China Target, Australia Reboot, Inflationary Depression: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Thursday, Asia. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help you start the day:

• China’s leaders are considering not setting a numerical target for economic growth this year given the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter
• Six weeks after shutting down swathes of the economy, Australia is preparing to relax its lockdown. This risks new clusters of infections, just as the southern hemisphere heads into winter
• The world economy could face a unique “inflationary depression” as it emerges from lockdowns, with government spending propping up demand, according to economic historian Robert Skidelsky
• Layoffs are turning from temporary to permanent across America
• St. Louis Fed chief James Bullard said policy makers need to mitigate the ongoing risks from the coronavirus in the second half of the year and gradually reopen the U.S. economy to avoid deeper harm
• The key question emerging from ECB discussions after Germany’s constitutional court legal bombshell is: who will defuse it? Meantime, Germany is preparing to open restaurants and all shops as well as to restart professional soccer games
• Brazil’s bid to join the OECD has come under scrutiny since allegations emerged that President Jair Bolsonaro sought to interfere with the federal police. Brazil meantime cut its interest rate to a record low
• Chile held its policy rate close to zero as the nation braces for its worst economic crisis in nearly four decades
• Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and some of the world’s top economists and academics are backing Argentina’s $65 billion debt restructuring offer to creditors ahead of a Friday deadline
• For more than two decades, Zimbabwe has been trying to get a giant coal-power complex started by the world’s biggest man-made reservoir. China just agreed to get the $4.2 billion project underway
• In all his years in the Texas oil patch, the billionaire Russell Gordy has never seen a bust like this
• A landmark study conducted in Finland shows that giving the unemployed free money doesn’t provide the boost to the jobs market that some had hoped it would. But it does raise happiness levels

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.