Posted on 02/23/2013 11:43:42 AM PST by blam
What If Germany Gets Bogged Down Too? Or Has It Already?
Wolf Richter
Friday, February 22, 2013 at 6:29PM
All hopes rest on Germany: its vibrant economy teeming with globalized, ultra-competitive, export-focused companies would drag France and other Eurozone countries out of their economic morass. But then, theres reality.
That France with its double-digit unemployment fiasco is losing its grip was hammered home by the Purchasing Managers Index. After three months of false-hope upticks, it crashed to a low not seen since March 2009, the trough of the financial crisis! Business activity has been skidding for 18 months, and new orders, a precursor for future activity, for 19 months. The French private sector is in a heap of trouble [Draconian Cash Controls Are Coming To France].
On the other side of the Rhine, Germany is still bathing in optimismthough its economic output dropped 0.6% in the fourth quarter (henceforth called the awful GDP surprise), on par with the struggling Eurozone, which has now spent five quarters in the red. But France saw a much milder 0.3% decline. While Frances decline has been ascribed to structural issues, fixable only through a slew of reforms and adjustments that would tighten the belts around its people until they squeal, Germanys much steeper decline was considered temporary. It would go away on its own.
Evidence of that chasm in perception: the Purchasing Managers Index. It was still in positive territory for Germany though it had dropped from January. While service orders stagnated, manufacturing orders ticked up. The sharp rebound in export business was attributed to higher demand from Asia. If only China would continue to pull through!
Alas, Germanys most important trading partner isnt China. Nor the US. Its France. It mops up about 10% of Germanys exports. And its not just cars and monstrous hardware. Germany exported, to name a delicious example, 645,000 metric tons of chocolate for 2.7 billion during the first eleven months of 2012, up 5.7% from prior year. The most important target country? France! It took 13.4% of it.
Seeing France keel over, German exporters were desperately trying to increase their sales in Asia. And they were investing in China like madmen. It worked last year. Exports of goods hit a record 1.097 trillion, up 3.4% from 2011. But the awful GDP surprise had a few even nastier details: exports in the fourth quarter actually declined by 2% from the third quarter. And investment by businesses plunged 9.3% from prior year. They were investing in China insteadbecause for them, thats where the future was, not in the economically decrepit Eurozone.
Now this: in 2012, Germany achieved something rarely seen anywhere in the world, and if its espied at all, its there only briefly, mirage-like: a budget surplus. It wasnt much, 4.2 billion. The first surplus in five years, the third since Reunification. While the federal government and the states (Länder) still ran up deficits, the surplus of the communities and the social security system more than made up for it. Anytime a government gets anywhere near a budget surplus, it deserves a round of applause. Then, after the noise dies down, we can quibble over how it got there, if it got there at all, or if it was a figment of governmental accounting imagination, and why it had to extract that much in taxes from its strung-out taxpayers.
Given that extraction of taxes, private consumptionanother detail in the awful GDP surpriseincreased by a measly 0.6% in 2012. But consumption by the government, flush with record tax revenues, increased by 1.4%. It got worse towards the end of the year: December retail sales saw a brutal plunge of 4.7%. January retail sales werent available yet, but January vehicles sales were....
Total vehicle sales plummeted 9.3% from January last year. An equal opportunity fiasco. Passenger car sales tumbled 8.6%. The biggest losers of what Germans consider German brands: Ford swooned 32.2% and VW, the megastar that could do no wrong, skidded 13.3%. Among foreign brands, Lexus suffered a dizzying 62.8% dive. Its tough in Germany these days. And an indicator of how businesses viewed the future in Germany, sales of light, medium, and heavy trucks fell by 14.6% and tractors by 23%. There wasnt a scintilla of good news in this report.
This is the economic engine of Europe, the country that is expected to pull Europe out of its funk. Sure, things could turn around on a dime. China and other Asian countries could unleash a tsunami of orders. France could suddenly rebound. Miracles happened before. And this could be one of them.
So when he was asked where he was putting his money, Felix Zulauf, founder of Zulauf Asset Management in Switzerland, said, Im sitting on cash. He was worried. And he has turned negative on just about everything. Read.... By Midyear, Europe Can No Longer Live With This Euro
Those surveys often weight the stock market highly, and the markets are up as a result of central bank interventions and currency finagling, not productivity or profit. The uptick probably is similar to the “false-hope” upticks noted about France.
IFO asks companies about how they are feeling about their business situation and outlook. The IFO index exists since 1972 and is a good predictor of the development of the German economy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.