Politics

Appending to an earlier announcement by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, according to whom the House would not add Harvey disaster funds to the debt ceiling bill, Dow Jones reports that Republican lawmakers are set to vote on the Harvey aid bill on Wednesday, and instead of raising the debt ceiling, they will suspend it, likely kicking the can until some time in December when the whole farce would have to repeat itself again, although the exact length of the extension remains under discussion.

In a day when gold is surging to the highest level since the Trump election, what better way to hedge what happens next than to issue two separate price targets. We bring this up, because that's precisely what Goldman Sachs did today.

First, in a note discussing the relative merits of gold as a "currency as a last resort", and which eyed the suitability of the yellow metal as a hedge to an escalating North Korean crisis (discussed earlier), Goldman's chief currency strategist, Jeffrey Currie issue the following trade recommendation:

Just as he promised, former President Barack Obama has "spoken out" against President Trump's decision to rescind Obama's "legally disrespectful" immigration plan.

Via President Obama's Facebook page:

Immigration can be a controversial topic. We all want safe, secure borders and a dynamic economy, and people of goodwill can have legitimate disagreements about how to fix our immigration system so that everybody plays by the rules.

Despite President Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney’s urgings, it appears that Congress will not combine funding for the Hurricane Harvey cleanup effort with a measure to raise the debt ceiling, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Congress’s decision will create a major headache for the Trump administration in the coming weeks, as it tries to push through a government-funding bill and a measure to raise the debt ceiling over objections of conservatives who are calling for budget cuts and other concessions.

The reason why the VIX has spiked by over 3 vols, or 3.13 to be precise, rising as high as 13.26 as this moment, is being attributed - by several buyside desks - to a "worst case" scenario analysis passed around the trader community from a prominent sellside analyst, according to whom a military outcome in North Korea now appears practically inevitable should North Korea launch its ICBM, as reports overnight have speculated it will do in the coming days.