Month: December 2020

In the latest reminder that COVID vaccines might not be as protective as the highly publicized Phase 3 trial data suggests, a local ABC News affiliate station in San Diego just reported that a nurse who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine came down with the virus 8 days later.

This isn’t unprecedented. Data from the Phase 3 trials indicated that it could take up to two weeks to develop protections from the virus after receiving the shot.

Still, with so much about the process unknown, the incident deserves more scrutiny. And according to the report, local health experts are weighing in.

In a Facebook message posted on December 18, Matthew W., an ER nurse at two different local hospitals, talked about receiving the Pfizer vaccine that day.

He told ABC 10News his arm was sore for a day but he suffered no other side effects.

Six days later on Christmas Eve — after working a shift in the COVID-19 unit — Matthew, 45, became sick. He got the chills and later came down with muscle aches and fatigue.

The day after Christmas, he went to a drive-up hospital testing site and tested positive for COVID-19.

The report makes a point of emphasizing the fact that this development is “not unexpected at all” and that it’s likely at least some nurses will be infected with the virus either just before, or just after, receiving their first dose of the vaccine, during the post-jab “incubation period”.

“It’s not unexpected at all. If you work through the numbers, this is exactly what we’d expect to happen if someone was exposed,” said Dr. Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist with Family Health Centers of San Diego. He serves on the clinical advisory panel for the county’s vaccine rollout.

He points out, it is possible Matthew was infected before receiving the vaccine, as the incubation period may be as much as two weeks. Dr. Ramers says if Matthew did contract it after the vaccine, it’s still in line with what we know.

“We know from the vaccine clinical trials that it’s going to take about 10 to 14 days for you to start to develop protection from the vaccine,” said Dr. Ramers.

The doctor then estimated that the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine could deliver protection that’s somewhere around 50%.

Dr. Ramers says he knows of several other local cases where health care workers became infected around the time they received the vaccine. He says all the cases illustrate the fact that results aren’t immediate. Even after you start receiving some protection, it won’t be full protection.

“That first dose we think gives you somewhere around 50%, and you need that second dose to get up to 95%,” said Dr. Ramers. Dr. Ramers says Matthew’s story also shows that even with vaccines, the pandemic isn’t going to turn around instantly.

“You hear heath practitioners being very optimistic about it being the beginning of the end, but it’s going to be a slow roll, weeks to months as we roll out the vaccine,” said Dr. Ramers. He adds this case is a good reminder of why masks, handwashing, and other COVID protocols are important, even after receiving the vaccine. Matthew says he’s feeling better since his symptoms peaked on Christmas Day but still feels fatigued.

Of course, a top WHO scientist recently warned that people shouldn’t stop social distancing and wearing masks after receiving the vaccine. After all, as she added, the trial data tells us nothing about the vaccines’ impact on viral transmission.

Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

The Trump campaign announced Tuesday that it was asking the Supreme Court to set aside Wisconsin’s presidential election, and to allow the Republican-controlled legislature to choose how to cast its 10 electoral votes.

The campaign asks in its filing (pdf) that the Supreme Court declare the state election “failed.” It also asks justices to allow the Wisconsin Legislature to appoint presidential electors to replace those pledged to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Trump lost the battleground state to the former vice president by about 21,000 votes, according to official records.

“This Court is likely the only institution of our government capable of credibly resolving the controversy over this election,” Trump’s legal team said.

Unless the campaign’s request to expedite the cases is granted, it will likely be moot before it is able to be considered by the nation’s highest court.

The president’s campaign filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court seeking to invalidate four groups of ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties, two Democrat strongholds.

The groups included some 170,000 absentee ballots cast in person before Election Day with a different application used by those who delivered ballots via mail, and 28,000 ballots cast by voters who said they were “indefinitely confined” so that they could submit an absentee ballot application without providing a photo ID.

That lawsuit was rejected by a narrowly divided Wisconsin Supreme Court on Dec. 14 in a 4-3 ruling, which saw the court’s three liberal justices joined by Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative, who said three of Trump’s four claims were filed too late and the other was without merit.

The remaining three conservative justices dissented, saying that they believed some practices in this year’s election were illegal.

