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Good morning, fellow political junkies. It's Day 9 of the partial federal government shutdown. Global financial markets at this point still appear to expect sanity to eventually prevail in the Washington fiscal standoff. We'll have to see if they're right.

The day's big news is expected to be President Obama's choice to head the Federal Reserve of the candidate thought to be his second choice since his first proved politically problematic.

Here are some of the more interesting politically related items that caught my eye this morning.

Economist Janet Yellen is President Obama's choice to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Ben Bernanke, The Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath and Peter Nicholas report. If confirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman to be the world's most powerful central banker. The bad news is she could also be the first U.S. Fed chief to have to pick up the pieces after a federal-government default on its obligations. Lawrence Summers, who was thought to be Obama's preferred candidate, won't have such worries, at least.

Some Senate Democrats are warning that the chamber's majority might be forced to change the rules to make it easier for the majority to advance a debt-ceiling raising bill to a floor vote if Republicans decide to filibuster it., Politico's Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report. That move would make the Senate's atmosphere even more toxic.

The vast majority of the federal government would remain closed if President Obama and Senate Democrats accepted the House Republicans' approach of reopening government in a piecemeal way, Derek Thompson vividly explains at The Atlantic.

Remember the immigration issue? It's kind of gotten lost amid the current fiscal fight. Supporters of an immigration overhaul want to make sure it's not forgotten, however. Hundreds demonstrated at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday with some being arrested, including several congressmen, reports NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.

It's easy to lose track of how many times, David Frum has stood athwart history to yell "stop" at his own Republican Party. His latest piece in The Daily Beast is a particularly good example of it.

Recruiting Democratic candidates to run for House seats in Republican districts has become relatively easier because of the government shutdown for which the GOP gets the greater share of the blame, Greg Sargent writes in the Washington Post's Plum Line.

Obama has a Kansas cousin with Tea Party leanings who plans to primary Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) reports Katrina Trinko in the The Corner blog at the National Review Online.

House members who workout in the private gym in the Capitol are being forced to reuse their towels because linen service is a casualty of the government shutdown, reports The Hill.

The latest House GOP gambit in the fiscal fight is ... wait for it ... a supercommittee.

But Republicans aren't calling it a supercommittee since that's the term for the failed panel that brought us the the sequester.

Instead, it's called the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth. The special panel would have 20 members, evenly divided between the House and Senate, who would recommend a budget for fiscal 2014 (which began Oct. 1), and craft details of a new debt ceiling and spending cuts.

One problem with the idea: The proposal has practically no chance of passing in a Senate led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

President Obama was also dismissive in his Tuesday press conference.

"Now, there is already a process in place called the budget committees that could come together right now — Democrats have been asking for 19 months to bring them together — make a determination how much should the government be spending next year," he said. "And that's a process that's worked reasonably well for the last 50 years. I don't know that we need to set up a new committee for a process like that to move forward."

The legislation is the House Republicans' attempt to codify as much as possible their request for negotiations with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

And when Senate Democrats consign it to the ever-growing pile of House GOP bills they've killed, Republicans can point to that as yet another example of Democratic intransigence.

"A president of the U.S. should provide leadership and that includes negotiating with people, even someone you disagree with. And that is the mark of a leader, and that is why we're here today," Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the House Rules Committee chairman, said at a hearing considering the legislation.

What was odd about that was that nothing in the legislation even mentions the president, which Democrats at the hearing noted.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, the committee's top Democrat, captured her colleagues' disdain for the idea.

"I expected better," she said. "Another supercommittee? For crying out loud. Look what happened to the last one. The last one just threw up its hands and said, 'We can't do another thing.' This is leadership?"

Well, yes, as the 14-term congresswoman knows better than most, in Washington, proposing a committee to solve tough problems does often pass for leadership.

Imagine a poker table.

At one seat, China's President Xi Jinping studies his cards. At another, Russian President Vladimir Putin is stroking his chin. Asian leaders fill the other seats, each trying to win the pot, which is filled — not with poker chips — but with jobs.

That's the kind of high-stakes game that played out this week in Indonesia, where global leaders got together to discuss trade relations. Their gathering ended Tuesday, and exactly who won what is not yet clear.

But this much is known: President Obama was not at the table.

And his absence, due to budget and debt tensions in Washington, was not good for American workers. Or at least that's the assessment of the president himself, as well as many economists.

'Important To Show Up'

Economists say the president needs to be in the game, but he missed his chances at the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

"It's always important to show up" whenever global leaders are talking trade, said Bill Adams, senior international economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

"Sweeping trade agreements are never settled at one meeting, but they are large and complex, so you need to keep working on them," he said. "You need face time with other leaders."

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Obama concurred.

"I should have been there," Obama said. "It's like me not showing up at my own party."

Many Asian leaders had hoped to end the APEC meeting with an announcement about advances in trade deals, in particular the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States. But those hopes fizzled, with some Asian officials saying they fear the TPP lost momentum because Obama was not there to push it.

Obama agreed, telling reporters, "I would characterize it as missed opportunities."

Advancing a megatrade deal is particularly important at this stage of the slow U.S. economic recovery, most economists contend. That's because growth spurts typically come from:

1.) fiscal stimulus (Congress spending money for new roads and bridges)

2.) monetary stimulus (the Federal Reserve making it easy and cheap to borrow) or

3.) favorable trade deals (U.S. companies getting access to new markets).

A Key Economic Ingredient

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Nabisco has released a special edition of its classic sandwich cookie, just in time for Halloween: Oreos with candy corn filling. This beats the July 4 special, the Oreo filled with a live M-80.

Eva: I didn't even know candy corn and Oreos were dating ... now they have a kid?!

Robert: When I eat regular Oreos, I want a glass of milk. When I eat these, I want a glass of poison.

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