Americans are worried that the recovery is already faltering - and anti-Government sentiment is rife.

Leaving a dreary and autumnal London for New York through a strangely quiet Heathrow was meant to be a morale-boosting escape to the land of optimism and rampant entrepreneurial spirit. Instead it was a journey into a land gripped by uncertainty, denial - and a shocking level of anti-government whingeing.

Americans have been turned by the credit crunch and consequent recession from headstrong consumers into frugal bargain-hunters, driven by fear of further job losses, pay freezes and a decreased sense of wealth.  A Conference Board report showed that the index of consumer confidence slipped by almost 6 points in October. Another report, based on polling ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, showed that 74% of consumers intended to switch to buying items on sale and 54% planned to use more discount vouchers.  

Reacting to this trend, Wal-mart and Sears both ran 'Black Friday' deep discount promotions on the all-important sales day after the holiday.  Burger King is selling double cheeseburgers for $1, while McDonalds is to offer a dollar breakfast menu. Never has the price of obesity and a heart attack been so low.

But what of the mood in financial and professional markets in Manhattan?

This is harder to gauge, simply because it is so difficult to get past some astonishing diatribes - not just about the ‘socialist’ nature of proposed healthcare reforms, but also about the cost to tax payers.  A series of meetings with top lawyers and bankers degenerated into a string of rants about the tax rises that will be needed to fund the proposals.  

What matter that 45m poor Americans will finally get access to healthcare, if it might dent the considerable wealth of the highly paid elite? The problem is not so much an unwillingness to share the cost in principle, rather the timing of the whole thing. The moment when bonuses slip off the remuneration agenda and profits melt away in a blizzard of cost cutting is not the perfect point at which to ask America’s professionals to stump up a huge chunk of cash.

The other topic dominating the thinking of the financial world is the latest debacle in the US real estate sector, with an average fall of 40% in commercial property values pushing owners out of the money -, and paralyzing their lenders because there is no sensible exit strategy right now. One real estate work out specialist I met came up with a memorable phrase about the process of endlessly digesting lower valuations: 'We’re just sitting here watching the pig go through the snake'.

The bottom line is that both Wall Street and Main Street fear the tentative recovery is faltering. Comments about new price bubbles in everything from the stock market to commodities are growing. If these burst any time soon, the mood of America’s thrifty consumers and outraged professionals will darken still further. The US is not prepared psychologically for a double dip, any more than the rest of the world. Politicians, economists, bankers and private equity alike are all in denial and are in serious danger of provoking exactly what they fear most.      

Paris is starting to recover its joie de vivre as France climbs out of recession, writes Nick Hood.

Parisians have much to celebrate these autumnal days: the Eiffel Tower is 120 years old, Asterix the Gaul is (paradoxically) only 50 and the Michelin-starred Tour D’Argent is auctioning off 18,000 bottles from its legendary wine cellar. Some lucky and non-recession-scarred bidders will be marking France’s escape from the global recession with a long-forgotten bottle of 1875 Armagnac Vieux.

But elsewhere, little changes. Three of France’s largest rail workers’ unions called a strike recently. Seeking to hide behind the green lobby, the cause was not workers’ salaries, but the failure of Le Petit Président’s government to encourage freight transportation by chemin de fer.  Newspapers reported that the trains continued to run with minimal disruption, unlike the self-destructive mayhem wrought in the UK by striking postal workers. French farmers were also protesting (when are they not?) burning tyres in the Champs Elysées and demonstrating right across France, demanding action over plummeting prices.

But France does seems to be charting a cautious and steady course out of financial darkness, all the same. Along with Germany and Japan, it returned to growth in the second quarter of 2009, and is forecasting a modest 2.2% GDP contraction for the whole of 2009. Jobs are still being lost and the unemployment rate in mainland France has reached 9.7%, but industrial orders rose 3% in August. Household consumption was also 2.3% higher in September than in August, although consumers are expected to remain prudent, fearful for their jobs.

The factors underlying these positive indicators are stronger exports to emerging markets and the cash-for-clunkers scheme. Despite this, business investment remains low and funding conditions are challenging for companies wanting to expand. Production capacity remains underused across a broad range of sectors.

Unfortunately, the business-restructuring regime in France has morphed during the recession, becoming more a protective environment for cash-strapped companies, rather than fulfilling its original brief of forcing troubled entrepreneurs into debt talks with their lenders.  Complaints are growing from lenders and advisors that this unintended shift of emphasis is both restraining lending for rescues, and changing the funding environment for healthy businesses.

There have of course been high profile casualties. In June, the iconic fashion house Christian Lacroix, famous for its brightly-coloured gowns, declared itself insolvent. Vodka maker Belvedere, known for its Sobieski brand and boasting Hollywood actor Bruce Willis as a shareholder, has entered the French 'sauvegarde' insolvency regime. A major struggle is under way to rescue the huge property empire of the Orco group, extending beyond France into Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

How are the legions of excellent Paris restaurants faring in this early recovery phase? They seem busy, but it was a sign of the times that it was possible to book a table for 14 on a Thursday evening at the illustrious Maceo establishment, with its magnificent L’Empire architecture and wide choice of magnums of fine French wines, at no more than three hours' notice.  

Things may be getting better in France, but a return to full health may be some way off yet.

Winter comes early to Sweden, but the snows of recession are still melting, says Nick Hood.

Stockholm has been plunged into traffic chaos by the premature arrival of winter 2009, just as the bar-room banter turned to the desperate thought that Sven-Göran Eriksson might be the answer to an abject failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

But in the recovery departments of Swedish banks, the talk is about what has happened to the anticipated surge of bad debts and insolvencies.  Why, they ask, are we not busier? Are we missing something? Surely there must be more problems lurking in our loan books, especially when Saab is reporting a 61.7% drop in car sales to Europe in September?

Others are more bullish. The Stockholm stock market OMX index is at a high for 2009 and house prices in Stockholm surged nearly 5% in the third quarter of 2009, taking them close to their previous peak in August 2008. The super-wealthy Wallenberg family’s investment company, Investor, has just reported a $1.8bn net profit as asset valuations rebounded upwards, reflecting rising confidence across the whole of the economy.

Certainly there are serious problems to be faced, not least the carnage in the Baltic economies where Swedish financial institutions dominate and control the local banking sectors.  Trouble there means heavy write downs for some Swedish banks.  Latvia is a particular worry, with the Government and the IMF seriously at odds over austerity measures.

But Swedish investors are not just supporting their own economy, they are looking to take advantage of regional opportunities, too. Agricultural land in Russia is popular, with Swedish company Black Earth Farming buying huge tracts of farmland in the Voronezh region south of Moscow, to exploit the fertile soil and reverse the current 70% fallow ratios.

Sweden is also basking in the warm glow of interest in its model socialist society - from America of all places. President Obama has been accused of adopting Swedish-style policies, with critics suggesting that his aim is to create a higher tax regime to support increasing state welfare benefits.  

Ironically, this comes just as Sweden heads enthusiastically towards a more capitalist approach. In September, the government started selling off state-owned pharmacies as the latest step in an ambitious liberal reform programme started some three years ago.  Some 80% of schools are now privately run, as is the entire railway and subway system and the post office network.  One academic recently described Sweden as a laboratory for privatization.

And Sweden has some very capitalist issues, with its Unemployment Insurance Board reporting that almost half of the country’s jobless have no unemployment benefit because of increased premiums.  

Judging by the throng of Friday night revellers jostling to join in the sing song round the grand piano in the Cadier bar in Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, the general public is less concerned about the economy than their compatriots in the banking sector. Only time will tell how many commercial corpses they will find when the snow thaws next spring.