-->Hi,

gerade aus dem DT reingeschneit:

France, Italy and Spain in danger of trade 'catastrophe'

A top European Union official said France, Italy and Spain faced a"catastrophic" slump in exports as a fresh batch of gloomy data hit the eurozone yesterday.

French industrial output slumped 0.5pc in February, following a 2.2pc contraction announced last week by Germany. The slide was blamed on high oil prices and the continued strength of the euro against the dollar and key Asian currencies.

(...)

The yield on 10-year French bonds fell to near historical lows of 3.58pc.

The aborted recovery is causing growing alarm at the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Both bodies have slashed their eurozone growth forecasts from over 2pc to 1.6pc in 2005.

A senior EU official said the eurozone was now acutely vulnerable to any slowdown in the United States, having failed to generate enough internal demand to sustain recovery.

"I'm afraid there is a high probability that Italy, France and Spain could see a catastrophic drop in exports," he told the Telegraph. The official said the eurozone's problems were rotating from Germany to other countries with fast-rising labour costs, even if German consumers remained traumatised for the time being by unemployment of 5.2m, the highest level since the Great Depression.

The Spanish economy is in the final stages of a credit boom caused by inappropriately low interest rates. Spanish property rose 17pc last year, while the trade deficit ballooned to €60.7billion, or 7.7pc of GDP.

[Italy's] budget deficit, already bursting through the Stability Pact's 3pc limit, is forecast to reach 4.6pc in 2006.

Stephen Jen, an economist at Morgan Stanley, said there was a growing risk that the effort to rebalance the global economy to wean it from dependence on American growth may now be done through an ominous "balancing down" rather than"balancing up".

There are signs of slowing in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, India, Taiwan and Thailand, though China still remains strong. The concern is that US consumers will retrench before the rest of the world begins to pick up the slack.

The European Central Bank can do little to boost demand since interest rates of 2pc are already at 40-year lows and barely above the rate of inflation, now 1.9pc.

Schooled in the rigorous tradition of the Bundesbank, ECB officials are worried that excess liquidity in the system could stoke future inflation - or worse, 1970s-style"stagflation" with price pressures and low growth going hand in hand.

Dass ich nicht an eine 70er-Doublette glaube, sondern an eine 30er, ist bekannt. Aber gern lasse ich mich überraschen. Sehr angenehm, da easy, wäre ein Remake des 70er POGs, was hinlänglich häufig beschrieen und beschrieben wurde.

Gruß!