The Ifo Institute has a fairly significant mission in Germany. They measure small business confidence.
In the world of commercial affairs, it's typically the business world that really reflects growth and consumer confidence that connect to the little guy and mean something to regular households. If a guy owns a 5-man business operation, and he's really down over business....then folks around assume that attitude, and then worry about their future and stability. If the boss comes into work grinning and smiling....it's a attitude that carries over, and the employees go home.....giving off the same enthusiasm.
The same logic works with a 4k man operation where the CEO walks boldly in and talks up orders and folks then relate that "safety" to buying a new car in the spring, or taking a four-star vacation in the fall.
The Ifo guys have a magic number that relates to business confidence, and it's the highest that it's been since the Berlin Wall went down (back to 1990). They admit, if you go back to 2009....it was a terrible number and reflected one of the worst economic stumbles in decades. Germany was in serious trouble in the spring of 2009. So we've come to this recovery phase now...eighteen months later. This is a 3.4 percent growth period for 2010, but even for 2011....the government is still talking about a 1.8 percent period of growth (something that some countries haven't seen in years).
The job market is moving, cars are selling, and it appears the next twelve months ought to be an awful positive period for the government and the nation. If you look around Europe....there might be one or two others in a somewhat positive moment....and everyone else is still waiting on things to settle (their recovery could be five years away).
The amazing thing is that if you go down to the local pub....there will sit Huns and Karl....and the topic of recovery isn't on their top twenty-five items of discussion. This is the fascinating part of this story. Germans aren't exactly bragging about the recovery....they simply participate in it. It's the business community that brags, and of course...the political folks. The local guys in the pub, Huns and Karl, will sum up the scores of soccer from the previous night, discuss the latest Penny Markt robbery by Russians, and perhaps settle on the worst landscaped yard in the local village.
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