The US economy has been weak ever since 2008, but the Eurozone has been experiencing a Depression-level catastrophe. And according to newly-released economic estimates from the European Commission, they are expecting the Depression to end ... never. Or at least not within the multi-year forecasting window.
(Source: European Commission)
The unemployment numbers are awful, but the inflation numbers are maddening. Several Eurozone member states have some very complicated entrenched economic problems, and the zone as a whole has a flawed institutional design that it will take time to fix. But inflation running that low means that alongside these difficult problems, the Eurozone is facing a very simple problem — lack of demand. The European Central Bank has been much less aggressive in offering monetary stimulus than its colleagues in the United States, United Kingdom, or Japan. And it shows in these grim forecasts.
The European Commission should be piping mad about this — outraged, because it’s genuinely outrageous — but instead they’re putting up infographics and bragging about the “lagged impact of already implemented reforms” as a response to an endless and avoidable depression.
