Global Confidence Maintains Record High on Signs Recession Over

Confidence in the world economy held at a record high in September after reports suggested the recession is over and officials said they won’t rush to withdraw stimulus, a Bloomberg survey of users on six continents showed.

The Bloomberg Professional Global Confidence Index rose to 58.54 this month from 58.12 in August. The index exceeded 50 for a second month, which means there were more optimists than pessimists. Measures of confidence in France and Germany surged after their economies unexpectedly grew last quarter.

The world is emerging from the deepest recession since the 1930s after more than $2 trillion of infrastructure projects, tax breaks and government spending, and interest rates near zero averted a spiral into another Great Depression. The pace of the rebound may be tempered by rising unemployment, which the White House predicts will surpass 10 percent next year in the U.S.

“Now we have to see if the increase in confidence is matched by actual growth,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, and a survey participant. “The recovery is still fragile.”

The survey of more than 1,800 Bloomberg users was conducted between Sept. 7 and Sept. 11. Since the previous survey, President Barack Obama signaled the U.S. economy is expanding again and the European Central Bank raised its growth forecasts. Finance ministers from the Group of 20 also committed to continuing emergency measures to help strengthen the recovery.

U.S. Recession Over

The Federal Reserve last week said 11 of its 12 regional banks reported signs of a stable or improving economy in July and August. A measure of U.S. participants’ confidence in the world’s largest economy was unchanged at 47.3, the survey showed, after jumping from 29.5 the previous month.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who last year called the financial crisis an “economic Pearl Harbor,” said Sept. 15 that the U.S. economy has “hit a plateau at bottom.”