The U.S. Treasury will run out of cash on Nov. 10 if an agreement to raise the debt ceiling isn't reached by the time a $13-billion payment to Social Security recipients comes due, according to strategists at Jefferies.

With House Republicans struggling to find a new speaker, analysts at Goldman Sachs have said that: "Negotiations to lift the debt ceiling may be contentious and may not be resolved until the last moment."

Despite all the debt ceiling drama, Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro, says the Federal Reserve has supplanted Congress as the biggest source of policy uncertainty emanating from the nation's capital.

"The latest commentary out of the FOMC supports the idea that monetary policy not a government shutdown or debt ceiling showdown is the biggest source of D.C. uncertainty," Dutta wrote.

Over the past two days, we've learned that daylight exists between Fed Chair Janet Yellen and two of her colleagues on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.

On Monday, Governor Lael Brainard said that global risks warranted a more cautious stance from the central bank. The next day, fellow Governor Daniel Tarullo indicated that he expects it will be appropriate to keep rates on hold through year end.

The details of their dovish commentary are much more noteworthy, as both appear to disagree with Yellen's description of what the Fed's reaction mechanism ought to be.

At the heart of the matter is the extent to which the progress made in achieving one part of the central bank's mandate (full employment) portends improvement in the other part (price stability, defined as an annual inflation rate of 2 percent).