There's a lot of conflation in this article between distribution and economic growth, which I think arises from the Spiegel's European perspective. Going back

There's a lot of conflation in this article between distribution and economic growth, which I think arises from the Spiegel's European perspective. Going back to the start of the DAX tracking (mid-2011), we see okay performance in German DAX index, stagnation for the French CAC and British FTSE, and strong performance in the US S&P 500 and Japanese Nikkei. [1] Eurozone unemployment has soared into double digits of late, while in the US and Japan it is converging with the natural rate, <6%. The economic situation in Europe is truly awful, in contrast to the US and Japan where growth has been respectable. But you would never have guessed this from the tone of the article. The article raises a second narrative about inequality. Fair enough! But this is an orthogonal issue to Europe's economic malaise. The US is infamous at not distributing the benefits of growth. In the US, we have one thing that's working (growth) and one thing that's not (inequality). This is due to many institutional problems and governance decisions and it will be a lot of work to improve the situation. The thing I found alarming about this was the way they denigrated stimulus. This is an area of major divergence between Japan/US and Europe. Nominal GDP growth, the measure of the 'easiness' of money (it's the sum of all money trading hands), has stagnated under the European Central Bank (ECB) while the US Fed (FOMC) has used stimulus to keep it growing in the United States [2]. If anyone believes the central banks have "run out of ammunition" as the article suggests, look what happened just last Friday in Japan: The BoJ announced unexpectedly high stimulus and the Nikkei instantly soared 4%, despite the fact that interest rates were already 0. [3] The ECB needs to be more like the FOMC and BoJ. The Spiegel seems to think the opposite. It seems like the ECB's policy reflects this hawkish European perspective. And that's scary for Europe. PS It's true that Japan has been stagnating for decades. That is likely related to the ultratight monetary policy they've pursued since the early 90's (as well as structural issues of course); NGDP actually shrunk there over 2 decades [4]. But they've been moving in a different direction lately, and the shift seems to be paying dividends. [1] Drag the slider here back to mid-2011 to get a long-ish view: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1414991874560&chddm=890&cmpto=INDEXNIKKEI:NI225;INDEXSP:.INX;INDEXDB:DAX;INDEXEURO:PX1;INDEXFTSE:UKX&cmptdms=0;1;1;1;1&q=INDEXNIKKEI:NI225,INDEXSP:.INX,INDEXDB:DAX,INDEXEURO:PX1,INDEXFTSE:UKX&ntsp=0&ei=7Q9XVOjLE8_diQLFlYHwBQ https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=141499... [2] http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/9/11/saupload_ngdp-ez-us.jpg http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/9/11/sauploa... [3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/31/nikkei-japan-stimulus_n_6080146.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/31/nikkei-japan-stimul... [4] http://uneasymoney.com/2012/02/13/japans-2-decade-experiment-with-fiscal-austerity-and-0-7-ngdp-growth/ http://uneasymoney.com/2012/02/13/japans-2-decade-experiment...