The Eurozone: a tale of two halves

Olivier Blanchard, the recently retired Head of Economics at the International Monetary Fund, has something of a track record with his predictions. In 2013, he warned George Osborne that he was “playing with fire” with the UK’s recovery from the financial crisis. Austerity had to be relaxed.. We now know that we were actually nowhere near a drop in GDP. Growth has been unequivocally positive in every year since 2009. Compared to the year immediately before the crisis, 2007, GDP is now 6 per cent higher, a recovery of similar strength to that of America, with US GDP being 8 per cent up on its 2007 level.