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    What Retail Sales and Other Data Say About China’s Economy

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    Consumers are spending a little more, but apartment prices and the pace of construction keep falling.China’s trains, planes, stores and beaches were a little fuller last month than a year ago, and the pace of activity picked up at factories, particularly those making mobile phones and semiconductors.A batch of numbers released on Friday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed a modest improvement in the country’s overall retail sales and industrial production during August. A series of small steps taken by the government over the summer, including two rounds of interest rate cuts, seems to be yielding a slightly better-than-expected improvement in the country’s economy.“The national economy has accelerated its recovery, production and supply have increased steadily, market demand has gradually improved,” Fu Linghui, China’s director of national economic statistics, said at a news conference.But many foreign economists were more guarded.“Some may be of the view that China’s economy has already bottomed out, but we remain cautious,” said a research note from Nomura, a Japanese bank.Real estate remains a persistent risk.The broad troubles of China’s real estate sector continue to cast a long shadow over the country’s economic prospects. Property investment plummeted nearly a fifth in August from the same month a year ago, an even steeper decline than in July.Construction sites around China appear visibly less busy, although activity has not stopped entirely and tower cranes still dot the skyline.Construction of new apartment towers has faltered because of falling apartment prices.Based on data released on Friday for prices of new apartments in 70 large and medium-sized cities across China, Goldman Sachs calculated that prices were falling in August at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.9 percent, compared with 2.6 percent in July.Construction sites around China appear visibly less busy, although activity has not stopped entirely and construction cranes still dot the skyline.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesThe statistics for new apartments considerably understate the speed and extent of price declines, however, as local governments have put heavy pressure on developers not to cut prices.Prices of existing homes in 100 cities across China fell an average of 14 percent by early August from their peak two years earlier, according to the Beike Research Institute, a Tianjin research firm. Rents have fallen 5 percent.Construction and related activities, including public works projects, make up at least a quarter of the Chinese economy. The government has tried to offset the plunge in apartment construction by demanding that already deeply indebted local and provincial governments undertake a debt-fueled wave of large projects, including new subways, municipal water systems, highways, public parks, high-speed rail lines and other infrastructure.Banks are being squeezed.Loans that China’s banks have made to property developers, dozens of which have defaulted on debt payments, are in trouble. So are loans to local governments and their financial affiliates involved in real estate. Banks are allowed to demand immediate repayment if work on a construction project has stopped, but they are reluctant to do so. Demand for new real estate loans remains weak.The central bank, the People’s Bank of China, announced on Thursday that it was freeing banks to set aside smaller reserves and start extending more credit. The move was widely seen as intended to accommodate an upcoming large batch of bond issuance by local and provincial governments to pay for their infrastructure projects.Investment in fixed assets was held back by property woes.Overall investment in what are known as fixed assets was up 3.2 percent for the first eight months of this year compared to the same months last year — infrastructure spending plus some manufacturing investment offset the property nosedive. The pace through August represented a slowdown from 3.4 percent the prior month.The value of China’s industrial production, a proxy for the activity of factories, rose 4.5 percent in August from a year ago.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe production of semiconductors rose 21.1 percent in August from a year earlier. The government has more heavily subsidized chip-making as the United States has restricted the export to China of a few of the highest-speed computer chips and of the gear to manufacture them.The value of China’s industrial production, a proxy for the activity of factories, rose 4.5 percent in August from a year ago after adjusting for considerable deflation in wholesale prices for factory goods over the past year. The increase had been 3.7 percent in July.Consumers are changing how they spend.Retail sales were up 4.6 percent in August from the same month last year, as rising energy prices likely pushed up retail sales, Nomura said.A main reason that retail sales rebounded was because a year ago, people in China were still living under stringent “zero Covid” measures that restricted their activity.Beer and wine production dropped from a year ago while output rose for bottled water, carried by many Chinese people during outdoor activities, and production of fruit and vegetable juices climbed sharply. More

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    Meet the Man Making Big Banks Tremble

