I admit that I watched last night’s last minute press conference hoping for something spectacular from U.S. president Joe Biden: an announcement that he was leaving the race. The first few words from his lips and I figured that Mr Biden was opting to continue on the road to the presidency. Mr Biden took the opportunity to address a special counsel report on his handling of classified documents and an observation by the special counsel of the President’s mental capacity. It was not a positive one.
Mr Biden’s response started out tough and for a brief moment I thought that Mr Biden’s intent was to use the optics of the press corps’ bombardment of questions to his advantage; to show the allegedly feeble, elderly man as a tough guy who could not only handle the barrage of inquiries but chew gum and walk while managing an economy and two or more hot wars.
My brief moment was indeed brief. A mental slip where Mr Biden mentioned Mexico’s involvement in the decision to let people into Egypt had me looking around and asking, “What the hell? Did I hear right?” Clearly, I was not the only one befuddled by Mr Biden mixing up the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico and I can still claim my minor in geography as intact.
A simple statement on the special counsel’s report, a report most Americans are not going to read anyway, would have sufficed. Instead, Mr Biden’s performance, which overall was not that bad, had enough moments of mental lapses for voters to think twice about his capacity to serve five more years.
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| CME Group Underlying Future | Underlying futures quote | x-rates.com FX spot prices | CME Group underlying futures quote |
| EUR FX (6EH4) | 1.07835 | 1.076978 | 1.1 |
| JPY/USD (6JH4) | 0.0067315 | 0.006694 | 0.00695 |
| United States 10-year yield | Germany 10-year yield | Japan 10-year yield |
| 4.17% | 2.36% | 0.71% |
The bond markets did not seem too surprised by Mr Biden’s performance. Yields on the 10-year U.S., German, and Japanese government bonds did not change much from yesterday. Call options on the Euro FX futures and Japanese Yen futures were both out of the money as of 5:53 am EST for the March 2024 contracts.
Overall, a yawn moment, at least until the rest of America wakes up.
Alton Drew
9 February 2024
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