this month’s monetary policy decision, and one analyst said those who monitor the European Central Bank for a living can spend their Thursday focused on something else.

“If you’ve ever thought about skipping an ECB meeting, this is the one to sit out,” wrote ING’s Carsten Brzeski, who went on to cite various reasons why this week’s meeting is a non-event.

Atop that list was a lack of new data since last month’s rate decision, giving officials almost nothing to act upon. Policymakers are still looking at September’s inflation numbers. The annual headline rate of 2.2% is unlikely to warrant action as it remains close enough to the ECB target of 2.0% over the medium term. And the initial October number is not due until Friday. Additionally, third-quarter GDP data from the Eurozone is set for release just hours ahead of the ECB decision.

(Continue Reading – LS)

The leaders of the world’s two biggest economies will meet Thursday, just days after the Trump administration declared it had brokered a tentative tariff truce, in an encounter that could soothe fears — at least temporarily — about the consequential U.S.-China relationship veering painfully off course.

For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the meeting will be vindication that Beijing’s use of economic coercion to gain an edge over Washington is effective — especially because the vague deal outlined by U.S. trade envoys over the weekend represents little more than a return to the status quo before Trump came back to the Oval Office in January.

(Continue Reading - WaPo)

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday voted to lower interest rates for the second straight month, but the broader market reacted negatively after Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggested an additional cut may not come later this year.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a statement that policymakers had “strongly differing views” about how to proceed in the FOMC’s last meeting in December. A further reduction to interest rates is “not a foregone conclusion,” Powell said, “Far from it.” Powell noted that while some government data has been delayed, public and private sector data that have remained available suggest employment and inflation have “not changed much” since the FOMC met last month.

(Continue Reading - Forbes)