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    Michael Barr, whom President Biden appointed as the Federal Reserve’s top bank cop, has drawn blowback for his bank regulation push.Yelling at Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, has never been particularly effective, his friends and co-workers will tell you. That hasn’t stopped America’s biggest banks, their lobbying groups and even his own colleagues, who have reacted to his proposal to tighten and expand oversight of the nation’s large lenders with a mix of incredulity and outrage.“There is no justification for significant increases in capital at the largest U.S. banks,” Kevin Fromer, the president of the Financial Services Forum, said in a statement after regulators released the draft rules spearheaded by Mr. Barr. The proposal would push up the amount of easy-access money that banks need to have at the ready, potentially cutting into their profits.Even before its release, rumors of what the draft contained triggered a lobbying blitz: Bank of America’s lobbyists and those affiliated with banks including BNP Paribas, HSBC and TD Bank descended on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers sent worried letters to the Fed and peppered its officials with questions about what the proposal would contain.The Bank Policy Institute, a trade group, recently rolled out a national ad campaign urging Americans to “demand answers” on the Fed’s new capital rules. On Tuesday, the organization and other trade groups appeared to lay the groundwork to sue over the proposal, arguing that the Fed violated the law by relying on analysis that was not made public.Some of Mr. Barr’s own colleagues have opposed the proposed changes: Two of the Fed’s seven governors, both Trump appointees, voted against them in a stark sign of discord at the consensus-oriented institution.“The costs of this proposal, if implemented in its current form, would be substantial,” Michelle Bowman, a Fed governor and an increasingly frequent critic of Mr. Barr’s, wrote in a statement.The reason for all of the drama is that the proposal — which the Fed released alongside two other banking agencies — would notably tighten the rules for both America’s largest banks and their slightly smaller counterparts.Michelle Bowman, a Fed governor, has become increasingly critical of Mr. Barr. Ann Saphir/ReutersIf adopted, it would mark both the completion of a process toward tighter bank oversight that started in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the government’s regulatory response to a series of painful bank blowups this year.For the eight largest banks, the new proposal could raise capital requirements to about 14 percent on average, from about 12 percent now. And for banks with more than $100 billion in assets, it would strengthen oversight in a push that has been galvanized by the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank in March. Lenders of its size faced less oversight because they were not viewed as a huge risk to the banking system if they collapsed. The bank’s implosion required a sweeping government intervention, proving that theory wrong.Mr. Barr does not seem, at first glance, like someone who would be the main character in a regulatory knife fight.The Biden administration nominated him to his role, and Democrats tend to favor tighter financial rules — so he was always expected to be harder on banks than his predecessor, a Trump nominee. But the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, who was confirmed to his job in July 2022, has a knack for coming off as unobtrusive in public: He talks softly and has a habit of smiling as he speaks, even when challenged.If the proposal is adopted, it would mark both the completion of a process toward tighter bank oversight that started in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the government’s regulatory response to a series of bank blowups earlier this year.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesAnd Mr. Barr came into his job with a reputation — correct or not — for being somewhat moderate. As a top Treasury official, he helped design the Obama administration’s regulatory response to the 2008 financial crisis and then negotiated what would become the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.The changes that he and his colleagues won drastically ramped up bank oversight — but the Treasury Department, then led by Secretary Timothy Geithner, was often criticized by progressives for being too easy on Wall Street.That legacy has, at times, dogged Mr. Barr. He was in the running for a seat on the Fed’s Board of Governors in 2014, but progressive groups opposed him. When he was floated as the likely candidate to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2021, a similar chorus objected, with powerful Democrats including Senator Sherrod Brown, the chair of the Banking Committee, lining up behind another candidate.Mr. Barr’s chance to break back into Washington policy circles came when Sarah Bloom Raskin, a law professor nominated for vice chair for supervision at the Fed, was forced to drop out. In need of a new candidate, the Biden administration tapped Mr. Barr.Suddenly, the fact that he had just been accused of being too centrist to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was a boon. He needed a simple majority in the 100-seat Senate to pass, and received 66 votes.By then, the idea that he would have a mild touch had taken hold. Analysts predicted “targeted tweaks” to regulation on his watch. But banks and some lawmakers have found plenty of reasons to complain about him in the 14 months since.Wall Street knew that Mr. Barr would need to carry out the U.S. version of global rules developed by an international group called the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Banks initially expected the American version to look similar to, perhaps even gentler than, the international standard.But by early this year, rumors were swirling that Mr. Barr’s approach might be tougher. Then came the collapse this spring of Silicon Valley Bank and other regional lenders — whose rules had been loosened under the Trump administration. That seemed destined to result in even tighter rules.In one of his first acts as vice chair, Mr. Barr wrote a scathing internal review of what had happened, concluding that “regulatory standards for SVB were too low” and bluntly criticizing the Fed’s own oversight of the institution and its peers.Mr. Barr’s conclusions drew some pushback: Ms. Bowman said his review relied “on a limited number of unattributed source interviews” and “was the product of one board member, and was not reviewed by the other members of the board prior to its publication.”But that did little to stop the momentum toward more intense regulation.When Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, gave his regular testimony on the economy before Congress in June, at least six Republicans brought up the potential for tighter regulation, with several warning against going too far.After Silicon Valley Bank and other regional lenders collapsed this spring, Mr. Barr wrote a scathing internal review concluding that “regulatory standards for SVB were too low.” Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAnd when the proposal was finally released in July, it was clear why banks and their allies had worried. The details were meaningful. One tweak would make it harder for banks to game their assessments of their own operational risks — which include things like lawsuits. Both that and other measures would prod banks to hold more capital.The plan would also force large banks to treat some — mostly larger — residential mortgages as a riskier asset. That raised concerns not just from the banks but from progressive Democrats and fair housing groups, who worried that it could discourage lending to low-income areas. News of the measure came late in the process — surprising even some in the White House, according to people familiar with the matter.Representative Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican, said that aspects of the proposal went beyond the international standard, which “caught a lot of people off guard,” and that the Fed had not provided a clear cost-benefit analysis.“Vice Chair Barr is using some of the bank failures as a pretext,” he said.The banks “feel like he’s being obstinate,” said Ian Katz, an analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, a research firm in Washington. “They feel like he’s the guy making the decisions, and there are not a lot of workarounds.”Andrew Cecere, the chief executive of U.S. Bancorp, said of Mr. Barr, “We may not agree on everything, but he tries to understand.”Andrew Harnik/Associated PressBut he does have fans. Andrew Cecere, the chief executive of U.S. Bancorp and a member of a Fed advisory council, said Mr. Barr was “quite collaborative” and “a good listener.”“We may not agree on everything, but he tries to understand,” Mr. Cecere said.The Fed did not provide a comment for this article.The question now is whether the proposal will change before it is final: Bankers have until Nov. 30 to offer suggestions for how to adjust it. Colleagues who worked with Mr. Barr the last time he was reshaping America’s bank regulations — in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse — suggested that he could be willing to negotiate but not when he viewed something as essential.Amias Gerety, a Treasury official during the Obama administration, joined him and other government policymakers for those discussions over consumer protection and big bank oversight. He watched Mr. Barr leave some ideas on the cutting-room floor (such as an online marketplace that would allow consumers to compare credit card terms), while fighting aggressively for others (such as a powerful structure for the then-nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau).When people disagreed with Mr. Barr, even loudly, he would politely listen — often before forging ahead with the plan he thought was best.“Sometimes to his detriment, Michael is who he is,” Mr. Gerety said. “He is very willing to sacrifice small-p interpersonal politics to achieve policy goals that he thinks are good for people.”Some tweaks to the current proposal are expected: The residential mortgage suggestion is getting a closer look, for instance. But several analysts said they expected the final rule to remain toothy.In the meantime, Mr. Barr appears to have shaken his reputation for mildness. Dean Baker, an economist at a progressive think tank who, in 2014, was quoted in a news article saying Mr. Barr could not “really be trusted to go after the industry,” said his view had shifted.“I definitely have had a better impression of him over the years,” Mr. Baker said. More

