Cuando los políticos trasladan las diferencias políticas al campo de la economía y del comercio el resultado siempre es desastroso para todos.
Las economías europeas llevan más de cinco años en crisis y aúnque se dieron síntomas de recuperación en el 2013 con un aumento del 1 % en el GDP, que apenas cubrió el aumento poblacional. Pero ahora cualquier esperanza de crecimiento parece haberse tirado por la borda.
Los datos están allí, caídas del GDP en los últimos trimestres, aumento del desempleo y a partir de Junio 2014 fuga de capitales. De Rusia han salido cerca de 70 mil millones. De Europa Occidental no existen datos exactos, pero la cifra podría ser mayor.
Los economistas están de acuerdo en que los próximos años serán peores para Europa que los anteriores. Las causas son muchas.
Europa tiene problemas estructurales que no se van a resolver fácilmente, como el envejecimiento de la población. También tiene problemas sociales graves causados por el desempleo que es altísimo en los países del sur, y también por la gran cantidad de inmigrantes africanos y del Medio Oriente que no pueden y en algunos casos no quieren integrarse a las sociedades de los países que les han dado acogida. El caso parece ser más grave en Dinamarca, Holanda, Italia y Francia, país este último en el que existen barrios enteros en ciudades como París y Marsella controlados por bandas de radicales musulmanes.
Pero el evento más trascendente que parece haber condenado a Europa a una década de recesión ha sido el caso de Ucrania, que comenzó con los eventos de la Plaza Maidán que causaron la caída del presidente Yanukovich, democráticamente electo, un golpe de Estado que dió pie a la crisis de Crimea, a la rebelión de las provincias del este, a la formación de un nuevo gobierno frontalmente opuesto a Rusia y a la amenaza del ejército ruso.
Pero lo que ha venido a desastabilizar las economías de Europa han sido las sanciones económicas impuestas por los Estados Unidos y acatadas por la Unión Europea a Rusia, que tienen como objetivo final debilitar la economía de este último. Si las sanciones ya en sí llevaban un efecto boomerang particularmente para Europa este se hace más grave con las medidas retaliatorias rusas, que afectan la producción agrícola , vital par muchos países del sur y del este de Europa y para Polonia. Siendo Rusia el más grande campo de inversiones para Europa, un mercado en crecimiento en el que operan más de 8000 empresas europeas, 6,000 de las cuales son alemanas la guerra comercial va a ser ruinosa para ambos, y puede ser que más para Europa que dejará de vender sus productos y siempre tendrá la necesidad de importar el gas ruso.
Por el momento la crisis de Europa y Rusia ha beneficiado directamente a los US, que es el destino principal de los capitales que huyen de Europa y los efectos a corto plazo será positivos. Pero en un mundo globalizado en el que la UE es el segundo socio comercial más importantes es difícil que US se beneficien a largo plazo con el daño de las economías de Rusia y Europa. No hay duda que la crisis europea afectará también el comercio de este bloque con China.
Pero si la tensión entre Europa y los US con Rusia afecta el comercio entre esas regiones, no se verán forzados Rusia y China a aumentar sus intercambios de bienes y de capitales y formar otros ejes para reponer los que son vulnerables a las decisiones políticas?
FRANKFURT—The euro-zone economy stalled in the second quarter, raising the ugly prospect that the region's meager recovery has lost momentum just as it faces fresh headwinds from Russia and Ukraine.
Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and
Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight.
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"The euro-zone recovery never really got going, and now it appears to be petering out," said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a nonpartisan London think tank.
The gloomy numbers out of the euro zone—whose roughly $13 trillion economy accounts for 17% of the world's gross domestic product—join a litany of similarly sour reports this week from Asia, all pointing to signs of sudden weakness among many major economies.
The downturns in Europe and Asia come as the U.S. flashes signs of increasing economic vigor after a brief chill earlier this year. The U.S. economy grew in the second quarter by an annual rate of 4%, thanks to stronger consumer spending and corporate investment. Despite tepid wage gains, U.S. firms have been on the strongest sustained hiring stretch since 2006, adding more than 200,000 jobs each month since February.
But the growing sense of optimism in the U.S. contrasts with deepening uncertainty in many other parts of the world.
Mexico's central bank lowered its growth forecast for 2014 to 2.4% from 2.8% on Wednesday. Japan reported a sharp contraction in the second quarter as output fell 6.8% in the wake of an April increase in the country's sales tax. Japan's slow recovery, despite heavy stimulus, is in part the result of surprisingly weak exports—a condition that stems from soft demand elsewhere in the world and shows how weakness can spread among economies.
In China, the central bank reported Wednesday that the broadest measure of new lending had plunged by two-thirds in July from the previous month, setting off alarm bells that the world's second-largest national economy might be heading for a hard landing.
