Nur, damit ihr schon mal alle wißt, wo es lang geht


By Matthew Lynn
LONDON (MarketWatch) — There has been no shortage of shocks for the
market in the past few weeks. The U.S. has lost its triple-A
rating. Italy is struggling to stay in the euro. The French banks
are running into trouble because of the loans they have made to the
continent’s peripheral countries.
But in fact none of those should have surprised anyone much. The
U.S. had been running up too much debt for a couple of decades and
the dollar was already on the way out as a reserve currency. The
Italians struggled to stay in the lira — no one expected them to
survive in the euro without a few problems. And it would hardly
qualify as a financial crisis if the French banks weren’t losing
money. Each of those events was about as unexpected as Andy Murray
getting knocked out of Wimbledon in the semi-finals.
In truth,
the really worrying news is coming out of
Germany.
The signs right now are that the motor of the European economy is
starting to slow down significantly. That was confirmed with the
release of second-quarter figures that showed gross domestic
product growth of a mere 0.1% at a quarterly rate in the second
quarter of the year, significantly lower than the 0.5% most
economists had been predicting. Read our full story: German growth
nearly grinds to a halt.
What happens to the mighty German economy matters hugely to the
rest of the world right now. Germany
will have to bail out the
rest of the euro zone, and it won’t want to do that if its own
economy is struggling.
Click to Play Euroview: Calm before storm? The currency markets are
becalmed Tuesday, but the increasingly familiar chaos could easily
return as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy talk about euro-zone issues.
Germany is one of the few viable sources of global growth. And
because it is a huge exporter, Germany is a good leading indicator
for what is happening to the rest of global demand. If the world
economy is going to run into serious trouble this autumn, then it
is Germany that will be pointing the way over the cliff.
The signs right now are hardly encouraging.
Tuesday’s GDP figures merely confirmed a trend that has been
evident for the last few weeks. In June, German exports, adjusted
for work days and seasonal changes, fell by 1.2%, compared with a
rise of 4.4% in May, according to the country’s statistical office.
The IFO business climate index for July fell sharply to its lowest
level in nine months, and analysts predict it is likely to keep
dropping. The ZEW investor sentiment index recorded its weakest
results since back in January 2009.
Reuters
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President Nicolas
Sarkozy are meeting again to discuss Europe’s sovereign debt
crisis.
And the Markit/BME purchasing managers’ index for the German
manufacturing sector fell 2.6 points in July to 52 points, its
lowest level since October 2009. German engineering orders — one of
the most crucial sectors of an engineering-based economy — rose in
June by just 1% year-on-year, after recording a 21% rise in May,
according to the VDMA engineering industry association.
It all adds to the same picture. The German economy is still
growing, but it is not booming the way it was for most of last
year. It may still expand by 3% this year as the Bundesbank
currently forecasts — first-quarter growth was very strong 1.3% —
but it looks unlikely it will be able to sustain that into
2012.
There is no great mystery about why that is. The country’s big
export markets are slowing down. China is unlikely to import as
much high-quality German stuff as it has in the past two years. The
Eastern European countries, which are huge customers for German
industry, are cutting back: Czech and Hungarian growth is also
slowing down. So of course are the countries in the euro. The Greek
economy is currently contracting by almost 7% year — a 1930s-style
depression. German firms can’t expect to win much new business
there.
A German slowdown, however, is going to knock the world economy.
Here’s why.
First, Germany is going to have to bail out the rest of the euro
zone. It was hard enough to persuade German voters to do that when
the economy was booming. The Germans believe in low inflation and
balanced budgets, and if they can live within their means they
don’t understand why other countries shouldn’t do so as well. When
their economy was booming, it just might have been possible for the
political class to persuade the voters it was worth digging into
their pockets to salvage the currency
/quotes/zigman/4867933/sampled EURUSD -0.24% . We all feel a bit
more generous towards our neighbors when we are doing well. But if
ordinary people are feeling squeezed and losing their jobs, it is
going to be impossible. If the country slows significantly, the
euro will fall apart a lot faster and with a lot more
recriminations.
Next, Germany was one of the few potential sources of global
growth. It was growing fast, and even if the Germans don’t import
that much, they do take a lot of holidays — and that helps the
countries they visit. German consumer spending has only risen very
slowly even as the economy has been booming. If all those
prosperous Germans could have been persuaded to start spending a
bit more of their money, they could have boosted the world economy.
That’s not going to happen now.
Lastly, the German economy is an export economy. Not only that, it
is also a world leader in capital goods. It makes many of the
machine tools that power factories around the world. It is good
leading indicator of both global demand and investment,
particularly in the emerging markets. If it is slowing down, it is
a good bet that the rest of the world economy probably is as
well.
Everything else that has happened in the markets in the last couple
of weeks should have already been priced into the markets. None of
it was a big surprise. But a slowing German economy is genuinely
bad news — and a good reason for investors to start to sell off
equities.
/quotes/zigman/4867933/sampled Add EURUSD to portfolio EURUSD
USD/EUR 1.4409 -0.0035 -0.2417% Volume: 0.0000Aug. 16, 2011
2:19p
Matthew Lynn is a financial journalist based in London. He is the
author of "Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis,"
and he writes adventure thrillers under the name Matt Lynn.
Quelle:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/germany-will-lead-the-global-downturn-2011-08-16?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts