The IMF has also warned that America’s recovery from the financial crisis has not been shared fairly.

Our economics editor Larry Elliott explains:

The increasingly polarised US economy has meant that a record-breaking period of growth has been accompanied by falling life expectancy, high levels of poverty and stagnant living standards for average Americans, the International Monetary Fund has said.

In its annual health check on the world’s biggest economy, the IMF highlighted a range of “troubling” social indicators marring a decade-long expansion which in July will be the longest in the country’s history.

It called for more generous in-work benefits for the low paid, a minimum wage rise, higher spending on education and action to reduce deaths by opioids as part of a wide-ranging programme of anti-poverty measures.

The IMF’s annual article IV consultation said the US economy had shown extraordinary resilience, noting that unemployment was at its lowest in 50 years, but that “the benefits from this decade-long expansion have not been widely shared”.

The IMF also identified several kay areas where the US economy is failing Americans, particularly those at the lower end of the wealth and income scale:

• The impact of rising suicides and drug overdoses on falling life expectancy, now one of the lowest in the G7.
• A rise of just 2.2% in inflation-adjusted incomes for the median US household since the end of the 1990s, even though per capita incomes have risen by 23%.
• A decrease in wealth among the poorest 40% of the population since 1983.
• The fact that 45 million Americans live in poverty.
• An erosion of social mobility so that half of today’s young American adults earn less than their parents did at a similar age. Forty years ago the figure was 10%.
• Poor education outcomes by international standards despite devoting a bigger slice of national income to schools and colleges.

Meanwhile in Vilnius, the European Central Bank has extended its pledge to keep interest rates at their current record low.

The ECB now won’t hike borrowing costs above zero until the middle of 2020, as it struggles with low growth and weak inflation.

The central bank also slashed its 2020 growth forecast from 1.6% to 1.4%, while also nudging up its 2019 forecast from 1.1% to 1.2%.

ECB president Mario Draghi revealed that some members of the governing council had discussed the possibility of cutting interest rates to new record lows, or restarting its QE stimulus programme.

That highlights the weakness of the European economy -- bad news for companies such as Ford as they also struggle with technological change.

Draghi was also questioned about the ‘minibots’ which Italy’s parliament has approved this week. They’re new securities which Rome could used to pay off individuals and companies who are owed money by the state as payment for services or as tax rebates.

Analysts have suggested they could run as a new parallel currency - something Draghi points out would be illegal under eurozone rules:

‘Minibots’ are either money and then they are illegal or they are debt and then the stock of debt goes up. I don’t think there is a third possibility.

Ford workers at Bridgend have been sent home early after learning that their factory will close next year.

Some spoke to media outside the plant.

Press Association reports that Len Jones, 48, who has worked at the plant for seven-and-a-half years, said:

“It’s devastating. Everyone’s got mortgages to pay and families to support.

“I expected a little more time to get things sorted.

“When we found out, everyone was just silent. They gave us letters and we just all went home. “It’s hard to take in really, even though we expected it. Now it’s official, it’s a bad thing, really.”

Another, named Stephen, explained how demand for Bridgend’s new 1.5-litre engine had dwindled:

“The writing has been on the wall for a long time. We knew when the Sigma engine finished there was no replacement. We knew when the AJ engine finished there was no replacement. The predicted volumes for new Dragon engine were 250,000, then 125,000, then the last thing we had was for 70,000.”

Supervisor Claire Shortland reported that the mood inside was “Dismal, but sort of expected really”. She’s already been through this situation once, having worked at Ford’s Southampton factory which closed in 2013.

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do now. I sort of packed everything up and came here from Southampton when we stopped making Transit and now this.”

Ford is holding a conference call with journalists now, to explain the closure of the Bridgend site.

Is Brexit a factor? European president Stewart Rowley insists the closure has nothing to do with Brexit, saying that Ford wouldn’t have taken a different decision if Brexit wasn’t happening.

But what if there’s a no-deal Brexit? Rowley says Ford will need to evaluate the business environment, and any tariff changes, if that happens.

Rowley explains that Ford will source engines from other sites, and isn’t planning to relocate the Welsh Dragon Engine facility elsewhere.

Should the rest of Ford’s UK operations be worried? Rowley says the Dagenham engine plans is a core part of the business.

Rowley also reveals that he’s spoken to UK business secretary Greg Clark about Bridgend.

Ford’s president of Europe, Stuart Rowley, has insisted that the company is still committed to the UK - despite deciding to shut Bridgend.

Rowley says:

“Creating a strong and sustainable Ford business in Europe requires us to make some difficult decisions, including the need to scale our global engine manufacturing footprint to best serve our future vehicle portfolio.

“We are committed to the U.K.; however, changing customer demand and cost disadvantages, plus an absence of additional engine models for Bridgend going forward make the plant economically unsustainable in the years ahead.”

Rowley is pledging to help staff who lose their job at Bridgend.

“As a major employer in the U.K. for more than a century, we know that closing Bridgend would be difficult for many of our employees.

We recognise the effects it would have on their families and the communities where they live and, as a responsible employer, we are proposing a plan that would help to ease the impact.”

NEWSFLASH: Ford has confirmed that it plans to close the Bridgend engine plant by late 2020, as feared.

More to follow....

The Unite union has now pledged to fight the closure of Ford’s engine plant at Bridgend “with all its might”.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey has also accused the US carmaker of treating its workers “disgracefully”:

“Ford’s decision to shut its Bridgend engine plant in 2020 is a grotesque act of economic betrayal.

“These workers and this community have stayed faithful to Ford, as have UK customers - this is still Ford’s largest European market - through thick and thin, but have been treated disgracefully in return by this company.

“Ford broke promise after promise to the UK. First, it was that it would build 500,000 engines at Bridgend. That fell to a quarter of a million, then fell again and again to now just 80,000. The company has deliberately run down its UK operations so that now not a single Ford vehicle - car or van - is made in the UK.

McCluskey is referring to the fact that parts made at Dagenham and Bridgend are shipped to the EU where Ford vehicles are assembled (a process that could be hampered by a disruptive Brexit)

The governor of the Bank of England has issued a stern warning to the asset management sector, just days after Britain’s most famous stock picker was plunged into a crisis.

Mark Carney has told a conference in Tokyo that investment funds are a significant, and growing, area of financial risk.

The danger, he says, is that they can amplify a downturn because they promise investors quick access to their money while often investing in relatively illiquid assets (basically, stuff that you can’t sell at a moment’s notice).

Carney warned:

Over half of investment funds have a structural mismatch between the frequency with which they offer redemptions and the time it would take them to liquidate their assets.

Under stress they may need to fire sell assets, magnifying market adjustments and triggering further redemptions – a vicious feedback loop that can ultimately disrupt market functioning.

Small UK investors who trusted fund manager Neil Woodford with their money will know exactly what Carney is talking about. Woodford’s decision to freeze his Equity Income fund has shaken the sector, with the man himself admitting that he needs time to cut its exposure to illiquid assets.

Carney doesn’t single out Woodford directly, but he does flag up the property funds which froze redemptions after the 2016 Brexit vote.

We have recently seen analogous situations in the UK within some niche managers and smaller markets, such as property Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

The complications would be much greater if a major asset class like emerging market economy debt were to freeze up.

Here’s some reaction:

Union sources have told Sky News that the Bridgend plant is to close in 15 months time, in September 2020.

Still nothing official from Ford yet.

Adam Price, leader of Wales’s Plaid Cymru, has blasted Ford’s decision to (we fear) shut the Bridgend engine plant.

Price says the move would be “one of the worst acts of industrial vandalism seen in the UK for decades”. He’s also unhappy that the US company is making the move on D-Day, when people should be celebrating co-operation and solidarity.

Price tells Sky News:

This is an act of crass insensitivity by Ford.. not the actions of a responsibly mature company. This is cowboy capitalism at its worst.

Q: But hasn’t this been coming for 3 years? Manufacturing in the UK has been struggling for several years, particularly the car sector....

