Shutdown looms in DC and what this means for 2025.
Andrew Sheves Good morning. One big headline worth considering today.
US Republicans in the House pulled a bipartisan spending bill that would have funded the government until Spring following Tweets condemning the bill from Elon Musk and opposition from President-elect Donald Trump. Current funding runs out at midnight on Friday, and the house is due to recess this weekend. [SOURCE - BBC]
Elon Musk via x.com
Commentary
Normally, a short-term resolution would keep the government open until a more long-term bill could be agreed upon. However, this would require GOP Speaker Johnson to gather support from Democrats, and a similar deal brought down his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. Therefore, the chance of a government shutdown is real, and if so, it would likely continue until January 20th, when Trump takes office.
It’s also important to recognize that, irrespective of the bill’s merits or lack thereof, it was doomed after Elon Musk Tweeted his opposition, calling it ‘criminal’ and urging Congress not to pass any bills until Trump is in office. This should banish any thoughts that Congress won’t fall in line with the incoming administration and that Trump and Musk fully intend to follow through on all campaign promises, in this case, cutting government spending, irrespective of what the spending is for.
The big takeaway is that it’s worth spending some time between now and January 20th examining everything that Trump, Musk, and others have promised (and threatened) to do, and determine how that affects your business and operations. It seems prudent to take the incoming adminsitration’s statements both seriously and literally.
Upcoming SITREP Changes
Two big changes are coming to the SITREPS.
Metrics.
First, the metrics will be calculated at the end of the previous business day instead of the morning of the report. For example, the metrics for today are the market data from 17:30ET yesterday, December 18. This is to assist with the automation push (see below).
Second, you’ll soon start to see the metrics on a comparative scale to show 1) how the latest daily value relates to prices over the last 45-days and 2) whether the latest value is higher, lower or unchanged from the previous value. This is still in development but here’s a rough concept.
Oil is Up at $75
Very Low - - - - - - - - Mid-Range - - - - - - - - Very High
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Metric tracker concept I’ll also be changing the metrics being tracked to make these more widely applicable. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Full Automation.
The SITREP content is already highly automated — I do the headlines, some editing and quality control but the main report is all generated by the Decis engine. However, I aim to have these published 100% automatically unless I see something that needs correcting. This reduces publishing delays and allows me to focus on quality improvements in the background instead of tinkering with the editing at 05:30.
I plan to get these rolled out over the next few days but there will be several steps to complete the whole process. The biggest cha
Carpe tomorrow!