How Wall Street stopped worrying and learned to love Democrats

Follow Us Get the newsletter This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an economic platform of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Today's Agenda Biden has a chance to finally address economic anxiety. And unified Democratic government will help. Republicans aren't rejecting Trump hard enough. Maybe insurrectionists don't deserve big platforms. Dems May Have a Cure for Anxiety People once chalked up the rise of President Donald Trump mainly to the "economic anxiety" of Americans left behind by immigration and globalization. Lately the importance of race to the Trump story has taken center stage — a summer of Black Lives Matter protests, followed by armed white supremacists storming the Capitol, will do that — but those real economic hardships haven't gone away. President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 election (really, he did!) by talking about reuniting the country. Few things would advance that goal more than addressing those economic anxieties. Many Heartland voters may have stuck with Trump and the Republicans. But Biden and a Democratic Congress now have a chance to make their lives better, and economic growth more fair, Bloomberg's editorial board writes. They can do this by investing in neglected communities, improving infrastructure and otherwise creating new growth opportunities at home.      Wall Street, which typically favors the GOP shibboleths of tax cuts and deregulation, gets it: Having Democrats in charge right now is better for business, writes Conor Sen. Gridlock would have kept old trends in place, meaning more inequality and more anxiety. Narrow congressional margins will keep the Bernie Sanders wing of the party at bay but leave room for the investments the economy so desperately needs. Republicans, meanwhile, are still figuring out just how much they should atone for that whole storming-the-Capitol thing, which their rhetoric encouraged. They could do the economy a big favor by stamping out violent political turmoil right now, because it's bad for business, writes Noah Smith. Beyond the obvious instability it creates, it can also push up the risk premium on Treasury bonds, making government borrowing more expensive. We may have seen a bit of this happen on Jan. 6. Everybody's goal at this point should be easing anxiety in any form. Further Biden-Opportunity Reading: Biden has a chance to honestly reckon with America's anti-democratic history. — Pankaj Mishra Paid Post There's a reason over 2.5 million people start their day with Morning Brew — the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn't have to be dry and dense...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. Check it out. Morning Brew Meanwhile, the Republicans The Capitol attack does have many Republicans finally distancing themselves from Trump, at the last possible moment. Maybe it's the heinousness of the event, which has banks and other businesses ditching Republicans. Maybe it's the fact that their lives were in danger. Or maybe it's simply that they no longer need him politically, Jonathan Bernstein writes, now that he's getting kicked out of the White House and Republicans have lost both houses of Congress.   Still, Republicans just can't seem to fully quit him. Trump's mob may have chanted "Hang Mike Pence!" but the vice president can't bring himself to invoke the 25th Amendment against the man who taught him how to handle a water bottle. The Republican National Committee applauded a phoning-it-in Trump after the Capitol riot and re-elected a Trump loyalist to lead them, writes Robert George. If you wanted to ensure the party sinks further into irrelevance, this is one way to do it. As for Trump, he clearly hasn't learned any lessons, immediately making a fool of Senator Roy Blunt. Today he denied inspiring the Capitol attack, calling his rabble-rousing speech beforehand " totally appropriate," just like that other thing he got impeached for. The only way to keep him, and future presidents like him, from pulling such stunts again is to impeach him and keep him from ever running again, writes Ramesh Ponnuru. Big Tech's Anti-Fascism Moment A lot of people made fun of the explanation offered by the rioter photographed dangling from a balcony on the Senate floor during the attack. He was "caught up in the moment," he said. Honestly, though, this is a thing that happens in mobs: People who couldn't imagine themselves storming Capitols end up hanging from Senate balconies. There's a science to this, Cass Sunstein writes, that explains how stuff like "unleashing" and "group polarization" leads to events like Kristallnacht and Jan. 6. A lot of this particular group polarization happened in advance on the Internet, leading big tech companies to hastily de-platform Trump and his more extreme followers, who are still plotting violence. Elaine Ou doubts this will do much good, as these people will just find other ways to communicate. But Alex Webb argues it's still better to let these people gather in the internet's dark corners than expose more mainstream users to them on big services. Telltale Charts Most of the standard explanations for value investing's underperformance to growth don't make sense, writes Nir Kaissar.   Shake Shack is a prime example of how chain restaurants are being starved of revenue at their deserted city locations, writes Sarah Halzack. Further Reading A big problem for Biden's clean-energy ambitions is how much of the world's silicon for solar panels is made by forced labor in China. — Eli Lake  We still don't know enough about where this coronavirus came from, and China hasn't exactly helped figure it out. — Faye Flam  Boris Johnson needs to keep people just panicked enough to keep infections down and the health service from being swamped while it vaccinates people. — Therese Raphael  Luxury retailers are putting kids in charge, to better attract new generations of shoppers. — Andrea Felsted  A Malaysian power grab on the pretense of fighting Covid sure feels like a coup. — Dan Moss  Bitcoin investors locked out of their Bitcoin wallets are rediscovering why banks are important. — Matt Levine  ICYMI How Trump lost the trade war. The U.S. will require negative Covid tests for international travelers, not a moment too soon. A timeline of the Capitol attack. Area man has no regrets about storming Capitol. Kickers The first human civilization lasted 20,000 years longer than first thought. (h/t Ellen Kominers) BioNTech is trying to use mRNA technology to treat multiple sclerosis. This at-home cancer-screening test may replace the dreaded colonoscopy. Martian satellite photos reveal a dynamic planet. Note: Please send flint tools and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.   Like Bloomberg Opinion Today? Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.   You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. 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