Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - End of an era

It was a big week for central banks, replete with surprises, told-you-so’s and new projections about where monetary policy is headed the world over. The Swiss National Bank, citing progress on inflation, became the first among global peers to cut interest rates while Norway signaled no such move was in the offing for at least another six months. As expected, the Bank of Japan ended its negative interest rate regime, the world’s last. The radical policymaking tool had been adopted to encourage bank lending, spur demand and stem disinflation. In Africa, central banks in the continent’s biggest economies, including Egypt and Kenya, are set to part ways with emerging-markets in Latin America and Europe as they maintain tight monetary policies to contend with sticky inflation.

In the US, the Federal Reserve kept rates unchanged at 5.25% to 5.5% as policymakers maintained their projections for three rate cuts this year if inflation continues its retreat. But after a couple of bumps on the path back to 2%, there’s a chance the Fed could drop one of those cuts. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said it will be appropriate to start slowing the Fed’s quantitative tightening program “fairly soon.” An important complement to rate hikes in tighter monetary policy, QT is currently removing liquidity from the US financial system to the tune of up to $95 billion a month. Officials are determined to stop it before it causes the kind of financial disruptions experienced before the last round ended some five years ago.

US President Joe Biden is maintaining a significant fundraising advantage over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is running out of campaign money he can tap for legal fees. The twice-impeached former president’s properties in New York, including this golf club in Westchester County, may also be in jeopardy: the state’s attorney general said she will begin seizing properties if Trump can’t post a bond on the $454 million judgement levied against him for fraud. The stakes are high for his business empire as Trump campaigns to return to the White House. He has urged the US Supreme Court to declare him immune from prosecution for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, as his lawyers move on multiple fronts to push the four criminal trials he faces—all of which have been subject to delays—beyond the November election.

Israel will invade the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah “even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States,” said Ron Dermer, the nation’s strategic affairs minister and a confidante of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Still, Dermer and other Israeli officials will travel to the US to hear the Biden administration’s concerns, including what the United Nations has warned is a looming famine in northern Gaza. In the leaders’ first call in more than a month, Biden warned Netanyahu that invading Rafah, where more than a million displaced Gazans have fled, would be a mistake, leading to more civilian deaths and worsening the already dire humanitarian situation.

Palestinians sift through the rubble of an Israeli air strike on March 20 in Rafah, southern Gaza. Photographer: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images Europe

CRE commercial loan obligations—the “first shoe to drop” in commercial real estate debt—are facing unprecedented stress. Blackstone President John Gray says it’s a good time to move fast and buy real estate assets at beat-down prices. Then there’s the residential market: Baltimore introduced a plan to sell boarded-up houses for $1 each to people who commit to fixing them up. Chicago’s historic Gold Coast has lost some of its more wealthy residents, such as Citadel’s Ken Griffin, in part because of high taxes. And the National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million in damages to settle litigation over commission rules for real estate agents, a case that will change the landscape for buyers and sellers. While the damages are hefty, they are “a welcome disruption at a time of woeful housing affordability,” Conor Sen writes in Bloomberg Opinion. 

Big tech has been on a tear this year, with a notable exception. Apple fell the most since August after the Justice Department and 16 attorneys generals sued, accusing the gadget maker of violating antitrust laws and suppressing competition by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features on its popular devices. Apple and Alphabet’s Google also are set to face full-blown European Union investigations into their compliance with a new law reining in the power of Big Tech.

If travel credit card perks are important to you, we’ve done some of the heavy lifting to pare down options. Here are the five best for 2024. Perhaps when you put the card to use, do it in Bangkok. The Thai capital is a dizzying mix of tradition and modernity, from its emblematic street food to its temples of fine dining. Here’s how to navigate them all. And if you need a new timepiece, we can also point you in the direction of Geneva, where F1 legend Michael Schumacher’s watches go on the auction block in May. Speaking of sports legends: On this week’s episode of The Deal, Derek Jeter sits down for a rare interview with co-host and fellow-former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez. 

Derek Jeter, left, on the The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly

• Chinese megabanks report earnings; may suffer more margin pressure.
• Africa’s biggest economies are poised to keep policy tight.
• Judge could hand Sam Bankman-Fried a 50-year sentence.
• Senegal’s presidential election after turmoil over the vote’s delay. 
• Good Friday holiday, most global markets closed. 

To understand the 2024 US presidential election, it’s essential to understand the politics of fentanyl. About 8 in 10 voters in seven swing states say the deadly drug’s misuse is a “very important” or “somewhat important” issue when deciding who to vote for—more than the number who cite abortion, climate change, labor and unions or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, according to a recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of almost 5,000 registered voters. And about one-third of swing-state voters trust neither the sitting president or his challenger to handle the crisis.

Lane Santa Cruz, left, lost her brother Jorge to a fentanyl overdose in 2016. Jim Rauh, right, lost his son Thomas in 2015. Photographers: Caitlin O'Hara/Bloomberg; Maddie McGarvey/Bloomberg

Get Bloomberg’s Evening Briefing: If you were forwarded this newsletter, sign up here to get it every to get it every Saturday, along with Bloomberg’s Evening Briefing, our flagship daily report on the biggest global news.

Bloomberg Technology Summit: Led by Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Brad Stone and Bloomberg TV Host and Executive Producer Emily Chang, this full-day experience in downtown San Francisco on May 9 will bring together leading CEOs, tech visionaries and industry icons to focus on what’s next in artificial intelligence, the chip wars, antitrust outcomes and life after the smartphone. Learn more.