Spain Officially Double Dips, Joins 10 Other Western Countries In Recession
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
04/30/2012
The good news: Spanish Q1 GDP printed -0.3% on expectations of a -0.4% Q/Q decline. Unfortunately this is hardly encouraging for the nearly 25% of the labor force which is unemployed, and for consumers whose purchasing habits imploded following record plunges in retail sales as observed last week. The bad news: Spain now joins at least 10 other Western countries which have (re) entered a recession. Per DB: “Spain will today likely join a growing list of Western Developed world countries in recession. Last week the UK was added to a recession roll call that includes Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia. Debt ladened countries with interest rates close to zero have limited flexibility to fight the business cycle and this impotency will continue for many years.” Alas, the abovementioned good news won’t last: from Evelyn Hermman, economist at BNP – “The Pace of Spain’s economic contraction may increase in coming quarters as austerity measures bite more sharply.” Of course, it is the “good news” that sets the pace each and every day, as the bad news is merely a further catalyst to buy, buy, buy as the ECB will allegedly have no choice but to do just that when the time comes. And something quite surprising from DB’s morning comment: “If it were us in charge we would allow more defaults which would speed up the cleansing out of the system thus encouraging a more efficient resource allocation in the economy at an earlier stage.” Wait, this is Deustche Bank, with assets which are nearly on par with German GDP, saying this? Wow…
The sorry state of affairs visually:
The Rest…HERE
