Just days after reporting its worst economic performance since the global financial crisis, China has unveiled a one-two punch to prop up growth, while also sweeping away a major control on how banks set deposit rates. The country’s central bank combined a quarter-point cut in benchmark interest rates with a half-percentage reduction in banks’ reserve-requirement ratios, moves aimed at lowering corporate financing costs and pumping liquidity into the economy. Friday’s action was the sixth time since November that the Chinese central bank has cut interest rates and the fourth across-the-board reduction of the amount of deposits banks are required to hold in reserve. In a statement posted on the central bank’s website late on Friday, the People’s Bank of China attributed the measures to what it said was downward pressure on the world’s second-largest economy. China’s leaders are fighting a host of economic ills that have put their goal […]