Powell’s Outlook, Italy’s Crisis, New Zealand’s Pause: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) --

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

• Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said the bank is keeping a close eye on fallout from the deadly coronavirus outbreak in China, singling it out among risks to the U.S. and world economies
• Italy’s facing a demographic crisis as the population fell for a fifth year in 2019 and deaths exceeded births by almost 212,000
• Poland’s central bank is raising eyebrows in its justifications for maintaining record-low borrowing costs
• It’s rate decision day in Sweden -- here’s what to expect
• Three of the European Central Bank’s top policy makers defended their monetary stimulus even as they acknowledged that the negative side effects must be watched closely
• Two top Bank of England officials suggested that the U.K. financial system’s rules may have to diverge from the EU’s after Brexit -- a topic that’s becoming a major point of contention
• New Zealand’s central bank left interest rates unchanged and signaled it won’t need to cut them further unless the coronavirus outbreak has a bigger-than-expected impact on economic growth
• Malaysia’s central bank sees room to adjust monetary policy again after economic growth slowed to its weakest pace in more than a decade last quarter and the nation braces for the impact of the coronavirus on tourism and trade

To contact the reporter on this story: Enda Curran in Hong Kong at ecurran8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Jackson at pjackson53@bloomberg.net, Alexandra Veroude, Michael Heath

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