U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin puts on a face mask during a break as he testifies before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on September 1, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
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Here’s what you need to know about the impact of Covid-19 to navigate the markets today.
• A deal between the White House and Congress to fund the federal government to the beginning of December through is likely to be struck by the end of the week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday. Funding is set to expire on Sept. 30 and a Democratic aide confirmed to Reuters that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif) had reached an agreement with Sec. Mnuchin, but said the details weren’t yet hammered out. “We’re going to move forward with a clean CR [continuing resolution], hopefully through the beginning of December,” Sec. Mnuchin told reporters. “I hope by the end of the week we’ll have something firmed up.”
• India set a global record for daily coronavirus cases on Sunday, reporting 90,632 fresh cases in the previous 24 hours. The country has experienced the world’s largest outbreak of Covid-19 infections for the past several weeks and has reached about 4.1 million cases so far with just over 70,000 deaths. As the nation loosens its lock down restrictions and prepares to partially restore metro train service in its capitol New Delhi, medical experts fear that a second-wave of infections has already begun in some areas. India is likely to surpass Brazil as the country with the second-most reported coronavirus cases in the world by Monday.
• Big companies are trying to solve a national poll-worker shortage by giving their workers paid time off to help staff in-person voting places, The Wall Street Journal reports. An estimated 460,000 election workers will be needed this year, because elderly Americans, who often staff polling places, might not be able to volunteer because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Gap, Old Navy, Target, and Warby Parker have told their employees that they can take paid-time off to staff early voting locations in October and on election day, Nov. 3. Another way companies are trying to meet the need for poll workers is through Power the Polls, a campaign to recruit workers to volunteer at polling places that has partnered with companies such as Starbucks and Patagonia. Last week, the group behind the effort said they had signed up 350,000 people.
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Write to Ben Walsh at [email protected]
