German optimism was predictably, inevitably sent crashing in March and April 2022. According to that country’s ZEW survey, an uptick in general optimism from November 2021 to February 2022 collided with the reality of Russian armored vehicles trying to snake their way down to Kiev. Whereas sentiment had rebounded from an October low of 22.3, blamed on whichever of the [...]
Forgotten now, overridden by the arrival of the coronavirus, Germany’s economy was already well into recession before COVID. Quite a long time before. It wasn’t an earth-shattering collapse reaching downward to an incredible depth, that became the later effect of overreacting to the pandemic. We will simply never know what that prior contraction would have looked like, and how bad [...]
By the summer of 2018, there were already any number of economic warning signs over globally synchronized growth fading fast. Many if not most of them market-based, of course, but not all. In the realm of sentiment, for example, the Germans in particular had put their finger on the pulse of the global economy and found it suspiciously feeble, economic [...]
It has taken nearly two years for Germany’s ZEW to finally close its gap. The index for sentiment had popped all the way back in September 2019 buoyed by the ECB restarting QE; these peculiar German businesspersons who make up this particular survey panel do love their “stimulus” announcements no matter how many times the actual policy fails to stimulate [...]
It was very cold across much of the United States in February in parts of it that usually don’t freeze up – literally and figuratively. While electricity in Texas garnered most of the attention, the weather was just as bad in many other states across the typically mild wintering South. Undoubtedly, last month was an exception to the seasons’ status [...]
The idea behind post-Georgia reflation is that globally fiscal-led “stimulus” will be enough to fix what’s still wrong. The economy broke down, by choice, last year but with sufficient zeroes behind governments spending around the world, from DC to Brussels and a bunch in between, whatever costs and consequences remaining due from 2020 aren’t going to be unmanageable for 2021. [...]
Sticking with Europe, central bankers want and expect higher inflation because that would confirm an economy strong enough – and monetarily sufficed – to sustain success. It’s the sustainability which has been lacking; the global economy since the first global (euro)dollar shortage never able to do more than lurch between downturns and the absence of downturns (reflation).Without enough monetary oxygen [...]
Europe’s problems are more immediate. Encouraging news about Pfizer’s vaccine won’t change the European circumstances in near enough time to avoid what’s more and more looking like a real possibility for a retrenchment. In this case, COVID cases are a primary culprit, meaning how authorities over there are responding to their rise. As such, it has taken the shine off [...]
The original “V” narrative was simple and straightforward. The economy was turned off by governments prioritizing modeled simulations of something like the Black Death, but it would be easy enough to turn it right back on especially with the aid of so much “stimulus” being added in every possible way. Monetary, fiscal, you name it.Piece of cake. Legitimizing the choice [...]
OK, so not all of Germany’s bellwether business sector is gaga over Christine Lagarde. The particular subset of respondents who answer the survey from that country’s ZEW, if you recall, are absolutely nuts (about “stimulus.”) Other examinations have found rather less enthusiasm; still some degree of rising optimism, but nowhere near the exuberance displayed to the ZEW.The IFO’s sentiment surveys [...]
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