The bitter aftertaste will be that it has taken eight or so years to accomplish this. By contrast, it took less than four years for the American economy to expand beyond its pre-crisis peak of late 2007. Since passing that milestone in the autumn of 2011. America's GDP has grown to be nearly 10% bigger. Yet the risk of a slowdown in growth for Europe, together with stubbornly low inflation, are considerable and will mean the European Central Bank’s programme of quantitive easing will carry on beyond September 2016, when the ECB originally scheduled it to end.
