Wall Street Gets It; Main Street Doesn't

Wall St. Gets It. Main Street Doesn’t…. Morgan Stanley’s chief US economist Ellen Zentner says Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has created an economic boom, and bolstered the manufacturing sector.

Due to Bidenomics, the investment bank has upped its projection for US first-half GDP growth from 0.5 percent to 1.9.

Unemployment at 3.6 percent is near an all-time low, while inflation in June dipped to three percent, its lowest point since 2021.

Despite the economic rebound, Biden gets little credit from the public for his economic accomplishments.

That’s because people don’t want to hear about the slowing of inflation. They want to know why prices at the supermarket are higher now than when Joe took office.

The administration can talk all that it wants about supply chain disruption, war in Ukraine, pandemic fallout, and high energy costs as reasons for the initial surge in inflation. That sounds like a cop-out.

Only 37 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, CNBC reported on July 20. That was up a mere three points since April.

The Biden White House has a lot of PR work ahead to shift the narrative to plentiful available jobs and rising family incomes to cover those higher grocery bills.

Jungle capitalism at its worst. The Wall Street Journal reports that a trio of hedge funds is working to deny about $1B to victims of the opioid crisis and keep the money for themselves.

The scheme is to drive Mallinckrodt, which has agreed to pay a $1.7B settlement to opioid victims to resolve lawsuits, into Chapter 11 and then take control of the company. Mallinckrodt was the No. 1 producer of opioid pills from 2006 to 2014.

The funds believe that Mallinckrodt promised too much when it agreed to the opioid deal “and that the company’s money first belongs to senior lenders like themselves, not to addiction victims or state governments,” according to the WSJ.

Silver Point Capital (Greenwich), Bracebridge Capital (Boston), and Alta Fundamental Advisors (New York) are negotiating with Mallinckrodt about the Chapter 11.

Silver Point declined to comment to the WSJ, while Bracebridge and Alta Fundamental didn’t immediately respond to the paper’s request for comment.

Hats off to the WSJ for its exclusive report on financial greed and heartlessness.