How bad was the Q4 in euro zone? Actually, in my opinion it was great. My preferred measure it was the best quarter in two years: Final domestic demand grew at very strong 0.53%. In other words, the relatively subdued headline growth comes solely from net exports and inventories. 1/

Ugly, even if not as ugly as the headline number suggests. That was the #eurozone industrial production release for December, which showed 1.1% decline on the month. 1/

#Eurozone #GDP numbers brought a negative surprise, but its was not a big one. On our preferred metric, eurozone excluding Ireland, we got 0.07% increase, small difference from the 0.18% expectation from early January. 1/

The final data on #eurozone #inflation did not provide much new arguments for hawks of doves. It definitively wasn’t a good month, but neither was it a terrible month. 1/

This was a pretty good month for #eurozone #industrial #production. 0.2% increase for eurozone aggregate, and bigger jump of 0.7% when excluding Ireland. 1/

Is euro zone unemployment rate unsustainably low? Does the record-low unemployment rate imply a tight labour market? I think the answer to both questions is “No”. A longish thread motivated by @bob. 1/

Eurozone #inflation was disappointing, but not particularly bad in December. Headline inflation surprised significantly on the upside (2.44% vs our expectation of 2.29%), with energy and especially services the main culprit. 1/

Yesterday's forecasts from the ECB staff served to reiterate the growing eurozone economic gloom: the ECB staff started to produce point forecasts for GDP growth and other variables in Q4 2013. Yesterday's GDP growth forecast (for 2027) was the weakest final horizon forecast since then

This was not a good industrial production report for #eurozone. While headline number showed no change, stripping volatile Ireland there was a 0.5% decline. And while this was mostly about Germany, we even saw another moderate decline elsewhere. 1/

On Friday we got the #eurozone #GDP data and it was a bit of bitter-sweet reading. On the upside, the data confirmed that this was the strongest quarter since 2022, driven by consumption growth. BUT, larger-than-expected contribution came from the volatile inventories. 1/

This is the most puzzling (or scary) euro zone #macro chart of 2024. Once you don't distort the left axis by including pandemic period, you can see that the increase in savings rate is both dramatic and unprecedented. Friday data should show a decline, but still..

#Eurozone #inflation comes in soft for November! Headlines will be full of rebound in overall inflation, but that is old news driven by last November’s base effects. Instead, the main news was the soft services, which actually declined during the month. 1/

Today’s detailed data for #eurozone #inflation provided some small relief about the October headline numbers. The main takeaway is that October numbers were juiced up. At the same time there is clear evidence that the disinflationary forces are waning. 1/