Life could get “tough,” particularly for the world’s have-nots, in the event of a “sharp correction” for global equities.

That’s according to IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, who’ll spend the next few days hanging out with a who’s who of central bankers, finance ministers and other ostensible luminaries meeting in Washington this week for the Fund’s annual fall festival, co-hosted as always by the World Bank.

If you want to attend that’s great, but consider donning one of those “PRESS” vests reporters wear in war zones. Especially if you aren’t demonstrably white. The streets of D.C. are patrolled by a couple thousand troops these days, and it’d be a shame if the National Guard accidentally shot you. Technically, being brown on a Tuesday night’s just a misdemeanor in Trump’s America, but better safe than sorry.

The IMF will release a new world economic outlook in conjunction with this week’s proceedings. As usual, no one will read it. The new projections for global growth, including the country-by-country breakdown, will garner a smattering of headlines which’ll disappear below the fold almost immediately. If the Fund warns in pointed language about a stock correction, that’ll be worth an article or two as well.

Other than that, you won’t even know the meetings took place, although market participants will be keen for any mention of the US bailout for Argentina, which is a de facto bailout for the IMF. And because the IMF’s basically the US, America’s effectively bailing out itself. To be fair to Scott Bessent, Trump’s had worse ideas. Like dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes.

No, but seriously: The problem with the Argentina bailout is that Washington has no business trying to buy Javier Milei out of a jam. He knew full well that voters would revolt against shock austerity eventually. Now they have — with a little push from the corruption scandal swirling around his sister — and he’s gotta deal with it.

With the $20 billion support pledge, Bessent’s trying to prevent markets from pricing in another leftward swing in Argentina’s domestic political pendulum, the idea being that if the US Treasury can stabilize local assets, Milei might be spared another crushing loss at the ballot box in legislative elections later this month. It won’t work, it could backfire and it’s wildly inappropriate, just like Trump wielding tariffs in a failed bid to influence legal proceedings against Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Anyway, the IMF meetings will play out against a backdrop of a shuttered US government. Russ Vought says layoffs have begun, and Trump continues to hint at the possibility of denying back pay to furloughed workers as part of a broader effort to leverage the shutdown in the service of defunding what The White House calls “Democrat things.”

The chart above, derived from a Friday court filing by OMB advisor Stephen Billy in response to a union lawsuit, suggests Vought’s machinations have already impacted more than 4,000 people.

This is a bad idea, to put it politely. I realize the general public isn’t aware of the extent to which Vought’s proud of this, but suffice to say Russ wears these dismissals as a badge of honor. He considers what’s going on right now inside the federal government to be among his crowing achievements in life.

In Vought, we’re talking about the chief architect of Project 2025, a man who once said,

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down. We want to put them in trauma.

That’s who’s running Trump’s OMB. If you’re thinking, “My God, it sounds like these firings are part of some bizarrely personal vendetta,” you’re not wrong.

No one can explain what, precisely, drove Vought to become the person he is today, but it says a lot that John Thune held up Vought as the best argument for not shutting down the government while (cynically) warning Democrats against a standoff. “This is the risk of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought,” he told Politico earlier this month.

Last week, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself and JD Vance performing Blue Oyster Cult’s only hit, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” with Vought playing the Reaper. In a statement, the actual Blue Oyster Cult reminded Americans they don’t own the rights to the song, and thereby couldn’t sue even if they wanted to. (And yes, that’s how absurd things are in American politics currently.)

All US government macro releases are still suspended as a result of the shutdown, which means traders won’t get the CPI report this week. But the administration did say it’ll bring enough BLS staff back to tally the September inflation figures for release on October 24 “to meet statutory deadlines necessary to ensure the accurate and timely payment of [Social Security] benefits.”

This week, as a result of the funding lapse, investors (and the Fed) will miss jobless claims, retail sales, PPI and housing starts. Jerome Powell’s due to speak at an NABE event in Philadelphia on Tuesday.