LONDON (Reuters)- No sooner are Europe’s debt anxieties easing a touch than a sharp rise in oil prices threatens to impede the economy’s tentative recovery from the euro’s near-death experience with Greece.

Brent oil has shot up about 20 percent since mid-December on concern over cuts in Iranian supply, and set an all-time high this week in euros.

LONDON (Reuters) – Away from the markets’ fixation with the debts of Greece and other governments, concern is growing at the painfully slow progress Europe is making in tackling a much bigger mountain of corporate and household debt.

With austerity pointing to weak growth if not outright recession, the risk is that the burden of servicing the debt can only increase, causing a rise in bad loans. The spotlight then would fall on the capacity of banks to take losses and whether they might have to turn to their governments for help.

LONDON (Reuters) – Away from the markets’ fixation with the debts of Greece and other governments, concern is growing at the painfully slow progress Europe is making in tackling a much bigger mountain of corporate and household debt.

With austerity pointing to weak growth if not outright recession, the risk is that the burden of servicing the debt can only increase, causing a rise in bad loans. The spotlight then would fall on the capacity of banks to take losses and whether they might have to turn to their governments for help.

LONDON (Reuters) – Entering the fifth year of recession, Greece is writing its name in the book of unwanted records for one of the deepest economic slumps of modern times.

The Greek economy shrank 6.8 percent in 2011, leaving the level of output an estimated 16 percent below its pre-crisis peak. Unemployment has soared to more than 20 percent from 7.7 percent in 2008.

LONDON (Reuters) – Entering the fifth year of recession, Greece is writing its name in the book of unwanted records for one of the deepest economic slumps of modern times.

The Greek economy shrank 6.8 percent in 2011, leaving the level of output an estimated 16 percent below its pre-crisis peak. Unemployment has soared to more than 20 percent from 7.7 percent in 2008.

LONDON (Reuters) – Portugal’s economy will shrink as much as Greece’s this year, according to IMF projections. The two will have identical current account deficits and the red ink in Portugal’s budget will be almost as deep as in Greece’s.

But there’s also a huge difference: Lisbon enjoys political support that Athens can only dream of. Euro zone leaders seem determined that the slow-motion crash that is Greece will be a one-off, not a template for other strugglers.

LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuters) – A new guessing game is about to
begin: will China’s incoming generation of leaders show more
courage than the current incumbents in tackling deep economic
imbalances that threaten to bring growth to a sudden stop?

The question, easier to frame than to answer, is critical
for the world economy. China has accounted for about a quarter
of global growth in recent years, yet as far back as 2007
Premier Wen Jiabao characterised the expansion as “unsteady,
unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable”. It still is.

LONDON (Reuters) – To get an idea of the economic mountain euro zone strugglers Greece and Portugal have to climb, consider this: per million inhabitants, they each filed fewer than eight applications with the European Patent Office in 2010.

Germany, with the advantages of scale that go with a population eight times bigger, lodged 335 patent applications per million residents. But the Czech Republic, of a similar size to Greece and Portugal, managed 16. Much-smaller Ireland boasted 112, according to calculations based on data on the EPO website.

LONDON (Reuters) – To get an idea of the economic mountain euro zone strugglers Greece and Portugal have to climb, consider this: per million inhabitants, they each filed fewer than eight applications with the European Patent Office in 2010.

Germany, with the advantages of scale that go with a population eight times bigger, lodged 335 patent applications per million residents. But the Czech Republic, of a similar size to Greece and Portugal, managed 16. Much-smaller Ireland boasted 112, according to calculations based on data on the EPO website.

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Another European summit, another
bland commitment to boost growth and employment that even one of
the participants privately dismissed as unimportant.

It is true that communiques do not create jobs.

But investors might not be giving enough credit to
governments that, away from the summit spotlight, are at last
forcing through long-shunned reforms to increase economic growth
and thus tackle one of the root causes of the euro zone crisis.