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    How the Jackson Hole Conference Became an Economic Obsession

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    Investors and economists are watching the event this week closely. How did a remote Wyoming conference become so central?Filmmakers have Cannes. Billionaires have Davos. Economists? They have Jackson Hole.The world’s most exclusive economic get-together takes place this week in the valley at the base of the Teton mountains, in a lodge that is a scenic 34 miles from Jackson, Wyo.Here, in a western-chic hotel that was donated to the national park that surrounds it by a member of the Rockefeller family, about 120 economists descend late each August to discuss a set of curated papers centered on a policy-relevant theme. Top officials from around the world can often be found gazing out the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows — likely hoping for a moose sighting — or debating the merits of a given inflation model over huckleberry cocktails.This shindig, while a nerdy one, has become a key focus of Wall Street investors, academics and the press. The conference’s host, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, seems to know a thing or two about the laws of supply and demand: It invites way fewer people than would like to attend, which only serves to bid up its prestige. But even more critically, Jackson Hole tends to generate big news.The most hotly anticipated event is a speech by the Fed chair that typically takes place on Friday morning and is often used as a chance for the central bank to send a signal about policy. Jerome H. Powell, the current Fed head, has made headlines with each and every one of his Jackson Hole speeches, which has investors waiting anxiously for this year’s. It is the only part of the closed-door conference that is broadcast to the public.Mr. Powell will be speaking at a moment when the Fed’s next moves are uncertain as inflation moderates but the economy retains a surprising amount of momentum. Wall Street is trying to figure out whether Fed officials think that they need to raise interest rates more this year, and if so, whether that move is likely to come in September. So far, policymakers have given little clear signal about their plans. They have lifted interest rates to 5.25 to 5.5 percent from near zero in March 2022, and have left their options open to do more.People will pay close attention to Mr. Powell’s speech, but “I think it’s about the tone,” said Seth Carpenter, a former Fed economist who is now at Morgan Stanley. “What I don’t think he wants to do is signal or commit to any near-term policy moves.”For all of its modern renown, the Jackson Hole conference, set for Thursday night to Saturday, has not always been the talk of the town in Washington and New York. Here’s how it became what it is today.It’s set in the formerly wild West.Jackson used to play host to a very different cast of characters: The town was once so remote that it was a go-to hideaway for outlaws.In 1920, when Jackson’s population was about 300, The New York Times harked back to a not-so-distant era when “whenever a serious crime was committed between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast, it was pretty safe to guess that the man responsible for it was either headed for Jackson’s Hole or already had reached it.”Jackson’s seclusion also meant that the area’s towering, craggy mountains and rolling valley remained pristine, making it prime territory for conservationists. The financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. stealthily acquired and then donated much of the land that would eventually become the Jackson Hole section of Grand Teton National Park. And around 1950, he began to construct the Jackson Lake Lodge.The lodge’s modern architecture was not initially beloved by the locals. (“‘A slab-sided, concrete abomination’ is one of the milder epithets tossed at the massive structure,” The Times quipped in 1955.) Among other complaints, Rockefeller’s donation to the park lacked resort perks: no golf course, no spa.But by 1982, its ample space and sweeping vistas had caught the eye of the Kansas City Fed, which was looking for a new location for a conference it had begun to hold in 1978.The gathering has happened there since 1982.The Jackson Lake Lodge was built by the financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. on land he had donated to Grand Teton National Park.David Paul Morris/BloombergHigh on its list of charms, the Jackson Lake Lodge was close to excellent fly fishing — a surefire way to appeal to the Fed chair at the time, Paul A. Volcker. He came, and between the A-list attendees and the location’s natural beauty, Jackson Hole quickly became the Fed event of the year.“About one-half of the 137 people invited this year attended, a remarkably high response,” The Times reported in 1985.The size of the conference has not changed much since: It averages about 115 to 120 attendees per year, according to the Kansas City Fed. The response rate has gone up markedly since 1985, though the Fed branch declined to specify how much.But the local context has shifted.Teton County, home to Jackson (now a bustling town of 11,000) and Jackson Hole, hosts more millionaires than criminal cowboys these days. It has become the most unequal place in America by several measures, with gaping wealth and income divides. The event, billed as rustic, now struggles to pretend that its backdrop isn’t posh.And the Fed gathering itself has gained more and more cachet. Alan Greenspan delivered the opening speech at the conference in Jackson Hole in 1991, when he was Fed chair, and then kept up that tradition for 14 summers until he stepped down.His successors have mostly followed suit. Mr. Powell has used his speeches to caution against overreliance on hard-to-determine economic variables, to unveil an entirely new framework for monetary policy and to pledge that the Fed would do what it took to wrangle rapid inflation.But it’s changing.Attention to Jackson Hole also deepened because of the 2008 global financial crisis, when central banks rescued markets and propped up economies in ways that expanded their influence. In the years that followed, uninvited journalists, Wall Street analysts and protest groups began to camp out in the lodge’s lobby during proceedings. Speaking at or presiding over a Jackson Hole session increasingly marked an economist as an academic rock star.Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed between 2011 and early 2023, was in charge as the event garnered more notice. She and her team responded to the intensified spotlight partly by shaking up who got to bask in it.Far fewer banking and finance industry economists have gotten invites to the event since 2014, partly in response to public attention to the Fed’s Wall Street connections after the financial crisis. The people who make the list tend to be current and former top economic officials and up-and-coming academics. Increasingly, they are women, people from racially diverse backgrounds and people with varying economic viewpoints.Ms. George started to hold an informal happy hour for female economists in 2012, when there were so few women that “we could all sit around a small table,” she recalled. It made her think: “Why aren’t these other voices here?”Last year, the happy hour included dozens of women.But the Jackson Hole conference could be entering a new era. Ms. George had to retire in 2023 per Fed rules, so while she helped to plan this conference, she’ll be passing the baton for future events to her successor, Jeffrey Schmid, a university administrator and former chief executive of Mutual of Omaha Bank. He started as Kansas City Fed president on Monday and will make his debut as a Fed official at the gathering this week. More

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    Soft Landing Optimism Is Everywhere. That’s Happened Before.

