Congress And White House Reach Agreement on Anti-Coronavirus Stimulus Plan
US Senate leaders and the White House announced a deal on the massive $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill. The Senate is expected to vote and pass the legislation to put into action the most extensive rescue package in American history later Wednesday.
"At last we have a deal," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Tweeted at 1:51 AM ET from the floor of the Senate. In a significant action in a Twitter politician era, McConnell informed the world that the policymakers reached a bipartisan agreement.
White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland also showed his euphoria as he told reporters, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are done. We have a deal."
After several days of negotiations, the size of the relief package got an increase from the $850 billion that Donald Trump reportedly first asked for, to the current $2 trillion.
The Senate had yet to release the final terms of the deal. But according to an early draft released Tuesday, Americans would get more unemployment insurances, multi-billion funds for hospitals, direct paychecks to taxpayers, bailouts for specific industry sectors, and low interest loan programs for small businesses, including freelancers.
Mitch McConnell said:
In effect, this is a war-time level of investment into our nation.
On the other hand, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed out that President Trump, vice president Pence, members of Congress and heads of Executive Departments businesses are banned from receiving loans or investments under the deal.
Schumer told CNN:
To the American people we say, big help, quick help is on the way because we face about the most unprecedented health crisis we have.
The agreement came when the United States is in the middle of the Coronavirus crisis, with over 55K confirmed infected of COVID-19, a rate of 10K new cases daily, and over 802 deaths.
Globally, over 436K cases have been confirmed, with near 20K deaths and 112 people recovered, according to the COVID-19 Situation Dashboard provided by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Wall Street Consolidates Gains After Stimulus Deal
The US stocks market is trading positive on Wednesday after the 11% rally experienced on Tuesday. Investors are betting on a quick and neat signing of the bill later today.
As the package has a provision for Airlines' bailout, investors will be looking for opportunities on these companies, including Boeing amid speculations that the Chicago-based aerospace manufacturer would restart 737 Max production as early as May.
Technology, retailers and financial companies are also doing well. In fact, American Investor and DoubleLine Capital founder Jeffrey Gundlach tweeted on Tuesday: "I can see the S&P 500 making it to around 2700 on this snap back." The tweet was released before the deal announcement.
Bitcoin Near to $7,000, But Rejected
The king of cryptocurrencies is trading negative on Wednesday against the US dollar, but for many investors and leaders of the industry, the bullish movement is just starting.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted overnight that the $2 trillion aid package ready to be approved by the US Congress would put the Bitcoin price at $100,000.
Zhao commented:
As we get used to talk about Trillions, a modest $2 trillion market cap of #bitcoin will put 1 BTC at $100,000. Not such a hard to imagine number now, right? As most BTC are not for sale (HODLers), we only need a small portion of that $2t to buy to reach it.
Dollar Extends 103.00 Rejection
The US Dollar index is trading negatively for the second day as investors continue to sell the Greenback after a rejection of the 103.00 area and amid the Fed pumping dollars into the economy.
DXY is now testing the 101.00 area for the third day in the last four. Even though the chart is still positive, it looks like the index is losing steam every day. Especially as US 10-Year Treasury bonds are trading below the 1.00%
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