As noted yesterday, the confounding divergence between the stock markets of the Chinese growth "dynamo" which is at three year lows, and that imploding basket case of a banana republics known as Europe, whose stock markets trade like a penny stock and have been soaring laelt, may never have been wider, but when it comes to how people feel, unlike in the US, they refuse to be fooled by some arbitrary manipulated level of the DAX, CAC, IBEX or MIB. In fact, Europe's "chip on its shoulder" grow to the largest it has been in three years as confidence plunged. Specifically, consumer confidence in the euro area slumped to the lowest in three years at minus 24.6, according to the final estimate for August. The 3.1 deterioration in August represents the sharpest decline in a year. The index has been lower in only two periods over the past three decades. Not unexpectedly the least unconfident is Germany, while Greeks are urgently trying to find new reasons to keep pushing the rock uphill day after day.
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