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Goldman executives frustrated with David Solomon’s leadership are turning attention to the bank’s No. 2., while China tries to rescue its sl [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Goldman executives frustrated with David Solomon’s leadership are turning attention to the bank’s No. 2., while China tries to rescue its slumping stock market. Plus, what to expect from the Fed’s minutes. — [Sofia Horta e Costa]( Goldman mutiny [Bitterness is festering]( among senior Goldman Sachs managers over Solomon’s leadership as CEO, and they are now pressing his longtime ally President John Waldron to pick a side. While the 54-year-old dealmaker, who has spent his three-decade career ascending Wall Street’s rungs behind Solomon, is known to be in sync with the CEO on the company’s strategy shifts, he has also listened to and acknowledged frustrations with his boss without outwardly betraying Solomon. Tensions at Goldman are now so apparent that in June, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink — whose firm ranks as Goldman’s second-biggest shareholder — casually opined on television that there’s an obvious “schism” within the bank. Fed minutes due A record of the Federal Reserve’s July policy meeting is due Wednesday at 2 p.m. New York time. The minutes are set to show only a minority of officials favored holding interest rates steady over the remainder of the year, [Bloomberg Economics predicts](, with a majority likely displaying cautious optimism that the US economy is headed for a soft landing. While the minutes may give a sense of the relative size of each camp on the committee when they met in July, economic data released since may have already altered the balance, wrote Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Stuart Paul. Investors currently do not expect another rate increase this year, though the implied odds of a hike at the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 meeting are higher than those for their next meeting on Sept. 19-20. China’s rescue plan Chinese authorities are resorting to familiar tactics to put a floor on markets as the economic slowdown deepens and a crisis brews in the [shadow banking industry](. After Tuesday’s interest-rate cut, the country’s stock exchanges [asked]( some investment funds this week to avoid being net sellers of equities, according to people familiar with the matter. It echoes the playbook of February 2020 when Chinese markets crashed in a worsening pandemic. The exhortations to investment firms also follow several last year. Beijing has recently been trying to engineer a bullish stock market as a way to help boost sentiment among households and revive the economy. Other potential measures include a reduction in the [stamp duty](. In July regulators [consulted]( securities firms for their advice on how to do this and now appear to be following through, though with limited effect so far. Markets steady Stocks are fluctuating after Tuesday’s slump, while the pound strengthened after UK inflation came in hotter than expectations. In China, the onshore yuan sank toward its weakest in 16 years against the dollar as a worsening economic outlook and a widening interest-rate gap with the US weighed on sentiment. US futures were little changed as of 6:16 a.m. in New York while Treasury yields were slightly lower across the curve. Coming up… As well as the Fed’s policy minutes, today there’s data on industrial production for July, as well as housing starts in both the US and Canada. Target reports earnings before the open. In the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the second semi-final is underway between England and Australia. What we’ve been reading This is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours. - Expensive holidays in the UK are keeping inflation [sticky](. - Intel’s $5.4 billion deal with Israel’s Tower [collapses](. - Saudi Arabia [sold more]( than $3 billion of US government debt. - A hedge fund manager is priming for a [pullback in stocks](. - Tesla makes its [second round]( of price cuts in China of the week. - US tribal lands have some of the best potential for [solar and wind energy](. - Norway’s sovereign wealth fund made a [38.6% return]( on tech stocks. - Residents are [leaving Hong Kong]( at a faster rate. - A handful of tourists are [disrespecting]( European landmarks. And finally, here's what Joe’s interested in this morning… One thing I'm convinced of is that we'll never really have consensus on the question of "What caused the inflation spike in 2021 and 2022? And what caused inflation to settle down in 2023?" It seems totally reasonable to say that Covid and the policy response to it represented this unprecedented shock to consumption and production all around the world, all at the same time, and it took a few years for things to respond to normal. Basically that's the Long Transitory story. And it also seems totally reasonable to say that the government spent a ton of money, more than was necessary, putting cash into to the hands of the consumer, while at the same time the Fed was explicitly telling us (with its new framework) that it would allow for an inflation overshoot, and that it wasn't until the Fed started hiking aggressively, and the stimulus measures wore off, that inflation started cooling down. Economists will probably be debating these for years, and given how economics seems to work, both sides will have plenty of evidence in their favor, with little prospect of anyone changing anyone's mind. One problem with the second story, about Fed tightening, and waning stimulus, is that so far at least, we never got the unemployment that many people expected from the more restrictive policy. Now some will say that tightening can cool inflation, even without a jump in the unemployment rate. But by and large, there was a view inside the Fed and out that higher joblessness would be one effect of the tightening campaign. The other interesting wrinkle is that the economy seems to be showing momentum again. Yesterday we got an [extremely strong retail sales report](, with the "ex auto and gas" measure jumping 1% month-over-month vs. an expectation for a 0.5% rise. The report even had slight upward revisions to the previous month. [We also got the latest Atlanta Fed GDPNow tracker](, indicating that for Q3, real GDP is estimated to be growing at a 5% clip. The presumption is that this level of growth is probably unrealistic or unsustainable, or not actually what Q3 will end up being. And that's fine. But the point is, this doesn't look like much of a Fed-induced slowdown. If we were in recession right now (as many people would have predicted six or seven months ago) we might have a clean story. "Inflation was too high, and it took an unfortunate policy-induced downturn to bring prices off the boil." But at least of right now, nobody is getting the clean narrative they want about what's going on, or how things work. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Five Things to Start Your Day: Americas Edition newsletter. 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