1. Europe Braces for Another Fiscal Push to Support Economy Through New Lockdowns — British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced on Tuesday a £4.6 billion ($6.2 billion) package of “top-up grants” for some 600,000 businesses in the retail and hospitality industries. The announcement comes after several government-financed measures since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, including a “furlough” job support scheme due to expire at the end of March.
The U.K. government spent the equivalent of more than 8% of GDP in immediate direct fiscal spending in 2020 to counter the pandemic’s consequences. That’s roughly the same amount as Germany, and significantly more than France, Italy or Spain. Other European governments are now considering other rounds of fiscal stimulus to take into account the unexpected severity of the pandemic’s second wave. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz last month announced a doubling of Germany’s borrowing plans for 2021 and has stated that he would be ready to spend more if needed.
2. Congress Certify Biden’s Win — after a day of turmoil, when a violent mob halted the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, the joint session completed the count and affirmed Biden’s defeat of President Trump, with 306 electors to the incumbent’s 232. See more below. Trump commits to orderly transition of power. The president issued a statement early this morning committing to an orderly transition of power to Biden on Jan. 20, but said he continued to “totally disagree with the outcome of the election.”
3. Democrat Jon Ossoff Wins Georgia Senate Runoff — Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won both Senate runoff races in Georgia, giving Democrats control of the U.S. Senate and easing the path for President-elect Joe Biden’s appointments and legislative agenda. Mr. Warnock defeated Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, while Mr. Ossoff took the seat held by former Republican Sen. David Perdue, whose term expired over the weekend. The new Senate will be evenly split between the two parties at 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker vote, if it comes to that.
4. Pelosi Lays Out Plan for Impeachment of President Trump — Speaker Pelosi said Democrats will bring a resolution on Monday calling on Vice President Mike Pence and cabinet members to remove the president using the 25th Amendment under unanimous consent. If that fails, it will be brought for a full vote Tuesday. Pence would then have until Wednesday to respond or “we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the Floor,” Pelosi said in a letter to Democratic lawmakers. So far only one Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, has explicitly said that Trump “committed impeachable offenses.” Both Toomey and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Ak.) have called President Trump to resign and Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) has said he would consider voting to remove the president from office.

Below is the Year End poem that recap the major Events of 2020

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

Tags: President Impeachment

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2021 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Weekly Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.