The Sunday Meeting
The Senate staged its crypto rulebook and went home. Baghdad worked Sunday. The digital dinar reached parliament. The 3 zeros are being said out loud.
Monday, August 10. Friday's briefing left you with three things to watch, and one of them answered before sunrise. At 4:52 on Saturday morning, after an overnight session that ran past its own adjournment, John Thune, the Senate's majority leader, filed the motion that locks the CLARITY Act's next vote for September 15. Then the chamber went home until September 14.
Baghdad did the opposite. On Sunday, Iraq's Finance Minister Falih al-Sari sat down with Central Bank Governor Nizar Nasser Hussein, the customs authority, advisors from the Prime Minister's office, and the UN's trade and development agency. The job on the table: wiring the country's electronic payment networks into its customs system. The same day, a sitting Iraqi lawmaker asked parliament to let public salaries be paid in state-issued digital currency. And Iraqi state media kept repeating a sentence it has been running since midweek: the government is weighing two options, borrow at home, or remove the three zeros from the currency.
One capital staged its rulebook and left the building. The other kept working, because its crisis does not take weekends. Today's file is the split, and which side is actually pouring concrete.