The improvement is tied to vaccine rollouts and the planned $1.9 trillion relief package. “Some point during mid-year, U.S. economic output is expected to breach or meet the pre-virus level of output,” said Jeffrey Cleveland, chief economist at Payden & Rygel. “So we’ll make up for lost ground, lost time, which is great news for the U.S.” Now, U.S. interest rates could trend up in that kind of environment, relative to the rest of the world, which could make investment in the U.S. more attractive than investment in emerging markets. “As the U.S. recovers to pre-virus levels, the OECD expects that many of the other countries on Earth will still remain well below pre-virus levels, and so that will be a gap that needs to be made up in 2022.”