The European Commission has cut its growth forecast for the Eurozone this year, after admitting the sclerotic German economy is “significantly weaker” than previously thought – they expect it to shrink by 0.4% this year – and its “big deterioration” will be a drag anchor on Europe. Output across the Eurozone is now predicted to rise by 0.8% this year, with an earlier projection expecting 1.1% growth.  Next year’s growth outlook was cut to 1.3%…

The growth forecasts for the top 6 European economies are:

Spain 2.2%
France 1.0%
Italy 0.9%
Netherlands 0.5%
Poland 0.5%
Germany -0.4%

Germany have at least announced a €32 billion tax-cutting growth plan to fix this. No such luck on our own shores: Jeremy Hunt has just told Bloomberg he doesn’t have much headroom in the Autumn Statement…