| Stimulus talks continue to be not over, it's presidential debate day, and little improvement expected in jobless claims. Not there yetDeadlines have passed, negotiations have started and stopped and started again, and now with only a dozen days to the election there still is talking without an agreement. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will have further discussions today aimed at resolving any open questions in the deal, which White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows says will total $1.9 trillion. The main blockage remains in the Senate where Republican members have balked at the size of the spending bill and where there is resistance to holding a vote before the election, and even this year at all. DebateSpeaking of the looming election, the second presidential debate begins at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time tonight in Nashville. Both candidates will be seeking to improve their performance from a rancorous first outing. In an effort to improve the quality of the 90-minute face-off, the Commission on Presidential Debates will mute the microphones of candidates in turn to allow two minutes of uninterrupted speaking time at the beginning of each segment of the debate. In other election news, the White House has accused Iran of attempting to intimidate voters. ClaimsThe median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg shows weekly jobless claims will be at 870,000, little improved from last week's 898,000. Continuing claims are expected to fall below 10 million. The data comes as Fed policymakers continue to warn that failure to agree on stimulus is the biggest risk to the economy, apart from the coronavirus itself. The pandemic, meanwhile, continues to reach record numbers of new daily infections in Europe while hospitalizations in the U.S. from the virus have hit a two-month high. Markets slipNo breakthrough on stimulus and the rising number of Covid cases is keeping a lid on any chance of market optimism this morning. Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slipped 0.6% while Japan's Topix index closed 1.1% lower. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was down 0.5% at 5:50 a.m. as earnings season so far fails to reassure investors. S&P 500 futures pointed to a small decline at the open, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 0.811% and gold eased. Coming up...U.S. existing home sales data is at 10:00 a.m., with Kansas City Fed manufacturing at 11:00 a.m. There are only three Fed speakers on today's calendar. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, with a full Senate vote expected early next week. Southwest Airlines Co., Coca-Cola Co., AT&T Inc. and Kimberly-Clark Corp. are among the long list of companies reporting earnings. What we've been readingThis is what's caught our eye over the last 24 hours. And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morningWhen people think about money, they often have in their head a starting point of physical currency as the sort of Platonic ideal of what it is. As for money in a bank account, most people probably know there isn't cash in a pile somewhere that's theirs, but bank money is still seen as analogous to cash somehow. But not only are the two forms of money very different, it's really a mistake to start with cash. Most money in the world is not a thing to possess, but rather a thing that you're owed by some other entity. It's credit. The money you have in your bank account is money that your bank owes you. Cash is a form of money that you can actually possess, but it's kind of a freak sideshow in the grand scheme of things.  On the latest episode of the Odd Lots podcast, Tracy Alloway and I talked with Benoît Cœuré, a former ECB executive board member who now heads up the Innovation Hub at the Bank for International Settlements, where he works on the development of Central Bank Digital Currencies. There's a lot of confusion about what CBDCs are actually for, what purpose they serve, or why they're being pursued. But fundamentally, they're about replicating cash in the digital context... a form of money that the public can hold that represents a direct liability of the central bank, as opposed to money owed to you by a private institution. As the world gets more digital, and actual physical cash departs the scene, the ability to hold cash money as opposed to credit money may be under threat if systems like this aren't built out. Check out the conversation at the link above or on iTunes here. Joe Weisenthal is an editor at Bloomberg. Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. | 
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