Record unemployment, low inflation underline Europe's pain | Reuters

Record unemployment, low inflation underline Europe's pain
| Reuters

Thousands of demonstrators from the anti-capitalist Blockupy movement cut off access to the ECB in Frankfurt on Friday to protest against policymakers' handling of Europe's debt crisis.
Some economists believe the ECB, which meets on June 6, will have to go beyond another interest rate cut and consider a U.S.-style money printing program to breathe life into the economy.
"We do not expect a strong recovery in the euro zone," said Nick Matthews, a senior economist at Nomura International in London. "It puts pressure on the ECB to deliver even more conventional and non conventional measures."
In the past, the euro zone has needed economic growth of around 1.5 percent to create new jobs, according to Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING. With the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecasting this week that the euro zone economy would contract by 0.6 percent this year, unemployment is set to worsen long before it turns around.
"We do not see a stabilization in unemployment before the middle of next year," said Frederik Ducrozet, an economist at Economist at Credit Agricole in Paris. "The picture in France is still deteriorating."

Euro @ 1.30 or close to it is a running  joke....1.20 is in the cards or less...