Economic Expectations Improve Again

The economic expectations for Switzerland have improved again in August. This reveals the current Financial Market Test for Switzerland which is carried out by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in cooperation with Credit Suisse (CS), After its decline in the previous month, the ZEW-CS indicator of economic expectations has continued to follow its uptrend which started at the beginning of 2009, climbing in August from the neutral level of 0.0 to the 18.6 mark. On the other hand, the indicator for the assessment of the current economic situation was less positive, deteriorating by 8.9 points to a reading of minus 79.1.

Inflation expectations have changed just slightly since the July survey, with roughly two-thirds of the respondents now expecting the inflation rate to continue holding steady at the current level.

In this month's "special question," the financial market experts were asked about the factors to which the weakening momentum in lending activity is attributable. The answers show that several factors are seen as responsible. In each case, more than half of the respondents expressed agreement with the three respective possible factors: lack of demand, lack of supply as well as deteriorating consumer credit ratings and stricter equity capital regulations for banks. On the other hand, 26.3 percent of the survey press release participants do not consider the lack of supply as a factor of origin in this context.

Detailed results More detailed results - including survey participants' assessment of developments in other countries - can be found in this month's edition of the "Switzerland Financial market report" (please note that the URL is case sensitive):
https://www.credit-suisse.com/upload/news-live/000000021961.pdf