US growth has outpaced Germany, France, Japan, and the UK for five consecutive quarters -- and long-end bond yields don't track the divergence at all
Real GDP growth across the US, Germany, France, the UK, and Japan has diverged sharply and persistently, not just in the latest print. As of Q1 2026, year-on-year growth ranks: United States 2.68%, United Kingdom 0.91%, France 0.87%, Japan 0.32%, Germany 0.34% -- a 2.36 percentage-point spread between the fastest and slowest economy. US growth has held between 2.0% and 2.7% for five consecutive quarters; Germany has not cleared 0.4% over the same window. Japan shows the sharpest deterioration, decelerating from 1.82% to 0.32% in three quarters. Long-end government bond yields do not track this growth ranking at all -- Japan and Germany, the two weakest growers, carry the lowest 10-year yields, reflecting each country's own rate regime rather than relative growth prospects. This piece was delayed briefly during verification after an initial Germany/France GDP fetch was found to have pulled the Euro Area aggregate by mistake -- a genuine platform bug, now fixed, with corrected data used throughout.
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