Trade worries increase again, it's all kicking off in the UK, and Dorian slowly moves toward the U.S. Setting a dateChinese and U.S. officials are having difficulty agreeing a date for the next round of trade talks after Washington rejected Beijing's request to delay tariffs that took effect over the weekend. Authorities in the Asian nation said they planned to file a complaint at the World Trade Organization against the U.S. moves. The fallout from the prolonged trade war is biting deeper into global factory production, with manufacturing PMIs from across the world yesterday showing increasing weakness. Although not everyone is gloomy on the outlook: Veteran market strategist David Woo says now is the time to bet on a deal. Snap election?Parliament returns for its first post-holiday sitting today in London, and it looks like it's going to be a very interesting one. A cross-party group is hoping to introduce a draft law which would force Prime Minister Boris Johnson to delay Brexit if he can't broker a new deal with the EU by the current Oct. 31 deadline. Johnson reacted to the threat by saying he would rather have an election than see his negotiating position with Europe undermined. Sterling dropped to $1.1959 this morning, the lowest level since 2016, as the uncertainty takes its toll. Storm coming The Bahamas continues to bear the brunt of the very slow-moving Hurricane Dorian, with the storm dropping to category 3 as it inches its way toward the U.S. mainland. Weather forecasters are currently painting a picture of Dorian grazing the coast as it moves up through Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, with residents living near the sea told to evacuate. Despite the storm not now expected to make a direct hit on the mainland, the sheer size of the weather system has already caused massive numbers of flight cancellations, with insured losses from the event expected to hit at least $25 billion, according to UBS Group AG calculations. Markets dropOvernight the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slipped 0.3% while Japan's Topix index closed 0.4% higher as the market there showed it's becoming more resilient to U.S.-China headlines. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.4% lower at 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time with London's FTSE 100 Index falling despite the drop in the pound. S&P 500 futures pointed to a sharp drop at the start of the holiday-shortened week in the U.S., the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.476% and gold was higher. Coming up…Investors will get a look at the strength of U.S. factories today with August Markit Manufacturing PMI published at 9:45 a.m. and ISM Manufacturing released 15 minutes later. 10:00 a.m. also sees construction spending data for July. In monetary policy, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren speaks and Chile's central bank announces its rate decision. What we've been readingThis is what's caught our eye over the weekend. And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morningThere's this new annoying thing that happens in any discussion: someone interjects that Bitcoin is the answer. It doesn't even matter what the question was. The payment system is too slow? Use Bitcoin. There's too much excess natural gas in Texas? Just solve it with Bitcoin (seriously, that's a thing people say). And of course when Bank of England Governor Mark Carney recently talked about transitioning to a post-dollar world, Bitcoiners had a predictable response: Bitcoin! As annoying as this is, I thought I'd take a moment to explain why it's virtually impossible that Bitcoin will be the dollar's successor on the global stage. The two-bit answer is that Bitcoin is too volatile to serve as a global reserve currency. The problem with this line is that Bitcoiners acknowledge this, and say that eventually the volatility will disappear. So that gets you nowhere. The four-bit answer is that there can be no lender-of-last-resort with Bitcoin, because no central bank can create it, and therefore relying on it would be exceptionally risky. This is true, but it won't convince anyone, because Bitcoiners think this is a good thing. And then you just end up in an argument over first principles, which is a waste of everyone's time. The real answer is that Bitcoin won't be a dominant medium of exchange or unit of account, because virtually nobody has Bitcoin-denominated liabilities. One reason companies like to sell stuff in dollars is that they owe dollars, and so they avoid a potential mismatch between the currency they take in and the currency they spend. As the economist David Beckworth nicely explains here, the dollar's ongoing dominance is partly derived from the network effects brought on by growing dollar-denominated debt around the world. It's not clear why anyone would ever want Bitcoin-denominated debt (especially given the history of the price rising). Besides debt, the one other way to create a liability is for states to demand that taxes be paid in a specific currency. But no state would demand Bitcoin-denominated taxes, particularly as Bitcoin usage limits a state's ability to regulate commerce. This isn't to say that Bitcoin can't get much bigger. Maybe it could even get as big as gold. But as a dominant medium of exchange or unit of account for the whole globe? It's not going to happen.  Like Bloomberg's Five Things? 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