After a few months of difficult talks and multiple disappointments, the two chambers of the United States Congress finally managed to agree on a stimulus bill. Democrats and Republicans shook their hands on a $900 billion stimulus package that passed through the Senate yesterday; it is currently awaiting Donald Trump’s signature to come into effect.
The stimulus bill was indeed much needed, though critics suspect $900 billion is far from enough to handle the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Still, direct one-time payouts to households will resume, and unemployment benefits will be padded by an extra $300 thanks to this package.
In addition, the US government also passed its budget until September 2021 so that it can continue operating as usual, avoiding the government shutdown experienced previously.
Speaking of the coronavirus pandemic, the total number of cases worldwide has surpassed 77.8 million, with 1.7 million deaths. The trend of newly confirmed cases daily is tentatively going down, giving people hope that with lockdowns and vaccinations, the end of Covid-19 will come sooner rather than later.
The United States has cemented its position as the most heavily affected by the coronavirus country and to date has had more than 18.4 million infections. Its daily infection rate had dropped below 200k briefly, but yesterday another 200,000 cases were confirmed.
Things are worse in the United Kingdom, where daily infections continue to climb. The majority of the cases now (and in general this fall) are attributed to the new type of coronavirus plaguing the UK.
Things are looking up in Germany, which managed to bring its cases to under 20,000 yesterday. Germany is one of several countries in Europe that have decided to extend their lockdowns into January despite the upcoming holidays.
The economic calendar is rather empty today. Consumer confidence for January in Germany is still negative, but not as low as expected. In other positive news, the UK revised its GDP projections upward, registering GDP growth of 16% (QoQ) in the third quarter of 2020.
The same report for the United States was also better than expected at 33.4%. Later in the day we expect the consumer confidence for December.
