A growing number of Republican senators are now recognizing Joe Biden's victory. The hypothetical scenario of a Republican Fort Alamo in the Senate no longer holds, if it had ever really been realistic. That doesn't stop Donald Trump from continuing to yell conspiracy. His justice minister, William Barr, decided to resign yesterday. As for Joe Biden, he urged everyone to move on.

On equity markets, indices are going a bit all over the place, staying within bounds narrow enough to prevent a real trend from taking shape. An interesting paper by Michael Hartnett and his team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, under the title "Frankenbull", points out that in 2020, central banks have bought back $1.3 billion worth of assets every 60 minutes, which is truly mind-boggling. There have also been 190 rate cuts around the world, or 4 rate cuts every 5 trading days, which is also mind-boggling. Let’s also mention the $139 billion of financial inflows into equity funds in the last six weeks or the fact that 9730 companies went public worldwide to raise $1,100 billion, an absolute record. And finally, U.S. companies have never borrowed so much money, whether through bonds or leveraged loans: $2.5 trillion in total, from both investment grade and high-yield issuers.

These figures confirm the singularity of the year 2020, which is almost a condensation of the cycle in itself: a deep and ultra-fast crisis, a sharp recovery, a second-round effect, re-acceleration... The problem is that, unlike classic expansion phases, there are many people left behind in the real economy. And we are left with mountains of public debt and don't really know what will happen in reality, even though the most likely outcome is that they will become almost perpetual.

Wall Street is still waiting for an end-of-year adrenaline rush in the form of a bipartisan support plan. Futures tied to the S&P 500 rose 0.6% today after a bipartisan group of lawmakers urged Congressional leaders on Monday to proceed with a $748 billion-spending package.

In Europe, the November unemployment rate in the United Kingdom rose by only 0.1% to 4.9%. This result is below the consensus of analysts who were expecting a rate of 5.1%.

Today on the agenda, the United States the Empire Manufacturing Index for December and the industrial production figures for November. This morning, China reported industrial production, retail sales and unemployment rate in line with expectations.