How well do you think the economy is going in the next few years?

[MikeRox]

generic-user-1 said:

MikeRox said:
I think Europe is very much dependant on what Greece does (there are rumours they plan defaulting on their next repayments) but Greek officials have dismissed that as nonsense.

UK depends how the general election goes. The current situation is really dragging the value of sterling down, however that's kind of a good thing for our exporters. The problem is, it's starting to offset savings from such as the low oil prices meaning we're not getting anywhere near the same benefit from that in our economy (lower pound means oil costs us more to import as our currency is at a 5 year low against the dollar)

I do think countries like Germany need to start spending a bit more and stop hoarding (maintaining a large trade surplus) as doing this is invariably causing the Eurozone's stubbornness for growth. It's sapping the demand out of the rest of the zone meaning there is nothing to create the demand to enable growth.

Not really clued up enough about other economies at the moment to really put much forward.

greece isnt such a big problem, its 400b € debt and its mostly hold by EU states.   the ecb QE is a much bigger problem, they are pushing some AAA bonds into negative yields, thats not good for the banks and will create a bubble in central europe(with a negative bund you can get realy cheap loans).

and the germans will not spend more because they like savings to much to consume on credit, and there isnt much they are willing to buy from other EU states, you just can buy so much oliveoil from greece and wine from spain. french or italian cars arent that hot, and electronics come from china.

 

Greece itself isn't a major problem. However the questions it raises (exit from the EU and Euro isn't officially possible) gives scope for markets to suddenly turn their attention to Italy, Spain and Portugal. They're only just starting to settle down now.

The purpose of negative yeilds is that it's meant to encourage investors to put their money elsewhere.  We're also toying with negative interest rates in the UK to try and stop people shoving all their money in the safe places.

Very basic view of the other manufacturing that Greece Spain etc put out. But as long as Germany is getting all the exporting, and not buying from other nations too, Europe will never get out of it's current slump. Wasn't it even the IMF that have now said Germany's current fiscal policy is pretty much the key reason the Eurozone is now refusing to recover?