The last week of June opens up on an extremely quiet note in terms of economic reports.
Earlier today there was a survey published with the opinions of members of the Bank of Japan regarding monetary policy. The only other notable events throughout the day will be speeches by members of the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve of the United States.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus is once again making it to the leading headlines, this time due to the rapid spread of the Delta variant. This strain of Covid-19 first originated in India and caused the highest daily infection rates and lethality rates in the world to occur there.
Now the Delta variant has made its way to the United Kingdom where infections are on the rise. The daily infection rate in the UK has risen to about 15,000, which is the highest since February, back when the United Kingdom was still in the initial stages of its vaccination campaign.
Understandably, the government of the United Kingdom has decided to extend the lockdowns by a month but if the spread of the virus continues, it may need to keep the country in a partial lockdown while vaccinations continue. There are also some concerns over the ability of the vaccines developed last year to fight off the new versions of Covid-19, but so far they seem to be at least 60% effective.
The other issue with the spread of the Delta strain in the UK is that many European countries are wary of tourists coming from the UK. Germany called on all EU states to agree on mandatory quarantine, but many southern member states did not agree because it will negatively affect tourism and halt their economic recovery from the pandemic.
The highly contagious Delta variant has also reached South Africa and Australia.
In other news, US President Joe Biden is forging ahead with his infrastructure bill. Congress seems to have agreed on a $1.2 trillion bill, which is going to continue positively feeding into the US economy, maintaining its fast recovery pace.
US stock indices today will move by 0.1-0.2% and remain more or less flat in the absence of major events and the upcoming possible shock from this week’s NFP revelations.
