In the latest Spectator, Liam Halligan takes a sobering look at European markets bearing the brunt of sanctions against Russia.
‘The western economy that’s suffered most, by far, is the largest one in the eurozone. Germany’s manufacturing thoroughbreds have sunk tens of billions of euros into Russian production facilities in recent years. . . .
‘This helps explain why, having grown 0.8 per cent during the first three months of 2014, German GDP shrank 0.2 per cent in the second quarter. The eurozone’s powerhouse is now on the brink of recession. Industrial production dropped 4 per cent in August, the biggest monthly fall since early 2009. Exports were down 5.8 per cent — again, the steepest drop since the Lehman collapse in 2008.’
The dismal news will come as little surprise to regular readers, who would have caught Halligan’s cover story in July, in which he neatly summed up the consequences of the US Federal Reserve’s ‘money-printing machine’:
‘Since ‘quantitative easing’ began in response to the late-2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Fed has created thousands of billions of virtual dollars, with the Bank of England chipping in hundreds of billions of similarly computer-generated pounds.
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