FX.co ★ Omicron is no longer scary. Joe Biden calms everyone down.

Key US stock indices rose again on Wednesday and are again approaching their historical highs. Unfortunately, in the last days of the outgoing year, everyone is talking about Omicron. At the moment, there is practically no news from the Fed and Jerome Powell. However, yesterday, the stock market could still react to statistics, since the only more or less important report of the day - the report on GDP for the third quarter in the final estimate showed an increase of 2.3% q/q, and not by 2.1%, as indicated in the second estimate. Thus, in the third quarter, the US economy slowed down its growth rate, but still, at the end of the quarter it even accelerated a little, despite the raging "coronavirus" and its new strain "omicron". It is about Omicron that most of the conversations are going on now. For a long time, everyone knows that this strain in most cases does not cause any complications and rarely leads to death. However, this does not negate the fact that people continue to get infected, and business and economic activity continue to fall. Thus, even if omicron is compared with a common cold, if everyone gets sick, it will not mean that there will be no consequences for the economy. Moreover, the American economy has just reached pre-crisis levels and a new powerful "wave" can roll back all progress for a couple of quarters.

In the States, 227 thousand new diseases were diagnosed on December 21, and most of them fall on omicron. On this occasion, President Joe Biden has already addressed the nation, who urged everyone not to panic. He said that those who died from the "coronavirus" in recent months had not been vaccinated and called on everyone to be vaccinated, as well as revaccinated. At the same time, many publications, such as the British Guardian, believe that Joe Biden has not fulfilled his election promises. Biden, who insisted that former President Donald Trump had lost the fight against the coronavirus, promised to defeat the pandemic. However, after a year of his rule, the States again found themselves in a "difficult winter", from an epidemiological point of view. If now Biden starts closing schools and businesses, introducing the American economy into a new "lockdown", his political ratings, already not high, may collapse even lower. Americans, like many other nations in the world, are already tired of restrictions. Especially if we are talking about quarantine for Christmas and New Year. On the other hand, if you do nothing, the epidemiological situation may worsen several times.