Submitted via Doug Kass,
"We seem to be living in the riskiest moment of our lives, and yet the stock market seems to be napping. I admit to not understanding it.'
--Dr. Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize winner
White House budget director Mike Mulvaney has come out swinging at The IMF, after the establishment-sponsored organization threw shade at Trump's tax reform plan's growth expectations, accusing them of wanting the reforms to fail.
The angry response came after Vitor Gaspar, The IMF’s head of fiscal affairs, told the Financial Times:
News that Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) is retiring from the Senate was not welcome news for advocates of reform in the government-controlled world of housing finance. "A big loss," said John Thune (R-SD). "He's always been a guy who's really about trying to find solutions, common ground, and getting results."
Looking at today's scheduled release of Minutes from the September FOMC meeting (which at least according to one trader will be the "start of the market changeover process"), RanSquawk reminds us that the Federal Open Market Committee stood pat at the meeting, as expected. The Committee also announced that it would begin to shrink the size of its balance sheet in October, as expected, with the process falling in line with a previously disclosed detailed plan.
At a time when the SEC is still debating whether to permit bitcoin-based ETFs in the US, Europe has been one step ahead thanks to the Swedish-based XBT Exchange Traded Notes (from provider CoinShares). And today, remaining one step ahead of the US, the same team behind the XBT ETN has launched the first ever ETN for Ether, the native token of the Ethereum platform, which will be listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm.