A raft of UK economic data is released this week but I imagine it will be the on-going Greek debt crisis which will dominate the news for the next few days. Data released on Friday showed that the change in price of goods sold by factories in the UK rose at their fastest rate in nine months. Data released this week includes the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) – (the change in the price of goods and services purchased by consumers), unemployment and retail sales figures and inflation, with the latter expected to show a fall from 4.2% to 3.4%. The Governor from the Bank of England is also making a speech which should explain the logic behind the further £50 billion of quantitative easing announced last weel. Call in now for the latest update and the latest news.

On Friday and throughout the weekend we saw continued unrest in Greece as thousands of people protested at the proposed austerity measures put forward by the government including €325 million in additional cuts from this year’s budget. Over the weekend the Greek cabinet and their parliament approved the new measures. Matters are being cut fine for the €130 billion bailout as February 15 is pencilled in as a dead line for negotiations to be completed so as to allow time for the legal procedures to be completed before the default day on March 20. Economic data this week should highlight how the euro zone slipped into a downturn in the final quarter of 2011. Call in now for the latest update and the latest news.

In the US on Friday, consumer confidence data and trade balance figures were released which were worse than expected. This dampened slightly the positive sentiment of economic growth that had been coming from the US. This week see’s a fair amount of information released including CPI data, more unemployment data and the Chairman of the Federal Bank is also speaking. Call in now for the latest update and the latest news.

Elsewhere on Friday saw Canadian and Chinese trade balance data released which was better than expected. This week see’s the release of unemployment data in Australia, retails sales data for New Zealand, CPI data for Canada and growth figures for Japan. Call in now for the latest update and the latest news.

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