(Bloomberg) -- Good morning Americas. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help take you through to the weekend.
- President Joe Biden will mark his third day in office with executive actions to boost food assistance for impoverished Americans and use federal contracts as a step toward his proposed nationwide minimum-wage hike, seeking immediate help for an economy struggling to cope with Covid-19
- Labor unions and advocacy groups are pressing Democrats to leverage their control of the White House and Congress to enact policies that benefit workers, including facilitating the formation of unions and adopting a more expansive definition of what it is to be an employee
- Federal Reserve officials meeting next week are likely to put off any changes in their bond-buying program until 2022, when a tapering of purchases may begin, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg
- The world’s largest advanced economies are recovering very slowly from the holiday slump amid stubbornly high infection rates and stricter containment measures
- ECB officials have asked staff to propose new ways to measure financial conditions in the euro area; that comes as President Christine Lagarde signaled that the euro-zone economy is headed for a double-dip recession
- European manufacturers are struggling to get supplies and their costs are surging at the start of 2021, testing their optimism that the economy will recover from the pandemic
- Brexit drove the second-biggest jump in U.K. delivery times in at least 30 years this month, adding to Britain’s economic woes as Covid shut down services