5 things to start your day

[Bloomberg]( U.S.-China trade talks could be over before they begin, another deadline to save Nafta, and counting storm damage in the Carolinas and Asia. Disharmony China is considering [declining the offer of trade talks](, according to the Wall Street Journal, after President Donald Trump told aides on Thursday to [proceed with tariffs]( on about $200 billion more in the the country’s products. The disunity within the U.S. administration over the approach to China means there’s a lack of confidence in Beijing over whether any trade deal would be honored. Markets in Shanghai continue to slip amid the uncertainty, with the benchmark index there closing at the [lowest level]( in almost four years. Deadline The off-again, on-again [Nafta talks]( between the U.S. and Canada are set to resume this week, with Thursday now seen as the deadline for an agreement which could be formalized by the end of the month. The U.S. already dropped some of its most high-profile demands amid opposition from Congress to a Mexico-only deal and mounting pressure ahead of the midterm elections. The uncertainty caused by slow progress on Nafta and the stand off with China is hurting prices of base metals, nearly all of which are [trading lower]( again this morning. Sponsor Content by VanEck Helping Investors With the Crucial In or Out Decision. VanEck’s Guided Allocation Philosophy. [View Video.](  Damage The assessment of damage from Hurricane Florence is proving difficult as flood waters continue to rise in rivers throughout North and South Carolina. Officials don’t yet know how hard the regions’ farms were hit, or how long it will take to restore power to 708,000 customers who were cut off by the storm [which left 15 dead](. In Asia, a cleanup is underway from [Typhoon Mangkhut]( after a weekend of high winds and flooding which saw [casinos in Macau]( closed for the first time. Markets slip Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan Index fell 1.2 percent amid heightened trade concerns and falling casino and airline stocks in the wake of Mangkhut. Japan was closed for a holiday. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.2 percent lower at 5:45 a.m. Eastern Time, with miners among the hardest hit sectors. S&P 500 futures were [little changed](, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 2.996 percent and gold was higher. IPO There’s a huge public offering coming to the oil market, just maybe not the one [people have been talking about](. Abu Dhabi is pushing ahead with an initial public offering for Spanish oil company Cia Espanola de Petroleos SAU, which could raise about 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion), making it the [largest oil IPO]( in a decade. Crude [remains range-bound](, with a barrel of West Texas intermediate for October delivery trading at $69.58 by 5:45 a.m. Brent and WTI futures continue to drift further apart as worries about Iran help drive [bullish bets]( on the global benchmark. What we've been reading This is what's caught our eye over the weekend. - Odd Lots: What investors should know about the correlation between [bonds and stocks](. - Goldman Sachs says rising U.S. rates “[boiling the frog](” of risk assets. - Machines to handle half of work tasks [by 2025](, World Economic Forum says. - Misfiring Macron [desperate for a victory]( as magic starts to fade. - Musk says he's left one hell for [another delivering Teslas](. - Goldman Sachs is not a believer in [the 2020 recession](. - [Gravitational waves]( provide a dose of reality about extra dimensions. And finally, here’s what Joe's interested in this morning Back in the 90s, Alan Greenspan had a great reputation for being the "maestro" of the great economy. Then the dotcom crash happened and the housing bubble started to inflate and then there was a financial crisis, and between all the bubbles and crashes and his own free-market beliefs, [his reputation plunged](. But everything goes in cycles, and maybe it's time for a Greenspan revival. [On Friday on TV we talked to a JW Mason](, an assistant professor of economics at John Jay College (CUNY) and a fellow at the liberal Roosevelt Institute, about productivity and whether it could be poised to take off. If productivity started to rise, that would be huge, as it would signal the economy could grow faster (and for longer) without boosting inflation. The mainstream view is that there's no boom in the cards though. Mason's view is it's endogenous to the cycle, meaning that as the economy is strengthening (like now) companies spend more money on worker training and capital formation, and thus the economy begets increased productivity in a virtuous cycle. Greenspan, Mason believes, got this right, and didn't raise rates during periods when other economists were saying that the U.S. was at "full employment." Greenspan ended up being correct that there was room for the economy to grow much further without boosting inflation. This is highly relevant now, since Chairman Jay Powell is at a similar crossroads, with the economy running strong, but not particularly "hot" if measured by inflation. And indeed, Powell cited Greenspan several times [during his recent Jackson Hole speech](, when talking about the difficulties of using real-time economic signals. So now we have this weird situation where mainstream academic economists are talking about the need to raise rates, [while a random crew of left-wing economists]( (and a few others) are citing Greenspan as the model policymaker. 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