POWER: Greece Mulls Extending Operations at Lignite Units

Source: Bloomberg

• SNB President Schlegel is scheduled to appear at a BIS panel on "future-proofing central banks" in Basel today (link here: https://www.bis.org/events/bis_innovation_summit_2025/agenda.pdf). The event is officially scheduled on the SNB calendar but to our knowledge there will be no speech text release.
• In an interview yesterday (text, in German), Schlegel said "We are aware that negative interest rates can have undesirable side effects, for example for savers and pension funds. The hurdle to reintroducing them is high", broadly repeating his rhetoric from the June policy meeting.
• Schlegel is also scheduled to appear tomorrow, where he will hold prepared remarks on "communication – an important element in fulfilling the SNB’s mandate" then, with a scheduled text release for 12:45 BST / 13:45 CEST. This appearance would seem to be the most natural fit to potentially provide any new signals on monetary policy ahead of the SNB meeting on September 25.
• Our base case would be that Schlegel's rhetoric implicitly remains rather sceptical towards a cut into negative rates at the September meeting taking into account inflation has printed the third consecutive time within the SNB's target range in August. Any dovish tilt here could be considered a material surprise given market pricing for a mere 6% implied odds of a September cut.

The implied probability of a government shutdown on October 1 receded slightly after appropriators huddled yesterday for a bipartisan and bicameral meeting to discuss the funding deadline. 

• House Democratic appropriator Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said, “Everybody is very cognizant of the deadline.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said House leadership may let bipartisan talks go further than March, when Democrats swallowed a partisan funding extension: “We want to give [Republican appropriator Tom Cole] the latitude to get the agreement first...”
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said he expects the House to sign off on a “fairly clean” stopgap measure to punt funding into November or December.
• The Hill notes Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), "have gotten the message that Democrats will only accept a clean continuing resolution, without major policy riders or significant spending cuts..."
• However, President Donald Trump’s position remains unclear. Punchbowl notes that, “Top Republicans recall that Trump oversaw the longest government shutdown in U.S. history back in 2018-19,” and his OMB Director, Russell Vought, may see a showdown with Democrats as another route to coopting the pursestrings from Congress.
• Republicans may also overestimate Democrats’ willingness to accept a ‘clean’ CR, especially considering they have framed a potential lapse in appropriations as a ‘Republican shutdown’. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told reporters: “How do you say ‘clean CR,’ then Russ Vought gets to pick and choose?”  

Figure 1: Government Shutdown by October 1                    

Source: Polymarket