U.S. Talks End, Australia’s Big Spend, Activity Pick-Up: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Wednesday, Asia. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help you start the day:

• President Donald Trump ended talks with Democratic leaders on a new stimulus package, hours after Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s strongest call yet for greater spending to avoid damaging the economic recovery
• Australia released a fiscal blueprint that pushes debt and deficit to a peacetime record just hours after the central bank signaled a willingness to ease further, as both arms of policy press to drive down unemployment
• Here are the results of Bloomberg Economics’s latest estimate of activity using a set of high-frequency, alternative data
• Two custodians of the global economy signaled that while the early days of pandemic recovery were stronger than expected in some countries and industries, a return to full health is likely to be longer and bumpier than they first predicted
• U.S. job openings declined in August for the first time in four months, pointing to a moderation in pace of hiring as the pandemic drags on
• The ECB’s top officials signaled the need for extra monetary and fiscal stimulus as the euro zone struggles to sustain its recovery
• Companies around the world are scrambling to harden their supply chains through the pandemic and beyond. In countries like Italy, the government is even lending a bigger hand
• Berlin joined European cities like Paris and Madrid in cracking down on after-hours activity, after a recent wave of partying helped fuel some of Germany’s highest rates of Covid-19 infection
• Asia’s fast-growing economies for decades have offered millions of young people the chance to do better than their parents, a path to upward mobility now at risk as youth unemployment soars

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