As the government shutdown enters its third week, Senate leaders appear to be waiting for world financial markets to give them a jolt before they make a deal, the Washington Post reports. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had a conversation yesterday that Reid says left him "optimistic about the prospects for a positive conclusion." But there's no indication of what a compromise might look like, and Democrats are now pushing for a deal that would lift the sequester budget cuts, showing what the New York Times calls a "newfound aggressiveness."