Central Banks, Impact from Coronavirus, Lagarde’s Charm: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) --

Welcome to Monday, Europe. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help you start the day:

• Mark Carney’s final policy decision as Bank of England governor is looking to be the most suspenseful of his more-than six-year reign, a thrill for investors that might well surpass that of the Federal Reserve’s own meeting this week
• Inside the Fed, it’s steady-as-she-goes. Investors see this week’s meeting as an easy call, with officials set to vote for leaving their policy rate unchanged for now
• Ever since she moved to Frankfurt as European Central Bank president three months ago, Christine Lagarde has been working hard to charm the locals. The institution’s new chief has sought to turn a new leaf with Germany after years of cooler relations under her predecessor, Mario Draghi
• People saving money should get used to low-to-zero interest rates on their accounts, according to Klaas Knot, the head of the Dutch central bank
• Faced with a U.S. refusal to cut industrial tariffs unless the European Union opens its agricultural market more, the European Commission might be prepared to scale back technical barriers to imports of American foods including shellfish, according to officials
• The uncertainty is no longer whether, but how hard, the new coronavirus will hit China’s economy. A lockdown on cities and an extension of the Lunar New Year holiday mean a definite blow to 1Q GDP, writes Bloomberg Economics’ Chang Shu
• The viral outbreak may also end up hitting Japan’s fragile economy harder than the SARS outbreak of 2003, according to economists, and what’s more, it will be top of emerging-market investors’ minds as they ponder its impact on the global economy
• With time running out on his final term as president, Vladimir Putin evidently wants to end it with a boom, and he’s channeling an economist whose pro-growth ideas are mainstream almost everywhere else: John Maynard Keynes

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, Tuhin Kar

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.