New Normal for Central Banks, ECB Letdown, U.S. Jobs: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Happy Friday, Europe. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help get your day started and send you into the weekend:

• It’s U.S. jobs day. Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by about 180,000, a still-solid pace though down from 304,000 in the prior month, while the jobless rate fell a tenth of a point to 3.9 percent -- near the lowest rate since 1969
• U.S. and European central banks are reconciling themselves to a new normal of historically low interest rates and bloated balance sheets
• Disappointment. Mario Draghi’s latest and potentially last salvo to boost the euro-area economy risks not being enough
  • On Thursday, the ECB delivered a fresh round of monetary stimulus to shore up the weakening economy. Bloomberg Economics’s Jamie Murray says the measures fail to offer a material injection of fresh stimulus.
• Doubts linger. Some European Central Bank policy makers consider the institution’s downgraded growth forecast for 2019 is still too optimistic, according to people with knowledge of the matter
• Doves club. It’s been a week of dovish turns at central banks, as officials in Europe unleashed more stimulus, while their peers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia indicated they are in no hurry to raise interest rates
• Women in work. Italy’s women are lagging the rest of Europe when it comes to economic activity, leaving the nation missing out on billions of euros each year
• Slump time. China’s exports fell in February and imports also weakened due to the Lunar New Year shutdown and continued uncertainty from the trade war
• As simple as that. The European Union’s chief trade negotiator urged President Donald Trump to stop imposing tariffs on the bloc if he wants a partner to help the U.S. pressure China to abide by rules governing the global economy
• Summit takeaways. China’s annual leaders gathering in Beijing unleashed a flurry of policy initiatives, key among them a shift that puts fiscal policy decisively at the forefront of stimulus. In the nation’s manufacturing heartland, firms are struggling to retain workers who succumb to the lure of easier, better paid jobs in the booming services industry
• Uneven: Japan’s economy expanded more than first estimated in the fourth quarter, driven partly by stronger business investment. Yet more recent gauges of factory output and exports point to a gloomier outlook for this year
• On International Women’s Day, here’s what top female economists covering India are predicting for 2019

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, Devidutta Tripathy

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