Trump Denies Fed Threat, China Stimulus, QE Down Under: Eco Day

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

• President Donald Trump denied that he’d threatened to demote Fed chief Jerome Powell but said he’d “be able to do that if I wanted.” The drumbeat for a Fed interest rate cut is getting louder, with one policy maker calling for a 50-basis-point reduction
• China’s pivot from controlling debt to boosting infrastructure reflects a need to counter the cyclical downturn. Trouble is, public investment packs less punch than it did in the past, writes Qian Wan
• The prospect of rates going below 1% has prompted Australia’s economists to start exploring what much of the world has already contended with: the introduction of unconventional monetary policy
• Central bankers hand back the spotlight to presidents and prime ministers as leaders from the G-20 gather for a summit in Japan
• Japan is still winning the Southeast Asia infrastructure race against China, with pending projects worth almost one and a half times its rival, according to the latest data from Fitch Solutions
• The U.S. plans to announce more sanctions against Iran, but Trump is also willing to negotiate with Iranian leaders with “no preconditions” to ensure the Islamic Republic never acquires a nuclear weapon
• Turkish opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu won the redo of the Istanbul mayor’s race by a landslide, in a stinging indictment of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s economic policies
• The U.S. economic expansion, soon to be the longest on record, has tightened the labor market. But as wage growth has accelerated for some and the unemployment rate sits near a five-decade low, differences in how people work and spend the rest of their time reflect persistent inequality
• The euro area’s anemic growth and inflation mean it’s probably already experiencing its own Japanification, and escape could prove hard if the Asian nation’s record is any guide, according to ING Group
• Facebook Inc. was hours away from the formal announcement of its ambitious foray into financial services, but French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was already broadcasting his discontent

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, Henry Hoenig

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