This week's set-piece event is the Jackson Hole central-bank gathering in Wyoming, slated for Thursday through Saturday. Investors will be glued to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's speech on Friday, hoping for any insight into whether the central bank might kick off interest-rate cuts in September. The Fed is also set to release minutes from its July rate-setting meeting. Recent weak U.S. jobs data, alongside inflation data which didn’t reveal tariffs having a worrying impact on prices, have caused investors to expect that the Fed will reduce interest rates next month.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will take the stage on Friday at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium to deliver what may be the defining speech of his career. The speech won’t be lengthy—last year’s version clocked in at just over 15 minutes—but with his term as chair ending next May and the Fed’s performance under attack by the Trump administration, Powell may see Jackson Hole as his last or, at least, his best chance to cement his legacy and make the case for the central bank’s independence, Nicole Goodkind reports for Barron's.

The annual symposium, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, attracts the world’s most influential central bankers, who will meet on Aug. 21-23 at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. This year’s conference, titled “Labor Markets in Transition,” will focus on structural forces such as demographics, productivity, and immigration that are reshaping the U.S. job market and the broader economy. The theme also speaks to the central challenge of Powell’s term: how to navigate structural changes in the economy while fulfilling the Fed’s dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.

Steering monetary policy in the face of political hostility has become a parallel challenge this year. President Donald Trump, whose second term began on Jan. 20, has berated Powell for the Fed’s failure to cut interest rates, calling him a “stubborn MORON” and “Too Late.” Trump has also accused Powell of mismanaging the $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s Marriner S. Eccles building in Washington, D.C., and suggested firing the Fed chair before his term ends. The White House is already vetting potential replacements, focusing on candidates willing to cut rates quickly and, in some cases, restructure the Fed.

Powell’s reluctance until now to lower the federal-funds rate from a current target range of 4.25%-4.50% stems chiefly from concerns that Trump’s tariff policy may worsen inflation, which ran at an annual rate of 2.7% in July, as measured by the consumer price index.

• Week Ahead: Fed’s Powell Comments at Jackson Hole in Focus

Americans are starting to pull back from a pandemic-era credit-card binge. After a surge in credit-card spending that pushed Americans’ card balances above $1 trillion, growth is now moderating. Credit-card spending has been growing more slowly than debit-card spending since late last year, the first such stretch in nearly four years, according to the latest spending data from Visa and Mastercard.

10 a.m.: NAHB Housing Market Index

8:30 a.m.: New Residential Construction - Housing Starts and Building Permits
10 a.m.: Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales

Economists at JPMorgan look back at revisions to official BLS payroll numbers over the decades. They find that despite the head-spinning downward revisions of 258,000 in May and June that landed in the July jobs report, revisions have not been rising over time, on average. Revisions have generally declined since the 1990s, they write, with exceptions around moments of disruption like Covid-19 and the 2008 financial crisis. Revision patterns do tend to be persistent, JPMorgan finds, meaning that they tend to come in strings of positive or negative numbers. But these patterns aren't typically correlated to the business cycle, JPMorgan's team finds. "While we always prefer smaller revisions, the payroll ones are usually considerably smaller than other key high-frequency indicators," JPMorgan writes. — Matt Grossman

Japan's notoriously choppy preliminary GDP numbers will likely be revised up, but the economy will remain stuck between a bleak trade outlook and fragile domestic demand, Moody's Analytics says. A 2Q GDP uptick doesn't mask the fact that Japan's economy is struggling, with tariffs and foreign competition squeezing manufacturers, and domestic consumer and business spending soft, economist Dave Chia says. Tariffs will damage exports and industrial production in 2H, with the new 15% U.S. levy set to knock at least 0.5% off GDP. Domestic demand won't save the day, Chia says, as inflation outpaces wage growth and firms struggle to get investment off the ground as the government drags its feet on big-ticket items. The gloomy backdrop could keep Bank of Japan on hold through 2025. — Fabiana Negrinochoa

• The global economy appears to have taken a sharp rise in U.S. tariffs and increased uncertainty about the future of the international trading system in its stride, but faces stronger headwinds as tax rates continue to climb.
• European exports to the U.S. continue to slow sharply, underscoring the drag the continent’s trade faces from President Trump’s trade tariffs.
• Amsterdam and London pioneered the creation of public-stock trading centuries ago, raising money for voyages to Asia, Africa and the Caribbean that forged Europe’s colonial empires. Now, Europe’s stock markets face a crisis of inactivity.
• Shares in European renewable companies rose in opening trade after the Trump administration on Friday published better-than-expected guidelines on which projects will qualify for wind and solar tax credits.
• Bolivia’s once-dominant left was swept aside in Sunday’s presidential election, with voters handing the ruling party the worst electoral defeat in two decades and all but ensuring that the next government will be led by a pro-U.S., market-friendly candidate.

WSJ Pro Central Banking brings you central banking news, analysis and insights from WSJ’s global team of reporters and editors. This newsletter was compiled by markets reporter Vicky Ge Huang in New York. Send your tips, suggestions and feedback to vicky.huang@wsj.com.