Germany now joins Japan and Switzerland in the below 1% yield club. The rush into the safety of government bonds driving down yields is a sign everywhere of lousy productivity.
Meanwhile yields below 2% exist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, The Netherlands, Ireland, France, Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic, Belgium, and Austria. Finland is the lowest of these presently at 1.14%.
CNBC reports here:
"Following disappointing growth data for the euro zone, 10-year yields finally broke through the 1 percent handle on Thursday—a first—dipping to an intraday low of 0.998 percent. Yields then fell below 1 percent again on Friday, on reports that Ukrainian troops had attacked armed Russian military, which had crossed into the country near the border of Izvaryne. U.S. yields also declined, hitting a low of 2.333 percent, while the euro and European stocks turned negative."
German GDP fell in the second quarter from the first, at -0.6% annualized, which was, believe it or not, blamed on a mild winter there after poor GDP Stateside was blamed on an unusually harsh one.
The Wall Street Journal reported with a straight face here:
"Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight."
Oh well, at least they wrote "shrank".
