The eurozone just pulled a rabbit out of its hat. The 21-country bloc grew 0.4% in the third quarter, Eurostat said Friday – twice the 0.2% economists had forecast. That’s a slowdown from the 0.6% pace in Q2, but in a world of war, energy shocks, and bond market chaos, beating expectations by that much is no small feat.
The headline number hides a messy reality. Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, grew just 0.2%. Italy stagnated completely. Spain, despite its own mass protests over housing and costs, grew 0.6% and continues to outpace the average. And then there’s France, which unexpectedly shrank by 0.1%, a stark reversal from the flat reading in the previous quarter.
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