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Economists, central bankers and governments are all taking a gloomier idea of the global economy. Good morning! Jeff Sparshott here to take you through the day’s most important fiscal bulletin. Move us your questions, comments and suggestions by replying to this email.

OUTLOOK: Cloudy WITH A CHANCE OF RATE CUT

Economists crisply lowered their forecasts for employment and financial raise in the first quarter. In a new Wall Street Journal survey, private-sector forecasters said they expect U.S. economic output to grow, on average, at a 1.3% speed during the first quarter. That would be the weakest since the end of 2015. Economists likewise pruned their monthly payroll would be expected to an average speed of 170,805 new jobs per month, down from 207,583 in the February survey, Harriet Torry reports.

The latest downgrades follow data indicating its national economy is cool. U.S. payrolls rose by time 20,000 in February, the slowest gait since September 2017.

FED’S NEXT MOVE

A thriving number of economists say the Federal Reserve’s next move is gonna be a pace reduction. About 18% of economists canvassed this month expect the Fed to lower them, up from 10% in February’s survey and 4% in January. While still a minority, the change spotlights a sharp change in the economic outlook. As recently as January, more than 80% of economists expected the Fed to raise again before September. Now, most don’t expect a rise until September or afterwards, David Harrison reports.

WHAT TO WATCH TODAY

The New York Fed’s Empire State survey for March is expected to fall to 8.3 from 8.8. (8: 30 a.m. ET)

U.S. industrial production for February is expected to rise 0.3% from the prior month.( 9:15 a.m. ET)

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey for March is expected to rise to 95.3 from 93.8 at the end of February.( 10 a.m. ET)

The U.S. task openings and labor turnover survey for January is out at 10 a.m. ET.

The Baker-Hughes rig count will be exhausted at 1 p.m.

TOP STORIE

LET’S DO IT LIVE

Federal Reserve real-time growth trackers likewise are pointing to a nice tepid start to the year. But the disparity is stark: The Atlanta Fed’s closely watched GDPNow currently has the first one-quarter pegged at a 0.4% annualized charge. The St. Louis Fed Nowcast is a more robust 2.2%. Either would be a slowdown–but one is downright anemic. Why the difference? One of our favorite topics: Atlanta’s GDPNow indicator squanders more hard data while the St. Louis’s index is located more on soft data. So, for example, approximates like customer sentimentality have inspected a whole lot better than actual consumer spending. Plus there really isn’t just as much first-quarter hard-handed data out yet.

JAPAN, TOO

The Bank of Japan offered a bleaker picture of the economy on Friday and left its ultra-easy monetary policy on hold. The central bank said Japan’s exports and production have shown some weakness, a downgrade from its January assessment. It also adjusted its earlier view that overseas economies were ripening firmly on the whole, saying some slowdowns have been observed. The central bank lodge to its overall evaluation that the Japanese economy is “expanding reasonably, ” Megumi Fujikawa reports.

AND CHINA

China’s government will consider chipping interest rates and banks’ reservation requirement ratio to bar brand-new downward pressing on its national economy, Chinese Premier Li Keqaing said Friday. Mr. Li said Beijing needed to keep fiscal rise within a tolerable range to impede brandishes of layoffs. China’s economy reported its slowest growing in roughly 30 times last year and force continued to slow at the start of 2019. In response, the government earlier this month foretold charge strokes and efforts to goad infrastructure investment, Grace Zhu reports.

TRADE DEAL

China fixed last-minute changes to a proposed foreign-investment regulation, trying to address U.S. complaints about impelled technology transfer and bolster promises for a swap enter into negotiations with Washington. The national legislature humbly mended a draft of the laws and regulations to tighten up paths used to leak intellectual property rights. The brand-new word takes aim at the regulatory discus committees, known as “conformity evaluations, ” that foreign firms must pass. The Trump administration says the process exist to leach proprietary information materials and troop transfer of technologies, Lingling Wei and Chao Deng report.

President Trump’s take: “So the China talks are moving along. As to whether or not we’ll affect a final administer, that I would never want to say.”

DENY, DENY, DENY

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, addressing an irritant in relations with the U.S ., said that China’s government doesn’t ask manufacturers to spy on its behalf. Queried at a press conference about China-U. S. contender and whether Beijing troops its companies to conduct espionage, Mr. Li first didn’t respond but later returned to give an unequivocal self-denial, Chun Han Wong reports. “Let me tell you explicitly that this is not consistent with Chinese principle. “Thats just not” how China behaves, ” Mr. Li said. “We do not do that and will not do that in the future.”

THE COMEDY OF ERROR

British lawmakers elected to delay the U.K.’s departure from the European Union by at least three months beyond a March 29 deadline. The other 27 EU authorities must unanimously agree to any expansion, a matter they will consider next week.

Third time’s a charisma? Before she negotiates with the EU over an extension, Prime Minister Theresa May will likely aim to coerce recalcitrant elements of her Conservative Party into backing a Brexit deal they have soundly rebuffed twice. Her hope is that lawmakers who want a unadulterated break with the alliance will now accompany the cope as their least-bad alternative: Delay could lead to a preservation of closer ties or even a second Brexit referendum.

TWEET OF THE DAY

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WHAT ELSE WE’RE READING

The U.S. needs to rethink the path it finances higher education. Instead of obliging students to acquire, “We should replace such systems with an’ equity’ framework, in which funders pay for a student’s education in exchange for a stake in their own future success. Students who attain high-pitched earnings–tech engineers, bankers–would pay back more than the cost of their education. Their lower-earning peers–high school maths teaches, Salvation Army workers–would pay back less, ” Sheila Bair writes in the Financial Times.

Neither robots nor automation have caused craftsman wages to stagnate. “What did? There is a growing though incomplete consensus between economists that a key factor in payment stagnation has been workers’ slumping agreement power–a reject whose springs are ultimately political, ” Paul Krugman writes at the New York Times.

President Trump is offsetting the trade deficit big. “Pretty much anyone with a legislate knowledge of macroeconomics could have predicted that this would be the likely arise of moves by Trump and Congress to arouse the U.S. economy with big federal deficits, ” Justin Fox writes at Bloomberg Opinion. “That Trump himself did not see this coming is another indication that, as someone recently said, the man doesn’t understand much about macroeconomics.”

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