Crypto News: Who's the ugliest?

And finally the good news: Sterling is set for its best week since May, poised to end the week up 1.4%. Stock markets rose too, and are in line for their best month since November 2020. (Want the $100 billion story on why markets are recovering? Try this.)

Some see the UK, and the pound, as better able than Europe to ride out the incoming gas-supply crisis. Even though data today showed that the eurozone economy expanded by more than three times the amount expected, Jamie Rush of Bloomberg Economics said that a sharp slowdown "looks inevitable" as the "full impact of Russia throttling Europe's gas supply is yet to be felt."

"The euro's woes are seen as even worse than sterling's woes" said John Hardy, head of FX analysis at Saxo Bank in Copenhagen.

Inside Whitehall, this is what is known as an "ugly baby competition." The UK may have problems, but for now at least, currency traders deem them less ugly than the EU's.

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The stories you need to know about this evening

Liz Truss pledged to grow the UK economy by 2.5% a year. Odds show she now has a 90% chance of becoming prime minister.
Black bankers say Barclays treated them unfairly because of their race.
The UK scaled back a £1 billion plan, meaning fewer homes can be insulated before winter.

"Never waste a good crisis," as Winston Churchill didn't quite say. For the giants of the consumer world, Rahm Emanuel's 2008 dictum might just hold true today.

In what's been a frantic week of corporate earnings, firms on both sides of the Atlantic have posted eyebrow-raising results.

Stealing the headlines earlier this week were McDonald's (strong sales but now pricing a cheeseburger above £1 in Britain) and Amazon (shares are shooting up today; this week it raised European Prime subscription rates by 31%.) Unilever hiked prices by 11%; Reckitt Benckiser's climbed nearly 10%. Outside of the UK, Coca Cola, Colgate-Palmolive and Nestle beat estimates. Procter & Gamble this morning missed sales estimates, but even then it noted that higher pricing is still driving growth.

As our reporters note, UK inflation is already high and getting worse, with consumers currently "the ones taking most of the pain."

Firms are trying to push the trolley down a difficult aisle. They have a duty to maximize shareholder value, but if they veer too far that way shoppers will look elsewhere. Some have chosen to cut back on promotions, increasing average prices. Others are reducing pack sizes but keeping prices stable — so-called "shrinkflation." Unilever says customers are already ditching big-name goods for own-brand food, ice-cream and cleaning products.

In the US, Walmart bucked the trend and issued a profit warning. Here's Andrea Felsted, writing for Bloomberg Opinion: "The simple answer is, we must all still buy food, but we can easily jettison non-essentials such as clothing, cushions and even electronics."

Back in the UK, companies may unwittingly be playing a role in the simmering dispute over public sector pay. After all, as prices go up so it becomes harder to pay for essentials if wages lag behind inflation. As our UK business editor Julian Harris tells me, companies have to be careful: "The unions have been blaming 'profiteering' for inflation. While that's economically questionable, these earnings stories do give it some traction."

Tesco spotted the sensitivity some weeks ago, saying it wouldn't pass on to consumers what it called "unjustifiable price increases" by Kraft Heinz. (The companies subsequently reached a compromise.)

It's not just energy — there are multiple front lines in this cost-of-living crisis.

TikTok Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

The Chinese government was interested in creating a secret TikTok account to "showcase the best side of China (some sort of propaganda.)" That's how an internal message sent to a TikTok executive described a request by a Chinese state PR entity, Olivia Solon reports today.

The attempt to run a propaganda account was met with pushback from senior TikTok executives. But it highlights the internal tensions within the fast-growing social media app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, which has constantly attempted to distance itself from Chinese state influence.

Read more from Olivia Solon here.

Get ahead of the curve

From the Ritz to a brush with jail. How a family feud and a bitter divorce blew the cover off Frederick Barclay's private life.

The office strikes back. A recession might pose the biggest test yet to the WFH revolution.

FOHMO. With rates rising, British homeowners are wondering if it's too late to get a good mortgage deal.

France has it worse. The first European city to suffer a blackout this winter could be Paris, not Berlin, writes columnist Javier Blas.

Chinese billionaire resurfaces. Jack Ma has been traveling in Europe, a sign that China might be easing pressure on Alibaba's co-founder.

Car heaven. Hampton Court Palace is hosting "the greatest display of Ferraris ever assembled in the UK."

Brummie pride. Birmingham is shining again after years of decline and disappointment, Adrian Wooldridge writes for Bloomberg Opinion.

1.5 million

The record number of bets Entain, an online gambling company, registered for the UEFA Women's Euros 2022, as of July 28.

One key story, every weekday

New York police on the subway network. Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg

Violent incidents have jumped in New York City since the pandemic began ⁠— and residents, tourists and businesses are getting nervous. But widespread anxiety obscures the fact that crime is still at decades-long lows.

A rash of high-profile incidents in subway stations and tourist hubs—and an outspoken new mayor who's made crime-fighting his signature issue—has intensified scrutiny on public safety. A generation of younger New Yorkers are seeing a sustained rise in crime, instead of a decline, for the first time in their lifetimes. So what's really going on?

Read The Big Take.

Your early warning system

Tonight
7:30 p.m. Rishi Sunak interviewed by Andrew Neil on Channel 4.

9 p.m. Final episode of "Neighbours" after 37 years on TV.

Saturday
Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds expected to celebrate their wedding.

Sunday
5 p.m. England play Germany in the Women's Euro 2022 final at Wembley Stadium.

Monday HSBC, Pearson earnings.

Follow all Monday's corporate news in The London Rush, live on Bloomberg UK from 8 a.m.

Please send thoughts, tips and feedback to readout@bloomberg.net. You can follow Allegra on Twitter. The Readout is edited by Adam Blenford.