t’s official, for what it’s worth. Both Europe and Japan are in recession. The Eurozone contracted by 0.2% for the second straight quarter. Germany (the largest economy in Europe) and Italy (fourth largest) both shrank in the third quarter. Japan’s economy-the world’s second largest-shrank by almost half a percentage point in the third quarter.

Sometimes when you’re scouring the news, you see a statistic that renders you almost speechless. You can’t quite get your head around what it really means, you just know that it’s a knockout number.