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    People are often sure that the economy is going to settle down gently right before it plunges into recession, a reason for caution and humility.In late 1989, an economic commentary newsletter from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland asked the question that was on everyone’s mind after a series of Federal Reserve rate increases: “How Soft a Landing?” Analysts were pretty sure growth was going to cool gently and without a painful downturn — the question was how gently.In late 2000, a column in The New York Times was titled “Making a Soft Landing Even Softer.” And in late 2007, forecasters at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas concluded that the United States should manage to make it through the subprime mortgage crisis without a downturn.Within weeks or months of all three declarations, the economy had plunged into recession. Unemployment shot up. Businesses closed. Growth contracted.It is a point of historical caution that is relevant today, when soft-landing optimism is, again, surging.Inflation has begun to cool meaningfully, but unemployment remains historically low at 3.6 percent and hiring has been robust. Consumers continue to spend at a solid pace and are helping to boost overall growth, based on strong gross domestic product data released on Thursday.Given all that momentum, Fed staff economists in Washington, who had been predicting a mild recession late this year, no longer expect one, said Jerome H. Powell, the central bank’s chair, during a news conference on Wednesday. Mr. Powell said that while he was not yet ready to use the term “optimism,” he saw a possible pathway to a relatively painless slowdown.But it can be difficult to tell in real time whether the economy is smoothly decelerating or whether it is creeping toward the edge of a cliff — one reason that officials like Mr. Powell are being careful not to declare victory. On Wednesday, policymakers lifted rates to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent, the highest level in 22 years and up sharply from near zero as recently as early 2022. Those rate moves are trickling through the economy, making it more expensive to buy cars and houses on borrowed money and making it pricier for businesses to take out loans.Such lags and uncertainties mean that while data today are unquestionably looking sunnier, risks still cloud the outlook.“The prevailing consensus right before things went downhill in 2007, 2000 and 1990 was for a soft landing,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, a rates strategist at TD Securities. “Markets have trouble seeing exactly where the cracks are.”The term “soft landing” first made its way into the economic lexicon in the early 1970s, when America was fresh from a successful moon landing in 1969. Setting a spaceship gently on the lunar surface had been difficult, and yet it had touched down.By the late 1980s, the term was in widespread use as an expression of hope for the economy. Fed policymakers had raised rates to towering heights to crush double-digit inflation in the early 1980s, costing millions of workers their jobs. America was hoping that a policy tightening from 1988 to 1989 would not have the same effect.The recession that stretched from mid-1990 to early 1991 was much shorter and less painful than the one that had plagued the nation less than a decade earlier — but it was still a downturn. Unemployment began to creep up in July 1990 and peaked at 7.8 percent.The 2000s recession was also relatively mild, but the 2008 downturn was not: It plunged America into the deepest and most painful downturn since the Great Depression. In that instance, higher interest rates had helped to prick a housing bubble — the deflation of which set off a chain reaction of financial explosions that blew through global financial markets. Unemployment jumped to 10 percent and did not fall back to its pre-crisis low for roughly a decade.Higher Rates Often Precede RecessionsUnemployment often jumps after big moves in the Fed’s policy interest rate

    Note: Data is as of June 2023.Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Business Cycle Dating Committee; Federal ReserveBy The New York TimesThe episodes all illustrate a central point. It is hard to predict what might happen with the economy when rates have risen substantially.Interest rates are like a slow-release medicine given to a patient who may or may not have an allergy. They take time to have their full effect, and they can have some really nasty and unpredictable side effects if they end up prompting a wave of bankruptcies or defaults that sets off a financial crisis.In fact, that is why the Fed is keeping its options open when it comes to future policy. Mr. Powell was clear on Wednesday that central bankers did not want to commit to how much, when or even whether they would raise rates again. They want to watch the data and see if they need to do more to cool the economy and ensure that inflation is coming under control, or whether they can afford to hold off on further interest rate increases.“We don’t know what the next shoe to drop is,” said Subadra Rajappa, head of U.S. rates strategy at the French bank Société Générale, explaining that she thought Mr. Powell took a cautious tone while talking about the future of the economy on Wednesday in light of looming risks — credit has been getting harder to come by, and that could still hit the brakes on the economy.“It looks like we’re headed toward a soft landing, but we don’t know the unknowns,” Ms. Rajappa said.That is not to say there isn’t good reason for hope, of course. Growth does look resilient, and there is some historical precedent for comfortable cool-downs.In 1994 and 1995, the Fed managed to slow the economy gently without plunging it into a downturn in what is perhaps its most famous successful soft landing. Ironically, commentators quoted then in The Times weren’t convinced that policymakers were going to pull it off.And the historical record may not be particularly instructive in 2023, said Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan. This has not been a typical business cycle, in which the economy grew headily, fell into recession and then clawed its way back.Instead, growth was abruptly halted by coronavirus shutdowns and then rocketed back with the help of widespread government stimulus, leading to shortages, bottlenecks and unusually strong demand in unexpected parts of the economy. All of the weirdness contributed to inflation, and the slow return to normal is now helping it fade.That could make the Fed’s task — slowing inflation without causing a contraction — different this time.“There’s so much that has been unusual about this inflation episode,” Mr. Feroli said. “Just as we don’t want to overlearn the lessons of this episode, I don’t think we should over-apply the lessons of the past.” More

