Two Sagging Economies… Two Laid-Back Banks

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

Anemic. Stagnant. Plodding.

Pick your favorite… it doesn’t matter. They all describe the state of the British and Eurozone economies.

Two weeks before the official third quarter U.K. GDP figure is released, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) delivered a somber verdict. The group says it actually didn’t grow at all, confounding those who said the economy started growing again.

Cue a fresh round of some good, old-fashioned British grumbling.

The culprit: a 2.5% fall in industrial production in August, as oil demand dropped. Still, neutral is better than reverse – a gear that Britain had driven in for 2009 up to that point, posting a 2.4% first-quarter slump and 0.6% second-quarter decline.

It’s not alone either. Its European neighbors are also backpedaling. The latest quarterly figure from Eurostat shows that the

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