Bloomberg China’s mounting pile of distressed debt has elevated market players’ attention to one of the nation’s less obvious economic data points: the producer-price index (PPI). With many of the debtors that ran into trouble in the past year coming from the industrial world, gauges of manufacturing strain are particularly important. Some analysts point to the PPI as a forward ...

Bloomberg The lower chamber of the Japanese parliament early on Saturday approved the government’s record $907 billion initial budget bill for the fiscal year starting April 1. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner Komeito held a vote on the bill, clearing the way for its passage by the chamber to ensure it can be enacted ...

Bloomberg Inflation in Indonesia eased to a near-decade low, boosting odds that the next interest rate move by policy makers in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy could be down. Consumer prices rose 2.57 percent in February compared to a year earlier, the lowest since November 2009, according to figures released by the statistics office in Jakarta. That was lower than the ...