There is a pretty mixed bag of numbers coming in at the moment. The German economy shows some signs of a recovery of activity (here), as is the French one (here). It is important to understand however that trend growth in Germany is now extremely low, and the economy is very export dependent. The underlying performance of the Frech economy is essentially much better. However, the sick man of Europe continues (and will continue) to be Italy (here)
Levels of business activity in the Italian services economy continued to fall in June. However, rising from 47.3 in May to 48.9, the seasonally adjusted NTC Research/ADACI Business Activity Index indicated that the rate of contraction had eased and was only marginal.
A month-on-month decline in new business to Italian service providers was recorded for the third successive month. Furthermore, the rate of decline quickened again and was the sharpest in the survey history. Panel companies reported that demand for their services had continued to suffer as a depressed domestic economy led to subdued client spending.
Service providers reported that diminishing levels of new business had freed up capacity, leading to the sharpest reduction in backlogs of outstanding work in the seven-and-a-half years that data have been collected.
Employment levels in the Italian service sector fell for the fourth straight month in June. The rate of job shedding was again only marginal, although slightly sharper than in May.
Source NTCResearch
Holland is also headed towards a recession. Again.
Yes, I noticed that. Strange. It doesn’t fit my profile of where to expect problems. That makes it more interesting. I must look a bit more at this.