The government shutdown that began last week seemed to come out of nowhere. But the take-no-prisoners strategy among Republicans was planned months ago, as part of a long-running effort to undo the Affordable Care Act, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire report in The New York Times.
Speaker John A. Boehner stood his ground on Sunday alongside the most conservative Republicans, saying he would not vote to finance and reopen the government or raise the debt ceiling without concessions from President Obama on the health care law, Jackie Calmes and Jeremy W. Peters report in The Times. “The fact is, this fight was going to come one way or the other,†Mr. Boehner said on the ABC News program “This Week.â€
Now, with no resolution in sight, Wall Street is worried about the more consequential fight over the debt ceiling. “As political theater, the debt ceiling is not a useful threat, because politicians are basically threatening to shoot themselves as they will rightly shoulder the blame for the serious global economic consequences of a default,†Vincent Reinhart, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley, writes in DealBook in the Another View column. If the debt ceiling is not raised, the government’s economic officials face the prospect of violating one of three laws in order to prevent a default, Mr. Reinhart writes. “They have to break a law.â€
In rural Iowa, home to Representative Steve King, a Republican, “people were fed up with the gridlock in Washington,†James B. Stewart writes in the Common Sense column in The New York Times. “But while they are beginning to question Mr. King’s tactics, they continue to support his core commitment to cutting the size of government.â€
HOW TWITTER’S I.P.O. FILING EVOLVED  | Twitter’s prospectus for an initial public offering was released on Thursday, but the company had already filed four earlier versions of the document with the Securities and Exchange Commission, kept out of the public view. Those versions, released late on Thursday, show how Twitter added certain disclosures about its business, DealBook’s Peter Eavis writes.
“Twitter added some eye-opening, potentially helpful disclosures to its later documents. For instance, it tried to quantify how many of its users might be fake. This is a significant statistic, since Twitter’s advertisers want to reach real users,†Mr. Eavis writes. “Twitter also added geographical data that seemed significant. One of the questions hanging over social networks is whether they can generate profits outside of the comparatively wealthy and developed United States market.â€
One columnist, David Carr, pondered how much a single post on Twitter could be worth. “How about $1 billion? Or maybe $6 billion? If the post comes from the fingertips of Carl C. Icahn, the hyperactive hedge fund manager, an argument could be made that there’s gold in those 140 characters,†Mr. Carr writes in the Media Equation column in The Times.
As it heads to Wall Street, Twitter must “prove it can fend off a rising threat from a younger generation of nimble social outlets that offer clever new ways for people to connect and share content,†Jenna Wortham and Vindu Goel report in The New York Times. “Among these up-and-comers are Snapchat, WhatsApp, Line, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Kakao and Reddit.â€
ON THE AGENDA Â |Â The trial of five former employees of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities begins this week in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Julian Robertson, founder of Tiger Management, is on CNBC at 4:30 p.m. Maurice R. Greenberg, former chief of the American International Group, is on CNBC at 4:30 p.m.