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    The Fed’s Difficult Choice

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    The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates again. When should it stop?After raising interest rates again yesterday, the Federal Reserve now faces a tough decision.Some economists believe that the Fed has raised its benchmark rate — and, by extension, the cost of many loans across the U.S. economy — enough to have solved the severe inflation of the past couple years. Any further increases in that benchmark rate, which is now at its highest level in 22 years, would heighten the risk of a recession, according to these economists. In the parlance of economics, they are known as doves.But other experts — the hawks — point out that annual inflation remains at 3 percent, above the level the Fed prefers. Unless Fed officials add at least one more interest rate increase in coming months, consumers and business may become accustomed to high inflation, making it all the harder to eliminate.For now, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, and his colleagues are choosing not to take a side. They will watch the economic data and make a decision at their next meeting, on Sept. 20. “We’ve come a long way,” Powell said during a news conference yesterday, after the announcement that the benchmark rate would rise another quarter of a percentage point, to as much as 5.5 percent. “We can afford to be a little patient.”The charts below, by our colleague Ashley Wu, capture the recent trends. Inflation is both way down and still somewhat elevated, while economic growth has slowed but remains above zero.Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis | By The New York TimesToday’s newsletter walks through the dove-vs.-hawk debate as a way of helping you understand the current condition of the U.S. economy.The doves’ caseThe doves emphasize both the steep recent decline in inflation and the forces that may cause it to continue falling. Supply chain snarls have eased, and the strong labor market, which helped drive up prices, seems to be cooling. “A happy outcome that not long ago seemed like wishful thinking now looks more likely than not,” the economist Paul Krugman wrote in Times Opinion this month.Economists refer to this happy outcome — reduced inflation without a recession — as a soft landing. The doves worry that a September rate hike could imperil that soft landing. (Already, corporate defaults have risen.)“It’s crystal clear that low inflation and low unemployment are compatible,” Rakeen Mabud, an economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, told our colleague Talmon Joseph Smith. “It’s time for the Fed to stop raising rates.”A recession would be particularly damaging to vulnerable Americans, including low-income and disabled people. The tight labor market has drawn more of them into work and helped them earn raises.The hawks’ caseThe hawks see the risks differently. They point to some signs that the official inflation rate of 3 percent is artificially low. Annual core inflation — a measure that omits food and fuel costs, which are both volatile — remains closer to 5 percent.“The Fed should not stop raising rates until there is clear evidence that core inflation is on a path to its 2 percent target,” Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute writes. “That evidence does not exist today, and it probably will not exist by the time the Fed meets in September.” (Adding to the hawks’ case is the fact that big consumer companies like Unilever keep raising their prices, J. Edward Moreno of The Times explains.)Fed officials themselves have argued that it’s important to tame inflation quickly to keep Americans from becoming used to rising prices — and demanding larger raises to keep up with prices, which could in turn become another force causing prices to rise.At root, the hawk case revolves around the notion that reversing high inflation is extremely difficult. When in doubt, hawks say, the Fed should err on the side of vigilance, to keep the U.S. from falling into an extended and damaging period of inflation as it did in the 1970s.And where do Fed officials come down? They have the advantage of not needing to pick a side, at least not yet. Between now and September, two more months of data will be available on prices, employment and more. Powell yesterday called a September rate increase “certainly possible,” but added, “I would also say it’s possible that we would choose to hold steady.”As our colleague Jeanna Smialek, who covers the Fed, says, “They have every incentive to give themselves wiggle room.”More on the FedThe Fed’s economists are no longer forecasting a recession this year.Powell noted that the labor force has been growing. “That’s good news for the Fed, because it helps ease the labor shortage without driving up unemployment,” Ben Casselman wrote.Responding to a question from Jeanna, Powell said it was good that consumer demand for the “Barbie” movie was so high — but that persistently high spending could be a reason for a future rate increase.Stock indexes rose after the Fed announced the increase, but fell after Powell delivered his economic outlook.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineA Ukrainian soldier on the front line in eastern Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesUkraine appears to be intensifying its counteroffensive. Reinforcements are pouring into the fight, many trained and equipped by the West.The attack looks to be focused in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, with the aim of severing Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.U.S. officials said the assault was timed to take advantage of turmoil in the Russian military.PoliticsA judge halted Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax charges after the two sides disagreed over how much immunity it granted him.In her first Supreme Court term, Ketanji Brown Jackson secured a book deal worth about $3 million, the latest justice to parlay fame into a big book contract.Mitch McConnell, the 81-year-old Senate Republican leader, abruptly stopped speaking during a Capitol news conference and was escorted away. He spoke in public again later.A former intelligence officer told Congress that the U.S. government had retrieved materials from U.F.O.s. The Pentagon denied his claim.Rudy Giuliani admitted to lying about two Georgia election workers he accused of mishandling ballots in 2020.Representative George Santos used his candidacy and ties to Republican donors to seek moneymaking opportunities.Other Big StoriesGetty ImagesSinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who had a No. 1 hit with “Nothing Compares 2 U,” died at 56. She drew a firestorm when she ripped up a photo of the pope on live TV.The heat wave that has scorched the southern U.S. is bringing 100-degree heat to the Midwest. The East Coast is probably next.Israel’s Supreme Court agreed to hear petitions challenging the new law limiting its power.Soldiers in Niger ousted the president and announced a coup.Gap hired Richard Dickson, the Mattel president who helped revitalize Barbie, as its chief executive.The messaging platform Slack was having an outage this morning.OpinionsCongress should create an agency to curtail Big Tech, Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, argue.Thousands of Americans drown every year. More public pools would help, Mara Gay writes.Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on affirmative action and Pamela Paul on the so-called Citi Bike Karen.MORNING READSEternally cool: Fans keep you dry on a hot day. They let you channel Beyoncé. They say, “I love you.” Can an air-conditioner do that?The yips: A star pitcher lost her ability to throw to first base. Now, she helps young athletes with the same problem.Spillover: Could the next pandemic start at the county fair?Lives Lived: Bo Goldman was one of Hollywood’s most admired screenwriters, winning Oscars for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard.” He died at 90.WOMEN’S WORLD CUPThe Dutch midfielder Jill Roord, left, and Lindsey Horan of the U.S. team.Grant Down/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA second-half goal from the co-captain Lindsey Horan gave the U.S. a 1-1 tie against the Netherlands, in an evenly matched game.Spain’s star midfielder Alexia Putellas returned to the starting lineup for the first time in more than a year after a knee injury.OTHER SPORTS NEWSOff the market: The Angels are reportedly withdrawing the superstar Shohei Ohtani from trade talks.Honeymoon phase: Aaron Rodgers agreed to a reworked contract with the Jets, which saves the team money and likely ensures he plays multiple seasons in New York.ARTS AND IDEAS Alfonso Duran for The New York TimesA growing dialect: What is Miami English? The linguist Phillip Carter calls it “probably the most important bilingual situation in the Americas today,” but it’s not Spanglish, in which a sentence bounces between English and Spanish. Instead, Miamians — even those who are not bilingual — have adopted literal translations of Spanish phrases in their English speech. Some examples: “get down from the car” (from “bajarse del carro”) instead of “get out of the car,” and “make the line” (from “hacer la fila”) instead of “join the line.”More on cultureKevin Spacey was found not guilty in Britain of sexual assault.The Japanese pop star Shinjiro Atae came out as gay, a rare announcement in a country where same-sex marriage isn’t legal.THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …Armando Rafael for The New York TimesBrighten up grilled chicken with Tajín, the Mexican seasoning made with red chiles and lime.Preserve vintage clothes in wearable condition.Calculate your life expectancy to guide health care choices.Consider a body pillow.Reduce exposure to forever chemicals in tap water.GAMESHere is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was thrilling.And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. David is on “The Daily” to talk about how the wealthy get an advantage in college admissions.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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    Global Economy Shows Signs of Resilience Despite Lingering Threats

