Recovery stalls in Europe as austerity grinds on

...“This was a statistical mirage,” said Simon Tilford, from the Centre for European Reform.

“We are not seeing real recovery anywhere apart from Germany, and the picture becomes more troubling the more you drill into it. Nominal GDP growth is very weak, so we’re going to see a significant rise in debt rations,” he said.

“We think it is highly unlikely that the ECB will launch the kind of shock and awe QE needed to convince the markets that they are really going to stay the distance,” he said.