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·         The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, rose 0.2 percent to 93.494, up 0.4 for the week.

The dollar jumped 0.6 percent to 113.16 yen JPY=, on track to gain 1.2 percent for the week, as investors awaited Sunday's Japanese general election.

The euro EUR= was 0.4 percent lower at $1.1808, moving back toward this week's low of $1.1730 and down 0.1percent for the week.

·         Senate Republicans approved a $4 trillion budget measure Thursday, taking a crucial step toward their goal of passing a tax plan this year.

President Donald Trump’s drive to overhaul the U.S. tax code cleared a critical hurdle on Thursday when the Senate approved a budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year that will pave the way for Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without Democratic support.

The chamber approved the budget resolution by a 51-49 vote. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the only GOP senator to vote against it.

The budget measure, which would add up to $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade in order to pay for proposed tax cuts.

But Democrats are likely to oppose the Trump administration’s tax plan, which promises to deliver up to $6 trillion in tax cuts to businesses and individuals.

·         The Trump administration, bent on deregulation from the start, has now completed wholesale repeal of the "Mnuchin Rule."

It happened in an interview with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that Politico published Wednesday. Faced with economic analyses showing the White House plan to cut corporate and personal income taxes provides big gains for wealthy Americans, Mnuchin called that result unavoidable.

"The top 20 percent of the people pay 95 percent of the taxes," the Treasury secretary said. "The top 10 percent of the people pay 81 percent of the taxes."

"So when you're cutting taxes across the board, it's very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy with tax cuts to the middle class," he concluded. "The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do."

·         The slippage in the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield may reflect investors' expectations of slower long-term domestic economic growth rather than looser financial conditions, Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan said on Wednesday.

"That is not a sign of easy financial conditions," he said of the benchmark U.S. yield which has fallen nearly 10basis points so far this year.

"That may be a sign of worry about future growth," Kaplan told reporters after participating on a panel with New York Fed President William Dudley about regional economic trends sponsored by Hearst and Partnership for New York City.

·         A preview of Federal Reserve System Chair Janet Yellen speech due at 2330 GMT Friday 20 October 2017

Maybe the BTC people can trade her comments?

Barclays: Chair Yellen will deliver the annual NEC Herbert Stein Memorial Lecture in Washington. The topic is "Monetary policy since the financial crisis."

We expect her to detail the Fed's response to the financial crisis, including conventional and unconventional policies.

We expect little direct monetary policy content as it relates to the likelihood of further near-term policy rate increases.

Deutsche Bank: We do not anticipate any new incremental information that should affect odds of a December rate hike

Yellen should stick to the central Fed narrative that inflation is likely to rise toward the Fed's target over the medium term as growth remains above potential and the labor market tightens further.

·         Finance Minister Taro Aso on Friday criticized Japanese companies for sitting on too much cash, and said the government needed to take steps to encourage them to increase spending on wages and business investment.

Internal reserves, or retained earnings including cash, at Japanese firms have increased by 101 trillion yen over the past four years to some 400 trillion yen ($3.53 trillion), while many firms are wary of boosting business expenditures, Aso said.

“The situation went much too far, we must think of ways for that money to be spent on capital spending and wages,” he added.

However, Aso said it would be difficult to tax internal reserves, which has been proposed by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s new Party of Hope, as that causes “double taxation” on companies that pay the corporate tax.

·         Japanese companies overwhelmingly want Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition to stay in power in this Sunday’s national election but about two-thirds want it to lose seats, a Reuters poll found.

The survey suggests corporations want political stability but don’t want to hand Abe a landslide victory for fear he might become complacent about reviving the economy.

Japanese go to the polls on Sunday to elect representatives for the country’s 465-member lower house, the more powerful of Japan’s two-chamber national diet, or parliament.

Forecasts published last week predicted Abe’s coalition would win around 300 seats, close to the two-thirds super-majority it held before he called the election. Along with like-minded parties, the LDP bloc also has a majority in the upper house, which would be needed to revise the constitution.

·         Oil prices rose on Friday, supported by signs of tightening supply and demand fundamentals, although a warning about excessive China economic optimism still weighed somewhat on markets.

Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $57.45 at 0639 GMT, up 22 cents, or 0.4 percent from their last close.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $51.54 per barrel, up 25 cents, or 0.5 percent.

Reference: Reuters, CNBC