STOCKS RISE BROADLY — AP’s Alex Veiga: “Stocks notched gains on Wall Street Monday, pushing the Nasdaq composite to an all-time high and helping the S&P 500 more than make up for its losses last week. The S&P 500 rose 0.9 percent, after spending much of the day within striking distance of notching its own record high. The benchmark index ended less than 0.2 percent below its all-time high set a week ago. “Technology, communication and financial stocks helped lift the S&P 500. Companies that rely on consumer spending also notched gains. Energy stocks rose as the price of U.S. crude oil jumped 5.3 percent, recovering some of the ground it lost last week. Only utilities, household goods makers and real estate companies fell.” NEW APPETITE FOR MORTGAGE BONDS THAT SIDESTEP FANNIE, FREDDIE — WSJ’s Ben Eisen: “Wall Street is diving back into the business of turning home loans into bonds, injecting new competition into a market long dominated by government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “The so-called private-label mortgage market — in which financial firms serve the middleman role of creating giant pools of loans and selling them to investors — had more than $42 billion of issuance in the second quarter. That is the most since the pandemic started and almost the most for any quarter since the last financial crisis, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry research firm.” CRYPTO’S SURGE LEAVES GLOBAL WATCHDOGS TRYING TO CATCH UP — WSJ’s Dave Michaels, Caitlin Ostroff and Elaine Yu: “The cryptocurrency industry is getting so big and enabling so much risk-taking that governments around the globe are taking notice. Bitcoin traded above $50,000 Monday; its total value now exceeds $900 billion, more than all but a handful of companies. "Digital currencies called stablecoins grease ever more trading and issuance. Giant crypto exchanges in Asia offer 100-to-1 bets, often serving traders in countries where their products aren’t legal.”
Fly around BIDEN, FED WANTED A HOT ECONOMY. THERE’S RISK OF GETTING BURNED. — NYT’s Neil Irwin: “There is a big idea in economic policy that has become ascendant in recent years: Great things can be achieved for American workers if the economy is allowed to run hot. “The notion of creating a ‘high-pressure’ economy is that government should be willing to risk a bit of inflation in the near term to achieve conditions that will over the long run lift people out of poverty, prevent the scars of recessions from becoming permanent, and make the nation’s economic potential stronger.” POWELL NAVIGATES THE INFLATION DEBATE — WSJ’s Nick Timiraos and Paul Kiernan: “After a decade of low growth and inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell unveiled a new strategy a year ago in which the central bank would keep interest rates lower for longer. “Reality has dealt Mr. Powell a different and unexpected challenge: the biggest inflation spike in decades. Consumer prices rose 5.4 percent in July from a year earlier. Mr. Powell heads into the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference this week at the center of the debate over how long the currently higher inflation will last, and what the Fed should do about it.” FED’S JACKSON HOLE SHIFT SHOWS DELTA’S ABILITY TO SKEW PLANS — Reuters’ Howard Schneider: “Health officials in Teton County, Wyoming, announced last Thursday what was in part an administrative change, swapping a local five-point index for assessing COVID-19 risk for a four-point scale used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But that change promptly pushed the county into the CDC's highest risk category, and shifted the Federal Reserve's plans to hold its Jackson Hole central banking conference as an in-person event into non-compliance with local health guidance. Within a day, the U.S. central bank had cancelled the in-person portion of the conference at the local mountain resort.” | 
