Eurozone: Growth slowdown - Natixis

Patrick Artus, analyst at Natixis, suggests that the Eurozone’s growth slowdown is now clearly under way, and this time it’s not because of the finance.

Key Quotes

“We want to stress that it does not result from an imbalance caused by finance:

• There is no bubble in financial or real estate asset prices in the euro zone;
• There is no household or corporate overindebtedness driving up defaults;
• There is no banking crisis leading to a fall in credit;
• There is no fiscal solvency crisis in the euro-zone countries.”

“The growth slowdown in the euro zone is therefore a mechanism purely of the real economy (it is an old-style cycle): hiring difficulties among companies; saturation of needs for housing, capital goods and durable goods; slowdown in global trade.”