Jim Troupis, Trump’s lead Wisconsin attorney, said in a statement that the Wisconsin Supreme Court “refused to address the merits of our claim.”

“This ‘Cert Petition’ asks them to address our claims, which, if allowed, would change the outcome of the election in Wisconsin.” Troupis added. “Three members of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, including the chief justice, agreed with many of the president’s claims in written dissents from that court’s Dec. 14 order.”

Tuesday’s appeal by the Trump campaign asserts that officials in the state exceeded their authority under state law to make provisions for receiving ballots.

It argues voters who weren’t “indefinitely confined” were allowed by state and local officials to request absentee ballots. Voters in Madison were also allowed to deliver ballots to a “Democracy in the Park” collection event, and clerks were allowed to fill in missing personal information from absentee ballot envelopes, the campaign argues.

Dozens of lawsuits in key battleground states and before the U.S. Supreme Court have so far mostly failed. Trump has asked courts to reject ballots cast under questionable circumstances, including under alleged violations of state election laws and other improprieties like Republican poll watchers being denied “meaningful access.”

In a blow to Trump’s legal efforts, the Supreme Court earlier this month declined to take up two of his cases challenging the election process in key states. Some 120 House Republicans signed on to that failed effort.

US equity futures and world stocks rose again as the last thrush of the year end rally levitated risk assets, with the S&P inching closer to recent all time highs and Asian shares hitting a record on Wednesday. Futures on the S&P 500 added 0.4%, recouping much of Tuesday’s losses, and emerging-market stocks advanced to the highest levels since 2007 on buoyant inflows. U.S. stocks retreated from an intraday record high on Tuesday after Mitch McConnell put off a vote on President Donald Trump’s call to increase COVID-19 relief checks from $600 to $2,000.

The upbeat mood pushed the dollar to its lowest since April 2018, while its replacement, Bitcoin, extended its frenzied rally, approaching $29,000 before reversing. Speculative bets on USD futures hit the most bearish since 2011.

Predictably, on the last full-day session of the year, volumes were lethargic with Europe’s Stoxx 50 seeing about half of the average activity.  That did not stop them from rising, however, and Europe’s stock markets were set for a sixth straight session of gains as AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine became the second to be approved by Britain, helping the FTSE 100 add as much as 0.2% early on. A new, more transmittable variant of the virus is spreading rapidly but European Union countries have also begun rolling out Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine this week. The United States also detected its first-known case of the new, highly infectious coronavirus strains already spotted in Britain and South Africa. Away from the virus worries, British lawmakers were set to vote on the UK-European Union trade deal later on Wednesday, a day before a Brexit transition arrangement expires.

“This is an economy that is recovering, policy is going to be accommodative for years to come, it suggest a good backdrop for risk assets – it doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be some challenges as we progress over the next couple of years,” Brian Levitt, Invesco global market strategist, said on Bloomberg TV. “The reality is the markets are going to be focused on a recovery.”

Elsewhere, MSCI’s world stocks index remained upbeat, up 0.2% and within touching distance of the record highs it had set on Tuesday. The index is up 14% this year and nearly 70% from its March lows, boosted by trillions of dollars in central bank liquidity and helicopter money and also hopes that coronavirus vaccines will re-open locked-down economies.

“The prospect of more rapid and widespread inoculation will be a shot of confidence to markets as the COVID-19 struggle intensifies,” said Janet Mui, investment director at wealth manager Brewin Dolphin.

Earlier in the session, Asia-Pacific shares ex-Japan rose 1.4% to a record high, bringing its gains this year to 19% led by Hong Kong and South Korea, as investors continued to chase beaten-down Chinese internet names. That offset the sentiment drag from fading prospects for bigger U.S. stimulus payments. An extended rebound in shares of Tencent and Meituan, which had been falling amid an antitrust probe into rival Alibaba, helped the MSCI Asia Pacific Index gain 0.8% on Wednesday. China’s tech-heavy ChiNext Index climbed 3.4%, putting it in line for its highest close since July 2015. The advance took the index gain in 2020 to 62%, in line for the most in five years. The large-cap CSI 300 Index also on pace for highest finish since 2015, rising 1.1%

Communication services and information technology were Asia’s top-performing sectors while industrials was the only industry group to fall. Hong Kong’s benchmark jumped 2.2% to the highest level since February, led by Alibaba and peers, as mainland money continued to pile in. China’s CSI 300 Index gained 1.4% to its highest close since June 2015. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.9% However, equities in Australia retreated after a three-day rally. Japan stocks also fell on their last day of trading for the year, down -0.45%, though the Nikkei 225 Stock Average ended near its highest level in 30 years..

