Finance Minister Amr El Garhy heads to Paris today for the annual Organization f or Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) / European Union meetings on economic governance and public administration reform, a ministry statement says. El Garhy’s agenda includes meeting with French investors to discuss the improved economic climate under the reform program and a sit down with the OECD’s Director of the Center for Tax Policy and Administration Pascal Saint Aman.

Markets are waiting for news out of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting to review interest rates. The expectation is that the meeting, which concludes today and is the FOMC’s last of the year, will see a quarter-point rate hike. Stock pickers need to think carefully about what this means for 2018, the Wall Street Journal warns, writing: “Typically, the prospect of Fed rate increases tightens financial conditions by pushing up borrowing costs for companies and governments, lifting the value of the U.S. dollar against its peers, and restraining a rise in the stock market. But that hasn’t happened this time around.”

The European Central Bank, Bank of England and Bank of Mexico are also meeting this week to review interest rates. The Central Bank of Egypt will follow suit in a couple of weeks’ time when its Monetary Policy Committee on 28 December. With the surprise uptick in month-on-month inflation in November and inflation cooling slower than expected Y-o-Y, don’t expect a rate cut here at home until sometime in the new year.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin hit another record high in its march toward USD 20k, according to Reuters, and emerging markets look set to close 2017 having posted their “best gains in eight years,” Bloomberg reports. High-profile investor and EM champion Mark Mobius tells the business information service he expects emerging markets could “see at least another 20% growth going forward” in a video that accompanies a very nice region-by-region rundown of what happened in emerging markets this year — with a hint of what to expect in 2018.

You’ve probably never heard of Susan Fowler, but she’s the FT’s Person of the Year. The “the 26-year-old from rural Arizona who had to teach herself at the local library to get into university” became an Uber engineer — and blew the doors off the company’s conspiracy to keep quiet widespread [redacted] harassment in the workplace, helping catalyse what became the #MeToo campaign that is taking down politicians, business leaders, media figures and others. You can read Fowler’s blog post, which got it all started, here.

Across the pond, Americans are watching an Alabama Senate race that pit Republican (and alleged serial [redacted] harasser) Roy Moore against a Democratic challenger in a contest the New York Times writes has “national importance” and could “illustrate the enduring limitations of Democrats in the deeply conservative South.” As we were preparing to hit “send” this morning, the New York Times was reporting that the Democrat, Doug Jones, had pulled off an upset victory.

***Take our end-of-year survey — get a bag of Enterprise-branded coffee and cool mugs from which to drink it: It’s that time of the year again — we want you to help us gauge how well business went during the year. What are the biggest challenges you faced during the year? Where will the exchange rate stabilise? Do you expect big raises in 2018? Are you hiring? Help us find out. You’ll get the chance to become one of 25 people who’ll get our end of year giveaway package consisting of Enterprise swag and our first-ever Enterprise-branded batch of coffee, which we’ve put together with good friends in the coffee business. (More on that in a later issue.)