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    The International Monetary Fund upgraded its global growth forecast for 2023.The world economy is showing signs of resilience this year despite lingering inflation and a sluggish recovery in China, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday, raising the odds that a global recession could be avoided barring unexpected crises.The signs of optimism in the I.M.F.’s latest World Economic Outlook may also give global policymakers additional confidence that their efforts to contain inflation without causing serious economic damage are working. Global growth, however, remains meager by historical standards, and the fund’s economists warned that serious risks remained.“The global economy continues to gradually recover from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it is not yet out of the woods,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the I.M.F.’s chief economist said a news conference on Tuesday.The I.M.F. raised its forecast for global growth this year to 3 percent, from 2.8 percent in its April projection. It predicted that global inflation would ease from 8.7 percent in 2022 to 6.8 percent this year and 5.2 percent in 2024, as the effects of higher interest rates filter throughout the world.The outlook was rosier in large part because financial markets — which had been roiled by the collapse of several large banks in the United States and Europe — have largely stabilized. Another big financial risk was averted in June when Congress acted to lift the U.S. government’s borrowing cap, ensuring that the world’s largest economy would continue to pay its bills on time.The new figures from the I.M.F. come as the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point at its meeting this week, while keeping its future options open. The Fed has been aggressively raising rates to try to tamp down inflation, lifting them from near zero as recently as March 2022 to a range of 5 percent to 5.25 percent today. Policymakers have been trying to cool the economy without crushing it and held rates steady in June in order to assess how the U.S. economy was absorbing the higher borrowing costs that the Fed had already approved.As countries like the United States continue to grapple with inflation, the I.M.F. urged central banks to remain focused on restoring price stability and strengthening financial supervision.“Hopefully with inflation starting to recede, we have entered the final stage of the inflationary cycle that started in 2021,” Mr. Gourinchas said. “But hope is not a policy and the touchdown may prove quite difficult to execute.”He added: “It remains critical to avoid easing monetary policy until underlying inflation shows clear signs of sustained cooling.”Fed officials will release their July interest rate decision on Wednesday, followed by a news conference with Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair. Policymakers had previously forecast that they might raise rates one more time in 2023 beyond the expected move this week. While investors doubt that they ultimately will make that final rate move, officials are likely to want to see more evidence that inflation is falling and the economy is cooling before committing in any direction.The I.M.F. said on Tuesday that it expected growth in the United States to slow from 2.1 percent last year to 1.8 percent in 2023 and 1 percent in 2024. It expects consumption, which has remained strong, to begin to wane in the coming months as Americans draw down their savings and interest rates increase further.Growth in the euro area is projected to be just 0.9 percent this year, dragged down by a contraction in Germany, the region’s largest economy, before picking up to 1.5 percent in 2024.European policymakers are still occupied by the struggle to slow down inflation. On Thursday, the European Central Bank is expected to raise interest rates for the 20 countries that use the euro currency to the highest level since 2000. But after a year of pushing up interest rates, policymakers at the central bank have been trying to shift the focus from how high rates will go to how long they may stay at levels intended to restrain the economy and stamp out domestic inflationary pressures generated by rising wages or corporate profits.Policymakers have raised rates as the economy has proved slightly more resilient than expected this year, supported by a strong labor market and lower energy prices. But the economic outlook is still relatively weak, and some analysts expect that the European Central Bank is close to halting interest rate increases amid signs that its restrictive policy stance is weighing on economic growth. On Monday, an index of economic activity in the eurozone dropped to its lowest level in eight months in July, as the manufacturing industry contracted further and the services sector slowed down.Next week, the Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates for a 14th consecutive time in an effort to force inflation down in Britain, where prices in June rose 7.9 percent from a year earlier.Britain has defied some expectations, including those of economists at the I.M.F., by avoiding a recession so far this year. But the country still faces a challenging set of economic factors: Inflation is proving stubbornly persistent in part because a tight labor market is pushing up wages, while households are growing increasingly concerned about the impact of high interest rates on their mortgages because the repayment rates tend to be reset every few years.A weaker-than-expected recovery in China, the world’s second-largest economy, is also weighing on global output. The I.M.F. pointed to a sharp contraction in the Chinese real estate sector, weak consumption and tepid consumer confidence as reasons to worry about China’s outlook.Official figures released this month showed that China’s economy slowed markedly in the spring from earlier in the year, as exports tumbled, a real estate slump deepened and some debt-ridden local governments had to cut spending after running low on money.Mr. Gourinchas said that measures that China has taken to restore confidence in the property sector are a positive step and suggested that targeted support for families to bolster confidence could strengthen consumption.Despite reasons for optimism, the I.M.F. report makes plain that the world economy is not in the clear.Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to pose a threat that could send global food and energy prices higher, and the fund noted that the recently terminated agreement that allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported could portend headwinds. The I.M.F. predicts that the termination of the agreement could lead grain prices to rise by as much as 15 percent.“The war in Ukraine could intensify, further raising food, fuel and fertilizer prices,” the report said. “The recent suspension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a concern in this regard.”It also reiterated its warning against allowing the war in Ukraine and other sources of geopolitical tension to further splinter the world economy.“Such developments could contribute to additional volatility in commodity prices and hamper multilateral cooperation on providing global public goods,” the I.M.F. said. More