Attention now again turns to the Senate, where although many Republican Senators in the United States remain adamantly opposed to increasing relief payments, support is growing among them, including two from Georgia, who are running in crucial races that will determine who will control the Senate.

In FX, the dollar’s weakness continued. It dropped again on Wednesday, the first day where settlement of trades will be in 2021. The Bloomberg dollar index slid 0.4% to its lowest since April 18, 2018 as traders squared currency positions ahead of the year’s end amid thin liquidity. The euro reached its highest since 2018 against the greenback at close to $1.23, while the pound climbed, with U.K. lawmakers expected to approve a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union later Wednesday.  The risk-sensitive Australian and New Zealand dollars advanced amid portfolio rebalancing flows: the OZ dollar rose 0.6% to $0.7663, a two-and-a-half-year high. The Japanese yen also gained 0.25% to 103.28 per dollar.

“The start of COVID‑19 immunization campaigns in several countries as well as additional U.S. fiscal support reduce downside risk to the global economy and bode well for general financial market sentiment,” analysts at Commonwealth Bank of Australia said in a note.

In rates, yields are slightly cheaper across the curve near session highs as U.S. trading gets under way, facing upside pressure from risk assets. U.S. yields are cheaper by ~2bp at long end of the curve, steepening 5s30s by ~1bp, with 10-year just below 0.95%, higher by ~1bp vs 2.5bp for U.K. 10-year yield; bunds trade broadly in line on final trading day of the year for euro-area government debt. Gilt yields and pound also are higher after U.K. approved another vaccine.

In commodities, oil prices extended their recent climb on hopes stimulus and reopening of economies next year will spur fuel demand. WTI crude futures were up 0.73% at $48.35 a barrel. Gold was steady at $1,878.5 an ounce, while bitcoin hit a record high of $28,600 before reversing.

On today’s calendar, the economic data agenda includes pending home sales, MNI Chicago PMI and wholesale inventories

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures up 0.4% to 3,733.25
• STOXX Europe 600 up 0.2% to 402.52
• MXAP up 0.8% to 199.23
• MXAPJ up 1.4% to 658.71
• Nikkei down 0.5% to 27,444.17
• Topix down 0.8% to 1,804.68
• Hang Seng Index up 2.2% to 27,147.11
• Shanghai Composite up 1.1% to 3,414.45
• Sensex up 0.3% to 47,745.08
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.3% to 6,682.43
• Kospi up 1.9% to 2,873.47
• German 10Y yield rose 1.3 bps to -0.558%
• Euro up 0.08% to $1.2259
• Brent Futures up 0.6% to $51.39/bbl
• Italian 10Y yield rose 1.8 bps to 0.447%
• Spanish 10Y yield rose 0.7 bps to 0.057%
• Brent Futures up 0.6% to $51.39/bbl
• Gold spot up 0.06% to $1,879.32
• U.S. Dollar Index down 0.2% to 89.86

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

• AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine won U.K. clearance, marking the first approval worldwide for a shot that’s faced questions but will be key to mass immunizations
• Economic shocks like the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 only arrive once every few generations, and they bring about permanent and far-reaching change
• Boris Johnson urged U.K. lawmakers to approve his Brexit trade deal and complete Britain’s four-year divorce from the European Union. Parliament was recalled from its Christmas break for an emergency session on Wednesday to rush the trade agreement into law in a single day, 24 hours before the U.K. leaves the EU single market and customs union
• Changes to the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting panel will make the U.S. central bank even less likely to tighten monetary policy in the new year, no matter how much of a jolt the economy gets from the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines
• More areas of England are set to be placed under lockdown, as the new coronavirus strain puts growing pressure on hospitals. People living in London, Essex and Kent should behave as if they have Covid-19, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in an interview with LBC radio on Wednesday
• Germany’s daily coronavirus deaths surpassed 1,000 for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, underscoring the urgency facing Europe’s leaders to slow the spread and roll out vaccines

