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The Conference Board Leading Economic Index™ (LEI) for France increased 0.7 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index™ (CEI) decreased 0.1 percent in May.

Public trust in government has declined, pressure to regulate business has softened, and trust in President Barack Obama to solve the nation’s problems has slipped, according to the latest quarterly Public Trust Monitor, conducted by Public Strategies, Inc., in conjunction with POLITICO.

In May 2009 compared with April 2009, the euro area (EA16) industrial new orders index fell by 0.2%. In April the index decreased by 0.7%. In the EU27 new orders rose by 0.9% in May 2009, after dropping by 1.7% in April. Excluding ships, railway & aerospace equipment, for which changes tend to be more volatile, industrial new orders decreased by 0.3% in the euro area, but grew by 0.4% in the EU27.

Pay raises for U.S. workers are expected to rebound in 2010, following a year in which many companies slashed raises in the wake of the recession, according to a new survey by Watson Wyatt.

From December 2007 to December 2008, employment declined in 285 of the 334 largest U.S. counties, according to preliminary data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Elkhart County, Ind., located about 100 miles east of Chicago, posted the largest percentage decline, with a loss of 17.8 percent over the year, compared with a national job decrease of 2.3 percent. Manufacturing sustained the largest employment losses in Elkhart. Montgomery County, Texas, which is about 20 miles north of Houston, experienced the largest over-the-year percentage increase in employment among the largest counties in the U.S., with a gain of 2.7 percent.

A newly released survey, conducted in seven countries - the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Brazil, India, Germany and France - indicates that while many environmental beliefs and behaviors are shared across different consumer cultures, others vary widely. Generally, consumers in the US, UK, Germany and France tend to align in their attitudes, while consumers in Brazil, India, and China have divergent views, and are particularly inclined to seek green products and to favor companies they consider green.

TPI, the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world and a unit of Information Services Group Inc. (ISG),released second-quarter and first-half global market data showing that outsourcing activity continues to be constrained by difficult macroeconomic conditions, despite its potential to soften the impact of the recession through cost savings and efficiency gains.

As the economy struggles to gain momentum, 57% of manufacturing executives are cautiously optimistic about the outlook for the next six months and nearly two-thirds (70%) are planning to keep staff levels steady, according to a survey released by Baker Tilly.

The number of people online around the world will grow more than 45 percent to 2.2 billion users over the next five years, according to a new report by Forrester Research, Inc. Asia remains the biggest global Internet growth engine: 43 percent of the world’s online population will reside in Asia by 2013, with 17 percent of the global online population in China. Growth rates in the US, Western Europe, and the major industrialized nations in Asia Pacific such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea will slow to between 1 percent and 3 percent.

In the midst of economic uncertainty, the relationship between investors and their financial advisors becomes the most crucial factor impacting investor satisfaction, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 U.S. Full Service Investor Satisfaction Study(SM).