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Follow Us Get the newsletter Trump says he won't be removed from office. Uncertainty surrounds China's best vaccine shot. Malaysia's state of emergency sparks concerns of a coup. 'Zero Risk' President Donald Trump said he's not at risk of being removed from office after encouraging supporters who went on to attack the U.S. Capitol last week — but suggested President-elect Joe Biden could be. Democrats have called for Trump to be removed after last Wednesday's riot, but the president rejected any responsibility, calling inflammatory remarks he delivered before the attack "totally appropriate". "The 25th Amendment is of zero risk to me but will come back to haunt Joe Biden and the Biden administration," Trump said, referring to a constitutional amendment that lays out a process for the president's cabinet to remove him. He didn't elaborate. Meanwhile more banks are cutting ties with the president over the riot. His top creditor, his hometown bank and even his mortgage lender have spurned him. The question is whether his other banks and financial backers — including giants Capital One and JPMorgan — plan to keep him as a client. Dollar Retreats Asian stocks looked primed for a lackluster start to trading Wednesday after their U.S. peers closed little changed and Treasury yields fluctuated around a 10-month high. The dollar retreated. Futures pointed to little movement in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia after the S&P 500 fluctuated between gains and losses before closing flat. Energy, materials and the consumer discretionary sectors were the best performers as investors mulled the prospects of an economic recovery. Crude oil approached a 11-month high as the dollar fell back after a three-day rally. Corn futures surged on a tighter-than-expected supply outlook. Ten-year Treasury yields pared an earlier rise after a government auction was met with solid demand.  China Vaccine Days before a global rollout of Sinovac Biotech vaccine kicks off, uncertainty is swirling over its efficacy, for which four different protection rate numbers have been released in recent weeks. Indonesia, which is moving the fastest on distributing the Sinovac shot to its population, said that a local trial showed an efficacy of 65% against Covid-19. But only 1,620 people in Indonesia took part in that trial — too small for meaningful data. Turkey and Brazil posted different results with different sample sizes. Meanwhile, Pfizer and federal health officials are investigating the death of a health-care worker 16 days after the person received the company's Covid-19 vaccine. So far, the evidence doesn't suggest a connection. Power Grab? In explaining why Malaysia needed to suspend democracy for the first time in half a century to fight the pandemic, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin assured the nation he wasn't staging a military coup, although he remained vague on just how he'll use his new powers. But his opponents found it hard to view the extraordinary move as anything but a power grab. The Southeast Asian nation has seen a surge of coronavirus cases in recent weeks, and measures to combat the pandemic have generally enjoyed broad support across the political spectrum. But the latest move may change that perception. Here's how the pandemic is keeping Malaysian politics messy. Stop Right There Some of the world's biggest banks are urging a U.S. judge not to immediately terminate Libor after a group of borrowers filed a suit claiming the benchmark was the work of a "price-fixing cartel." The defendants, including JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, said in a November filing that abruptly ending the London interbank offered rate would wreak havoc on financial markets and undermine reforming the reference rate. Policy makers around the globe have been developing new benchmarks to replace Libor by the end of 2021, and in November, officials proposed an extension for some dollar Libor tenors until mid-2023. Here's more on why ditching Libor is a complex task. What We've Been Reading This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours: One of Asia's former richest men is now fending off debt collectors. Wall Street visionaries provide chilling views on the next big risk. HSBC is grooming top bankers for a make-or-break push into China. Pizza, soy sauce and superfruits are food trends to watch. Spotify is betting big on podcasts as a path to profitability. 'No regrets': A Capitol rioter tells his story from the inside. And finally, here's what Tracy's interested in today The big story in markets right now is the rise in U.S. Treasury yields and what it might mean for risk assets like stocks and corporate debt. But as the yield on the benchmark 10-year hovers over 1.1%, it's worth considering spillover effects of a different sort. A new working paper from the Federal Reserve tackles the issue of whether U.S. government bonds are impacted by what's happening to debt in places like Germany, Japan and the U.K. While it's long been thought that German bunds, Japanese government bonds, British gilts and so on were impacted by U.S. Treasury yields (the correlation between these groups of debt has jumped from 0.4 in the early 1990s to more than 0.7 in 2019), far less work has been done on whether this holds true in the opposite direction. So, are U.S. Treasury yields affected by what's happening to bonds in other advanced economies? The evidence from Don Kim, a senior advisor to the Fed board, and economist Marcelo Ochoa suggests the answer is yes. Interestingly, they suggest that the spillover effect isn't due to what's going on in the global economy, but comes about as investors consider the relative attractiveness of different debt. "For example, negative news in Europe would depress European yields, which in turn would make U.S. Treasuries relatively more attractive depressing U.S. term premiums, as opposed to negative European news darkening the U.S. economic outlook and lowering the expected path of the federal funds rate," they write.  This makes some intuitive sense. In a globalized financial system, big investors are often evaluating a U.S. Treasury against other investment opportunities as they try to generate yield, rather than considering it on its own merits. Kim and Ochoa's estimate of the degree to which foreign shocks are impacting U.S. bond yields rose from 13% in the early 1990s to 30% in the 2019 period. No bond is an island — not even a U.S. Treasury. You can follow Tracy Alloway on Twitter at @tracyalloway.   All Things Wall Street and Finance Join the many Matt Levine subscribers and sign up for the Bloomberg Opinion columnist's daily newsletter here. Trust us, your inbox will thank you for it. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Five Things - Asia newsletter. Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022