The world says it lost faith in business in 2008

Trust in business plummeted worldwide last year,as the global economic crisis sent financial institutions pleading for government support....

Trust in business plummeted worldwide last year,as the global economic crisis sent financial institutions pleading for government support,leaving average people to question industrys ability to bring prosperity,according to a survey released on Tuesday. Some 62 per cent of informed adults aged 25 to 64 told the Edelman Trust Barometer that they trusted businesses less than they did a year ago,with respondents in the United States and Western Europe more suspicious than those in emerging economies.

The biggest drops came in Ireland,where 83 per cent of respondents said they had lost trust in business; in Japan, where 79 per cent grew more wary; and in the United States,where 77 per cent became more suspicious. Trust evaporated as the worlds most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression caused millions to lose their jobs and wiped out billions of dollars of invested capital.

This is not 2001-2003; this is not limited to the dot-com new economy concept companies … This is General Motors; this is your big bank, said Richard Edelman,president and chief executive of US public relations firm Edelman,which commissioned the survey. Its affected you in the pocketbook and also its been the mainstay of the economy. Last year a downturn that started with investors losing confidence in obscure securities from the mortgage market snowballed,pushing Wall Street banks including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc to their knees and even bringing the North Atlantic nation of Iceland to the brink of bankruptcy.

Story continues below this ad

In the United States,just 38 per cent of respondents aged 35 to 64 said they trusted business,down from 58 per cent a year earlier and the lowest rating in the surveys 10-year history. The reading is lower even than results in the wake of the dot-com bust and collapse of Enron Corp.

While the survey has been conducted for 10 years,this is the first time questioners have specifically asked whether their trust in business had declined over the past year. The survey has grown to include more countries and a wider age range of respondents over its history. Americans were least trusting of the auto and banking industries both of which last year turned to Washington for billions of dollars to tide them through financial crises. The US government has already paid out more than $270 billion through its Troubled Asset Relief Program to prop up financial institutions including Bank of America Corp,Citigroup and American International Group,and has made multibillion-dollar loans to automakers General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC.