FX Manipulator No More, Spiraling Debt, Hong Kong Hope: Eco Day

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

• President Donald Trump’s administration plans to lift its designation of China as a currency manipulator, removing an obstacle to a trade deal the two nations are set to sign this week
• The U.S. budget deficit widened to $356.6 billion in the first three months of fiscal 2020 as spending rose more than revenue, keeping the federal shortfall on pace to exceed $1 trillion by year-end. Meantime, the global debt-to-GDP ratio hit an all-time high of 322%
• Hong Kong’s government is usually eager to play up the city’s resilience in the face of economic calamity, like the bounce-back after the Asian financial crisis and its recovery following the 2003 SARS epidemic. It’s now settling for “less bad than before”
• The Fed can “sit back” and allow the economy to keep growing because there are no signs of overheating, said Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic
• With South Korea’s central bank heading for its biggest board shakeup in decades this year, President Moon Jae-in has a chance to make a raft of personnel appointments that could influence monetary policy at a time when the bank is balancing competing risks
• India’s consumer price inflation hit a more than five-year high, boosting the case for the central bank to keep interest rates on hold for longer and possibly putting at risk its accommodative stance. Meantime, here’s why in India, 5% GDP growth is cause for alarm
• Mark Carney’s last policy decision as Bank of England governor could prove to be a dramatic one as the weakening economy pushes traders to raise the odds on an interest-rate cut to a coin toss
• In the year the ECB doubled down on calls for more fiscal stimulus, the euro area’s biggest economy managed the feat of a record budget surplus instead. President Christine Lagarde has written to policy makers asking them to refrain from publicly discussing the ECB’s impending strategy review and its parameters before it is formally announced on Jan. 23
• Behavioral economics, it seems, might just have a bias problem of its own. Call it the “bias bias.”
• Middle age is miserable, according to a new economic study which pinpoints 47.2 years old as the moment of peak unhappiness in the developed world

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