It is possible such sluggishness is temporary—July is often a down month for credit and June's credit growth had been exceptionally strong. Even so, the figures suggested that several months of "mini-stimulus" spending on infrastructure, transportation and information technology, as well the central bank's injections of cash into China's financial system, hasn't done much to lift the economy.
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In the 18-member euro zone, GDP was flat in the second quarter compared with the first, the European Union's statistics office said Thursday. That translates into 0.2% growth in annualized terms.
Over the past year, the euro zone's economy expanded just 0.7%—too slow to reinvigorate investment and job creation or to escape the legacy of heavy public and private debts in many countries.
German GDP shrank an annualized 0.6% from the first quarter, and Italy's output fell, too. The French economy, the bloc's second largest behind Germany, was largely flat for a second straight quarter. Spain and the Netherlands posted some growth, but not enough to offset weakness in the economies of their larger peers. Nerves over Europe's outlook helped cause the yield on Germany's 10-year bond, considered a haven, to dip below 1% for the first time.
Germany's weak second quarter is widely seen as a hiccup: the country is enjoying record-high employment, rising wages and ultralow borrowing costs. A return to growth is expected in the current quarter. Germany's Bundesbank, which has considerable influence over the country's public opinion, made the unusual move of responding to Thursday's data with a statement from its economists, saying the trend "remains pointed upward."
However, the continued
sluggishness of business investment, despite cash-rich corporations, is a puzzle that bodes ill for Germany's ability to lift euro-zone growth. Averaging out the last two quarters, which evens out weather-related swings in construction, Germany still only grew at a pace of about 1% in the first half. And that was before the crisis in Ukraine intensified last month, leading to
growth-draining sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU against Russia.
"We're seeing the crisis worsen in Ukraine and Russia as well as a difficult political situation in
the Middle East," Kasper Rorsted, chief executive of German consumer products company
Henkel AG
HEN.XE -1.48% said in an earnings call Tuesday. "The situation remains volatile, and we don't see it changing any time soon."
France's problems are rooted more deeply, in tight fiscal policies and long-unreformed markets. The country's unemployment is at all-time highs. A shrinking construction sector is making things worse, forcing entrepreneurs like Patrick Liébus to resort to innovative strategies to keep people on the job.
Prolonged Euro-Zone Downturn, Says Mizuho
The weak GDP figures for Germany may to an extent be attributed to some production being shifted to earlier months, but even so, the data is very disappointing, says Mizuho International's chief European economist Riccardo Barbieri. "For the euro zone as a whole, surveys are now, on balance, worsening and so we cannot rule out that these numbers mark the beginning of a more prolonged downturn rather than a dip," he says. (josie.cox@wsj.com)
Worrying Signs in French GDP, Says Barclays
A breakdown of France's GDP shows no reassuring signs, says Barclays economist Fabrice Cabau. The rebound in consumer spending only corrects the fall in the first quarter and investment has fallen once again, Mr. Cabau notes. "All in all, we find that today's investment and underlying private consumption disappointments are a key worrying sign for the French economy outlook," says Mr. Cabau. Furthermore, Barclays sees a risk the government will struggle to implement its policies as political parties on all sides fragment. (william.horobin@dowjones.com)
Market Talk is a stream of real-time news and market analysis that's available on Dow Jones Newswires.
Mr. Liébus has sent employees at his roofing firm in southeastern France on a three-week vacation instead of two this August as he doesn't have enough work for them. "After that there's no vacation left—it's temporary layoffs or redundancy," he said.
Some of France's largest companies are also feeling the pinch. Construction and concession giant
Vinci SA
DG.FR -1.23%said earlier this month it would record a slight decrease in revenue this year as it warned the upturn in France's building market hadn't yet materialized.
European policy makers have hoped that the recovery would gather steam of its own, so that they don't have to experiment with controversial stimulus measures, including money-printing by the European Central Bank or large-scale government investment spending.
Many economists, as well as European governments, forecast recovery will resume in the third quarter and strengthen by 2015. Business surveys such as the purchasing managers index imply faster GDP growth than recorded so far—an anomaly that optimists say will be corrected this fall.
But deeper worries loom, too. With each additional quarter of near-zero growth, the bloc's vulnerabilities—weak productivity, a stagnating labor force and fragile banking system—become more firmly entrenched. That could make the bloc resistant to stimulus from fiscal or monetary policies, a problem that has gripped Japan for years.
"Our view is that temporary factors dampened growth in the first half of 2014, and this will reverse itself in the third quarter," said Marco Valli, chief euro-zone economist at Italian bank UniCredit.
Mr. Valli said two risks threaten the outlook, however: Geopolitical and trade frictions between the EU and Russia could hurt euro-zone business sentiment; and the slowdown in global trade and emerging-market growth could hit European exports.
