Germany declares first official recession in Europe
The German government has today confirmed that the economy is officially in recession and the situation looks like getting worse before it gets better. While this is the first official recession in Europe it will shortly be followed by French and Italian declarations together with the UK government over the next few months.
Slowly but surely all of Europe is likely to slip into recession although there is some hope that recent ECB interest-rate reductions may well help to take the edge off the situation. Germany was always favourite to slip into recession before any other country due to the struggle of recent years and the credit crunch. Officially a recession is only confirmed as when a country posts negative economic growth in two consecutive quarters.
The announcement from the German government was closely followed and by news that both the US and Japan are also likely to announce that they are officially in recession over the next few weeks. This is the time when the threat of recession becomes reality and the concerns which many have harboured for some time start to come to the fore.
It will be interesting to see how the governments of the world react to the prospect of depressing news flow for some time to come.
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