Destatis in Germany released its newest economic report, covering the recorded growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product over the last fiscal quarter of last year, and the results were surprisingly negative.
The consensus forecasts projected 0.1 per cent growth to be observed for the fiscal quarter ending December 31st 2019 after the moderate gains which were observed for the previous quarter.
However, it was later demonstrated that the German economy actually contracted by a percentage point and therefore its growth rate remained flat at 0 per cent.
In light of these recent results, it can be observed that the long-term trend of growth consolidation around the zero per cent level was preserved during the last quarter.
This trend was initiated towards the end of 2017 and had since become a major impediment to investors' confidence in Germany and the Eurozone as a whole.
One of the core reasons leading to such poor results was the uncertainty that was looming over the international trade conditions at the time, stemming from the US/China trade war.
Germany is one of those countries whose economic well-being is especially dependent on uncurbed global supply and free trade; both of these factors were jeopardised at the high of the trade war and resulted in subdued growth in Germany.
The situation could have been much worse if it weren't for ECB's accommodative monetary policy in the Eurozone and the extra liquidity, which is made easily accessible to support growth in the bloc.
Nevertheless, the long-term trend of subdued economic growth may be proven to be tough to break, and loose monetary policy may turn out to be insufficient in promoting more robust aggregate growth in demand.
As Christine Lagarde, the President of the ECB argued recently in the European Parliament, governments in the Eurozone may have to increase their spending in order to promote and indeed support faster growth.
The German economy has a considerable budget surplus of 1.5 per cent, which can be used instead to bolster government spending, something that Lagarde claims would be an exceptionally effective policy in the current environment of low interest rates.
Meanwhile, the euro continues to lose ground to all major currencies, including the greenback.
The price action on the EURUSD is currently underpinned by a considerable bearish downtrend, which is likely to persist as indicated by the ADX index, which illustrates the rising strength of the downswing.