European Commission’s economic confidence weakened in November for a ninth consecutive month. The headline index dropped from 94.8 to 93.7, marginally below the consensus estimate, which was looking for a decline to 93.9. The details indicate that weakness was broad-based as industrial (-7.3 from -6.5), services (-1.7 from 0.1), retail (-11.00 from -9.7) and consumer (-20.4 from -19.9) confidence all weakened in November. Construction confidence, on the contrary, improved slightly from -25.1 to -24.8. The breakdown of the national data shows a more mixed picture as economic sentiment improved slightly in Greece albeit it from record lows (68.6 from 67.5), Italy (90.1 from 89.3) and Spain (91.0 from 90.8) and held up surprisingly well in Germany (104.0 from 104.1). In Portugal (71.2 from 77.7), Belgium (93.6 from 98.2), France (93.2 from 96.9) and the Netherlands (89.7 from 91.5), weakness was more persistent. The data confirm again that after the peripherals, also the core EMU countries are feeling the pain from the ever spreading debt crisis. Last month, ECB President Draghi said already that the euro zone was heading towards a mild recession by the end of the year and on Monday the OECD noted that the euro area appeared to be in a mild recession. A bright spot is however that most recent German business confidence data held up relatively well, so there might be a very small chance that Europe’s growth engine might escape a new recession.