Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S.

Economist for Morgan Stanley.

And I'm Adam Hergadama, U.S. Equity Strategist.

On this special edition of the podcast, we're going to be talking about the ongoing economic recovery in the U.S.

and how investors could look at potential reopening opportunities in 2021.

It's Thursday, October 15th at 11 a.m. in New York. So Ellen, with each passing day it's looking

a little bit less likely that Congress will pass a stimulus bill before the election.

What do the fourth quarter and 2021 look like to you without a near-term

stimulus package and what are you hearing about a post-election or maybe post-inauguration

package and how that could look? You know as we move further into the fourth quarter here, growth is slowing and some of that

is that we didn't get a further fiscal stimulus package and so just mechanically we're not going

to have a strong a quarter as we did when we were coming out of lockdown.

In terms of the various scenarios post-election, laid out by Mike Zezes, our U.S. public policy

strategists, of course the split Congress scenario regardless of who's in the White House holds the least prospects for further stimulus spending, you probably need a bauble in the economy, significant bauble in markets in order to provide that impulse that Congress would need to act. But certainly under a Democratic sweep, under a Republican sweep, you do get further fiscal stimulus.

Particularly under a Democratic sweep,

I would be encouraged if we were to see serious progress

on infrastructure spending package.

These are the kinds of policies that would carry much higher

multipliers for the economy in 2021. Well near term I think the focus is probably

going to be on the consumer because you can't think about the U.S US economy without really thinking about that

consumer. We know that the benefits from CARES, the original package, expired at the end of

July and yet consumer confidence was actually remarkably strong in August and September given that loss of income.

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