One has to just listen for a couple of minutes to the nutcases in the EU parliament, and one will come away with an understanding of how a great empire like the Roman empire had let itself go to ruin. Why did the UK enter this messy union? With the exception of the UK reps, everybody else in the EU, including the French and the Germans are total yahoos and fully under the influence of the manipulative powers of the powers-that-be in the USA.
Michelle Martin and Martin Santa writing at Reuters:
Euro zone economy grinds to halt even before Russia sanctions bite.
Euro zone economic growth ground to a halt in the second quarter as Germany's economy shrank and France's stagnated.
The zero growth reported by statistics agency Eurostat on Thursday was cause for alarm throughout the 18-nation region, which is already bracing for the impact of sanctions imposed on and by Russia over Ukraine.
Germany, Europe's largest economy, contracted by 0.2 percent in the quarter, undercutting Bundesbank forecasts that gross domestic product would be unchanged. Foreign trade and investment were notable weak spots, the German Statistics Office said on Thursday.
"Today’s figures show that the upturn remains too weak to withstand external shocks" - such as the Russian sanctions - "meaning that GDP growth will probably remain stuck in stop-and-go mode," said Peter Vanden Houte, chief euro zone economist at ING.
France fared little better; its GDP failed to grow for the second quarter in a row. That forced the French government to confront reality, saying it would miss its budget deficit target this year and cutting its 2014 forecast for 1 percent growth in half.......
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