Price agrees that the closure has been on the horizon -- so politicians in Westminster and Cardiff should have done more to support the Bridgend plant.

He also warns Ford that workers won’t take the closure lying down.

There could be “UK-wide industrial action, and even continent-wide industrial action”, he claims, as Ford is also paying off staff in France and Germany.

I don’t think in any sense that this is a done deal.

The blame game has begun over the collapse of the deal to create the world’s third-biggest carmaker.

Fiat-Chrysler is clear that Parisian politicians are to blame, telling its shareholders that “the political conditions in France do not currently exist for such a combination to proceed successfully.”

Renault’s board has revealed that its largest shareholder had indeed wanted to delay its decision on whether to back the plan. It says its directors couldn’t take a decision due to “the request expressed by the representatives of the French State to postpone the vote to a later Council.”

But a French government official says Fiat Chrysler is at fault for pushing the deal too aggressively.

Associated Press explains:

The French official said France wanted to delay a vote until Tuesday to give more time to discuss it with Renault’s alliance partner Nissan, and said Fiat Chrysler put “massive pressure” to quickly take the offer or leave it.

Another jobs blow: Britain’s largest insurer, Aviva, has just announced 1,800 jobs across its worldwide operations.

Aviva’s new CEO, Maurice Tulloch, says the cuts will help save £300m per year.

He told the City:

Reducing Aviva’s costs is essential to remain competitive and this means tough decisions and job losses which I do not take lightly.

We will do all we can to minimise redundancies and support our people through this.

More than half of Aviva’s 30,000 global workforce are based in the UK, at offices at Norwich, Bristol, Sheffield, York, Perth and Glasgow.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.

The car industry is reeling from a double-dose of bad news this morning.

In the UK, workers at Ford’s Bridgend engine factory are heading to work to learn the future of their plant - and the omens are not good.

Ford officials have flown over from America for a company meeting, and are expected to announce the closure of the plant. It employs more than 1,500 people, with many more jobs in the local economy and supply chains also dependent on it.

Bridgend’s future has been in doubt for some time -- Ford cut investment last year, and recently began a voluntary layoff programme.

Losing a key engine contract to supply engines for Jaguar Land Rover was another blow, while uncertainty about Britain’s future relationship with the EU has also hurt the sector.

My colleague Jasper Jolly explains what’s gone wrong:

The British car industry is facing a series of difficulties including a steep fall in demand for diesel vehicles and falling sales in China, previously a key growth market. At the same time, Brexit uncertainty has cast a pall over the industry, with the threat of tariffs on cars and parts travelling to and from the UK.

And in another auto twist, the proposed merger between US-Italian carmaker Fiat Chrysler and French rival Renault has just collapsed.

Fiat-Chrysler has blamed France’s politicians (Renault’s biggest shareholder) for thwarting the deal.

It says:

It has become clear that the political conditions in France do not currently exist for such a combination to proceed successfully.

The merger would have created a powerful new force in the car industry, at a time of dramatic and volatile change. It would have let the two firms share the cost of developing cutting-edge technologies such as self-driving vehicles and electric cars.

More to follow....

Also coming up today

It’s a busy day in the economic world - the European Central Bank is setting interest rates, releasing new economic forecasts, and pondering what more it can do to support the eurozone economy.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney speaks in Toyko in a couple of hours, at the Institute of International Finance spring meeting.

Trade tensions and geopolitics will be in focus too, as China’s president Xi visits Russia. America is releasing new trade figures too, which may show whether the tit-for-tat tariffs imposed recently have hurt demand.

We’ll also have an eye on Arcadia, after Sir Philip Green was forced to delay a creditors’ vote after some landlords refused to back his rescue plan.

The agenda

• 10am BST: Eurozone GDP for Q1 2019 (second estimate)
• 10am BST: Bank of England governor Mark Carney speaks in Tokyo
• 12pm BST: Chinese president Xi Jinping speaks at St Petersburg International Economic Forum
• 12.45pm BST: European Central Bank interest rate decision
• 1.30pm BST: US trade figures for April