While almost everyone in Washington is glued to impeachment developments, Europe has been quietly drifting toward a recession. This is bad news for Christine Lagarde, the former head of the International Monetary Fund , who is now the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) . It may also be bad news for the rest of us. By the usual indicators — which define a recession as two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy — Europe is almost there. Growth of the euro zone’s gross domestic product was a meager 0.2 percent in the third quarter. Growth for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, was only 0.1 percent. Employment growth for the euro zone, the 19 countries using the euro, was only 0.1 percent. No one can want this. The economics are brutal: higher unemployment, lower confidence and squeezed profits. The politics are worse: greater distrust of government, more nationalism (including […]