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WEAK ECONOMIC DATA from Germany, France and Italy has sent shock waves through the eurozone.
The slowdown in Germany, which is seen as the economic engine of the growth in the bloc, is particularly significant. The eurozone’s largest economy shrank by 0.2% in the three months to the end of June.
In a statement released this morning, Germany’s statistics office said that the economy is “losing momentum”.
Q2 #GDP in the #euro area so far, signalling 0.0-0.1% growth in the currency union. Italy and Germany drop to bottom pic.twitter.com/oes5aGNAiV
Italian GDP growth declined by the same rate as Germany, while the French economy was treading water for the second quarter in a row, according to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies.
Figures from the official European statistics agency, eurostat, showed that GDP was again static in the eurozone, and increased only slightly by 0.2% in the EU as a whole.
Earlier this summer, the Department of Finance published figures showing the Irish economy had grown by 2.7% during the first quarter. If that trend were to be sustained into the second quarter, Ireland would be a major outlier to continent-wide trends.
Inflation in the eurozone also slowed, stoking fears that a package of policy measures announced by ECB president Mario Draghi in June was insufficient to prevent price stagnation.
The European Central Bank has a inflation target of just under 2%, which has been consistently missed in recent months.
“No bright spots”
Danae Kyriakopoulou, an economist with the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said that the Eurozone is “a step away from recovery as output in the currency bloc as a whole failed to grow over the second quarter of the year”.
There are no bright spots in the picture when looking at performance in the first half of 2014 overall.
Quantitative easing would involve the mass buying of Government, and potentially commercial bonds by the ECB in an effort to stimulate the eurozone economy.
Kyriakopoulou said that the ECB’s actions had proved ineffective, adding that “reality, today’s data showed, did not submit to the ECB’s intentions”.
This adds pressure on Frankfurt to consider graduating from June’s pea-shooter stage to the bazooka that is QE.
Spanish growth
Despite relatively positive results for the Spanish economy, which grew by 0.6%, some commentators said that both that country and Italy will need further cash injections from the ECB.
Megan Greene, who is chief economist with Maverick Intelligence and will be a specialist advisor to the Oireachtas banking inquiry, tweeted:
However bad Ger economy is, Sp/It will need more ECB help. Bad domestic politics for Ger to support helping them when it's struggling (1/2)
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My advice if you have a few bob spare is invest one weekends drink money in lite coins. Created by Google engineers its an alternative to bit coin and a couple of years behind it. When you consider a bit coin was what a few euro and jumped up to 700 or so at one point. A lite coin is about 11 euro a coin. If anything you cash out in months with what you invest I do see it climbing.
You could mine then but jesus its painful and even if you have best pc its not worth it
I got 2,200 xrp free – ripple. Waiting to see what happens. Sat on my free mined bitcoins for a couple of years thinking they would never be worth anything, how wrong I was :)
Do check it out :) mining a bit coin your talking years to wsrn one coin in which case you fried a few gpu’s and a esb bill of small country. They are expensive to but also hundred for one.
That’s why I think lite coins could work. Would you really miss €100 next year if it falls apart but could get nice little return. There is few sites where you can see how much bit and lite coins ate trafing against $£€
@eye c u depends on the hashing power you have. If you have a knc 2 terrahash miner you will mine a couple of bitcoins a year at current difficulty. Scrypt based coins like litecoin/dogecoin are cheaper for the average person to get involved in. BTW you never told us how you got those scars?
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