In hotly anticipated comments on Thursday—and yes, such a designation applies to a speech on monetary policy—Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell “announced a major shift in how the central bank guides the economy, signaling it will make job growth pre-eminent and will not raise interest rates to guard against coming inflation just because the unemployment rate is low.” The new plan forward comes after an almost-2-year review of the Fed’s monetary policy strategy – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Marketplace
Streetwise, unsurprisingly, has thoughts – WSJ
Japan’s Premier, Shinzo Abe, is stepping down for health reasons a year ahead of the island nation’s next planned general election. The announcement “appeared to catch key members of Abe’s ruling party off guard” – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ
The latest wrinkle in the TikTok saga includes news that Walmart has joined Microsoft’s bid for the video app, creating the potential for turning “TikTok into a kind of e-commerce app for both creators and users.” TikTok’s weighing this bid against an apparently White-House-backed move for the company by Oracle and a coalition of investors – NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch and Mashable and Law360
New U.S. unemployment claims have again topped 1 million, the “latest sign that the economy is losing momentum just as federal aid to the unemployed has been pulled away” – NYTimes and Marketplace
Bon Appetit, the “multimedia food-journalism outlet that has experienced a summer of racial strife in the workplace,” has named Dawn Davis—a major power player in the book world—as its new editor in chief. Davis will assume the role in early November and exercise editorial control over the company’s various food outlets “across all media, including print, digital, social media and video” – NYTimes and WSJ
The Treasury Department has delayed guidance on enforcement of the White House’s controversial executive order purporting to suspend the payroll tax, “leaving businesses across the country uncertain about how to proceed” – NYTimes
Bloomberg gives us this closer (and probably overdue) look at the role that Nissan insider Hari Nada played in taking down Carlos Ghosn—a power play to end all power plays that’s shaken the carmaker and its triparty alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi to their core – Bloomberg
Bayer’s efforts to reach a near-global $10.9 billion settlement of claims related to the safety of its Roundup weedkiller are faltering, just months after the company announced that it “had reached deals to settle 75% of the 125,000 cases.” On Thursday, the federal judge overseeing the vast federal MDL instructed lawyers to get him a “plan to restart the litigation in light of the settlement uncertainty” – WSJ
Steel yourself: that deep dive on boredom for which you’ve been clamoring is finally here. No really, it is. Read it – NewYorker
