Look more widely across Japan, it's important to remember that Japan, although it hasn't grown very much in the last 20 years, is still the world's third biggest economy and is extremely diversified. So there are areas of the economy which continue to function quite normally, and Tokyo is still operating relatively normally, although of course people are very concerned about the nuclear threat from the power stations which are in still in very unstable state.

But there is a sense that things will continue to move. Rolling power blackouts are happening across the country. That will depress manufacturing output, particularly over the course of certainly the next couple of months or so. But our view is that growth over the short term will be very weak. The economy will probably contract over the course of the next three months or so. But there will be a very significant reconstruction effort after that.

So our forecast has been moving around slightly, and we've cut our forecast for growth this year slightly and revised it up slightly next year because of the construction boom. But I think it is important to recognise that while geographically the part of Japan that was worst affected will be very badly hit indeed, the economy is very big, and other sectors will continue to perform and develop, and the export trade will continue. And so while short-term disruption very high, in the longer term we would expect broadly things to continue.

And of course the bigger story is, as you imply, is that the rise of China and the relative decline of Japan along with many other Western economies, or many other developed economies, that of course continues. China will grow by about 9 per cent, maybe a bit more this year; Japan, we think, by 1.5 per cent which is slower than Europe and America, but really the difference between Japan, Europe and America is pretty small relative to difference in all of those and what's going on in China, where China's growing three of four times faster than the US is.

So this doesn't really do much to change the long run story. But the long run story is absolutely China's ascendancy.

Once the Middle Eastern situation settles a bit, I think it's important to recognise that economic growth in many areas of the world is likely to be slowing going forwards, but fiscal austerity is going to start to bite in Europe. It will ultimately start to bite in America as well at some point down the road, and even in the emerging markets. Because we've seen overheating over the course of the last six or nine months or so, policy is tightening in many markets, and that will slow economic demand in most countries over the course of the next 12 months or so. And that will allow oil prices to come off a little bit.

So some of the factors which are keeping prices exceptionally high will start to ebb away. But there's no doubt that we're in a world in which there's not that much spare oil capacity around at the moment. Demand has rebounded pretty strongly from the depths of the recession, and all the time there's not a lot of spare capacity, oil markets are very vulnerable.

So in fact when you look at our forecast for next year, despite the fact that we do expect by that point no more fiscal stimulus, and perhaps even a little bit of austerity, and we've actually revised up modestly our growth forecast for 2012 because we think the fundamentals are looking a little bit better than they were before.

So in many ways the very aggressive action that the Fed took, and the fact that fiscal stimulus was kept in place for longer does seem to be combining to mean that the underlying dynamic within the US economy is a bit better than perhaps people had thought. So that's a very positive outcome.

So we see a story in Germany and perhaps some of the bigger economies within the eurozone which is still very strong, but you look around the periphery and really the story's not changed at all there. We still feel very negative about the prospects for growth around those peripheral countries, and of course Europe at the moment's still trying to drag together a plan in order to keep the fiscal show on the road for those markets. That's not looking anything like as promising as many people were hoping, and as a result of that we don't really see any relief for some of these marginal economies. Portugal is still going to be very weak, Greece of course has accepted some more onerous terms in reduction in exchange for having the interest rate on their bailout package reduced. Ireland's not taken a similar kind of offer, which would involve them lifting their corporate tax rate in return for lower interest payments.

So still a lot of strains around those peripheral economies, and we don't really see that changing. So Germany looks pretty good, but the rest, not so good at all.