In the Eurozone real GDP has contracted since the crisis according to this graph: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/more-coulda-been-worse-blogging/

In the Eurozone real GDP has contracted since the crisis according to this graph: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/more-coulda-been-worse-blogging/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/more-coulda-been... So a lot of the "growth" is just the economy recovering from the austerity/crisis-related policies. The Eurozone's real GDP contracted 5%, so even if we then outgrow the US by 0.5% every year it will still take us ages to catch up.