Japan is the first modern economy to slip into persistent consumer price declines known as deflation—a condition some European countries now seem perilously close to entering. Japan's 18-month-old stimulus experiment is the first test of a country attempting to wrench itself out of a deflationary slump.
"We should not wait until we all become Japan, we should act now," said Paul De Grauwe, professor at London School of Economics. He recommends a two-pronged approach with massive stimulus spending by governments—particularly in Germany, France and other countries that can borrow cheaply—buttressed by ECB purchases of public and private debt to increase the money supply.
But the ECB has shown little appetite for such measures beyond the
cheap bank loans and record-low interest rates it has already enacted. It argues that overhauls aimed at making economies more competitive are the answer to Europe's problems.
Last week, ECB President
Mario Draghi berated governments for their lack of progress on such reforms. "There are stories of young people who tried to open their business, and it takes eight to nine months before they can do so," he said. "That has nothing to do with monetary policy."
—William Horobin, Chase Gummer, Jacob Schlesinger and Bob Davis contributed to this article.
BRUSSELS , August 21 (RIA Novosti) - Russia’s recently introduced restrictions on food and agricultural imports from the European Union could result in the loss of more than 130,000 jobs across the 28-member bloc, including 23,000 in Poland and 21,000 in Germany, Belgium’s De Standaard newspaper reported, citing a recent study by ING financial group.
Belgium could lose up to 3,000 jobs and 165 million euros ($219 billion).
According to the research, the Baltic states will be hit the hardest, with Lithuania losing 0.4 percent of its GDP, Estonia losing 0.35 percent and Latvia losing 0.2 percent. It also notes that Germany’s production loss will total some 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion).
As for the United States, Washington’s losses will not exceed 11,000 jobs.
At the beginning of August, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order on economic measures to protect the country’s security, following the West’s introduction of several rounds of sanctions against Russia.
The decree went into effect on August 7 and banned for one year the import of agricultural and food products from countries that had imposed sanctions on Russia. The list of banned products includes meat, poultry, fish, seafood, milk, dairy products, fruits and vegetables.
Moscow said earlier it was ready to review the terms of its import restrictions if its Western partners showed a commitment to dialogue.
Russia’s recently introduced restrictions on food and agricultural imports from the European Union could result in the loss of more than 130,000 jobs across the 28-member bloc, including 23,000 in Poland and 21,000 in Germany, Belgium’s De Standaard newspaper reported, citing a recent study by ING financial group.
Belgium could lose up to 3,000 jobs and 165 million euros ($219 billion).
According to the research, the Baltic states will be hit the hardest, with Lithuania losing 0.4 percent of its GDP, Estonia losing 0.35 percent and Latvia losing 0.2 percent. It also notes that Germany’s production loss will total some 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion).
As for the United States, Washington’s losses will not exceed 11,000 jobs.
At the beginning of August, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order on economic measures to protect the country’s security, following the West’s introduction of several rounds of sanctions against Russia.
The decree went into effect on August 7 and banned for one year the import of agricultural and food products from countries that had imposed sanctions on Russia. The list of banned products includes meat, poultry, fish, seafood, milk, dairy products, fruits and vegetables.
Moscow said earlier it was ready to review the terms of its import restrictions if its Western partners showed a commitment to dialogue.
Paradoxically, weak overseas economics have probably helped the U.S. at least as much as it has hurt.
Markets, especially U.S. equities, were generally up this week through Thursday (I was traveling on Friday), with the S&P 500 setting a record high. Bonds also continued to hold their own, and the U.S. 10-year Treasury remained at about 2.4%, near the lows of the year.
Economic news out of the U.S. was excellent. The housing data that many people worried about last month showed a marked improvement in July, and some of the poor June data was revised away. And for an unusual change, both the new- and existing-home markets appeared to gain strength at the same time. I don't think housing is going to explode on the upside from here, but with lower mortgage rates and improving employment, continuing small steps forward seem possible.
Consumer prices also took a break in July, rising just 0.1% after several months of healthy increases. The Markit survey of U.S. purchasing managers also continued to show good improvement. Unemployment claims remained under control, and weekly shopping center data sustained its recent gains.
The news out of non-U.S. markets was not as good, with the purchasing manager surveys out of Europe and China each showing declines. Unfortunately, manufacturing is relatively more important in those regions than in the U.S. The markets seemed to take the drumbeat bad news in stride. In fact, we seem to be in one of those market moods when bad news is good news because it could mean more central bank easing in Europe and in China.
