Fed Frets Over Risk, Talks Inch Ahead, Special Report: Eco Day

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

• Fed officials stressed that risks to the U.S. economy remained elevated as they agreed to put interest rates on hold following their third cut this year
• After almost two years of negotiations and escalations, trade negotiators from the U.S. and China are making progress in key areas even as concerns grow that efforts to nail down the first phase of a broader deal are stalling
• New forces are shaping economies across Asia, writes Tom Orlik in this Special Report
• Penang’s pastel-hued, colonial-era buildings speak to the Malaysian island’s history as a key trading post for the East India Company, when spices filled its warehouses and the British and Dutch vied for dominance in the region
• If the world economy is stabilizing as some analysts suggest and many investors are betting, a couple of Asia’s biggest exporters didn’t get the memo, writes Enda Curran in Terms of Trade
• Indonesia is expected to hit the pause button after four straight interest-rate cuts, as policy makers use additional instruments to help stoke growth
• ECB watchers who monitor its every signal to gauge the future of interest rates would quite like new President Christine Lagarde to give them some clues when she breaks her silence this week. Meantime, a Peterson Institute paper says helicopter money could be both the best and worst option for the ECB
• U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will urge voters to take down bankers and billionaires who “profit from a rigged system” when he unveils an election manifesto Thursday
• Emerging and developing economies are less prepared for a sharp global downturn now than they were before the financial crisis a decade ago, the World Bank warned
• Born out of bloodshed, colonial politics, civil war and the pursuit of mining riches, the independence referendum on the island of Bougainville has been a long time coming, writes Jason Scott

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, Jason Clenfield

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