Happy Friday, Asia. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help take you through to the weekend.
- President-elect Joe Biden willask Congress for $1.9 trillion to fund immediate relief for the pandemic-wracked U.S. economy, a package that risks swift Republican opposition over big-ticket spending
- Fed Chair Jerome Powellsought to stamp out talk of a premature reduction in the central bank’s massive bond-buying campaign
- China’seconomic ascent is accelerating barely a year after its first coronavirus lockdowns
- The U.S. announced that it’sblacklisting China’s third-biggest oil company after years of involvement in offshore drilling in disputed South China Sea waters
- China’s central bankwill likely reduce the amount of one-year cash it offers lenders this month after excess liquidity pushed an interbank borrowing cost to an all-time low
- Politics islikely to carve up Joe Biden’s pie-in-the-sky stimulus, writes Bloomberg Economics’s Andrew Husby
- Stephanie Flanders and Lucy Meakin discuss theeconomic fallout from a Covid-driven mental-health crisis in their weekly podcast
- Credit-rating companies are likely to keep Indonesia’s investment-grade ratingintact for now
- The German economystagnated at the end of last year, probably avoiding a double-dip recession that is engulfing the euro area
- Applications for U.S. state unemployment benefitssurged last week by the most since late March, pointing to persistent job-market pain
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.boosted its year-end forecast for the 10-year Treasury yield — which has risen sharply this month
- The race to see who takes over as head of the OECDis tightening, with the field narrowing to a group of favored candidates
- The nations quickest to enact social distancing and contact-tracing systems have mostly kept Covid-19 in check, but their citizensfind themselves lagging in receiving the shots needed to end the outbreak
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