Germany and Recession

There's a good piece (short in nature) over at Focus business news this morning....discussing the German economy.

So, at this point, no one is arguing about a recession now active in Germany.  But here's this strange and odd landscape, which Christoph Sackman points out in this article.

The jobs situation (in a real recession) would be troublesome.  Right now, you could use the numbers and say it's flat....no losses, no gains.  Sure, there's short-work going on with the car companies, but there's not any real layoffs going on (as you'd see in a typical recession).

Here's the other thing....the Frankfurt stock market hasn't shown any real dramatic downturns.  Added to this....if you look at income from product sales....the last twelve months have been kinda positive, with more income tax generated than expected.

As he mentions in the article, there are three areas of the economy that make up the GDP (bulk of it)....cars, mechanical engineering, and chemical production.  They need an open door to sell, and with the chatter on imports into the US hurting slightly.....they aren't at top form.

So the blunt side of this discussion....it's a recession, but it's simply not the normal variety of recession that you expect.  And if jobs hold firm, and they exit the recession in 12 to 18 months....it won't be written down as a harsh recession.

I should add this interesting footnote, via ARD business news today, new car registration in Germany is up for October (roughly 13-percent over a year ago).  Curiously, it's the strongest car registration month of the past decade.  So Germans are buying cars, and it's hyping up the outlook for year-end numbers for the economy.