Bloomberg New Zealand’s government is preparing additional fiscal measures to limit a surge in unemployment as it battles the coronavirus, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. “Work on further significant government investment to protect jobs, support cashflow, and prepare the economy for recovery is well advanced,” Robertson said in Wellington. Scenarios released by the Treasury department show that unemployment “can be ...

Bloomberg Republicans are ratcheting up efforts to paint China as the villain in the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to shift blame as President Donald Trump faces increased criticism of his handling of a crisis that has shuttered the US economy. The Trump campaign sent out a fundraising email that accused China of “lying” about the outbreak and saying the country must ...

Bloomberg China criticised US President Donald Trump’s move to temporarily halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) and pledged to support the global health body. Trump said he ordered the move against the WHO because it took China’s claims about the coronavirus “at face value” and failed to share information about the pandemic as it spread. China has “serious ...

Bloomberg South Korea’s ruling party may have won an outright majority in parliament in elections held on Wednesday, in a show of confidence for President Moon Jae-in’s handling of the pandemic that gives him fresh momentum to reshape the economy. Moon’s Democratic Party of Korea, which had 120 seats before the vote, and its satellite party could win at least ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Tokyo could be facing as many as 80,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in a month if no action is taken as he declared a state of emergency in the capital and its surrounding regions. In what Abe said was the country’s greatest economic crisis since the end of World War Two, he declared a one-month ...

Bloomberg Spain reported the biggest increase in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in six days on Wednesday, while the daily death toll declined. There were more than 5,000 new infections in the 24 hours through Wednesday, taking the total to 177,633, according to Health Ministry data. The number of fatalities rose by 523 to 18,579, compared to Tuesday’s increase ...

Since President Trump moved into the White House, he has been eager for a dramatic initiative with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he may finally have found one in the latest announcement of a joint American-Russian-Saudi effort to stabilise world oil prices. “The big Oil Deal with Opec Plus is done,” Trump announced in a tweet thanking Putin and King ...

India has chosen an odd combination of strategies in its fight against the coronavirus: a harsh lockdown on economic activity and a meager fiscal response to the loss of jobs and incomes. What’s making this more painful is a denial of the role of finance in both containing the fallout of the outbreak and in supporting the recovery later. Allowing ...

Six governors from a string of contiguous eastern seaboard states stretching from Rhode Island to Delaware announced that they would form a working group to cooperate on reopening businesses in the region. This kind of state-level coordination is much needed. The federal government hasn’t taken the lead in ordering coronavirus lockdowns, and so it won’t take the lead in reopening ...

Covid-19 is not just changing Americans’ daily lives, it may also transform their system of government. On many important current issues, the US may end up with an arrangement that looks more like the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution. Consider how this might evolve. First, states and regions are recovering (or not) at dramatically different rates. The worst may ...