Powell ‘Let Us Down,’ China's Gen Z, Quantified Easing: Eco Day

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

• Donald Trump said Fed chief Jerome Powell “let us down” by delivering an interest-rate cut that’s not aggressive enough. Powell drew the president’s ire with an easing to “insure against downside risks” while failing to signal the start of a lengthy cycle
• The Fed left policy makers some flexibility, Carl Riccadonna writes; however, two dissents will make it a bit harder to push through more cuts. Powell meantime cited the need to help “those left behind,” suggesting income distribution may be playing a bigger role
• China’s Generation Z, born from the mid-1990s to early 2000s, have little income or credit history. Yet they have easy access to credit and are getting hooked
• Tom Orlik investigates how much space monetary-policy makers have to stave off a downturn. Spoiler alert: not much
• The central banks that barely tinkered with rates as the Fed tightened monetary policy now find themselves even more out of step with the U.S. Meanwhile, the banks in Asia that last year scrambled to follow the Fed higher are largely ahead of the game
• More than four years after the oil-price crash, Gulf Arab policy makers can finally count on support from the Fed to add fuel to their fragile economic recovery
• U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators plan to meet again in early September, as the latest round of negotiations ended with few signs of concrete progress. Meantime, the other big trade dispute threatening economic stability in Asia appeared to be evolving at a faster pace, writes Jenny Leonard in Terms of Trade
• Economic growth in the euro area slowed dramatically in the second quarter, the latest in a string of reports flagging deteriorating economic prospects that increase the chance of more ECB stimulus
• The only major Asian economy that’s grown its export share since the start of the tariff wars in 2018 is the one with the fewest trade links to China
• The drought in Thailand threatens to exacerbate a sharp slowdown in economic growth and intensify pressure on the central bank to loosen monetary policy
• Brazil cut its benchmark rate by half a percentage point amid a gloomy economic outlook, and signaled further easing ahead
• Turkish central bank Governor Murat Uysal has vowed to preserve “a reasonable rate of real return” for investors as he cuts borrowing costs for the first time in three years

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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