LONDON - Businesses across the euro zone performed much worse than expected in March as factory activity contracted at the fastest pace in nearly six years, hurt by a big drop in demand, a survey showed on Friday.
That supports the European Central Bank’s change of tack earlier this month. It pushed out the timing of its next post-rate increase until 2020 at the earliest and said it would offer banks a new round of cheap loans to help revive the economy. IHS Markit said the PMIs pointed to first-quarter GDP growth of 0.2 percent, below the 0.3 percent predicted in a Reuters poll last week. The economy expanded 0.2 percent in the final three months of 2018, its slowest pace in four years.
An index measuring output, which feeds into the composite PMI, plummeted to a near six-year low of 47.7 from 49.4. Meanwhile, French business activity slowed unexpectedly as a recent rebound ran out of steam in the face of deteriorating demand.
Why remainers want to stay in this garbage system? Brexit
Signs that Trump’s Trade Wars are pulling down World Economies. It won’t be long before a Trump/Republican inspired Recession concocted by Stephen Moore who Trump wants to run the Federal Reserve pulls the United States into another 2008 Recession.