Fed on Recovery, ECB’s Room to Move, Stimulus Prospects: Eco Day

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

• Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy is improving but has a long way to go before fully recovering
• Christine Lagarde said the ECB has room to add stimulus and can adapt its already expansive toolkit if the economy needs more help
• The eruption of a partisan battle over replacing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg damaged already-slim prospects for another round of U.S. fiscal stimulus
• The lapse in unemployment benefits and small business aid is set to subtract at least 5 percentage points from U.S. growth in the fourth quarter, writes Bloomberg’s Andrew Husby
• Boris Johnson will announce new restrictions on bars and restaurants as he seeks to halt a surge in coronavirus cases that threatens the U.K.’s fragile economic recovery
• France said the EU should keep pursuing a free-trade agreement with the U.K. while warning that any British violation of the Brexit agreement would end the push
• Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan, who dissented at last week’s policy meeting, said he doesn’t want to commit the U.S. central bank to too much monetary stimulus
• It’s hard to find a world leader who’s had a better 2020 than Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. But Tsai has one major problem: The Communist Party is threatening her life, with its Global Times newspaper saying she would be “wiped out” in a war
• Migrant workers from Asia’s developing countries have managed to send home record amounts of money in recent months, defying pandemic expectations and propping up home economies

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