·
Consumer
Confidence indicators were released today for France, the Netherlands
and Slovakia. Business confidence indicators for the Netherlands
and Slovakia were also released today. France's Composite Business
Climate Indicator was released last week. Both consumers business
people in the three countries have become increasingly
pessimistic. Consumers have generally been more pessimistic than
industrialists as can be seen in the three attached Charts which show
consumer and business confidence measures for each country.
·
Consumer confidence in the Netherlands
declined by 12 percentage points in July to -31% from -19% in
June. The pessimists in the Netherlands now outweigh the optimists
by 31%/ The optimists still exceed the pessimists among the
producers, but the margin has been shrinking and now is only 2.4
percentage points.
· Consumers are even more pessimistic in France where the percent balance between pessimists and optimists is 48%, up from 46% in June. France's Composite (synthetic) Business Confidence Indicator has fallen below its average level of 100. At 98 it is at the lowest level since April, 2005.
· The percent balance between the pessimists and optimists in Slovakia has been increasing but the pessimists exceed the optimists by only 8.8% in contrast to the much bigger differences in France and the Netherlands. The excess of optimists over pessimist in industry has practically disappeared. It is only 0.7%, and is 15.6 percentage points below the excess of optimists in July, 2007.
