It’s time. Even Jerome Powell said so. The Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest-rates next month, more than 2 ½ years after it started hiking borrowing costs in order to crush pandemic-spurred inflation. “The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell said Friday at the annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The direction of travel is clear.” Powell and his fellow Fed policymakers, after holding rates “higher for longer,” are now walking a tightrope between trying to continue to slow inflation and protect the US job market. Recently, signals including a weaker-than-expected July jobs report have bubbled up, potential signs the Fed’s slowdown is working, or that it overshot. Powell pointed to recent progress on inflation. “My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%,” he said. More proof will come next week with a reading of the central bank’s preferred inflation gauge, the core price index.

A rate cut in September is all but assured. After attacks on Powell and company (with the derisive moniker “team transitory”) for being late to raise rates in response to the Covid inflation surge, his remarks underscore how Fed officials are hoping to avoid another policy error. Many of those critics spent the past few years being wrong in their predictions of a downturn. Now the Fed’s success or failure will determine whether there’s a soft landing.

Vice President Kamala Harris boiled down her campaign’s attack on Donald Trump as she accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. “Donald Trump is an unserious man,” Harris said. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” It’s a delicate balance, to diminish Trump without dismissing the dangers critics warn he represents, and is emblematic of the Democrats’ many threaded needles: from the Israel-Hamas war to appealing to middle-class centrists without losing progressives to defining how her policies would differ, if at all, from those of the Biden administration. So far, Harris, 59, continues to ride the wave as the 78-year-old Trump struggles amid falsehoods, name-calling and disjointed speeches to find an attack that works against his opponent—one who could become the first female as well as first woman of color president. 

Kamala Harris Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Talks on a cease-fire in Israel-Hamas war are set to begin again on Sunday in Cairo, though it’s unclear if either side is ready to stop fighting as they blame each other for standing in the way of a truce. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left the region after his ninth visit during the war, reiterating that Israel had accepted a “bridging” agreement that would allow the two sides to hammer out the details. Hamas has pushed back on the idea that it’s the one stalling the talks. A sticking point is whether Israel can keep forces in the so-called Philadelphi corridor, which runs along the Egypt-Gaza border, which Israel alleges is a route for weapons smuggling.

Fraud targeting older victims has exploded across the US as criminals target the record wealth controlled by elderly Americans. It’s also raised an important question for banks and watchdogs: How should a financial institution react if a customer’s banking behavior abruptly changes? On the other side of the globe, the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region where the borders of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, is wild and remote. It’s also where a Chinese businessman persuaded officials to establish a special economic zone, now the site of gambling, drug running and human trafficking. 

A building that is believed to house a scam center is seen inside the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos. Photographer: Thomas Cristofoletti for Bloomberg Businessweek

After days of searching, Italian and British authorities are shifting their focus to how the Bayesian luxury yacht sank so quickly off the coast of Sicily, leaving several people dead. The 56-meter (184 feet) sailing yacht owned by the family of UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch sank in a matter of minutes in a violent storm, leaving Lynch and Morgan Stanley International chair Jonathan Bloomer among the victims. Of  the 22 total passengers in the boat, 15 were rescued. 

Call them “boommates.” Surging costs for housing and other expenses are prompting baby boomers to take on roommates. A Harvard study estimates that almost a million Americans over age 65 now live with unrelated housemates. It’s the latest manifestation of a housing affordability crisis that’s slammed Americans of all ages, especially those in expensive cities like New York. 

Dan Yafet, right, and Alan Ferber, left, are roommates in New York Photographer: Natalie Keyssar/Bloomberg

• Nvidia reports after disappointing season for Magnificent Seven.
• Euro-zone inflation might meet its 2% target after three years.
• Asia earnings, from travel to consumer goods and EVs.
• SpaceX set to take part in mission with first commercial spacewalk.
• The Paralympic torch leaves Stoke Mandeville for Calais. 

The Bank of Japan’s rate hike blew up a yen-centered carry trade. Now, as the dust settles, investors and Japanese business owners alike are questioning the yen’s role in the global economy. In this Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary, we explore how the currency and the “carry trade” managed to trigger a global market panic.

Photographer: Kosuke Okahara/Bloomberg

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Bloomberg CEO Forum: All eyes are on an Indonesia in transition. Will President-elect Prabowo Subianto follow through on his pledge to continue President Joko Widodo’s policies? Can the new administration create an understanding of how and where global investment should flow? Join us Sept. 4 in Jakarta for a series of conversations on the trends, risks and opportunities facing Indonesia and the region's other economies. Register here.