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Fed’s 2021 Tapering, Negative World, U.S. Jobs Slump: Eco Day

Fed’s 2021 Tapering, Negative World, U.S. Jobs Slump: Eco Day

Welcome to Friday, Asia. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help take you through to the weekend:

  • The Fed may begin paring back its bond-buying program as soon as the end of this year, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Patrick Harker said
  • As the world’s pile of negative-yielding debt rose to a record $18 trillion in December, authorities in Taiwan were working hard to keep the government’s bond yield above zero
  • U.S. job growth probably suffered a sharp slowdown in December, with further weakness expected until Covid-19 vaccines reach a larger swath of Americans and restore broader economic activity. Meanwhile, the trade deficit widened to the second-largest on record in November
  • Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s bet that a less-stringent state of emergency will limit the economic damage of virus containment runs the risk of compounding the pain if insufficient
  • Thailand’s latest virus outbreak is likely to crimp consumer spending and delay a tourism revival, prompting warnings the economy may undershoot expectations for a rebound this year and next
  • British medics will be able to give Covid-19 shots to hundreds of thousands of people every day by Jan. 15, Prime Minister Boris Johnsonsaid, as he set out details of the U.K.’s mass vaccination plan
  • An economy is its people. Alongside the almost 360,000 killed by the coronavirus in the U.S., there are millions more whose lives have been upended by the pandemic’s economic shock. Shawn Donnan investigates the widening inequalities across America with Stephanie Flanders in this Podcast

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