| The US yield curve sends an ominous signal, Biden sets his sights on Big Oil and Wall Street banks make moves. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's favored yield curve may be about revive the recession debate. Current three-month rates are on the cusp of exceeding the rate at which they're expected to be in 18 months' time, which would make for an inverted yield curve. That's a key warning sign for many investors that a recession is coming. It also comes ahead of the Fed's November policy decision, where it's expected to deliver its fourth three-quarter point rate hike this year. President Joe Biden said he'd seek to impose higher taxes on oil companies that record "windfall" profits without reinvesting in production. It comes amid elevated gasoline prices a week ahead of the midterm elections, after spiking to more than $5 a gallon this summer. While the idea of imposing a tax on oil companies' profits has garnered renewed attention among progressives in Congress, no such proposal is likely to pass the current Senate, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann said the Swiss lender is not open to takeover discussions, even as its revamp weighs on share prices and continues to invite rumors of buyout deals. Over at Bank of America, equities and fixed-income traders were informed they can work remotely two days a month as the Wall Street firm seeks to restore some of the pre-pandemic culture. US equity futures are in the green as of 5:39 a.m. in New York. S&P 500 contracts climbed 0.8% while Nasdaq 100 futures rose more than 1%. Bloomberg's dollar gauge was on the backfoot, boosting all Group-of-10 currencies. Treasury yields are down across the curve, with the 10-year rate dropping back below 4%. Oil and gold rose, and Bitcoin climbed for the first time in three days. It's time to collect responses for the next MLIV Pulse survey, and this time we're asking for your thoughts on how US midterm elections will impact markets. Send in your responses here. At 9:45 .m., we'll get the October reading for the S&P global manufacturing PMI, followed by September JOLTS figures 15 minutes later. At the same time, October data for a gauge of US manufacturing will be due. Earnings include Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Airbnb, Uber, KKR and Prudential. Here's what caught our eye over the past 24 hours: Good morning. The next four days are going to be big ones for macro. Today is JOLTS and ISM Day. Tomorrow is Fed day. Thursday is Initial Jobless Claims Day. And Friday is Jobs Day. JOLTS has taken on increased importance in this cycle, because there has been so much interest in the number of job openings as a measure of imbalances in the labor market. And to the extent that a high number of unfilled job openings is seen as a sign of unhealthy labor market tightness, the hope is that we can find stability with a decline in openings, rather than a high number of outright layoffs. Economics surveyed by Bloomberg are expecting 9.75 million openings, down from just over 10 million last month. Such a number would still be well above pre-Covid levels, which were below 8 million. The number peaked just under 12 million back in March. As always, I'm interest in the Quit Rate, which can be seen kind of a sentiment gauge about the labor market. The more people quit their jobs, the better they feel about things typically. That's also been trending down, though again, still well above pre-Covid levels. Anyway, we should learn a lot over the next few days. And in the meantime, I recommend reading the latest from Skanda Amarnath at Employ America. The basic idea is that while the labor market does remains strong, there has been a deceleration in Gross Labor Income that the Fed ought to take seriously as a sign that some cooling is afoot. There's obviously still a lot to do in terms of the actual goal (fighting inflation) but given the costs of mass layoffs, the balance of risks here may be shifting. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter @TheStalwart | 
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