EUROPEAN CAUSES
The European Central Bank was unable to predict this big recession and it took the measures with some delay, basically imposing austerity measures and the containment of public expending. This made the credit scarce and had complicated the access to financing consumers and producers. This phenomenon expands rapidly to the countries in the Eurozone and made them to fall into the recession in the first semester (like Denmark), and in the second one other economies just contract in a 0,2% (headed by France and Germany).
On October 7th 2008, ECOFIN (Economic and Financial Council formed by the Ministry of Economy and Tax Offices of all countries in the EU) had a reunion, and they decided that all the member States will provide, for at least a year, a granted protection to the personal deposits to particulars for a minimum quantity of 50.000€.
The European Central Bank reduced its interest rate from 4,25% to 1,25% and it was still bigger than in the USA. This is due to the late reaction of the authorities because Europe had less serious problems, they were afraid of the inflation and of a raised in the public debt. Since Europe was the 30% of the international commercial sector, this will delay the global economy’s recover.