5 things to start your day

[View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Biden plan hangs in the balance, ECB decision day, and a U.S. economy check. No deal yet  President Joe Biden will go to Capitol Hill today to make [one last pitch for his economic agenda]( ahead of his trip to Europe for the [Group of 20 talks in Rome]( and the [climate summit in Scotland](. Talks yesterday failed to reach agreement amid [arguing over tax measures]( to raise revenues for what could be $2 trillion in social spending. The White House messaging to progressives has changed somewhat from one of big ambition to something closer to ‘[a lesser bill is better than no bill at all](’. It now seems almost certain that [negotiations will blow past]( the end of October deadline. Central banks The European Central Bank is expected to [hold policy unchanged]( when its latest decision is announced at 7:45 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. President Christine Lagarde is likely to say that underlying pressures remain too weak for policy makers to pull back stimulus in her press conference 45 minutes later. The ECB position is becoming increasingly isolated, with the Bank of Canada yesterday [ending its bond buying program]( and accelerating the timing of future rate increases. Brazil’s central bank delivered its [biggest rate hike in nearly two decades]( and indicated more are on the way. The [Bank of England]( seems set to tighten by the end of the year and Federal Reserve officials are becoming [increasingly concerned about inflation](. Growth With the third quarter dominated by the delta variant’s impact on consumer spending and [supply-chain problems](, this morning’s growth figures for the period are expected to show a significant slowdown in activity. The median estimate from economists surveyed by Bloomberg is for annualized growth of 2.6%, well below the second quarter’s 6.7% pace. The data release at 8:30 a.m. is accompanied by the latest weekly initial jobless claims number, which may show another small improvement. Markets slip  Equity investors continue to concentrate on a busy earnings season, with results so far enough to keep global gauges close to record highs. Overnight the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slipped 0.6% while Japan’s Topix index closed 0.7% lower. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index had added 0.1% by 5:50 a.m., with [earnings]( and a drop in commodity prices weighing on the resource and energy sectors. S&P 500 futures [pointed to a small rise at the open](, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.548%, with the spread to the two-year yield dropping below 1 percentage point. Oil [moved below $82 a barrel]( and gold was unchanged. Earnings Tech megacaps dominate today’s earnings schedule with both Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. reporting. Both sets of results will be closely watched for supply and demand issues, ahead of the busy holiday season. Starbucks Corp., Caterpillar Inc., Yum! Brands Inc., Comcast Corp., Mastercard Inc., and Shopify Inc. are among the many other companies updating investors. Elsewhere in corporate news, [some oil majors]( will appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating a “long-running, industry wide campaign” of climate disinformation. What we've been reading Here's what caught our eye over the last 24 hours. - Odd Lots: Craig Fuller on the huge challenge of getting [ports to operate 24/7](. - Blackrock’s hedge fund star [gets paid more]( than CEO Larry Fink. - Why crypto really might need the [Worldcoin eye-scanning orb](. - CEOs say they’re wary of [speaking up about every political issue](. - EU [natural gas and power prices tumble]( after Putin’s order to add more fuel flow. - Workers [press for power]( in rare advance for U.S. labor movement. - Two Chinese teams claim to have [reached primacy]( with quantum computers. And finally, here’s what Joe’s interested in this morning The pressure on supply chains this year has put our ports, trucks, warehouses and rail systems front and center of our minds in a whole new way. For most people this stuff just happens in the background, outside of view. An item just appears on the shelf. Now, we get regular counts of how many boats are sitting in the water, waiting to unload their containers. Tracy Alloway and I have been covering the mess for basically [the whole year on the Odd Lots podcast](, and one of the recurring themes that emerges is how loose and informal the operations are on the back end. Getting your container onto a boat in China often involves who you know, and it's not uncommon for contracts to just not be honored. [On a recent episode](, Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen joked: "we call our industry freight forwarding, but I'm like, it should be called freight email forwarding because you're just kind of shuffling PDFs around the world trying to make things happen." On today's episode, [we speak with Craig Fuller](, the CEO of data and information firm Freight Waves. We cover a lot of ground, starting with the Herculean challenge of getting the ports to operate 24/7, which is the White House's goal. We talk about the different segments of the trucking market, and how the drayage operators (who move containers from the ports to inland warehouses) operate very differently than the long-haul truckers, who may move a container between two points in the U.S. Anyway again, one striking thing is just how informal it all seems. There's no central repository or network or trading platform for containers and movers. A lot of it just happens on Facebook or Telegram rooms such as this below, where you have drivers and dispatchers just non-stop posting for jobs to see if there's anyone available, or if anyone needs a container moved from one random city to another. It looks like this. It's OTC trading. As [Craig]( explains, some companies are trying to be the Tinder or Uber for matching drivers with jobs. But the system remains incredibly loose and unconsolidated. So while there's a lot of attention paid to the sort of sheer physical limitations stressing the system right now, there's also a lot to learn about the back end, and how it operates from both a financial and communications standpoint. The whole episode is a must listen. Check it out [here]( or on [Apple]( or [Spotify](. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter [@TheStalwart]( Follow the money. Be one of the first to [sign up for The Dose](, a new weekly newsletter that explores how once-illegal drugs like marijuana and psychedelics are becoming big business. Follow Us Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Five Things - Americas newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](