Stocks Down Again; Europe Falls Into Recession

People like to make excuses for Obama -- they love doing that, and they've gotten good at it -- and one I'm very tired of the "Europe is in recession, so American can't crawl out of its own" excuse.

If America were leading the world economy, chugging along like a magnificent locomotive, we'd pull Europe out of recession, and everyone else besides.

But instead we have our hopes pinned on Europe to grow the world economy for us, so we can follow in its wake?

How about instead of "Obama can be excused for the poor American economy, because Europe is dragging us down" we say "Obama's failure to ignite the American economy, indeed, his determination to dampen it, is causing Europe and the world to fall into a global recession"?

Nah. Can't say that. Lightworker. Doin' his best.

Yet another day of declines, though prices didn't end as low as they were earlier. So expect a big fall tomorrow, as yet another tiny bubble of unfounded optimism gets burst.

And Europe is now officially in recession. And our own economy is so weak it'll most likely follow suit.

The euro zone debt crisis dragged the bloc into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite modest growth in Germany and France, data showed on Thursday.

The French and German economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period but their resilience could not save the 17-nation bloc from contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.

Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2 percent drop in the second quarter.

Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone's 9.4 trillion euro ($12 trillion) economy back into recession, although Italy and Spain have been contracting for a year already and Greece is suffering an outright depression.

Tampons are still legal though. We really dodged a bullet on that.

posted by Ace at 04:23 PM

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