Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day - Bloomberg

Evergrande contagion fears, big week off to a bad start, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before… 

Property watch  

Worries are growing that Chinese authorities will not be able to contain the fallout from a possible disorderly collapse of hugely indebted developer China Evergrande Group. With much of Asia trading closed for a holiday today, there were signs of those fears in Hong Kong where real estate giants saw their shares sell off. One Shanghai-based developer. Sinic Holdings Group Co., saw its share price almost wiped out in two hours before trading in the stock was suspended. Investors, unable to hedge their exposure to Evergrande, see Thursday’s interest payment on two bonds as the key test as to whether the conglomerate can survive. 

Big week

Investors have a lot besides Evergrande on their plates this week. The Federal Reserve decision on Wednesday may start laying the groundwork for a reduction in stimulus. Primary dealers surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries will rise to 1.69% by year end, with a formal announcement on tapering expected in November. Also likely to weigh on bond markets this week is the progress, or lack thereof, of President Joe Biden’s economic plans through the House. 

This again

And if all that wasn’t enough, the hardy perennial of U.S. political headaches is rearing its head again. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen penned on op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which she called for Congress to raise or suspend the debt ceiling, warning that the U.S. government will run out of money to pay its bills sometime in October. While the House is due to vote on the issue this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far 

rejected appeals to support the measure. The precise date when the U.S. runs out of money is not knowable in advance due to volatility of cash flows. 

Markets drop

Global equities are down this morning, with the rapid decline in raw material prices hitting mining stocks hard. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slumped 3.3% overnight, with much of the region closed for a holiday. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index had dropped 2% by 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time with every industry sector in the red led by a 5.3% plunge in the mining sub-index. S&P 500 futures pointed to U.S. markets having a risk-off start to the week, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.331%, oil slid and gold rose. 

Coming up... 

The U.S. National Association of House Builders Index for September is at 10:00 p.m. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems set to retain power in today’s national election, though may fall short of the parliamentary majority he is seeking. A scaled-backed United Nations General Assembly returns to Manhattan this week, with President Biden arriving at the event this evening. Cognyte Software Ltd. and Lennar Corp. report earnings. 

What we've been reading

Here's what caught our eye over the weekend.

And finally, here’s what Joe’s interested in this morning

There's a widespread view that one of the silliest U.S. laws is the debt ceiling. From time to time, Congress must authorize an increase in the total amount of Federal debt that can be outstanding at any given time. There's zero evidence that this law restrains the debt in any way. And the law is completely separate from the spending bills that rack up the debt. So politicians can vote to authorize debt-financed spending, but then vote against the authorization of said debt as a way to grandstand. It's all absurd. During recent administrations, it's largely been Republicans threatening to oppose hiking the debt ceiling although the tradition is bipartisan, depending on which party occupies the White House.

The good news is that although the law is extremely silly, there's a silly law that counteracts it. Section (k) of US legal code 31 U.S. Code § 5112 states that: "The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time."

Basically, the law states that the Treasury Secretary has the discretion to mint a platinum coin of any denomination, and there's widespread belief that this could be used to circumvent a crisis. This opinion was agreed to in 2013, by the former direct of the U.S. Mint.

Of course, it seems unlikely we'll ever see a trillion dollar (or more, there's no reason it has to stop at a trillion) platinum coin get minted. Probably at some last minute, Congress will cobble the votes together on a virtually party line basis to hike the debt ceiling, and the whole thing will be forgotten about for a couple of years.

Coin critics say the whole thing is a joke. That somehow it wouldn't be "serious" to go the coin route. That it would make Washington D.C. look silly to engage in this exercise. But implicit in the argument against the coin is that the current approach is somehow serious, that we should risk defaulting on the debt -- a move that is arguably unconstitutional -- because that is more dignified than using one legal hack to just end this nonsense once and for all. After all, once the coin were to be employed, nobody would bother with the actual law ever again.

Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter at @TheStalwart

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