Economic Environment

In the first quarter the world economy was able to recover further from the financial crisis. As the joint diagnosis of leading German economic institutes for the spring of 2010 shows the individual regions did, however, progress at different speeds: In the threshold countries the economy picked up sharply. The industrialized nations, on the other hand, showed only a slight upward trend in their economic development. The repercussions of the crisis were still felt very strongly there. Thus, the propensity of companies to make investments continued at a low level and consumers also kept a low profile in terms of private household consumption.

In Germany the economic development continued to show a basically positive trend in the first quarter even though it slowed down somewhat. Especially the important export rates recovered slowly and industrial production was lower by some 20 per cent than before the beginning of the financial and economic crisis in 2008.

There was a similar development in the USA. There the economic dynamism lost its impetus in the last few months after the strong expansion in the second half of 2009.

In Europe economic development in the first quarter of 2010 was sluggish. The reason for this was the growing concern about the public budgets of some EU states that also constituted a burden on the common European currency.