German Business Confidence at Twenty Year High

Yahoo News/Associated Press:   German business confidence has risen to a new two-decade high, exceeding expectations as an increasingly broad-based recovery in Europe’s biggest economy shows no signs of slacking, a closely watched survey showed Friday.The Ifo institute’s monthly confidence index rose to 110.3 points in January from 109.8 in December. It was the eighth consecutive increase, the highest figure since Ifo started measuring business confidence in reunited Germany in 1991, and exceeded economists’ forecast of a slight rise to 109.9.

The German strongly in 2010, growing by 3.6 percent as a recovering global economy fueled a surge in exports — a traditional German strength — and domestic demand showed signs of improvement.

The government this week raised its growth forecast for this year to 2.3 percent from 1.8 percent.  (See GEI News Brief.)    Read more at Yahoo News.…