[OPE] Decoupling and recoupling

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Mon Feb 25 2008 - 19:59:57 EST


Jim O'Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs writes:

"There remains a mood among many, including some European policymakers, that they can be immune from the US slowing, as has been the typical assumption in the past. However, if China does slow somewhat, this is going to be harder to sustain. Maybe the US is going to "decouple" from the rest." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/623d1eae-e3c2-11dc-8799-0000779fd2ac.html

Between a quarter and a fifth of EU exports are destined for the USA. Total EU external exports were $1.33 trillion in 2005. Total EU GDP in 2007 was $14 trillion.  So, basically a quantity of product about 9% of EU GDP nowadays gets exported to the US, both services and goods, but more services than goods (Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy account for about $175 billion of goods exported to the USA annually). This seems a fairly small amount perhaps, but vastly more important are EU capital investments in the US, both direct investment and idle funds. It's difficult to extract the data from the ECB or Eurostat, because of the way they design their websites, but in short, there's no way that the EU can escape from the impact of a recession in the US. A US recession will also means slower GDP growth in the EU, simple as that.   

J.






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