German GDP Up in Q1, France Flat
The Federal Statistics Office of Germany said that GDP there rose 0.5% compared to the final quarter of 2011, a rate that was unexpectedly strong. Given the recessionary state of much of the balance of the European Union, Germany must…
In France, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies said first quarter GDP was flat compared with the fourth quarter.
The news is particularly important given the contraction of the economies of Spain, Portugal and Greece. Overall, the nations have tended to pull down EU GDP numbers. At least a part of Europe remains healthy. What is still of significant concern is whether all of Europe has fallen into recession this quarter. The fragility of the economy of the region likely will catch up to Germany because of the size of its trade within the EU.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.