Reuters: US Dollar Report: UPDATE 1-German Ifo business climate index falls for 4th month

Reuters: US Dollar Report Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

UPDATE 1-German Ifo business climate index falls for 4th month Aug 27th 2012, 08:32 Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:32am EDT * Fourth successive fall in business climate * German firms' increasingly feeling euro zone crisis * Business sentiment at lowest since March 2010 By Alexandra Hudson BERLIN, Aug 27 (Reuters) - German business sentiment dropped for a fourth month in August to reach its lowest level since March 2010, signalling domestic firms are increasingly vulnerable to the ravages of the euro zone crisis and that Germany may no longer be a bulwark. The Munich-based Ifo think tank said on Monday its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 firms, fell to 102.3 in August from a downwardly revised 103.2 in July. A Reuters poll of 40 economists had forecast a fall to 102.6 from an originally reported 103.3. "The downward slide continues as German companies are increasingly becoming pessimistic about the future," said Carsten Brzeski at ING. "It looks as if the German economy will, at best, be treading water in the coming months. The latest batch of sentiment indicators even points to a contraction in the third quarter," he added. Three years into the debt crisis, growth in Europe's largest economy slowed in the second quarter of 2012 to 0.3 percent and a string of increasingly gloomy data has raised the possibility of contraction in the second half of the year. The decline in the Ifo index reflects companies fears that key European export markets are faltering and that demand from emerging economies may not be able to pick up the slack. Ifo data also confirms what hard data from the Purchasing Managers' Indicator (PMI) already showed last week: Germany's hitherto steady resilience to the crisis is waning. Orders from abroad for Germany's manufacturing goods, a mainstay for the economy, fell this month at the fastest rate since April 2009. Industrial flagships ThyssenKrupp and Opel have announced they are reducing working hours due to weaker demand while Bosch announced it was in talks with workers over shortening hours. A slowdown carries risks for German Chancellor Angela Merkel as she seeks a third term in office next year and could tie her hands when it comes to bailing out indebted euro zone peers, especially if a nascent rise in unemployment accelerates. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions