EU Vaccine Delay Cost, No BOJ Tightening, Chinese Chips: Eco Day

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

• The European Union is facing a cost of tens of billions of euros for the slow and chaotic rollout of coronavirus vaccinations compared to countries such as the U.K. and U.S. as the bloc's economy is only operating at 95% of pre-pandemic levels
• Mario Draghi, the former ECB president, has been approached to become Italy's next prime minister in a bid to steer the virus-battered country out of its worst recession since World War II
• Jerome Powell doesn't want to talk about scaling back massive Fed asset purchases -- at least not yet -- but it's only a question of time before the discussion resumes and that might not be a bad thing
• President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Senate Democrats that a Republican stimulus counterproposal is too small
• Should we worry that a major stock market correction could seriously dent the recovery? Carl Riccadonna thinks the answer is no
• Racial and gender disparities have resulted in growing losses to the U.S. economy that amounted to $2.6 trillion in 2019
• A Bank of Japan deputy governor tried to send an unambiguous message that the bank's policy review next month isn't meant to find ways of walking back the BOJ's monetary easing
• China drained funds from the banking sector as the worst cash crunch since 2015 eased
• China is taking decisive steps to protect itself from a widening U.S. technology ban, with imports of computer chips and the machines that make them surging last year, Bloomberg analysis shows
• South Korean President Moon Jae-in is urging corporate winners of the pandemic to share some of their profits with smaller businesses
• New Zealand unemployment unexpectedly dropped last quarter

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With assistance from Bloomberg