Summary "Europe already has one foot in Japanese deflation grave" corrections

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, (date is missing) the author of the article in The Telegraph, analyses the European deflation crisis and compares this situation to Japan's deflation failure that happened due to policy errors. Dept in Europe is on the increase and is becoming a serious threat to the European economy. Since the debt in western Europe rises faster than nominal GDP, these countries may face disastrous consequences. Deflation can cause dangerous runaway debt, which is already the case in Italy and Spain, and this debt is even more problematic to repay.

Policy errors throughout Europe are one of the main reasons why the prospect of solving the deflation problem seems very unlikely. One possible solution for this dilemma is proposed in the article, namely, to let inflation drift up in order to prevent deflation. However, countries which are not affected by this danger, such as Germany, are against this solution. Therefore, instead of establishing stable policies, Europe is drifting uncontrollably towards its deflation grave. The author then suggests that France, Italy, Spain and Club Med should ally and force Germany to enforce reflation policies. As they fear Germany's quitting, this solution is improbable to be implemented. Furthermore, the author suggests the economy recovering by itself, which is also an inappropriate solution.

[207 words]

With teacher's corrections:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the author of the article published in The Telegraph on the 23th of October, analyses the European crisis and compares this situation to Japan's deflation failure that happened due to policy errors.  European debt is increasing and is threatening the European economy. Since the debt in western Europe rises faster than nominal GDP, these countries may face disastrous consequences. Deflation can cause extremely dangerous runaway debt, which is already the case in countries like Italy and Spain, and this debt is even more problematic to repay.

Policy errors throughout Europe are one of the main reasons why the prospect of solving the deflation problem seems very unlikely. One possible solution for this dilemma is proposed in the article, namely, to let inflation drift up in order to prevent deflation. However, countries like Germany are against this solution. Therefore, instead of establishing stable policies, Europe is drifting uncontrollably towards its deflation grave. The author then suggests that the Club Med should ally and force Germany to enforce reflation policies. As they fear Germany's exit, this solution is unlikely to be implemented. Furthermore, the author suggests may recover spontaneously, which is also an inappropriate solution.

[196 words]

Critique on an anonymous summary

The summary

Europe already has one foot in "Japanese" deflation grave

“The debt deflation theory” by professor Irving Fisher would take EU authorities far in the battle against rising debt. As the American Revolution has shown, deflation is an underestimated danger with the potential to lead to economic disaster. If total debt grows too high, as happens in Western Europe, deflation gets mortal. The eurostat index depicts that deflation has dropped. The tendency of falling prices is seen in many countries. Similar to Japan’s crisis, the eurozone economy is in endangered by high debt ratios and sustained deflation. Zsolt Darvas from the Brussels think tank Bruegel equates deflation with bleakness. He accuses the European approach of the debt crisis and mentions the dilemma of states being pushed to “internal devaluations”. Vicious dynamics such as the “denominator effect” are witnessed in countries like Italy, where debt rises faster than GDP. The same is true for private debt, where with crash diets for erred states, economic self destruction was only enhanced. For Mr Darvas, let inflation elevate means escaping from the deflationary spiral. Responsible for money shifting to Germany is the ECB and non counteracting member states which fear Germany would leave the eurozone. Europe hope for global growth to fight the deflation virus.

My critique

It seems to me, unfortunately, that the author of this text has nor fully identified the topic of the article. I have marked all content slips in orange and all language mistakes in red. 

Content-wise it was not necessary to include either the American revolution nor professor Irving Fisher. It is wasting precious word count that could have been used to explain, for example, different consequences of deflation in  EU countries. Furthermore, mentioning Zsolt Darvas is obsolete as most people do not know who he is and what he does. In the next sentence the author mentions "...the European approach..." which is not exact as European politicians are supposed to approach this issue. 

language:

happens             is happening

gets mortal        deflation would become dangerous

the Brussels      Brussels

like                   such as

crash diets         (refers rather to food than economy)

self destruction     self-destruction

money shifting     (not sure if that is an actual expression)

hope                  hopes

Apart from those difficulties the text also does not seem very coherent nor would I understand what the article was about, reading this summery in advance. 

However, there are a couple of important ideas that were included, such as deflation being an underestimated danger, what happens when debt rises faster than nominal GDP and Europe trying to solve the problems by doing nothing.