‘Phantom Menace’ Rate, China Spending, BEAST of Problem: Eco Day

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

• Global central bankers trying to gauge the threat posed by surging inflation have another puzzle to solve too: whether the pandemic has shifted their policy bearings
• Chinese consumers cut back on buying cars and apartments in August as stronger property market regulation and a broad Covid outbreak further undercut the economy's already slowing recovery
• What happens to emerging markets if U.S. inflation turns out to be a bigger problem than the Fed thinks? Bloomberg Economics looks at the experience of 2018 on the ‘BEASTs' most exposed
• Economists at Nomura Holdings Inc. are calling property curbs China's “Volcker Moment”
• Hurricane Ida's disruption to raw materials production in Louisiana is likely to compound global supply-chain issues, says Bloomberg Economics. An unrelenting supply squeeze is also darkening Germany's economic outlook
• Taiwan is set to reap the rewards of the post-pandemic rebound in global trade and U.S. efforts to reduce economic ties with China
• The Bank of Japan should set a more achievable inflation target to avoid endless stimulus, according to a former deputy governor
• The Bank of Canada will likely tread carefully this week, mutedly acknowledging a weaker-than-expected economy in the midst of a heated election campaign
• President Joe Biden has a historic opportunity to reshape the Fed Board, with long-lasting implications for both monetary policy and financial regulation, according to Bloomberg Economics
• The Swiss National Bank's pile of foreign exchange increased to 929.3 billion francs ($1 trillion) in August, suggesting officials used interventions to depress the value of their currency
• France's economic outlook improved despite a surge in delta cases, suggesting an increased vaccination rate may have ended the stop-go disruption. Yet Israel, once a front-runner in the race to move on from Covid, is now one of the biggest pandemic hot spots
• Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan to fund the National Health Service and social care uses a tax that has long attracted criticism for perpetuating generational inequalities in the U.K.
• President Biden needs Democrats in Congress to give him a boost by passing his $4 trillion economic agenda, but deepening divisions in the party threaten the chances of that happening any time soon
• He co-founded the Taliban, helped it rebuild during two decades of war with the U.S. and then brokered a deal to get American troops out. Now, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar's job is about to get even harder. Meantime, the Taliban included the leader of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization in a new government

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