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Italy Sticks to Budget, China Cuts, Finance Chiefs Meet: Eco Day

Italy Sticks to Budget, China Cuts, Finance Chiefs Meet: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Monday, Europe. Here’s the latest news from Bloomberg Economics:

  • Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio shrugged off European Commission attacks on his government’s fiscal plan and said his anti-austerity view will grow stronger across the continent
  • Pay Squeeze. The U.K.’s painful pay squeeze in the aftermath of the financial crisis helped save 800,000 jobs, according to new research from the Resolution Foundation
  • Record low rates. Serbia’s central bank will probably hold interest rates at a record low for a sixth month as investors’ attention turns to signs showing that the five-year push to cut borrowing has run its course
  • Cartel crackdown. Israel needs to open its food industry to foreign imports more aggressively to break the grip of the sector’s biggest companies and lower costs for consumers, the country’s antitrust chief said
  • Guardians meet. As global finance chiefs prepare to meet this week in Bali for the annual IMF and World Bank meetings, they do so without the firepower of 2008 and with the era of coordination looking like an anomaly
  • Rate cut. China’s central bank cut the amount of cash lenders must hold as reserves for the fourth time this year, as policy makers seek to shore up the faltering domestic economy
    • Meanwhile, China’s foreign-currency holdings fell in September amid heightened trade tensions with the U.S.
  • No need. Indonesia has adequate foreign-exchange reserves to weather a slump in the rupiah and doesn’t need to draw on a $240 billion emergency currency pool that was set up by Asian nations after the financial crisis two decades ago
  • Spending cut. Malaysia intensified its efforts to rein in spending by reducing the cost of an almost $14-billion mass-rapid transit project
  • Liquidity crunch. The current run-up in U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar poses a major stress test for a global financial system that has become even more dependent on the American currency

To contact the reporter on this story: Anirban Nag in Mumbai at anag8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram, Pradeep Kurup

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