Powell Pushes Back, Poloz Still Talking Tough, RBA Live: Eco Day

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

• Fed chief Jerome Powell pushed back against pressure for interest-rate cuts from traders and President Donald Trump, saying inflation will rebound and the economy will stay healthy -- this article questions his CPI assessment. Carl Riccadonna says the statement suggests officials aren’t rushing to dismiss recent weakness in consumer spending and business investment as transitory
• Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said he still believes policy rates would likely need to rise if the slew of factors slowing the expansion vanish. On that front, the government is expanding a loan program for farmers and launching an Asia trade mission as canola exports get caught up in a diplomatic feud with China
• The Bank of England looks set to take a cautious approach to rate changes during the U.K.’s Brexit delay, with the continued uncertainty outweighing the evidence of resilience in the economy
• The Australian central bank’s policy meeting next week is live and a cut could swiftly flatten the yield curve, as this chart shows
• South Korea needs another economic overhaul like the one following the IMF bailout in the late-1990s to stay competitive globally
• India’s central bank Governor Shaktikanta Das has built up support on both sides of the political divide, making his position relatively safe under a new government
• Ireland named Gabriel Makhlouf, chief economic and financial adviser to New Zealand’s government, as the nation’s new central bank governor in a surprise appointment
• Emi Nakamura, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who has studied inflation by looking at the stickiness of individual price changes, won the John Bates Clark award for young economists
• In a corner of outback Australia, a drilling crew will soon try tapping shale rocks that could hold more than three times the world’s annual consumption of natural gas

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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