Some facts after all these dark thoughts.
Eurostat released these figures on the 17th. Read them and weep.
Under the modest headline of “Construction output down by 3.1% in euro area” lies an altogether darker set of facts. The devil, as always is in the details that I didn’t see reported in our Ministry of Happiness financial news.
The reason to focus on construction figures is that in nearly every economy construction is the centre of domestic production and hopes for growth. If construction is down then there will be NO salvation from domestic growth, leaving ONLY export growth. Which throws you at the feet and mercy of those who can devalue their currency most and win the currency wars.
With that in mind….
Here are the reported construction output figures for some of those for whom growth will be absolutely essential if they are to have any hope at all of meeting their debt cutting targets and not head towards bail-out or default.
First Month on month for June to July ’10.
Romania (-28.3%), Spain (-10.3%) and Slovenia (-3.2%)
Let’s look at Year on year.
Spain (-36.5%), Romania (-24.9%) and Bulgaria (-19.0%), Slovenia (-17.6%)
Spain down 36%! Sure, everything is just fine in Spain. All those Caja with billions of Euros in loans to builders and developers. I feel perfectly sure that those losses are entirely contained and fully assessed. No really, I am very confident.
But it gets much better.
Has it struck you yet that those figures didn’t mention Ireland, Italy or Hungary? Well it turns out if that’s because Italy’s figures are marked as “Confidential”. No figures since January. As soon as Italy posted a negative, in January – no more figures just a little “c” for confidential.
For Greece, Hungary and Ireland there isn’t even the prissy little “c”, there’s just nothing. A note explains these countries don’t have to supply monthly figures. Well there’s lovely for you!
Wouldn’t want too many figures would we.
So we go back to the last figures they did supply. And we find this –
Greece in the second quarter of ’10 showed an -18% decline from a year earlier (YoY). For comparison, that same quarter Spain reported -7%. That had plummeted, for Spain, to -36% YoY for last quarter. You can guess what the not-yet-available figure for Greece will be.
Hungary’s most recent figure is for last month. It was -19.6% year on year decline. Even Denmark’s last month YoY decline was -17%.
The figures for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are even worse.
Funny how the missing figures mean they don’t appear in the headline or even the summary. Funny that none of it made it in to the press.
Truth is the first casualty of war. The question we need to ask is, who is the enemy?