AIX-EN-PROVENCE, Jul 4 – ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet ruled out on Sunday the risk of a new recession, after a week of soft economic data fuelled market fears of a dreaded double-dip into a new slump.
"I don\’t think so at all," Trichet told journalists when asked if a double-dip recession was on the horizon.
"At a global level it is clear that we are experiencing a recovery, which is confirmed particularly in the emerging world but also in the industrialized world," he said at an economics conference in the south of France.
But he warned that growth could not be taken for granted in industrialised countries, saying that "it depends on us, it depends on the capacity of the industrialized countries to reinforce confidence."
"This is the reason why it is so important that we have fiscal policies designed to reinforce confidence of households … of businesses … of savers and of investors," he said.
Trichet also said that austerity drives being implemented in several European countries would not hurt the recovery, as some top economists and US officials have suggested.
Global stocks suffered heavy losses and bonds rallied last week as a string of dismal economic data from the United States and China raised doubts about the health of the global economic recovery.