ACKMAN IN HIS OWN WORDS  | The activist investor William A. Ackman has experienced prominent setbacks this year, racking up paper losses on his bet against Herbalife and taking a $500 million loss on J.C. Penney. “I’m not emotional about investments,†Mr. Ackman, the head of Pershing Square Capital Management, tells Andrew Ross Sorkin in a Q. and A. interview in The New York Times Magazine. “Investing is something where you have to be purely rational, and not let emotion affect your decision making â€" just the facts.â€
Two other hedge fund managers, George Soros and Daniel S. Loeb, have taken the opposite side of Mr. Ackman’s Herbalife bet, Mr. Sorkin notes, calling them “friends†of Mr. Ackman. “Neither of the people you mentioned is, or has ever been, a close friend of mine,†Mr. Ackman says. “I certainly know the people you mentioned â€" but, look, you need a thick skin to be in this business. In a short sale, the whole world is going to be on the other side of the investment until they realize you’re right.â€
Labor Issues Complicate Cross-Border Tire Deal  | The planned $2.5 billion acquisition of Cooper Tire and Rubber by Apollo Tyres of India has “flared into a war of words,†Reuters reports. REUTERS
Temasek and Sinopec Said to Bid for Stake in Gas Natural  | Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and Sinopec, the Chinese oil giant, have approached the Spanish company Repsol over buying its 4.7 billion euro ($6.4 billion) stake in the utility Gas Natural, The Financial Times reports. FINANCIAL TIMES
Russian Bank to Sell Stake in Societe Generale Unit  | The Russian bank VTB is selling a 10 percent stake in Société Générale’s Russian unit back to Société Générale, Reuters reports. REUTERS
Bank Chat Service Aims to Challenge Bloomberg  | The biggest Wall Street banks have signed up for a messaging service that will be introduced on Monday and will allow employees to chat with one another quickly, The New York Times reports. Many traders and bankers currently rely on the chat application that comes with a Bloomberg terminal. NEW YORK TIMES
New Fashion Runway: Wall Street  | Michael Kors had extraordinary success with an initial public offering of his brand nearly two years ago, leading other designers to consider the same. DEALBOOK
Buffett Collects $10 Billion From Crisis-Era Loans  | Five years after throwing lifelines to blue-chip companies during the financial crisis, Warren E. Buffett is emerging with a payoff of $10 billion and counting, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
Wall Street’s All-Night Puzzle Competition  | The “Midnight Madness†competition, now in its second year, drew almost 300 people from the financial industry over the weekend to solve puzzles and follow clues in teams of 10, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Financial Literacy Outside the Classroom  | An academic research paper showed that “financial education is laudable, but not particularly helpful,†Richard H. Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, writes in an essay in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES
K.K.R. Said to Approach Deal for Crosby Group  | The private equity firm K.K.R. is near a deal to acquire the lifting equipment company Crosby Group for about $1 billion, Reuters reports, citing two unidentified people familiar with the matter. REUTERS
J.G. Wentworth Said to Pursue I.P.O.  | The financial firm J.G. Wentworth, which is owned by the private equity firm JLL Partners, “is pursuing an initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said,†The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
Paulson’s Bet on Greek Banks  | “The Greek economy is improving, which should benefit the banking sector,†the hedge fund manager John A. Paulson told The Financial Times, praising Greece’s “very favorable pro-business government.†FINANCIAL TIMES
Berkowitz’s Hedge Fund Opens to Institutions  | The mutual fund manager Bruce Berkowitz started a hedge fund this year that has grown to $140 million largely with money from Mr. Berkowitz and his employees. Now, he is seeking outside institutional investors, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
Twitter’s I.P.O. and the League Table Fight  | Twitter’s offering will most likely give a boost to its hired advisers in the league tables, rankings that banks profess to ignore but nonetheless track obsessively. DealBook »
Twitter’s R.&D. Spending Hits the Spot  | Twitter’s strategy of hiring engineers at a fast clip to build new features and services is the best way to ensure growth, Robert Cyran of Reuters Breakingviews writes. REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS
Twitter’s Mostly Male Cast  | All but one of Twitter’s top officials are men, its I.P.O. filing showed. The male-dominated cast “shows how stubbornly difficult it has been for women to make their way to positions of power and influence in tech,†The New York Times writes. NEW YORK TIMES
How a Big Law Firm Collapsed  | The giant law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, which filed for bankruptcy last year, “embodied a business strategy that has begun to supplant the traditional partnership values of loyalty and collegiality with an insistence upon expansion,†James B. Stewart writes in The New Yorker. NEW YORKER
A New Look for the $100 Bill  | The Federal Reserve plans to begin circulating a new $100 bill on Tuesday with some modern and colorful features to fight counterfeiting, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES
A Home-Court Edge for the S.E.C.  | The Securities and Exchange Commission’s internal court system is likely to hear more cases because of a recent change in the law, Gretchen Morgenson writes in the Fair Game column in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES
World Bank Proposes Sweeping Reorganization  | Jim Yong Kim, the American physician who took over as the president of the World Bank last year has planned a reorganization that “is meant to encourage collaboration across the sprawling, Balkanized and in some cases demoralized bank, which is conducting more than a thousand projects around the globe,†The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES
