‼️ 🇩🇪 Chancellor Friedrich Merz says he’ll stay on despite his CDU suffering a historic first-ever wipeout in a German state election, taking just 4.9% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as the AfD topped the poll with 38.2%. Separately, the anti-capitalist Left party—running on a platform to expropriate housing from private landlords—won the Berlin city-state election.
‼️ 🧠 SoftBank Group is seeking to raise more than $11 billion in junk debt—one of the largest such deals ever—via $10 billion in dollar bonds across three tenors and €1 billion ($1.1 billion) in euro notes across two maturities.
‼️ Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said Sunday that inflation remains too high across the US economy even when stripping out volatile energy and food prices, signaling broader underlying price pressures beyond the recent rise in oil
‼️ 🇨🇳 🇺🇸 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called his meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng “successful” ahead of the Sept. 24 Trump–Xi summit, noting agreement to launch a U.S.–China AI dialogue with a proposed incident-notification mechanism, while USTR Jamieson Greer said the two sides have “operationalized” the U.S.–China Board of Trade to advance trade negotiations.
‼️ 🇮🇩 Rupiah rally loses steam: after a 1.5% August rally (SEA’s best), BNP Paribas sees 17,900/USD and HSBC 18,200 by year-end as higher oil and narrower rate spreads dent sentiment.