European factories falter, Asia flourishes

>>exposing a widening gulf between Europe and the rest of the world

How do you work that one out? In Germany unemployment is 4%, whereas in the US even the wildly optimistic official figure is over twice that amount. The gulf seems to be between the industrial nations of Asia and Europe vs the debtor nation of the US.

“Only a handful of the 17-nation bloc’s economies are still growing and the euro zone as a whole is expected to suffer a mild recession until the third quarter of this year, a Reuters poll showed last month.”

This is a rather bizarre prediction. Is is based on careful analysis or did it come from an old Roma woman with glass beads and a crystal ball?

Unless the Eurozone is able to quickly contrive and enact a comprehensive growth strategy, the recession will expand. If that hypothetical growth strategy was enacted tomorrow, I wouldn’t expect to see it bear fruit for at least six months.

To PAndrews-The irony is that the debts of the U.S. and southern European Nations have allowed consumers to purchase exports from the rich European Nations and China. without thwe debt, the exporters like China and Germany would be unable to grow.

The exporters have lent money to the importers in order to purchase the exports!

PAndrews- Germany has such a low unemployment figure because of the way they organize their employment figures. Sure they have a much lower unemployment number than the United States, whose unemployment is really around 12-13%, but most of Germany’s workers are woefully underemployed. Their businesses try to have their workers work less hours rather than firing, which seems to be somewhat of a good idea. However, it makes it so that most of the German people are languishing near poverty.

China on path to becoming Europe’s financier. Inevitable. Irreversible. Global balancing continues.