Executive confidence

Free fall

“A LONG, ugly, deep recession.” That was how Chrysler's chief financial officer Jerry York described his outlook for America's economy at a recent gathering of fellow finance executives. The latest poll of over 1,000 chief financial officers conducted by Duke University, Tilburg University and CFO, a sister publication of The Economist, largely supports this view. In America economic confidence is in short supply, with pessimists outnumbering optimists by a nine-to-one margin in the first quarter of 2008. In Europe, pessimists outnumber optimists by six to one. And to add to the gloom, finance chiefs in Asia are now more pessimistic than optimistic for the first time in five years.

Alamy