US Event Calendar

• 8:30am: Advance Goods Trade Balance, est. $81.5b deficit, prior $80.3b deficit
• 8:30am: Retail Inventories MoM, prior 0.8%; Wholesale Inventories MoM, est. 0.6%, prior 1.1%
• 9:45am: MNI Chicago PMI, est. 56, prior 58.2
• 10am: Pending Home Sales MoM, est. 0.0%, prior -1.1%; NSA YoY, est. 21.0%, prior 19.5%

Even as regulators in the EU opt to give the approval process for the adenovirus-vector vaccine just a little more time, the British have, as expected, approved the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for emergency use, becoming the first country to do so.

With 100MM doses of the AZ-Oxford on order, the UK expects to vaccinate its entire population (except for children, who appear to be the least vulnerable) with the doses it has ordered from AZ-Oxford, along with the doses from Pfizer-BioNTech (30MM). Health Secretary Matt Hancock appeared on the BBC Wednesday to declare that “I can now say with confidence that we can vaccinate everyone” including the “over 50s” – who will come first – and “the under 50s”.

Dr. June Raine, head of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory products Agency – better known as the MHRA – said the vaccine would save tens of thousands of lives while promising “no corners have been cut” in assessing the shot’s safety and effectiveness.

PM Boris Johnson declared the vaccine development “a triumph” for British science, adding “[w]e will now move to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible.” England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty, meanwhile, praised the “considerable collective effort that has brought us to this point.”

Britain is moving to approve the jab even as questions linger about adverse reactions seen in a small number of trial participants. Safety questions prompted a month-long shutdown of the vaccine’s Phase 3 trial in the US.

But it’s understandable that the Brits are the first out the gate to approve it: Unlike Pfizer and Moderna’s jabs, the AstraZeneca shot is UK-made. The government has promised to start injecting high-risk patients with the jabs as soon as Monday.

Source: Bloomberg

The UK has hedged its bets with orders of enough vaccine orders to vaccinate its population twice over.

Source: Bloomberg

Though Phase 3 trial data suggest it’s less effective, the AZ jab is also cheaper and easier to store than the Pfizer vaccine (Note: data from AZ’s Phase 3 trials suggested that effectiveness can climb to 90% when patients receive a half-dose to start instead of the full dose). Still, the government has said the vaccine will be administered in a two full-dose regimen, because – according to the data – the lower dose of the vaccine that gave a higher efficacy result doesn’t hold up under closer analysis.

However, even with the pace of vaccinations expected to accelerate in the coming weeks, Secretary Hancock is expected to announce another expansion of “Tier 4” lockdown restrictions, per the BBC.

Millions more people in England are to be placed under the toughest tier four coronavirus restrictions as case numbers continue to rise. Health Secretary Matt Hancock will set out the details of which areas will change in a Commons statement later. Infection rates in lower-tier areas of England have risen rapidly in the last seven days, government data shows. Tier four rules include a “stay at home” order, and mean businesses such as hairdressers and gyms must close. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Hancock said: “It is clear as we have seen from the data in the last few days that the number of infections is going up. “That’s unfortunately not just happening in the London and the South East, as it was in the last few weeks, but it’s starting to happen elsewhere in the country.” The new variant “has made suppressing the virus much harder”, he said, adding the government didn’t “take these tiering decisions lightly”.

All this comes as BoJo deploys military troops to help prepare schools for the return of students after the winter holiday, even as daily infection numbers surge to new records, purportedly driven by the new, more infectious strain of the virus inspiring the expanded lockdowns in the UK. Regardless of where you live, the British government is asking all people to ‘stay in’ this New Year’s.

Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,

A video from a press conference in Ukraine is going viral. It is the follow-up to a video press conference that Ukraine released over a year ago, in which Members of the Ukraine Parliament demanded that President Zelensky and President Trump investigate billions of dollars of corruption in Ukraine that is tied to the U.S. The newly released video is meant to provide documentary and eyewitness information about the corruption – and the Biden family figures prominently in the story.