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    Jerome Powell’s Prized Labor Market Is Back. Can He Keep It?

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    The Federal Reserve chair spent the early pandemic bemoaning the loss of a strong job market. It roared back — and now its fate is in his hands.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, spent the early pandemic lamenting something America had lost: a job market so historically strong that it was boosting marginalized groups, extending opportunities to people and communities that had long lived without them.“We’re so eager to get back to the economy, get back to a tight labor market with low unemployment, high labor-force participation, rising wages — all of the virtuous factors that we had as recently as last winter,” Mr. Powell said in an NPR interview in September 2020.The Fed chair has gotten that wish. The labor market has recovered by nearly every major measure, and the employment rate for people in their most active working years has eclipsed its 2019 high, reaching a level last seen in April 2001.Yet one of the biggest risks to that strong rebound has been Mr. Powell’s Fed itself. Economists have spent months predicting that workers will not be able to hang on to all their recent labor market gains because the Fed has been aggressively attacking rapid inflation. The central bank has raised interest rates sharply to cool off the economy and the job market, a campaign that many economists have predicted could push unemployment higher and even plunge America into a recession.But now a tantalizing possibility is emerging: Can America both tame inflation and keep its labor market gains?Data last week showed that price increases are beginning to moderate in earnest, and that trend is expected to continue in the months ahead. The long-awaited cool-down has happened even as unemployment has remained at rock bottom and hiring has remained healthy. The combination is raising the prospect — still not guaranteed — that Mr. Powell’s central bank could pull off a soft landing, in which workers largely keep their jobs and growth chugs along slowly even as inflation returns to normal.“There are meaningful reasons for why inflation is coming down, and why we should expect to see it come down further,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “Many economists argue that the last mile of inflation reduction will be the hardest, but that isn’t necessarily the case.”Inflation has plummeted to 3 percent, just a third of its 9.1 percent peak last summer. While an index that strips out volatile products to give a cleaner sense of the underlying trend in inflation remains more elevated at 4.8 percent, it, too, is showing notable signs of coming down — and the reasons for that moderation seem potentially sustainable.Housing costs are slowing in inflation measures, something that economists have expected for months and that they widely predict will continue. New and used car prices are cooling as demand wanes and inventories on dealer lots improve, allowing goods prices to moderate. And even services inflation has cooled somewhat, though some of that owed to a slowdown in airfares that may look less significant in coming months.All of those positive trends could make the road to a soft landing — one Mr. Powell has called “a narrow path” — a bit wider.For the Fed, the nascent cool-down could mean that it isn’t necessary to raise rates so much this year. Central bankers are poised to lift borrowing costs at their July meeting next week, and had forecast another rate increase before the end of the year. But if inflation continues to moderate for the next few months, it could allow them to delay or even nix that move, while indicating that further increases could be warranted if inflation picked back up — a signal economists sometimes call a “tightening bias.”Christopher Waller, one of the Fed’s most inflation-focused members, suggested last week that while he might favor raising interest rates again at the Fed meeting in September if inflation data came in hot, he could change his mind if two upcoming inflation reports demonstrated progress toward slower price increases.“If they look like the last two, the data would suggest maybe stopping,” Mr. Waller said.Interest rates are already elevated — they’ll be in a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent if raised as expected on July 26, the highest level in 16 years. Holding them steady will continue to weigh on the economy, discouraging home buyers, car shoppers or businesses hoping to expand on borrowed money.Since 2020, the labor market has rebounded by nearly every major measure.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesSo far, though, the economy has shown a surprising ability to absorb higher interest rates without cracking. Consumer spending has slowed, but it has not plummeted. The rate-sensitive housing market cooled sharply initially as mortgage rates shot up, but it has recently shown signs of bottoming out. And the labor market just keeps chugging.Some economists think that with so much momentum, fully stamping out inflation will prove difficult. Wage growth is hovering around 4.4 percent by one popular measure, well above the 2 to 3 percent that was normal in the years before the pandemic.With pay climbing so swiftly, the logic goes, companies will try to charge more to protect their profits. Consumers who are earning more will have the wherewithal to pay up, keeping inflation hotter than normal.“If the economy doesn’t cool down, companies will need to bake into their business plans bigger wage increases,” said Kokou Agbo-Bloua, a global research leader at Société Générale. “It’s not a question of if unemployment needs to go up — it’s a question of how high unemployment should go for inflation to return to 2 percent.”Yet economists within the Fed itself have raised the possibility that unemployment may not need to rise much at all to lower inflation. There are a lot of job openings across the economy at the moment, and wage and price growth may be able to slow as those decline, a Fed Board economist and Mr. Waller argued in a paper last summer.While unemployment could creep higher, the paper argued, it might not rise much: perhaps one percentage point or less.So far, that prediction is playing out. Job openings have dropped. Immigration and higher labor force participation have improved the supply of workers in the economy. As balance has come back, wage growth has cooled. Unemployment, in the meantime, is hovering at a similar level to where it was when the Fed began to raise interest rates 16 months ago.A big question is whether the Fed will feel the need to raise interest rates further in a world with pay gains that — while slowing — remain notably faster than before the pandemic. It could be that they do not.“Wage growth often follows inflation, so it’s really hard to say that wage growth is going to lead inflation down,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said during a CNBC interview last week.Risks to the outlook still loom, of course. The economy could still slow more sharply as the effects of higher interest rates add up, cutting into growth and hiring.Consumer spending has slowed, but it has not plummeted — a signal that the economy is absorbing higher interest rates without cracking.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesInflation could come roaring back because of an escalation of the war in Ukraine or some other unexpected development, prodding central bankers to do more to ensure that price increases come under control quickly. Or price increases could simply prove painfully stubborn.“One data point does not make a trend,” Mr. Waller said last week. “Inflation briefly slowed in the summer of 2021 before getting much worse.”But if price increases do keep slowing — maybe to below 3 percent, some economists speculated — officials might increasingly weigh the cost of getting price increases down against their other big goal: fostering a strong job market.The Fed’s tasks are both price stability and maximum employment, what is called its “dual mandate.” When one goal is really out of whack, it takes precedence, based on the way the Fed approaches policy. But once they are both close to target, pursuing the two is a balancing act.“I think we need to get a 2-handle on core inflation before they’re ready to put the dual mandates beside each other,” said Julia Coronado, an economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives. Forecasters in a Bloomberg survey expect that measure of inflation to fall below 3 percent — what economists call a “2-handle” — in the spring of 2024.The Fed may be able to walk that tightrope to a soft landing, retaining a labor market that has benefited a range of people — from those with disabilities to teenagers to Black and Hispanic adults.Mr. Powell has regularly said that “without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all,” explaining why the Fed might need to harm his prized job market.But at his June news conference, he sounded a bit more hopeful — and since then, there has been evidence to bolster that optimism.“The labor market, I think, has surprised many, if not all, analysts over the last couple of years with its extraordinary resilience,” Mr. Powell said. More

