The economic "recovery" in Europe

Bit by bit through the piece - and thanks B for posting it!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/8358227.stm

The eurozone economy has emerged from recession after growing between

July and September, figures have shown.
...

However, both France and Germany grew by less than expected, a sign
of how tentative signs of recovery remain.

A temporary halt in the fall is called a recovery - this clutching at straws.

The European Union as a whole - which includes non-eurozone countries
such as the UK and Sweden - also emerged from recession, growing 0.2%
in the third quarter.
...

Oh, well, everything's hunky-dory, then.

The UK, Europe's second largest economy, has now contracted for six
consecutive quarters, the first time this has happened since
quarterly figures were first recorded in 1955.

That's 54 years ago. I was around then, most other people weren't. So ever since then, the economy's been healthier? It's been growing and thriving - growing is thriving, right? So the country (not us) is stronger and wealthier than it's ever been. Then why all the whimpering by the rich and powerful? Why the growing poverty? All this strength and prosperity - and the strong and the prosperous are unable to take a paltry per cent or two of less growth than usual?

ANALYSIS
...

(Well, what passes for analysis among the witch doctors and the village gossips...)

Economists are quick to point
out that a great deal of the growth is thanks to economic stimulus
packages which are bolstering European economies. Germany alone is
currently lending 85bn euros of its taxpayers' money.

All this strength and prosperity - and they're putting everybody in hock for decades? Cos it's not just the taxpayers, it's everyone who is dependent on taxes for a decent life and sometimes life itself. Sorry - my mistake - everybody except the rich and powerful who got us into the mess in the first place. They're the ones who'll be sending the cops and the army in to collect the debts over the next few decades.

Nobody can even
guess what will happen to growth when national governments stop
pumping credit into the system - as the European Commission is urging
them to do within two years.

Oh yes we can. And it's not pretty. Companies surviving on corporate welfare will be thrown into the mass graves of bankruptcy. Contraction will turn from suffocating squeeze to strangulation and bonecrushing. People relying on wages from these companies to stay alive

will starve and sleep on pavements and try and sell matches in the streets. I won't say what a lot of the women will be doing.

And the magical thing is that the debt will remain and be called in.

Economists had expected Germany to grow by 0.8% in the third quarter,
and France's growth was only half what had been predicted.

...

Tut, who would ever imagine economists could be so misguided in their expectations? I mean they've been right all along so far, haven't they? With growing world prosperity, the American dream of the fifties - Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin - is now flourishing everywhere. So many countries have reached economic "lift-off" thanks to US inspired economic remedies, thanks to Milton Friedman, the IMF and the World Bank. And the US Armed Forces beating back all the bad guys out to prevent the spread of prosperity, of democracy, of hope, of freedom.

France and Germany may have been less hard hit than the UK by the
global economic slowdown because their financial sectors, which were
at the heart of the crisis, account for a smaller proportion of their
economies.

But the financial sectors weren't and aren't at the heart of the crisis. They're just the most sensitive to its arrival. The heart of the crisis is the excess of capital, the excess of productive capacity, the glut of goods on the market. Too much prosperity for capitalism to digest. If the heart of the crisis was financial, the billion-dollar handouts would have had everything back in full swing again by now.

I'll say that again - too much prosperity for capitalism to handle.

Stronger exports and consumer spending, as well as government
stimulus packages, have contributed to the growth in the eurozone's
largest economies.

And the smallest economies? And the rest of the world? Africa, Latin America, China?

And when the borrowed money funding all this runs out? When there's not even a market for Chinese goods?

Cheers,

Chops

(Too many rhetorical questions leaving too many stones half-turned... Not a very satisfactory way of arguing. Too much irony - same problem.)