MacroScope

With little sign of economic recovery in Europe and governments incrementally loosening their austerity drives (Britain being the exception) the focus turns to the big central banks on our patch and what more they might be able to do to foster some recovery.

With the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday, President Mario Draghi is in Shanghai saying the euro zone is on track for only a “very gradual recovery”. It’s hard to tell at a glance whether that is a rhetorical downgrade of the existing forecast for a pick-up in the second half of the year with downside risks attached. Either way, the pressure on the ECB to act again is growing.

However, don’t expect anything at its monthly meeting on Thursday, although a further interest rate cut could come this year and there is still talk of cutting the deposit rate – the return banks get for parking funds at the ECB – into negative territory to try and get them to lend. The big question is would that achieve much? Despite being in a world awash with central bank money, there is clearly a reluctance among banks to push money into the real economy. The latest data showed bank loans to euro zone businesses and households contracted for the 12th month in a row in April.

Draghi has left the door open for negative deposit rates but beyond that it’s not clear what is doable. The ECB’s bond-buying plans are dormant because no country needs the help at the moment and there is no talk of a repeat of last year’s 1 trillion euro splurge of cheap long-term liquidity to banks. Discussion about boosting lending to smaller companies is ongoing but the central bank is reluctant to lead the way and Germany has already waded in with bilateral plans to help Portugal and Spain.

Manufacturing sector PMI surveys for euro zone countries and the UK today are likely to show Germany will grow more strongly in the second quarter but others will again be left trailing in its wake. We will pick up Asia’s global economy piece which is nosed on China’s equivalent report showing factory activity shrank for the first time in seven months in May. The parallel U.S. figure is due later.

* Updated to show Scotland’s composite PMI has bettered the UK equivalent for seven straight months now, after Monday’s data.

For the first time in a long while, Scotland’s economic performance has caught up with the UK average– and there is at least some evidence to suggest it’s doing slightly better than the British baseline.

In general, the Scottish economy has come second-best behind the poor UK average, at least since the full onslaught of the global financial crisis hit in September 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

A sudden turn for the worse across German companies should clinch an interest rate cut from the European Central Bank next week, or in June at the latest.

That’s because the latest PMI surveys, which have a decent correlation with economic growth, suggest the German economy  shifted back into reverse this month, against the expectations of economists.

And the one thing the ECB’s Governing Council never allows to pass is any sign that Germany, Europe’s No.1 economy, is floundering.

Take with a pinch of salt economists who say Tuesday’s strong UK services PMI  might persuade the Bank of England to hold off from restarting its printing presses this week.

BoE policymakers been perfectly willing over the last few years to vote in favour of more asset purchases after a rise in the services PMI number.

Only the last decision for more quantitative easing — July 2012 — came after a decrease in the services PMI’s main index. While members of the Monetary Policy Committee rely on the PMIs as a monthly gauge of economic activity, it’s clear the surveys can’t be read as any proxy for policy decisions.

Optimism in Germany is roaring and consumers across the euro zone are starting to become less gloomy. But the latest hard economic data are a reminder of the difference between confidence that things are going to get better, and the hope that they will.

For the moment, we only have the latter.

Friday’s German Ifo business climate survey topped even the highest expectations, as did the ZEW economic sentiment indicator on Tuesday. Euro zone consumer confidence improved this month too, and the mood in financial markets has been largely buoyant since the start of the year.

The hope is that will translate into a growing euro zone economy, but that isn’t happening yet.

The euro zone economy may be doing far worse than most economists want to believe. That’s not good news for a central bank trying to rescue the single currency through a hotly-contested bond purchasing programme that has yet to get started.

The latest flash purchasing managers’ indexes, which cover thousands of euro zone companies, suggest the third quarter will mark the euro zone’s worst economic performance since the dark days of early 2009, according to Markit, which compiles them.

They predict the economy likely shrank by 0.6 percent in the quarter that finishes at the end of this month.

If you have ever wondered why financial markets and economists are interested in purchasing managers indexes, here is why:

Europe’s economy is contracting at a steeper rate than most city economists recognise – and not for the first time.

While tiny Greece stole the headlines last week, a calamitous set of business surveys pointed to imminent recession for the enormous euro zone economy. Even a month ago, that was thought unlikely by most economists.

If city economists weren’t employed by global finance institutions, lots of them might make a living by closing barn doors after the horses have fled. Last week’s purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) were further proof of this.

““The recovery has finished, we are now contracting. The forward looking indicators suggest that things will deteriorate further in the coming months,” – Chris Williamson, chief economist at PMI compiler Markit.

Thursday’s PMI surveys make very worrying reading. Not a single economist out of the 37 polled by Reuters predicted the euro zone services number would fall below the 50 level that divides growth from contraction. In the event, it fell from 51.5 last month to 49.1 in September – its lowest reading since July 2009.

Economists like the PMI surveys because they have a very good track record of predicting moves in the economy. Before the Great Recession hit in 2008, they were among the first indicators that hinted at a downturn to come.

Anyone involved in financial markets on a day-to-day basis will be familiar with bits of jargon like “breaking the psychological barrier”, “passing key resistance levels,” and even “magic numbers”.

While academics might argue if such things exist, market players put a lot of weight (and money) on the way certain financial instruments, indexes and currencies seem to behave near a certain number – usually a round figure.

Economists, looking months and years into the future to predict the path of entire economies, could well declare themselves immune to the superstitions of daily market movements.