U.S. Government to Shut Down for First Time in 17 Years

U.S. Government to Shut Down for First Time in 17 Years (Bloomberg)

Unless an unlikely 11th hour agreement is reached by tonight at midnight, the wheels of government in the United States will grind to a halt — partially. While both Democrats and Republicans deny wanting to see a partial shutdown of federal services, neither side did much over the past weekend to prevent 800,000 from being sent home tomorrow. Without a stopgap measure for emergency funding, the government would close its doors for the first time since 1996 — marking the 17th time (coincidentally) that the American political system came to a halt. As for investors… the markets are reacting as you might think: Asian stocks were down today, as were European bourses. And, at the time of this writing, U.S. futures markets were down as well.