“Italian economy rebound”? Yes of the dead cat
This week we had the panegyrics on the success of the Italian economy compared to that of the other EU countries. Indeed, in the second quarter of 2021, things did not go too badly, with growth of 2.7% a little higher than expected:
Of course, the third and fourth quarters are not necessarily going so well: the fear of the fourth wave, the Delta variant, the policy of terror and uncertainty spread by the media will hit the tertiary sector: only 52% of Italians have a vaccination complete, more or less 60%, and not their fault, but for logistical reasons. So just under half of the Italians, at least in theory, will be excluded from a slice of the services in a few days. a great blow to an industry that has already been battered in the past.
But we also see this growth in a historical perspective, over time, thanks to a simple graph highlighted by Robin Brooks. Given 100 the GDP of some European countries in 2008, how does the Italian GDP rank?
Compared to the first quarter of 2008, the GDPs of these euro area countries have had the following trend:
1. Germany: 11% higher than the level at the end of 2007
2. Portugal: 1% more than the level at the end of 2007
3. Spain: stable compared to GDP at the end of 2007
4. Italy: -8% below GDP at the end of 2007
5. Greece: the first quarter of 2021 was -24% lower than 2007
The damage caused by Covid has done nothing but graft itself into a previous crisis situation, with deep roots, linked precisely to the structure of the euro area and put into our hands by the debt crisis. Covid was only the external element that further highlighted the structural errors inherent in the eurozone. The Green Deal and the NextgenEU will only make them even more obvious.
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The article"Italian economy rebound"? Yes of the dead cat comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/rimbalzo-economia-italiana-si-del-gatto-morto/ on Sun, 01 Aug 2021 11:09:29 +0000.