Fed Pressure, ECB Signals on Italy, Canada Ups Ante: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) --

Good morning Americas. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help take you through to the weekend:

• All of Wall Street’s eyes are on Washington again, but only Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is catching its gaze
  • U.S. economic growth is forecast to nearly halt in the second quarter and recession odds have jumped as the longest expansion on record

• Asian central banks moved aggressively to counter the market carnage Friday, pumping liquidity into the financial system and discussing emergency action to fight the global economy’s biggest threat since the financial crisis

  • Canada is stepping up efforts to bolster confidence in the nation’s economy, including the central bank sending cash into funding markets and suggestions from the government that fiscal stimulus could soon follow
  • The Inter-American Development Bank will explore redirecting some of its $26 billion in approved lending as the top financial institution focused on Latin America helps countries deal with the outbreak
• The European Central Bank signaled it will buy more debt of nations such as Italy in an attempt to calm mounting financial panic, and pushed back against political criticism of President Christine Lagarde’s handling of the coronavirus crisis
• There aren’t many precedents for the trauma that financial markets have suffered this week, as the coronavirus crisis drove U.S. stocks into a bear market and briefly sent yields on every Treasury bond below 1%. Larry Summers said the U.S. now confronts a stagnation like Japan’s as government bond yields plunge to ultra-low levels
• Finally, here’s a look how Texas’s shale heartland is being rattled by coronavirus and the oil price war

To contact the reporter on this story: David Goodman in London at dgoodman28@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Gordon at pgordon6@bloomberg.net, Zoe Schneeweiss

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