Great Indian Sales
The federal government has shut down at the stroke of
midnight Friday, 19th Jan, 2018:U.S.time zone). That has halted all but the
most essential operations ; an immediate fall out of this is the spoiling of
Donald Trump's first year celebrations, for which he had planned to depart to
his 'Mar-a-Lago' club, where he was to participate in high-dollar fund
raising program to commemorate the completion of his first year of being
office.
In case the
Congress can't reach a deal on continuing resolution, the U.S. government will face a potential
shutdown the effect of which is "non-essential" services provided by
information bureaus, national parks, as well as other employees across the
federal government will close. Essential operations pertaining to national
security, law and order, and emergency life-and-death services will continue to
function, as will agencies and services that are not funded through
congressional appropriations. This includes immigration and border patrol, the
US Postal Service and special counsel Robert Mueller's office.
Late hour and last-minute negotiations did not yield any
positive results as Senate Democrats blocked a four-week stopgap extension in a
late-night vote, causing the fourth government shutdown in a quarter century.
Behind the scenes parleys, however, leading Republicans and Democrats were
trying to work out a compromise to avert a lengthy shutdown.
Nonetheless, Wall Street shrugged off by choosing to climb to record levels, with the
main stock indices enjoying a third successive week of gains, as participants
appeared unfazed by the risk of the shut
down.
This, however, was not the case with the foreign exchange
markets with the dollar index struggling to stay afloat of a three-year against
a basket of peer currencies.
This is in contract of the last government shut down that
took for 16 days in October, 2013, which brought a sharp fall in the S&p
500.
In effect, the stock and bond yields moved in opposite
direction with the gold prices in the commodity space pushed up by $5 to $1332
an ounce, even though still gold is not glittering for the reaons the precious
metal is down by $6 over the week.