Good morning. A fragile deal might have been reached to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, but the loss of key economic reports has left policy makers and market watchers struggling to take the pulse of the U.S. economy. More on that below – plus, the case for ignoring cries of stock-market bubbles.

Infrastructure: The federal government will announce the next round of projects on the Major Projects Office list tomorrow in Prince Rupert, Prime Minister Mark Carney said.

Economy: The Quebec government is leaning harder on pension fund giant Caisse de dépot et placement du Québec to shield the province against mounting trade turmoil.

Pharmaceuticals: The Trump administration is asking drugmakers to share confidential details of contracts the manufacturers have signed with insurers in eight other countries, including Canada.

Looking out from a corner office window at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, you wouldn’t know the Gateway Arch, built in 1965 as a monument to the western expansion of the United States, is closed to the public. Perhaps it was built along the Mississippi River with unpredictable moments like the current Washington gridlock in mind: an arc designed, one prominent architecture critic wrote, with “a simplicity which should guarantee timelessness.”

Everywhere around it, the shutdown has spread into job losses, airline disruptions, and suspended contracts in ways that are both seismic and, at least for now, immeasurable.

Even with a potential deal making its way through a vote in D.C., a series of closely watched reports scheduled this week are in stasis. A lack of data is far from the most serious consequence of the gridlock, but weeks without new releases have underscored how politics that defy convention also disrupt the conventions of economic measurement – leaving policymakers flying blind and other countries without vital benchmarks.

And here, at a recent data training session for journalists hosted by the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s research arm, which runs the popular “FRED” database, a cloud of uncertainty looms over every chart and economic joke. (A discontinued T-shirt from its merch shop: “We keep it real – unless it’s nominal.”)

Martha Steffens, a professor at the nearby Missouri School of Journalism, said interruptions in the flow of U.S. data disrupt the shared reference points that governments, investors and journalists around the world rely on to make sense of the economy.

“People around the world look at U.S. data because it’s consistent, it’s thorough, and it’s frankly the gold standard,” Steffens said. “Any interruption to that system is felt not just here, but globally.”

In Canada, the missing reports result in reduced visibility into U.S. trade and inventory data – key inputs for tracking cross-border flows that influence manufacturing output and wholesale employment. Recent figures suggest exemptions under the countries’ free trade agreement are still supporting trade, but every suspended U.S. data release adds another layer of uncertainty to the picture, economists say.

Nathan Janzen, assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada, said the data gap will make it harder for Statistics Canada to compile monthly trade figures, since Canadian estimates of exports to the United States rely on import data from the U.S. Census Bureau. “In normal times, that would be an issue, but it’s magnified right now because trade with the U.S. has been a key driver of recent economic growth,” he said.

Statistics Canada has warned it may need to produce temporary estimates to complete quarterly gross domestic product calculations, though most domestic reports – including monthly GDP and labour market data – can still be produced as usual. “It’ll make Statistics Canada’s job a little tougher, and could compromise the reliability of some Canadian data reports,” Janzen said. “But broadly speaking, these issues are manageable for Canada.”

David Rosenberg, founder of Rosenberg Research, said the loss of traditional economic measures is bringing more attention to private reports and surveys of businesses.

The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book – a compilation of interviews with businesses, economists and community leaders across the Fed’s 12 regional districts – is the most comprehensive qualitative assessment of the U.S. economy, he said.

“We bow down to the holy grail of all these numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but they’re always based on a sample and they’re always subject to wide error.”

Unlike official data such as GDP or employment figures, which are recalculated and refined as new information comes in, “the beauty of the Beige Book is that it doesn’t get revised.”

For Steffens, the deeper concern is what happens when reliable information becomes uncertain. “When you can’t rely on the same releases you’ve always taken for granted, you start to appreciate the data you do get,” she said. “And you start to realize how much of the world depends on it.”