Get ready for the new week.
(Bloomberg) — Hello from Los Angeles, where gas prices on average topped $6 a gallon this week, the highest level in about a year.
The big disconnect: The soaring price at the pump is just one of the factors contributing to a growing disconnect between policymakers who point to cooling inflation indicators as a sign of progress and Americans struggling to make ends meet. It’s become a pressing issue for President Joe Biden as he tries to convince voters of his economic record for his 2024 reelection bid: How the economy looks on paper isn’t matching up with what consumers are experiencing in their everyday lives.
The big stat: Still, policymakers on each side of the Atlantic are likely to take comfort this week from a slowdown taking hold in key underlying measures of consumer-price growth. In the US, the annual core metric that strips out food and energy from the Fed’s preferred inflation measure may have fallen below 4% in August for the first time in nearly two years.
The big market thought: Bond investors face the crucial decision of just how much risk to take in Treasuries with 10-year yields at the highest in more than a decade and the Federal Reserve signaling it’s almost done raising rates.
The big debate: The GOP presidential hopefuls will participate in a second debate taking place Wednesday in Simi Valley, California, a chance for them to close the polling gap with Donald Trump. The former president has said he will not participate that day, and instead visit Detroit to court members of the United Auto Workers union who are striking against the legacy Big Three automakers. President Biden will make his own appearance to support workers Tuesday.
The big deadline: With a government shutdown looming, Republicans are eyeing a stopgap funding measure that would range from 14 to 60 days, according to Representative Garret Graves, an ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The House plans to return Tuesday and spend days debating full-year funding bills for the State, Agriculture, Homeland Security and Defense departments. The plan leaves little time to turn to the stopgap needed before Saturday night.
The big verdict: Apple’s iPhone 15 got off to a hot start, with many models quickly selling out and crowds returning to the company’s retail stores in a way we haven’t seen since before the pandemic. Mark Gurman got his hands on the latest device, only to discover something was amiss.
The big protest: The UAW on Friday expanded a strike against two of the Big Three automakers in Detroit. That comes on the heels of the months-long WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike against Hollywood. While studios and screenwriters are close to resolving a contract renewal dispute, they still don’t have a deal. Polling data released last month indicates that two-thirds of Americans approve of unions, a level last seen in 1965. But before workers crack open the champagne, they should understand that unions face a sad state of affairs that neither public opinion nor high-profile strikes can fix, warn Bloomberg Opinion’s Stephen Mihm. A series of decades-old regulations have tipped the balance of power against organized labor.
The big touch down: Chunks of asteroid that could tell us about the earliest days of the 4.5 billion-year-old solar system and the possible origins of water on our planet landed today. It’s a moment more than a decade in the making for a NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx, whose goal was to scoop up a large sample of rocks and dust from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu and bring it to our planet to study. The spacecraft successfully snagged its prize in 2020 and this weekend finally passed by Earth and released a capsule containing the sample and sent it careening down to the Utah desert.
ICYM Our Big Take: These ex-Goldman bankers are making a controversial bet on King Coal. Bloomberg’s Alastair Marsh, Archie Hunter and Todd Gillespie explain how a little-known London commodities newcomer made its founders very, very rich. In its first eight years, Javelin Global Commodities has grown to an equity value of more than $1 billion and become the biggest exporter of US coal.
And finally: Get caught up on the latest bulletins with Bloomberg’s News Now. It’s a rolling update in podcast format on the Terminal and web that’s a perfect primer for a return to your desk on Monday.
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Have a great week ahead.
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