What a difference a month makes as a delayed whistle-blower report effectively launches an official impeachment inquiry again U.S. President Trump by U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
The quick version: a whistleblower complaint focuses on a July phone call between Trump and president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump urged the newly elected leader to look into allegations of misconduct against Biden, brings Rudy Giuliani into the mix to collect any info, and WH lawyers place the notes of the conversation into a computer system reserved for code-word-level intelligence information according to a call summary released by the White House.
Given that this story is moving faster than a wildfire, let’s move on to October calendar highlights:
October 15th: Deadline for Trump’s personal attorney and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani to turn over Ukrainian documents to House committees.
October 15th: A dozen Democratic candidates for the WH take to the stage and debate yet again, this time at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.
Also on October 15th: Bloomberg News reports that the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin to buy $60 billion of U.S. Treasury bills a month into at least the second quarter. Why is this important? The Feds are insisting that this buying spree is not a resumption of quantitative easing — better known as the 2008 crisis-era stimulus programs used to boost the economy — but rather “to improve its control over the benchmark interest rate it uses to guide monetary policy.” If it walks, talks, and sounds like a duck…
October 22nd: Major League Baseball World Series kicks off.
October 26th: FIFA U-17 World Cup Brazil 2019 (through November 17).
October 27th: Diwali – the biggest and brightest holiday in India a/k/a festival of lights.
October 31st: UK leaves the EU without a deal and Brits are already hoarding Nutella. For the nitty-gritty of Brexit, the BBC breaks it down.
And you thought Halloween was scary…