President Biden in Brussels meets with Belgian King Philippe and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and participates in the U.S.-EU Summit before heading to Geneva ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin … House Financial Services subcommittee has a hearing at 10:00 a.m on “Digitizing the Dollar: Investigating the Technological Infrastructure, Privacy, and Financial Inclusion Implications of Central Bank Digital Currencies” … Senate Banking has a hearing at 10:00 a.m. on “21st Century Communities: Local Leaders on the Infrastructure Needs Facing America's States, Cities and Towns” … Retail sales at 8:30 a.m. expected to decline 0.6% and rise 0.4% ex-autos … Producer Prices at 8:30 a.m. expected to rise 0.5% headline and core HEARING PREP — A loyal MM reader notes on the House Financial Services hearing on a central bank digital currency (CBDC) “None of the witnesses appearing before the Committee appears inclined or prepared to comment on the serious financial stability and other risks that come with a CBDC, and all but one are invested either financially or professionally in widespread adoption of CBDC. It’s like inviting the Tesla sales team to a hearing on whether the government should subsidize electric cars.” PRIVATE EQUITY REACT — A little birdie emails on the NYT front-pager on private equity and taxes: “Blackstone’s President Jon Gray addressed the firm’s employees about the story on their regular Monday morning webcast called ‘Blackstone TV’ -- saying that Blackstone had not engaged in the tax reduction practice that was one of the main focuses of the article called ‘fee waivers.’ “He also said that Blackstone’s senior leaders pay average income tax rates of approximately 45 percent including federal, state, and local taxes since they live in the New York City-area and are among the largest individual taxpayers in the country.” DECODING THE NATO SUMMIT — Our By Ryan Heath: “Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky may need to get better at Twitter. Chiming into the NATO summit Twitter conversation, the Ukrainian leader tweeted this afternoon that Ukraine “will become a member of the Alliance” — a juicy-sounding claim some interpreted to mean Ukraine would be joining the alliance immediately. “If true, that claim would upend Wednesday’s Biden-Putin head-to-head summit. Instead, the alliance merely reiterated a 2008 commitment that Ukraine will one day become a member, and President Joe Biden later confirmed — at a press conference held two hours behind schedule — that Ukraine did not yet meet NATO membership criteria.” GOP EYES NEW INFRASTRUCTURE APPROACH — Our Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett: “Senate Republicans are mulling support for a massive amount of new spending on infrastructure — in part because they think it’ll help kill … Biden’s liberal agenda. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet to tip his hand on whether he supports the bipartisan negotiations on Biden's plan for roads and bridges that are being led by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). But a growing number of Senate Republicans are betting that if a deal is reached on that sort of physical infrastructure, Democrats won’t have the votes needed to pass the rest of Biden’s ‘soft infrastructure’ priorities, such as child care and clean energy.” BANK TRADE GROUP CALLS FOR STRICT EXAMS FOR FINTECHS — Our Victoria Guida: “A big bank trade group is making the case that financial technology firms that gain access to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails should receive regulatory scrutiny similar to that faced by traditional banks. “As the Fed considers providing accounts to companies that don’t take government-insured deposits but obtain some type of bank charter, the Bank Policy Institute said in a new publication that many of the top priorities for bank examiners are still highly relevant for such firms.” | 
