Dalio Central-Bank Alert, Ultra-Long Bonds, China Slows: Eco Day

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

• Ray Dalio thinks the ability of central banks to reverse an economic downturn is coming to an end. Meantime, San Francisco Fed chief Mary Daly says low inflation means the central bank can let a hotter economy draw more people into the labor force
• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said issuing ultra-long U.S. bonds is “under very serious consideration.” He also said officials expect Chinese negotiators to visit Washington, but wouldn’t say whether a previously planned September meeting would take place, and added the U.S. doesn’t intend to intervene in the dollar right now
• China’s economy slowed further in August as weak domestic conditions, intensifying tensions with the U.S. and worsening global trade all combined to undermine the outlook
• It’s one of the biggest questions hanging over Hong Kong as protests head into a 13th week: Will investors pull their money out?
• For the first time since President Donald Trump was elected, more Americans say the economy is getting worse than getting better. A goal of Trump’s tariffs is to bring back factory jobs from abroad -- evidence is hard to find that it’s going according to plan, writes Sarah McGregor in the latest Terms of Trade
• Italy’s acting prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, led an unstable coalition of two disparate parties that collapsed in chaos this month. On Thursday, he’ll get the chance to forge a second one. Meantime, Dan Hanson looks at what Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s power play to get Britain out of the EU means for the economic outlook
• The RBI’s record government payout turns the focus back to the central bank’s profits and how it can afford such a massive transfer
• Two months ahead of a presidential election, Argentina said it will propose an extension of debt maturities held by institutional investors, only postponing the pain, writes Adriana Dupita
• With almost half of Timor-Leste’s 1.2 million people living in poverty, the aging war heroes still in charge are now betting big on a risky energy project that could draw one of the world’s youngest nations into a wider geopolitical tussle between the West and China. Here’s why the country is defying global energy giants

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at mheath1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke

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