Economic confidence in Europe fell to the lowest in years in September, the European Commission said Friday, citing “a substantial deterioration” in industrial sentiment.
At broad gauge printed 101.7 for the month, down from 103.1 in August and worse than the most pessimistic estimate from nearly three-dozen economists.
Industrial confidence cratered to -8.8, the worst read in six years.
“The decrease in euro-area sentiment resulted from a substantial deterioration of confidence in industry, and a slight decline in retail trade, while confidence improved among consumers and remained broadly stable in services and construction”, the EC said, adding that “the ESI decreased significantly in the Netherlands, Spain (both -3.1) and Germany (-1.2) and, to a lesser extent, Italy (-0.8)”.
The news is just the latest in a string of dour economic headlines that paint an increasingly disconcerting picture of the bloc’s economy, which is bedeviled by a deep manufacturing downturn in Germany, persistent worries about Brexit and the drag from the ongoing trade war.
The market is pinning its hopes on fiscal stimulus out of Germany, but the debate in Berlin about whether to loosen the purse strings in a meaningful way is just getting started, and won’t be settled in time to keep the world’s fourth-largest economy from sliding into a technical recession as early as this quarter.
Meanwhile, skeptics abound with regard to the ECB’s capacity to save the day with more stimulus. Mario Draghi faced a veritable rebellion at the central bank’s September meeting, as policymakers wrangled over the relative merits of restarting net asset purchases.
Good luck to Christine Lagarde – she’ll need it.
Read more: Christine Lagarde Inherits ‘Unprecedented’ ECB Split After QE ‘Revolt’
Re: “Mario Draghi faced a veritable rebellion at the central bank’s September meeting, as policymakers wrangled over the relative merits of restarting net asset purchases.”
Maybe Draghi will have more success with a synthetic-derivative-QE offering like our Fed’s Standing Repo Facility, where banks will be paid by the Fed to play arbitrage games with their Treasury holdings, i.e., instead of banks being paid interest excess on cash-like reserves, banks will be able to swap various treasury maturities around as collateral, thus providing greater liquidity, with less-liquid debt instruments, which are already earning interest, but that’s a matter for the IRS to determine … and obviously foreign banks (and central banks) will play that game as well, so maybe Draghi just has to bring this matter up to policymakers and explain how The Fed is in the process of helping banks stimulate economies in a synchronized global kinda way.
Maybe this also solves The Dollar shortage and Snider can take a break from blogging?
Guys, penny for your thoughts on the dollar shortage thesis by Snider?