Earlier headline and brief summary is here:
Check out that link for the major points, but a few more bits and pieces now worth noting:
- "We are not calling for a recession in Germany ... yet", argued High Frequency Economics in a note this week. "We are suggesting that the peak of economic growth for this cycle has been realised." Once you are passed a peak, of course, then the only way is down.
Across the eurozone as a whole
- In truth, the growth of the last two years has been mostly an illusion
- The European Central Bank has chucked 2.2 trillion of freshly printed euros at the economy and slashed interest rates as close to zero as it can possibly get. It would be extraordinary if that amount of cash didn't stimulate some kind of revival. But the key question was always this: would quantitative easing kick-start a genuine recovery, as it has in the United States, or to a more limited extent in the UK? Or would it, as it has in Japan for 20 years, merely generate a feeble revival that almost immediately runs out of steam?