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    JPMorgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo Report Better-than-Expected Profits

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    The NewsThree of the biggest banks in the United States made a cumulative $22.3 billion in profit last quarter, a hefty jump from the same period last year, the lenders reported Friday.The largest bank in the nation, JPMorgan Chase, led the way with $14.5 billion in profit, helped by growth virtually across the board, including increases in lending and credit-card transactions. Wells Fargo pulled in $4.9 billion and Citi earned $2.9 billion in the quarter. All of the earnings were higher than analysts had expected.JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in New York. The bank made $14.5 billion in profit last quarter.Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York TimesWhy It MattersGiven its size, JPMorgan in particular is a proxy for the banking industry. Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, has deep political connections, and his prognostications on the economy are scrutinized in some circles as closely as a central banker’s musings.On Friday, Mr. Dimon told analysts that he expected the U.S. economy to experience “a soft landing, mild recession or a hard recession,” though he didn’t put a time frame on the prediction. “Obviously, we shall hope for the best,” he said.In its latest report, the bank listed a litany of risks, including that consumers are burning through their cash buffers and that inflation remains high. Last quarter, JPMorgan lost $900 million on investments in U.S. Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which have dropped in value as rates have risen — but that was barely a dent in its results.Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, is watched by analysts for signs of economic stress. The U.S. economy “continues to perform better than many had expected,” said Charles W. Scharf, the bank’s chief executive.The bank said Friday that soured loans in its commercial business had increased, but that its consumer business had held fairly steady, with a slight rise in credit-card defaults offset by a drop in losses on auto loans. Commercial real estate, especially loans on office space, is a pain point, and the bank set aside nearly $1 billion more for losses.Unlike the other banks, Citigroup reported a fall in second-quarter profit, although the decline was not as severe as analysts had predicted. “The long-awaited rebound in investment banking has yet to materialize, making for a disappointing quarter,” Citi’s chief executive, Jane Fraser, said in a statement.BackgroundThe three major banks that reported earnings Friday have been all over the news this year, thanks to their prominent role attempting to be a stabilizing force during the spring banking crisis that felled three smaller lenders. JPMorgan bought one of those failed banks, First Republic. In an indication of how troubled that institution had become, JPMorgan said Friday that it was setting aside $1.2 billion to deal with losses in First Republic’s lending portfolio.Analysts still expect the acquisition to prove worthy in the end, thanks to First Republic’s base of wealthy clients and coastal branches, which Friday’s results show are already buoying JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management arms.The U.S. government debt-limit standoff in April and May was also reflected in the banks’ results, with Citi citing anxiety during the negotiations as pushing investment-banking clients to the “sidelines” during the second quarter.What’s NextIn the next week or so, a slew of other banks will report quarterly earnings. Among the most closely watched will be Wednesday’s results from Goldman Sachs, which has hinted publicly of a disappointing stretch, and regional banks like Western Alliance and Comerica, which will be looking to prove they have bounced back from their recent troubles. More