Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Don’t hold your breath

US inflation has been slowing for some time now, buckling under the weight of near-incessant Fed rate hikes. With employment remaining muscular, many economists have either pushed back their so-far incorrect recession predictions or fallen entirely into the arms of a soft landing. But the strength of consumer spending—which rose 0.6% in July—is presenting fresh concern for policymakers hoping to put a final stake in inflation’s heart. So the big question among investors is less about when or if a downturn might occur, but more specifically when the central bank might start to reverse course on rates. Bridgewater Associates Co-Chief Investment Officer Karen Karniol-Tambour says don’t hold your breath. “When you look at what it takes to get fast rate declines, usually you need the economy collapsing pretty quickly,” she said in an interview for an upcoming episode of Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein. “That’s very far from where we are today.” —David E. Rovella

As the planet warms faster than predicted and climate-fueled catastrophes appear to be multiplying, European oil giant Shell is doubling down on selling the fossil fuels behind the global crisis. Six months after becoming chief executive of the European oil giant, Wael Sawan ended the world’s biggest corporate plan to develop carbon offsets, the environmental projects designed to counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate activists protest outside the Shell annual general meeting in London in May. In June, Shell Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan laid out an updated strategy for the European oil major that included cutting costs and emphasizing profit drivers like oil and gas.  Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg

It turns out UBS got a good deal when it swallowed up its cratering cross-town rival. The Swiss banking giant has outlined major targets for its integration of Credit Suisse as it posted the biggest ever quarterly profit for a bank. But not everyone is winning: While UBS touts billions of dollars in cost savings due to consolidation, a lot of that will come from the termination of tens of thousands of people.

Fresh off a pivotal win in court this week, Grayscale Investments may soon find itself in another fight. A court ruling Tuesday set aside a US Securities and Exchange Commission decision to block Grayscale’s bid to convert its $17 billion Bitcoin trust into a physically backed ETF. While the action potentially paves the way for the firm to attract a fresh wave of investors, there’s one potentially expensive problem.

The two would-be leaders of the “Global South” are not getting along. Tensions between China and India threaten to prevent Group of 20 leaders from issuing a joint communique for the first time since the forum was created in 1999. In the run-up to the summit in New Delhi, China is said to have blocked draft proposals on language regarding emerging-market debt and condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine. It’s gotten so bad that Chinese leader Xi Jinping might not show up.

From left, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg on Aug. 24. Photographer: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg

European aviation regulators have determined that a London-based company supplied bogus parts for repairs of jet engines that power many older-generation Airbus SE A320 and Boeing Co. 737 passenger planes.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said the chipmaker is on course to hit its third-quarter forecasts, helped by an improving personal-computer market. While sluggish demand in China and lower orders from some large data-center owners have been weighing on its server-chip unit, PC processor inventory is now back to normal, prompting customers to resume ordering.

For more than half a century, US farmers dominated the international market for corn, shipping more of the critical crop than any other country to feed the world’s livestock, fill its stockpiles and manufacture its processed foods. No more. In the agricultural year ending Aug. 31, the US handed the corn-exporting crown to Brazil. And it might never get it back.

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• One dose of this magic mushroom may ease major depression.
• This tropical Caribbean island has a domain name everybody wants.

As reports of damaged buildings poured in after Hurricane Idalia barreled into the Florida coast, property insurers braced for the possibility of  billions of dollars in claims. With global warming making some kinds of  extreme weather events worse, underwriters that have suffered billions of dollars in catastrophe losses have upped premiums and retreated from especially vulnerable markets. That means in many states, there’s less coverage to go around, and what protection is available is much costlier. Bloomberg QuickTake takes a look at the big picture.

Photographer: Chandan Khanna/AFP

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