Tyndall Commentary: What Europe needs to do

Perhaps rather unexpectedly from the perspective of the global consensus, whatever that may be, we find that a careful analysis of the available data shows that, far from continuing to expand, Asian export growth in volume terms appears to have virtually halted sometime during the fourth quarter of last year and possibly as early as October. 

Indeed, we find that Chinese export volumes have essentially been flat for the last six months and that Singaporean export volume trends, which have often a reliable indicator of Asian trends as a whole, have been relatively downbeat over the same period despite occasional periods of pharmacy related strength. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, we find that in Brazil export volume trends been notably weak of late and that domestic retail trends also began to cool slightly towards the end of last year. 

In Australia, we are now finding signs of recession in much of the country while in Europe and Japan, although the economic data has clearly been particularly weak over the last few months as a result of specific events, this in some senses hides the fact that the recent trend towards weakness actually predates the Tsunami / latest instalment of the Euro Crisis.  For example, Euro Zone industrial production growth actually peaked in December last year and the German orders data also appears to have put some form of ‘top' in around the November - February period (the adverse weather made the data quite volatile at that time).