Paradoxically, weak overseas economics have probably helped the U.S. at least as much as it has hurt. Weaker overseas activity has kept a lid on commodity prices, which is finally beginning to help consumers again. Central bank actions or potential actions have also driven down world and U.S. interest rates, which may be responsible for the small revival in this week's housing data. And though the U.S. is a massive exporter, the percentage of goods exported, at 13%, is one of the very smallest levels of any developed country, and many of those goods are going to Canada and Mexico. Furthermore, a lot of the goods shipped out of the U.S. are either necessities or under very long-term contracts (
Boeing (
BA) jetliners). However, poor export growth has indeed held back the U.S. economy for a couple of quarters.
Markit PMI Points to Sustained Momentum in U.S. Manufacturing, While Europe and China Weaken
Written by Roland Czerniawski
The Markit Purchasing Managers' Index report showed a sharp increase in the U.S. manufacturing sector, as the PMI reading bounced all the way up to 58.0 in August from a three-month low of 55.8 in July. The August number is the highest observed since April 2010. A combination of strength in new orders, exports, output, and employment contributed to the sharp increase, demonstrating that the manufacturing momentum continues to build into the third quarter.
The report also showed that the growth in manufacturing activity in the rest of the world, namely Europe and China, has remained muted. China's reading edged lower to 50.3, hovering just slightly above the 50.0 expansion line. The report underscored that deflationary pressures have returned, showing up in both output and input prices, which means that the economic recovery is and will most likely remain relatively slow in China.
The news from Europe wasn't much better, as the manufacturing PMI reading decreased from 51.8 in July to 50.8 in August. Output growth in Germany slowed but remained firm, rising for the 16th straight month. The PMI in France, on the other hand, softened further, suggesting that the pace of contraction has accelerated slightly.
While the strong manufacturing numbers in the U.S. can indirectly signal a pickup in overall economic activity and increased optimism domestically, the not-so-good data from Europe and China carry a little more weight, since those countries rely on their manufacturing sectors significantly more than the U.S.
The most recent softening in manufacturing could mean that the subdued economic recovery in those nations could extend into the third quarter or even beyond. This indicates that more accommodative monetary policy and stimulus in Europe and China could be around the corner. While the fragile recovery abroad will continue to threaten U.S. exports, it should also keep interest rates and commodity prices low, giving the U.S. consumer more space to breathe.
Price Growth Slows; Potential for Slower Growth Ahead
U.S. consumer prices grew a very modest 0.1% in July after growing 0.4% and 0.3% in May and June, providing consumers with considerable relief. The year-over-year averaged price data, my preferred metric, still looks at least a little elevated but is no longer showing accelerating increases.
As the nasty increases in May and June fall out of the averages, it seems quite likely that the year-over-year inflation rate will drop to under 2% again this fall. (A dip all the way back to the 1.1% level of last November doesn't appear in the cards for now.) Holding prices down in the months ahead will likely be continuing declines in both gasoline and natural gas (because of more supply and softer demand) and moderating food prices (as the drought situation eases). This will probably be offset by health-care increases and rent increases that will keep at least some upward pressure on the data.
Some of these future trends already began to form in the July period, especially in the energy-related complexes, as shown below:
The one exception is food prices, which again spiked in July after modest increases in June. Lower prices for corn and soybeans should eventually work their way through the whole food chain, at least helping to moderate some of the recent increases.
Striking in the monthly July data was the relatively large number of items that decreased in price. The price of airline tickets, recreational goods, used cars, furniture, and tobacco all declined in July, easing some of the sting of the larger 0.4% increase in food prices. Also, rents continued to run a little higher than a year ago and are trending toward a 0.3% monthly growth rate, or 3.6% annualized. It's not great news for consumers, but it should drive more people to consider purchasing either a new or existing home.
Medical-related inflation was relatively contained in July, though still a bit higher than a year ago, when the move to generic drugs held back health-care inflation. Since fewer drugs are coming off patent this year and more people are insured because of the Affordable Care Act, I am surprised that health-care price increases have been relatively moderate so far this year. I suspect that health-care inflation could accelerate a bit later on this year.
Housing Looking Better With the Latest Data
The housing news this week was much improved over what everyone thought just a month ago. Builder sentiment, housing starts, and existing-home sales all showed nice increases, and every piece of housing data came in above expectations. Just as importantly, housing starts for the previous month were revised sharply higher.
Over the past year, we have had periods where new-home sales (or starts) did better and periods where existing-home sectors did better, but seldom did both do well or poorly at the same time. This month, both sides of the housing market looked better, perhaps reflecting lower mortgage rates, moderating price increases, and somewhat easier lending conditions. From here, I expect to see continued moderate growth in housing--no boom and no bust. Hopefully, we are also past the periods where housing will detract from GDP growth, as it was in the fourth quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of 2014.
The most forward-looking of this week's housing metrics, builder confidence, showed a surprise increase in August, moving up to 55 from 53 in July. Any reading over 50 indicates that more builders are seeing improving conditions than softening conditions. This is the third consecutive improvement in the index.
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