Comment on 'summary1'

Summary of “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese’ deflation grave”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 analyses Europe’s debt crisis. (1)

According to Evans-Pritchard, more and more European states are suffering from the recent “trend” (2) of deflation as prices are falling and debt is increasing. Spain and Italy, for instance, are pushed into runaway debt trajectory and even Germany, renowned for having a flat inflation (3), is said to be in danger of deflation too.  Debt itself is already difficult to overcome but with deflation, the situation becomes lethal. Basically, Europe is now feared to end up in the same situation like Japan (4), sliding into a deflationary trap which will have hardly any turning back.  Nevertheless, possible solutions are proposed to try to, no matter how, break out of the impasse (5). The ECB, for instance, should do whatever it takes to keep inflation high enough to lower the risk of deflation in any vulnerable country. Another way to protect Europe from a complete deflation disaster would be the ganging up of the Club Gang (6) on Germany and forcing the country to accept inflation.

No matter which way Europe chooses to stabilise (7) deflation and debt, measures must be taken before Europe ends up in the same deflation lodge as Japan.

[200 words]

Here are my comments:

(1)    I think it would be better to change the word order in this sentence in order to make it 'easier' to read and get rid of this comma: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard analyses Europe’s debt crisis in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013.

Still, this sentence is a good start/introduction!

(2)    I think the word 'trend' is not the best choice in this sentence. Maybe you could just skip it and write something like: '…are suffering from the recent deflation as…'.

(3)    I looked up the word 'inflation' on the COCA and the most frequent collocation for it was 'low'. Therefore, I would change it to 'a low inflation'.

(4)    It is very good that you mention Japan in this context as it explains the title of the newspaper article. 

(5)    You chose a very fitting metaphor in this sentence! But shouldn’t it be 'break the impasse'?

(6)    In the text it was the 'Club Med', right?

(7)    Maybe it would sound better to write something like 'fight deflation', but I guess 'stabilise' is also correct!

In general, I think your summary is very good! What I liked most is that you used metaphors like 'to be pushed into runaway debt trajectory' or 'to break the impasse' as they help to depict the actual problem. Apart from this, the clear structure and logic of your summary helps understanding the matter. In my summary I tried to divide the main part into three smaller paragraphs which was not such a good idea. Your summary shows me that one can still write everything in one paragraph and still have a good organisation. I also liked that you referred to Japan and thus explained the title of the article very well. This is also something I will definitely do in my next summary. However, there are some words and phrases I might have written differently.