Week in a Glance: pandemic and Pfizer, ECB, Brexit and stimulus

Fundamentally, the latest week can hardly be called calm and easy. New pandemic records in the USA and the world, the start of vaccination in the UK, the approval of the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use in the USA, Brexit, the results of the ECB meeting and the EU summit, stimulus in Japan and the USA - this is not a complete list of everything that happened.

Last week, the pandemic showed new records in the number of new: worldwide it exceeded 700K, and in the United States - approached to 250K. And there is no feeling that the trend will be broken in the foreseeable future. The New Year holidays are already close, and they will almost inevitably lead to an outbreak of a pandemic. As a result, the “stay at home” order came into force in California, that is, bars, museums, cinemas, etc. will be closed, travel is prohibited and in generally citizens should stay at home. California is the 5th largest economy in the world (!). Plus on weekned Germany decided to start a tough lockdown.

It should be noted that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer. Great Britain at the start of last week began vaccination. The use of the Pfizer vaccine in a number of cases provoked an allergic reaction, which somewhat narrowed the range of its use. Despite this, at the end of the week the Pfizer vaccine was approved for emergency use in the United States.

The main source of news buzz last week was the UK and the EU, namely their negotiations on a trade agreement. Johnson's dinner with Ursula von Layden on Wednesday didn't help. And the parties went all-in, stating that, apparently, there would be no deal.

The ECB, as expected, left the rate unchanged, but at the same time expanded the quantitative easing program: PEPP was increased by 500 billion euros and extended until the end of March 2022. And the EU summit adopted a historic budget of 2.2 trillion dollars and a stimulus package of 750 billion euros.

A stimulus package worth $ 708 billion was adopted in Japan. It was only in the United States where the Democrats failed to come to an agreement with the Republicans about the adoption of a relatively small stimulus package (relative to the wishes of the Democrats) of 900+ billion dollars.

The coming week promises to be no less eventful. Meetings of the FED, as well as the Central Banks of England and Japan, the final chord of the Brexit epic, stimulus in the US, approval of the Modern vaccine. And we have not yet talked about the mass of macroeconomic statistics that will be published this week.