{"id":19952,"date":"2011-09-05T01:32:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T23:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/opinion\/decline-in-eurozone-growth-set-to-continue-into-2012\/"},"modified":"2011-09-05T01:32:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T23:32:00","slug":"decline-in-eurozone-growth-set-to-continue-into-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/opinion\/decline-in-eurozone-growth-set-to-continue-into-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Decline in Eurozone growth set to continue into 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"post_excerpt\">ING Investment Management is warning that a combination of fiscal austerity, a lingering debt crisis and a slow down in external demand will translate into a fall in Eurozone GDP growth from 1.7 to 1.0.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen, Head of Strategy, ING Investment Management<\/strong> says: \u201cAs a whole, the global economy is currently<br \/>\nslowing down again. This is most evident in those developed market economies characterised by household and financial sector<br \/>\ndeleveraging. Nevertheless, core Europe as well as emerging markets are affected as well through a slowing of external demand.<br \/>\nThere are two broad reasons behind this. First, the oil and Japan disaster shocks have taken a greater toll on developed markets\u2019<br \/>\ndomestic demand growth than previously anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSecond, there are increasing concerns about the competency of policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic to deal with the challenges<br \/>\nfacing them. In the US this has raised the prospect of more near term fiscal tightening without a solution for the long term fiscal<br \/>\nproblems, while in Europe it implies a heightened degree of systemic risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The asset manager highlights that risk aversion has risen considerably of late and this potentially opens the door to a self-fulfilling<br \/>\nnegative feedback loop between financial conditions and confidence, on the one hand, and growth, on the other. According to ING<br \/>\nInvestment Management, the onus is thus once again on monetary policymakers.<\/p>\n<p>Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen continues: \u201cThe Fed has signalled that it expects to keep rates near zero until mid 2013 whilst also<br \/>\nadopting and easing bias with some form of QEIII now a clear possibility. Meanwhile, the ECB has stepped up its unlimited liquidity<br \/>\nprovision again and we no longer expect a rate hike this year. While this should be helpful, one should bear in mind that the<br \/>\neffectiveness of monetary policy is still impaired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Looking to the rest of the world, ING IM foresees slight growth in real GDP terms for all developed markets in 2012. The strongest<br \/>\nregion is predicted to be Japan with the market bouncing back from the natural disasters of 2011, achieving predicted growth of 2.2<br \/>\ncompared to -0.3 in 2011. Despite the downgrading of the US by S&#038;P in the summer, the country is still expected to post an increase<br \/>\nin real GDP from 1.6 in 2011 to 1.9 in 2012. Even the UK with its on-going domestic policy of austerity is predicted to chalk up modest<br \/>\ngrowth of 1.5 in 2012 from an expected base of 1.0 in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Van Nieuwenhuijzen comments: \u201cOur base case is now one of positive but below potential growth in developed market space for the<br \/>\nnext six quarters and we see a 30-40% probability of a double dip. The reason for holding on to our base case is threefold. First of all,<br \/>\nrecent data shows some improvement which suggests that the impact of the oil and Japan shocks is abating. Moreover, employment<br \/>\nas well as spending on capital and consumer durables goods is still well below pre-recession levels. This implies that the room to<br \/>\nslash spending on these items is much more limited than it was in 2008. Finally, policymakers could still come up with a<br \/>\ncomprehensive solution to the problems facing them. \u201c<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHistory indeed suggests that they will once a certain pain threshold is reached. However, whether or not we are close to this<br \/>\nthreshold is still an open question.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, emerging markets are predicted to continue to outpace their developed counterparts with emerging market GDP growth<br \/>\nexpected at 6.1 in 2012, compared to a world average of 3.6 and a developed market average of 1.6. The asset manager also<br \/>\nforesees that China, the powerhouse of the East, will post figures of 8.5 in 2012. Although this represents a decrease from its 2011<br \/>\nlevels of 9.2, this is still higher than other markets; both developed and developing.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of inflation, the emerging markets are also ahead of the developed world posting a predicted rate of 4.6 for 2012 compared to<br \/>\n1.7 overall for the developed markets. Individually, the UK is predicted to see inflation hit 2.5 in 2012 followed by 2.0 for the US and1.9<br \/>\nfor the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Japan posts almost stagnant levels with ING IM Global Economic Outlook foreseeing a figure of 0.1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ING Investment Management is warning that a combination of fiscal austerity, a lingering debt crisis and a slow down in external demand will translate into a fall in Eurozone GDP growth from 1.7 to 1.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":19950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1480],"tags":[1782,1858,2073,1651,1919,1918],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19952"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}