Did Europe just see the bottom?
There's been increasing chatter in recent weeks about how the peripheral countries might start to surprise on the upside.
And in some extreme cases like Greece, there's been a clear jump up in some data relative to extreme lows.
And today's PMI manufacturing reports help tell that story.
Every one of the big countries (Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Greece) saw increases, withs ome rising to highs not seen in a long time.
Via Markit, here's a scorecard and a chart.
When you add these figures in with news that Germany may be willing to engage in fiscal stimulus, and news that deficit targets may be loosened, it's not hard to think there might be an inflection point here, where at least Europe is no longer seen as getting worse and worse.
Still, the economies remain clearly in contraction, and the overall economic crisis (especially relating to employment and youth unemployment) remains huge.
So green shoots won't cut it forever. Real growth needs to be in the offing.
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