Business today has a deep and ever-changing degree of global challenges. The ebb and flow of the U.S. war on Iran has been roiling commodity access and prices worldwide for the last six months. New tariffs are issued with lead times that make them difficult for businesses to analyze and digest. And global economies are in constant flux as inflation and access impact what consumers and businesses can buy. All of this is on top of some of the normal challenges businesses have always faced: Do consumers actually want your product, and how should it be priced?CFOs are becoming increasingly strategic across the organization, but a tighter working relationship with the supply chain arm is key today. I spoke with Pawan Joshi, chief strategy officer at supply chain management platform e2open, about what CFOs need to know to make better decisions during a volatile time. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.Until next time. This is the published version of Forbes' CFO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief finance officers and other leaders focused on the budget. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.Economic IndicatorsFederal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh speaks after last week's Federal Open Market Committee meeting.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesThe Federal Reserve held interest rates steady last week, though the decision was not unanimous. While the official statement from Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh was very similar to that from the June meeting—at which the decision to keep interest rates unchanged was unanimous—the three governors who voted last week against holding rates steady and one other have talked about the need for tighter monetary policy. After the Fed’s decision was announced, the markets reacted poorly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 2% to its worst day of 2026. Other reports last week didn’t paint a much better economic picture. June’s core inflation—excluding food and fuel—cooled a bit, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, dropping to 3.3% from 3.4% in May. But the economy as a whole is slowing. In the second quarter, GDP growth was 1.5%, the BEA reported separately —quite a bit below the 2.1% growth rate projected and seen in the first three months of the year. The slower GDP growth was not the result of changes in consumer spending, which surged 3.2%—government spending, exports and investment were all down.Big Tech buoyed the stock market, helping it largely erase any losses by the end of the week. Amazon’s stock saw one of its best days in a decade on Thursday, after a blockbuster earnings report showed net sales up 20% year-over-year to $200.6 billion. The biggest growth sector was its AWS business, writes Forbes senior contributor Peter Cohan, with 37.6% revenue growth—the fastest in 18 quarters. Microsoft, which reported earnings last Wednesday, also had a better-than-expected quarter, reporting $90 billion in revenue—up 18%. Microsoft’s stock climbed close to 15% after its earnings, which Cohan attributes to revenue growth that justifies its AI infrastructure spending and is bringing it more business.This was not the case for Meta, which also reported earnings last Wednesday, and saw its stock drop more than 7%—largely because of an imbalanced 55% year-over-year increase in expenses and only a 28% increase in revenue. Meta is also investing in costly AI infrastructure, but Cohan points out that most of it is currently going toward internal operations. The AI investments aren’t driving new business or revenue, stoking investor fears. Meta’s stock recovered on Monday based on a positive analyst report from Morgan Stanley.CryptocurrencyThe future of legislation to federally regulate cryptocurrency is in doubt, writes Forbes’ Nina Bambysheva. The Digital Market Clarity Act passed the House of Representatives last year and needs to pass the Senate before the end of this term. Bambysheva writes that it becomes a steeper hill to climb by the day. The bill in its current form has no support from Democratic senators, and it needs seven to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rules. The body’s rules also require days between votes to bring the bill up for debate and an official vote, which are dwindling between now and Congress’s August recess. When Congress returns in the fall, Bambysheva writes members are likely to be kept busy with must-pass legislation dealing with funding and national security—and are also unlikely to vote on anything controversial before November’s midterm election.The bill would create a federal rulebook for issuing, trading and holding digital assets, dividing oversight between the SEC and CFTC, Bambysheva writes. It would set standards for exchanges and other intermediaries, and define how decentralized finance developers and protocols would be treated. Without the bill, cryptocurrency companies can continue operating as they do now: subject to how the presidential administration in power interprets financial statutes and policies. The Biden administration viewed cryptocurrency as an avenue for fraud and destabilizing traditional finance, and initiated enforcement actions against exchanges and coins. President Donald Trump—who made more than $1 billion from cryptocurrency last year and dismissed the Biden-era cases—supports the industry. His presidential term continues until January 2029, but after the midterm elections, he may not have a like-minded Congress.Off The LedgerWhy Deeper Supply Chain Knowledge Leads To Better Business DecisionsPawan Joshi, e2open chief strategy officer.e2openIn today’s rapidly changing business environment, departments cannot operate in silos. As geopolitics, inflation and new tariffs change the global business landscape every day, CFOs need to become much better acquainted with their supply chains. I spoke with Pawan Joshi, chief strategy officer at supply chain management platform e2open, about ways to make this partnership successful. This interview has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.With everything that is happening today, what kind of data does a CFO need to keep ahead of changes in areas like tariffs, geopolitics and global inflation rates?Joshi: There are three different levels in which you can think about the information they need. One is the operational activity within your supply chain. Awareness of: How much is sitting? Not just within your four walls or your own locations, but how much inventory is someone else carrying on your behalf? If I’m supplying to you, and you sell to [another person], you tell me I need 20,000 widgets, and I will keep enough supply for 20,000. Then you change your mind and say, ‘You know what? I don’t need 20,000, I need 15,000.’ At some point in time, I’m going to pass the cost of carrying that extra 5,000 for you, because it’s in my balance sheet.That information is inside your operations, but oftentimes stuck inside systems that belong to someone else that a CFO does not have access to. Those are all important pieces of information that the chief supply chain officer needs from an operation standpoint. This is where tag teaming comes in: I’m bringing in information around availability in terms of units and locations. I want the same piece of information shared, the dollar value associated with that, and my [contractual] exposure so I can make a better sense of that. The next level is around the market: the industry. If I’m in the automotive space, there’s a dynamic I should be aware of; where I fit in into the automotive supply chain. Am I producing cars, steering wheels or chips? What’s really happening in the automotive world? That allows me to not just look at my current balance sheet, but my five-year projection. Why do I believe where I am right now financially is where I should be, and where am I headed?The third part is the global macro conditions. That has been the most surprising for a lot of CFOs and chief supply chain officers—and it is not just in terms of tariffs. The macro conditions have done things around inflation. It’s a natural cycle through which every economy goes. The dependence on which economies for what parts of their supply chain—for production, distribution, transportation, consumption—is extremely important to understand. If the U.S. was your biggest market and it is going through a massive inflationary cycle, what does that mean to you as a business, and where do you recover some of the revenue you’re expecting? Or if other markets are going through a massive boom and your market gets deprioritized in terms of what it is able to serve. You’ve got to be able to understand that and lock in that capacity you need to bring your products to market that make you successful. With all these changes and increasing complexity, are companies changing their structures or processes to bring CFOs and supply chain officers closer together?We’ll always have the finance department as a standalone. The dynamic that is changing is embedding finance people in other operational departments as bridges between the CFO’s function and the day-to-day workings, whether it be procurement for a supplier, manufacturing for production, distribution or fulfillment, or marketing for promotions. That builds the right level of awareness. That bridge ties the gap between looking at a number on a balance sheet versus knowing the context of that number on a balance sheet and what it really means in terms of operations. The other side of the bridge is understanding the financial impact of decisions operations make on a daily basis. That often is ignored. What you end up doing is making the decision and a few days, weeks, months later, you realize what it really means to your balance sheet. Given the speed of the magnitude of disruption, the speed at which these things are happening and the impact they have at a global scale, that is an extremely long time for you to make a decision—and that’s the need for a holistic decision-making process. I expect to see some of the functional departments within operations come together. Our transportation department doesn’t talk to the production department as much as they should. Our production department doesn’t talk to the procurement department. The manufacturing department doesn’t talk to the marketing department. So if I’m running a marketing strategy and promotion, if it’s not tightly coordinated, it may be a very successful campaign, but a bust because you did not have enough products to support the market.What advice would you give CFOs to do a better job of understanding today’s supply chain complexity?Understand the context of the operations. It’s very easy to get lost in the books, the lines, the numbers and columns. But behind each of them is a story. If CFOs double-click and start to understand the story, the entire company can make a better decision. CFOs oftentimes are the gatekeepers for these decisions, and the logical coordination points— because they’re the ones that are balancing the books and keeping scores. Don’t wait for the end of quarter, end of month, or whatever that cycle is, because you lose the cadence of the business. The clock speed of business is not the clock speed at which we report numbers or appreciate balance on our books. The books get balanced by the activities that are happening all the time. Understanding the clock speed of the business is important, and should drive how the CFOs lead the business. The more we can insert that cross-functional financial and fiscal balance knowledge into that decision-making process, the better decisions we end up making.Comings + GoingsBuilding materials manufacturer Owens Corning selected Jonathan Collins to be its executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective August 10. Collins will join the company from Clarivate Plc, where he worked in the same role, and he’s also worked in leadership for Dana Incorporated and ProQuest.Fast-food chain Whataburger appointed Ryan Moore as its next chief financial officer, effective July 31. Moore steps into the role from Torchy’s Tacos where he worked in the same role, and he succeeds Janelle Sykes, who is retiring.Healthcare payment software provider Waystar appointed Alpana Wegner as chief financial officer, effective August 1. Wegner joins the company from Integral Ad Science where she worked in the same role, and she succeeds Steve Oreskovich, who will remain as an advisor during the transition.Strategies + AdviceAs your workplace undergoes technical transformation, it’s important to demonstrate the value of your investments. Here’s why it’s important to look at this as a discipline, and things to do to ensure it works. Decision-making strategies are very different if you’re prioritizing the long term or the short term. Here’s a way to look at it a bit differently, as economic growth vs. stability.QuizWhich entertainment company credited the new version of the epic The Odyssey with boosting its stock to an all-time high this week?A. ComcastB. AMC EntertainmentC. IMAXD. CinemarkSee if you got the right answer here.