The European Union's Autumn economic forecasts
said gross domestic product (GDP) across the 17-nation currency area
would shrink 0.4pc in 2012 and that it would take until 2014 to recover, with
expected growth then of 1.4pc.
"Europe is going through a difficult process of macro-economic rebalancing,
which will still last for some time," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner
Olli Rehn said in a statement, pointing to a gradual pick-up "from early next
year."
The Commission expected the United States to far outstrip Europe, with steadily-increasing
growth above the two-percent mark going forward.
However, Rehn said there is still a risk that record and mounting
unemployment - put at nearly 12pc next year across the debt and austerity
ravaged eurozone - could undo progress on financial markets where the pressures
on government borrowing rates have eased in the past few months.
With inflation at next year forecast to "fall below two percent," the core
target underpinning eurozone-wide economic planning, Rehn said that decisions
taken at some two dozen crisis summits had "laid the foundations for
strengthening confidence."
A German government spokesman told reporters that parts of the
troika report on Greece would be ready by Monday, although they
added that Germany’s lower house of parliament would need to
approve the tranche before any cash could be disbursed.
A German government spokesman told reporters that parts of the
troika report on Greece would be ready by Monday, although they
added that Germany’s lower house of parliament would need to
approve the tranche before any cash could be disbursed. 
3 comments:
The Greeks need to do the following:
1) Get out of the Eurozone.
2) Default.
3) Inflate.
4) Exploit and export the above-average goods and services you do have (shipping, agricultural products, tourism).
And last - but definitely not least
5) Reform your corrupt and incompetent society. That means, pay and collect taxes, retire later, stop featherbedding and get efficient.
But reading this editorial I am left wondering "why this sudden concern?"The Guardian's love of all things EU and its glossing over of the malign affects of 'ever closer union' has had on the member states has been - at best - misguided
History tells us that you put people under unbearable strain, that nothing good comes out of it. The people being punished most severely are those that have nothing to do with the cause of Greece's troubles. However, it is the way of elites, that the price of their incompetence is usually paid by those least able to. Hell, we see it here, with the burden of austerity pushed onto the poor, sick, vulnerable, disabled...............with tax cuts for the wealthy. We should look to address this in Greece, Britain and else where.
What are you talking about? Western democracies have all without exception been built on massive debt. Without massive debt the industrial revolution wouldn't have happened. The present hysterical obsession with debt is ludicrous. Of course countries need to get their debt down but the way to do that, the way it's been done successfully in the past is to grow the economy. Austerity measures at a time of recession are self-defeating. This has been demonstrated so many times yet still we repeat the same disasterous mistake.
Oh and by the way the Greek government who cooked the books and disguised the size of Greek debt to con their way into the Euro was not "progressive", it was Conservative.
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