Start Date of European Recession Gets Officiated As Annual Deflation Looms
Wall Street Journal:
Spain's Price Drop Stokes Worries
Negative Inflation Reported as Euro Zone's Recession Is Dated to January 2008
Spain became the first country using the euro to post an annual decline in consumer prices in the current slowdown, underlining concerns about the potential for deflation in parts of Europe, as an important research institution reported that the entire euro zone has been in recession since January 2008 -- just a month after the U.S.
Spain's consumer prices slipped 0.1% in March from the year before, the Spanish National Statistics Institute said, as the country grapples with soaring unemployment and the collapse of the property market. The figure reflects a harmonized index of consumer prices, or HICP, for the European Union...
Spain's economic fall has been swift and dramatic. Its unemployment rate has almost doubled in the past year to 14.8%, the highest in the 27-nation European Union. The European Commission predicts Spain's jobless rate will reach 19% next year...
[Europe's Recession Began 14 Months Ago]
Monday's finding about the euro-zone recession came from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, which uses broadly the same methodology as the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. The Centre is funded by public and private groups including central banks, governments, the European Commission and financial institutions.
A CEPR committee of nine economists determined that the European recession began in January 2008 after an expansion that stretched back 57 quarters to the third quarter of 1993. The dating of the onset of the recession will also cast some doubt on the ECB's alertness to the scale of the euro zone's economic woes. The bank raised rates six months after that date, in July, which also was after some other central banks had begun lowering rates...
Dow Jones adds:
There are no indications as yet that the euro zone economy will soon pull out of recession. According to a monthly survey by the European Commission released Monday, business and consumer confidence in the 16 countries that use the euro weakened further to reach a record low in March as new orders continued to dry up and concerns about job losses mounted.
Other survey evidence for the first quarter to date are broadly consistent with the confidence survey.
A survey of purchasing managers at manufacturers and service providers released March 24 showed that the economy continued to contract in March, although at a slightly slower pace than in February. That was also the message of the EuroCoin indicator compiled by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Bank of Italy...
Spain's Price Drop Stokes Worries
Negative Inflation Reported as Euro Zone's Recession Is Dated to January 2008
Spain became the first country using the euro to post an annual decline in consumer prices in the current slowdown, underlining concerns about the potential for deflation in parts of Europe, as an important research institution reported that the entire euro zone has been in recession since January 2008 -- just a month after the U.S.
Spain's consumer prices slipped 0.1% in March from the year before, the Spanish National Statistics Institute said, as the country grapples with soaring unemployment and the collapse of the property market. The figure reflects a harmonized index of consumer prices, or HICP, for the European Union...
Spain's economic fall has been swift and dramatic. Its unemployment rate has almost doubled in the past year to 14.8%, the highest in the 27-nation European Union. The European Commission predicts Spain's jobless rate will reach 19% next year...
[Europe's Recession Began 14 Months Ago]
Monday's finding about the euro-zone recession came from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, which uses broadly the same methodology as the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. The Centre is funded by public and private groups including central banks, governments, the European Commission and financial institutions.
A CEPR committee of nine economists determined that the European recession began in January 2008 after an expansion that stretched back 57 quarters to the third quarter of 1993. The dating of the onset of the recession will also cast some doubt on the ECB's alertness to the scale of the euro zone's economic woes. The bank raised rates six months after that date, in July, which also was after some other central banks had begun lowering rates...
Dow Jones adds:
There are no indications as yet that the euro zone economy will soon pull out of recession. According to a monthly survey by the European Commission released Monday, business and consumer confidence in the 16 countries that use the euro weakened further to reach a record low in March as new orders continued to dry up and concerns about job losses mounted.
Other survey evidence for the first quarter to date are broadly consistent with the confidence survey.
A survey of purchasing managers at manufacturers and service providers released March 24 showed that the economy continued to contract in March, although at a slightly slower pace than in February. That was also the message of the EuroCoin indicator compiled by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Bank of Italy...