The spectre of a new crisis that would hit the West is increasingly present on the lips of economists and politicians. The G7 is the club of the most developed economies in the West, with worrying data reflecting the main economic indicators of these countries.

The U.S. economy started 2% in the last quarter, but several Wall Street banks expect it to contract for the coming months. Japan has set a growth target of 0.7% for this year, and will also have difficulty in achieving it. Canada is the exception between the G7 countries. GDP has recorded year-on-year growth of 0.9% in the last quarter, an increase of 3.7%. But its main stimulus is exports, so it has great risks in the face of trade wars.

Europe in Kinkan

Germany, the “European locomotive”, risks entering into a technical recession: The Bundesbank has announced a contraction for the third quarter and, if it occurs, it would become the second straight quarter without growth. In the UK, during the month of July, capitalist economic indicators have improved somewhat, but the instability generated by Brexit is high and will not disappear in the short term. France’s GDP has peaked in the last quarter by only two-tenths, while in Italy there has been no growth since the last quarter.

“We still believe that the possibility of recession in the euro area is small. But it’s growing,” European Bank President Mario Draghi said on Thursday. At the same press conference, he reiterated the announcement of extraordinary measures for the "revival" of the economy. The European Bank will begin to purchase debt and has postponed without delay the increase in the credit interest it had planned on the European market.

Short-term and structural causes

When analysing economic recession and the risk of crisis, the main economists, politicians and the media constantly repeat three factors. One of them is the trade wars being carried out by the Trump administration in recent years. The main one with China, but not the only one, and which in any case affects many economies in the world. The second would be the instabilities produced by geopolitical tensions at the global level. Finally, the Brexit process is long and uncertain.

Other voices, without denying their influence, focus on the cycles of structural crisis of capitalism and propose a broader view. Santiago Niño Becerro, for example, says that a new crisis is about to erupt, which originated in 2008. The Catalan professor of Economic Structure says that in the last decade patches and doping measures have been adopted that concealed reality, but we have never really emerged from the crisis of 2008.