The video is long – over an hour – and not all of it involves the Biden family. This post quotes those portions of the press conference that address Biden family corruption. The gist of it is that, while Democrats obsess about Trump’s purported criminality, despite the absence of any evidence, their chosen standard-bearer is extraordinarily corrupt.

Indeed, I would argue that Biden is one of the most corrupt politicians ever in America. In the past, corrupt politicians have confined themselves to playing dirty in their own back yard, making money from deals with fellow Americans.

I believe that Biden is the first person ever to serve in the highest reaches of government – the Senate and the Vice Presidency – who sold his country out to the highest foreign bidders. It’s an insult to everything America has stood for since its inception that massive election fraud might allow this person to set foot in the oval office.

With that intro, here’s the video, followed by quotations from the video regarding Joe and Hunter Biden. I recommend Nabu Leaks for more information, enlarged pictures of the relevant documents naming the Bidens, audios of phone calls between Biden and former President Poroshenko after Trump won the election, and the full transcript of the press conference.

From the introduction:

At one of the first press conferences about a year ago, we showed bank transactions for hundreds of thousands of dollars to the family of former US Vice President Joe Biden, namely to his son Robert Hunter Biden. The latter was a member of the board of directors of the infamous gas production company Burisma.

Burisma belongs to the fugitive Yanukovych-era minister Mykola Zlochevsky.

The inclusion of Biden in the Burisma leadership and payment for his services is nothing more than a political cover that protected Zlochevsky from the Ukrainian law, namely from the criminal code.

Two foreign witnesses whose identities are protected – Witness 1 and Witness 2 – came forward to testify about the facts of the case. Konstantyn Kulyk, the Head of the Group of Prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, explained what the witnesses offered:

One quote from a statement by a Witness:

“All the described financial transactions were fictitious. And a lot of money was paid in Ukraine so that the state authorities turned a blind eye to it.”

[snip]

In the period from November 2014 to October 2015, the Witnesses noticed strange recurring payments that, at the direction of Oleh Nelin (Zlochevsky’s assistant in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), were sent from the account of BURISMA HOLDINGS LTD, which was opened for the personal needs of Mykola Zlochevsky, in the Latvian PrivatBank AS to the account of the American company ROSEMONT SENECA BONAI LLC.

The witnesses drew attention to these payments since about 20 times the same uneven amount was recurring – $83,333.33 as payment for consulting services.

[snip]

In the period from November 2014 to October 2015, the money stolen from Ukrainians, located on account of BURISMA HOLDINGS LTD with the Latvian PrivatBank AS, was transferred to the account of ROSEMONT SENECA BONAI LLC in the American bank MORGAN STANLEY in payments in total amounting to $3.4 million for consulting services.

[snip]

This is a payment for the political “cover” that Biden provided to Zlochevsky.

The video offers a graphic image showing the flow of money and favors:

Andrii Derkach picked up the narrative. He focused on Joe Biden’s conversations with Former President Poroshenko when Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor, started looking into Zlochevsky’s graft. As we all know, Biden openly boasted about holding up money from the U.S. unless Poroshenko fired Shokin.

The press conference included audio from a November 16, 2016 conversation between Biden and Poroshenko. Biden was wheeling and dealing for influence and money – and conducting foreign policy behind Trump’s back. The men spoke again in February 2017, at which time Biden smothered Poroshenko with fulsome compliments.

Ukraine’s government is gunning for Joe Biden. The Ukrainians know Biden helped prop up a corrupt government in their country and that he profited mightily from doing so. No wonder this video has gone viral.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

I remember that in 2009 three messages were constantly repeated:

“In this crisis measures are different, because governments are investing in the recovery by increasing public spending,” “the funds from stimulus plans will strengthen the recovery “and “central banks help a stronger recovery by lowering rates and increasing liquidity”.

Then, 2010 arrived and the Eurozone entered a deeper crisis.

In many aspects, this recession is similar.

Many governments are doing the same as they did in 2009. Extend and pretend. Extend structural imbalances and pretend this time will be different.

It is worrying to see the same level of excessive optimism of 2009 these days, and we must prepare for a complex environment and a difficult recovery if we are to emerge from this crisis stronger.

