According to the CEO of investment house BlackRock and political scientist Ian Bremmer, the failure of the Republican-controlled Senate to oust President Donald Trump, should the House's impeachment investigation be referred for a trial, could have a far-ranging and unpredictable impact on the economy.
As part of an interview covered by Markets Insider, "BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is reportedly worried about political instability in 2020" and feels that investors are not looking far enough down the road and could be faced with economic chaos in the event of the Senate voting along party lines and not convicting Trump.
According to Bremmer, both he and Fink are thinking along the same lines about a constitutional crisis rearing its head.
"I was with Larry Fink — client, friend — a couple of weeks ago, who is asking me what worried me the most," Bremmer explained before elaborating that "If Democrats try and fail to convict Trump, the party that loses next year's election is likely to question its legitimacy, and Congress could grind to a halt," reports MI.
Noting that Fink stated, "I absolutely agree with those concerns. The markets are not thinking about it yet," Bremmer stated his case.
"The 'overwhelmingly likely outcome' of the current impeachment inquiry is that Trump is impeached in the House but not convicted in the Senate, he [Bremmer] said, before adding that Trump would then feel, 'empowered to continue to abuse power in ways that he had involving Ukraine and Biden and all the rest,'" the report states.
"It's worse than non-impeachment or not holding impeachment hearings because it means that there are many people that will feel that the 2020 elections are themselves not legitimate," Bremmer added.
"There is a reasonable likelihood in 2020 that you'll have a short period of time where a constitutional crisis occurs," Bremmer explained. "Not martial law, not troops in the streets, but a feeling that the election itself is not legitimate and, therefore, the outcome should not be recognized as such by whoever lost."
"For a few months, you can imagine Congress refusing to play ball on things like getting stuff funded, working on a day-to-day basis," he elaborated. ""A general congressional strike in this environment, with the global economy deteriorating, is a significant risk in 2020 in a way that US domestic risk in 22 years, since I started Eurasia Group, has never been significant."
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