By now, you are relatively familiar with recent economic events in the United States. But what about Europe? Write two paragraphs about the state of the economy in the Euro area over the past several years. What has happened to inflation, real GDP growth, and unemployment? What about a key policy interest rate set by the European Central Bank (ECB)? [The ECB sets several key interest rates, including a “deposit rate” (the interest rate the ECB pays on deposits from banks) and a “lending rate” (the interest rate it charges for overnight loans). All are useful and interesting. To keep us all on the same page, let’s look at the lending rate.] An extremely helpful resource for this exercise is the ECB’s Statistical Data Warehouse: sdw.ecb.europa.eu. (You may find it convenient to make a brief table of this data or even to copy some of the ECB’s graphs.)