Fact-Checking Breaking News -- February 20, 2020

Updates

Later, 10:41 p.m. Central Time: I spoke too soon. Market sell off. Dow down 310 points; down 1%. Reason: "a" Federal Reserve governor said this morning: don't expect any rate cuts any time soon. Buying opportunity. Panic vs FOMO. Traders on the floor, according a Fox Business News talking torso -- this has to do with coronavirus out of China. Yeah, panic. Sell-off began immediately after WHO press conference: pandemic. Reminds me of the Obama era; following every one of his speeches, it seemed, the market fell. Gold at 7-year highs. GS: probable correction; coronavirus not adequately factored in.

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Original Post

Fake news: we're so lucky to have the internet. We can do fact checking ourselves. Here's the top of the banner headline over at Yahoo!Finance! OMG! Stocks drifting lower! The Trump economy is tanking! Time to sell. Coronavirus will get us all.

Here's the rest of the story:

• all three major indices reached all-time highs yesterday, although two of the three did not close at all-time highs, pulling back a little before the end of the day;
• today, after the market hit all-time highs, we would expect some profit-taking; and, 
• the pundits provided that narrative -- coronavirus fears / stocks drift lower:

In fact, all three major indices -- after hitting all-time record highs yesterday, are drifting higher:

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Post-Debate

This morning I got up early -- prepare for an early morning of Uber-granddaughter driving -- eager to see how "Morning Joe" would report the debate.

They were interviewing some "scholar."

The question: "Which candidate has the gravitas to be the next commander-in-chief?"

The answer, and I kid you not: "It was a great debate, nice to see come competition."

In other words: no one on stage had the gravitas to be the next commander-in-chief. That's probably not the question that MSNBC executives want their talking heads to ask.

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To Answer Your Question

"Yes, senator, to answer your question, I am calling you dumb. I am not mocking you. Facts are facts."

I was aware that Senator Klobuchar -- a legend in her own mind, and said to be the smartest candidate of either party -- could not remember or did not know the name of the Mexican president.

What I did not know, from the AP:

And ongoing animosity flared between Buttigieg and Klobuchar when the former Indiana mayor slammed the three-term Minnesota senator for failing to answer questions in a recent interview about Mexican policy and forgetting the name of the Mexican president. [Did she forget or did she not know? Huge difference.]

Buttigieg noted that she’s on a committee that oversees trade issues in Mexico and she “was not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country.”

She shot back: “Are you trying to say I’m dumb? Are you mocking me here?”

Obviously, Klobuchar was not punching above her weight last night.

By the way, the Founders were smart to include a minimum age limit for president (otherwise AOC would have been on the stage) but they really, really, really dropped the ball when they failed to include a maximum age limit. That was brought home when VP Biden, although unable to name them, mentioned that he had met a dozen past Mexican presidents, including, no doubt, President General Antonio López de Santa Anna.