Two of the MPC's members broke ranks to vote for an immediate rate rise earlier this month, minutes published yesterday reveal, making prospects for a November increase look a virtual certainty. That requires further adjustment and adaptation.The slog continues Growth will remain pretty subdued. The other was entering the eurozone at what, with hindsight, was too high an exchange rate. That adjustment is now over and, within Europe, German prices are fully competitive again.Germany will now continue to carry a third burden, the demographic one noted above.
The latest survey from the ZEW Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim, out this week, shows that investors are more optimistic about the current economic situation than they have been at any time since 2000, as the first graph shows.But as you can see, they are also very pessimistic about the future, the other line on the graph. Indeed, the index tumbled this week, showing that the German investment community is less optimistic about that than at any time since March 1993. For investors the future is not "fantastic" at all.How should these two views be reconciled?First, a simple point. If people find present conditions are very positive it is reasonable for some of them to expect things may get worse. In other words, the negative expectation for the future is a function of the positive assessment of the present.But it is not just that. frequent product placement." The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom said: "The US experience shows clearly the ineffectiveness of regulations governing PP and the disregard.. towards what rules remain.".
JJB Sports plans to double the size of its combined health club-cum-superstore estate to 74 over the next two years as it steps up its attempt to become "serious about sport". A rash of new Premiership sponsorship deals has sparked a rush on the retailer's replica football shirts since the season began, helping its like-for-like sales to shoot 8.8 per cent higher in the past 11 weeks. Tom Knight, the chief executive, admitted the sales rate was likely to slow sharply over the next few months "It's still bloody competitive out there. You can see in the second graph how German industrial production has outpaced that of France and Italy in the past couple of years. Suddenly it seems to have decoupled.It is not quite clear why this should be so.
