There's been a number of more positive data releases in a large number of countries around the world. So if you look at anything from kind of mortgage applications to some housing market data, a little bit of retail sales numbers, even some manufacturing data around the world - America, Europe and even in Japan - some of those have ticked up. The difficulty, though, is trying to tease out an underlying recovery from more temporary factors. And there's two temporary things in play that we have to be aware of. One is that the inventory cycle is starting to turn. At the end of last year, a lot of firms just stopped producing because they had far too much stock on hand, and they've now run down their inventories so production's starting, which is unambiguously a good thing. But the question is, will that production continue if we don't see demand start to pick up, where at the moment we don't really see that. The other temporary factor in play is, of course, a fiscal boost - a tremendous amount of liquidity being pumped in the economies by governments in most markets. And that, again, is driving real activity, but of course we know the governments can't keep this up forever. So the question is, what would happen when that particular tap is turned off? So at the moment, there are green shoots. They are real. And things are genuinely improving. The worry is that it could be transitory.

I guess it takes you a little bit closer to this frightening W-shaped recession that people talk about. Clearly, the fiscal stimulus and the monetary stimulus that we see at the moment is very significant, and in some markets is making an enormous difference. We think it's making something of a difference in America and in Europe; making an enormous difference in China. But we also know that that stimulus is time-limited. It will be withdrawn later on this year, and at that point, judging from what we see going on in the private sector, you'd have to imagine that growth is going to slow again. So we have an uptick in the next few months, followed by a bit of a downtick after that. If the private sector doesn't recover, I think it's right to assume the governments will step up to the plate once again, and then things would improve, and you end up with a story that looks rather like Japan in the 1990s, which as you see these periodic bursts of optimism as governments really put their foot on the accelerator, followed by a wave of pessimism where everyone realises it hasn't really worked properly. And then the governments have to step back up to the plate, and that makes for a very bumpy ride in the real economy. But then also of course in financial markets, who are responding to all of this.

UK public finance is still pretty bad. We have an enormous public sector deficit, and that's rolling through of course into a dramatic uptick in the debt stock, and on top of that of course you've had the need - which is clearly not unique to the UK - of having to nationalise a large number of financial institutions. And while it's a bit unclear exactly how that's going to knock through into the official finances, it is pretty clear that government's on the hook for an awful lot of debt it didn't look like it was going to have two years ago. So obviously things are worrying. I think in the UK specifically, though, of course investors don't regard sterling as a must-hold currency in the way perhaps they regard the US dollar as a must-hold currency. So as a result, it's more difficult for the UK government to get some of the bond issues away that it needs to get away, and that raises the risks. And of course, the credit rating assessments that you're seeing, this sort of a threat of a downgrade, reflects in part the fact that, like many economies, the UK needs to attract foreign money to fund its deficit. But people don't have to buy sterling, and that clearly poses a risk.

If you asked Obama, I suspect he feels he hasn't had much of a honeymoon. It's been pretty brutal. But certainly in terms of the economy. And then of course, it's more widely there's a whole going on geopolitically as well around the world which is not related to the economy, and is clearly proving to be quite difficult to manage. It's going to be really tough. And I think the thing that we - [weakness] - had for a long time, but I think commentators have started to ignore, was that actually the economy's in a very bad state and it's going to require a lot of government work to get us out of this. And the implications of that government work, which is this massive run-up in debt and deficits and actually what's going in monetary policy as well, will have significant and long-lasting consequences. And perhaps the thing that people didn't fully take into account is that that big deterioration in the policy environment was going to come on top of the deterioration we were already going to get because of the fiscal position around healthcare and Social Security because of the aging population. So he has all that to deal with. And of course, the political system in America means that the Administration's not the only game in town. They have to bring Congress with them. That's very difficult. So it's really very tough for him.

Yeah, and I think there's two slightly separate things going on with the dollar in terms of that weakness. Right now, we have seen some softening, and I think that that is actually around people becoming a bit more optimistic about the world economy. When people are frightened, they run into the dollar because they view it as a safe haven. When people feel a bit more upbeat, they move out of the dollar into risk assets - so commodities or emerging market equities or whatever it is. And that process involves selling dollars and that pushes the dollar down a bit. The volatility will come if people start to worry that actually these green shoots are going to peter out. They might flow back into the dollar and the dollar actually strengthen a bit. So in the short term, dollar weakness actually implies a bit of optimism about the global economy. When you look out further, though, I think the dollar will be weak for different reasons. The dollar will be weak because people are very worried about the fiscal position and the monetary position and that that perhaps creates a danger of inflation being a bit higher than people are assuming. So right now, the soft dollar is actually a sign of global economic strength, but when we look out four or five years, I suspect we'll get a soft dollar, but that will be sign of people's lack of confidence in the US economy, so a completely different story.

Thanks very much.