A recent analysis by Ned Davis Research shows that as government debt rises, growth slows, and jobs recovery is weaker. Using a multi-factor mode analysis with data from 1951 to 2020, as government debt to GDP exceeds 100%, real growth per annum falls to 1.6%, non-residential investment falls and non-farm payroll recovery weakens to 0.6% per annum.

Two factors tell us that the recovery in 2021 will likely be disappointing.

1. Massive liquidity injections, with $26 trillion injected by central banks, have been used mostly to perpetuate elevated government spending, fundamentally current spending, and fund public debt.

2. The second is that corporate balance sheets have been damaged to a level that will make it difficult to see a significant growth in investment above depreciation. SP Global expects global capital expenditure to remain weak in 2021.

Global growth estimates look too optimistic. The consensus assumes a recovery of 4% globally in 2021, returning to the GDP of 2019 at the end of 2022. This assumes an extraordinary and unprecedented fiscal multiplier of debt and liquidity. One of the most important concerns is to see a recovery in GDP led by a bloated public spending and record debt that would not generate enough employment growth. This is what is called a jobless K-shaped recovery, where some sectors rebound rapidly (technology, high added-value sectors) and a majority (Small and medium enterprises, self-employed) either do not recover or worsen.

In this crisis, developed countries have had an enormous fiscal space at their disposal to face the pandemic. An economy doped by high liquidity and low rates. Some countries have used part of this fiscal space to preserve the business fabric and help create jobs. Others, a majority, have taken the crisis opportunity to increase structural imbalances and current spending without real economic return. This means that there is an important risk of a jobless recovery where furloughed jobs are not absorbed entirely.  

A solvency crisis cannot be solved with liquidity. All the central bank quantitative easing programs do not prevent the bankruptcy domino from accelerating in 2021, just as we saw in Europe after the 2009 optimism. This financial crisis after an optimist period comes because the challenged of the economy do not come from lack of access to debt or low rates, but working capital rising way above sales.

Expectations regarding the impact of the European Recovery Fund seem exaggerated. Too much hope is being placed on the magic of the Keynesian multiplier effect of these funds, despite the evidence of their low effectiveness, already contrasted after the disappointment of the Growth Plan and Employment 2009 plan and the Juncker Plan. The probability that these funds will be misused and unproductively is high.

When I look at the estimates of GDP growth for 2021-2022, I see that consensus estimates assume a 1.5x to 2x multiplier to the stimulus packages implemented in 2020. This is almost impossible because it has not happened in the past three decades, there is evidence that the multiplier is very low or zero. The study of Ilzetzki et al” How Big (Small?) Are Fiscal Multipliers? “ (Journal of Monetary Economics, Volume 60, Issue 2, March 2013) shows the history of the cumulative impact of public spending in 44 countries, showing the very low effectiveness of fiscal stimuli. Even if we accepted positive fiscal multipliers, the empirical evidence of the last fifteen years shows a range that, when positive, moves barely between 0.5 and 1 at most. However, in most countries has been negative (as reflected in the FT article “Has the IMF proved multipliers are really large?“, and “Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers” IMF study).

What can be expected?

Some relevant downgrades to GDP growth estimates in those countries with the highest indebtedness and where the fiscal space has been used to perpetuate current government spending and finance automatic stabilizers.

We may also see a large increase in debt as GDP growth undershoots expectations and deficits remain elevated, something that will impact 2022 estimates as well. As governments may decide to raise taxes to finance part of the deficit increase, the impact on jobs and growth will likely be larger.

There is also an important factor to consider. Gross Capital formation may likely disappoint as 2020 has seen an unprecedented zombification of the economy which has led to an abnormal rise in overcapacity for such a short crisis with a large bounce in the third quarter of 2020.

Fiscal and monetary space and are not excuses for counter-reforms and wasting money. Countries have the unique opportunity to use these tools to strengthen the productive fabric and create employment, but unfortunately a large part has been squandered.

There is only one way to strengthen the recovery: To reduce structural imbalances by regaining budgetary sanity and implementing serious measures to attract capital. To fall back into propagandistic optimism would be a mistake.