Posted on 05/18/2009 12:12:10 PM PDT by mnehring
Europe is in its deepest recession since World War II, so reports the UK’s Telegraph.
“German economic policy is ‘bankrupt,’ economists have said. The declaration was made as it emerged that Europe’s biggest economy has now suffered a worse ‘lost decade’ than Japan and is deeper in recession than any other major economy. On a day of dismal news for the European economy, official figures also showed that Italy, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands are facing their biggest combined slump in post-war history.”
Eurostat provides the raw data. Here are real GDP growth numbers for some selected countries and averages for the latest quarter (1st quarter of 2009, or January through March).
From Previous Quarter From Previous Year
Austria -2.8% -2.9%
Belgium -1.6 -3.0
France -1.2 -3.2
Germany -3.8 -6.9
Italy -2.4 -5.9
Netherlands -2.8 -4.5
Portugal -1.5 -3.7
Spain -1.8 -2.9
UK -1.9 -4.1
Europe (EU27) -2.5 -4.4
US -1.6 -2.6
Do you notice anything funny about these numbers? Here is what I notice: the recession in the US is milder than that of Europe. Every country on this list had more economic shrinkage from 2008 to 2009 (Q1 to Q1) than did the US.
How could this be? Did they all have George Bush for President? Did they all succumb to free market ideology in the last eight years? Did they all repeal part of Glass-Steagall? Did they all spend wildly on an unnecessary war in Iraq? Did they all bankrupt themselves with out-of-control defense spending?
Perhaps we need to look deeper, into the last eight years, in order to discover how bad President Bush was. Here are the average GDP growth rates over the last eight full years.
Ave. GDP Growth, 2001-2008
Austria 1.5%
Belgium 1.3
France 1.1
Germany 0.4
Italy 0.1
Netherlands 1.3
Portugal 0.3
Spain 2.3
UK 1.6
Europe (EU27) 1.2
Japan 0.6
US 1.7
Well I’ll be darned. With the minor exception of Spain, the US did better than all these countries over the last eight years as well.
What could it be? Could it be possible that Bush was not the cause of our global economic meltdown? Could it be possible that the economic illness spread from Europe to the US, rather than vice versa?
Could we have the whole thing wrong?
[...]
The facts here, as usual, are not on the side of the “blame Bush” lefties.
When the SEC allowed investment banks to shift to 40-1 leverage, they were following the lead of the Europeans. The euroweenies definitely played a role in inflating the global bubble.
LOL!
C H E N E Y
R O V E
It wasn’t easy, but he managed! You just have to multi-task when you are the left’s boogieman!
When the USA sneezes, the world catches the cold.
I love President Bush. Will always defend him and resent the fair weather friends that abandoned him. He was one helluva leader. Thank God for President Bush.
The Rove-Cheney machine set out to destroy the EU and all Euro-socialist economies... /s
It was actually that evil Cheney that did it revenge for 2006 midterm election. He is powerful AND evil, but those brave heros at MSNBC are on his trail. Bush was puppet controlled by Cheney.
I put this theory with the one that George Soros did it, more likely was Greenspan.
Me, too!!!
Obambi makes a quick left hand turn and Prime Minister Brown gets a broken neck.
Gunner
Exactly! If they can make hurricanes, they can certainly make a financial crisis!
One of the biggest financial mistakes made in Europe was the ECB inverted its yield curve in order to combat high oil prices. One of the biggest causes of the oil bubble was W’s weak dollar. The ECB keeping its rates too high, especially after Bernanke started to ease, exacerbated the weak dollar.
It going to be interesting to see how the socialist euroweenies react to their revenue streams drying up.
demographics is destiny.
“One of the biggest causes of the oil bubble was W’s weak dollar.”
INCORRECT...
Just like the Speculation bubble of the early 90’s, the “Oil Bubble” was financed using NEARLY FREE MONEY that came from Asian Banks.
ZERO PRIME INTEREST is a pretty tough deal to beat. it would be a net for the best/biggest borrowers of .75-1.25%.
And, again JUST LIKE THE EARLY 90’s, it only took one or two big speculators to fail a margin call for the whole thing to collapse.
The recession is probably worse there as they are farhter along the road to self-destruction than we are. Not until the last year of Bush’s second term did the Federal Government here get so mired in mucking up the free enterpriose system in such a blatant and extra-constitutional fashion.
Obama has merely accelerated what began in the Bush term.
Your use of Caps Lock is very convincing. /s
Did anyone else note that the anagram of this is "Chevron Eye"? Lol...[/sarc]
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