(Bloomberg) --

Welcome to Wednesday, Europe. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help you start the day:

• Have a look inside Mark Carney’s Brexit adventure atop the Bank of England as he prepares to leave office more than seven years after crossing the Atlantic
• If the coronavirus outbreak morphs into a regional economic crisis, the European Central Bank isn’t yet poised to rush to the rescue; in the U.S., Wall Street is increasingly betting the Federal Reserve may have to cut interest rates again
• A range of early indicators of China’s economy in February confirm that the virus outbreak has crippled production and consumption
• President Donald Trump and his top advisers want global markets and the American public to believe that the coronavirus poses little risk to the U.S., but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is saying just the opposite; the World Bank is eyeing a first-half global growth slowdown on the virus
• South Korean manufacturers’ confidence slumped the most in five years as coronavirus fears threaten a nascent recovery in the trade-dependent economy; the country also just broke its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, adding to economic challenges
• Trump touted “tremendous progress” on a trade deal with India on his visit there as he sought to strengthen ties with a country key to American efforts to blunt China’s influence in Asia
• U.S. consumer confidence edged up in February to the best level in six months on an improvement in expectations
• Global trade had a rough 2019 as weaker world growth and a manufacturing recession took their toll, suffering its first full-year drop since the financial crisis

To contact the reporter on this story: Michelle Jamrisko in Singapore at mjamrisko@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram, Tuhin Kar

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