He points to a current-account surplus, export growth, a sharp fall in the structural budget deficit, a significant drop in bond yields and a recent return to the market with a ten-year bond issue.
As has happened recently, the prospects for growth were boosted by a sharp fall in the value of the pound and deep cuts in the cost of borrowing.
The deficit is at a level that leaves the economy vulnerable to a sharp fall in the value of the dollar, a jump in inflation and interest rates, and a slowdown in growth or even a recession.
A sharp fall in the number of new infections followed.
Scottish banks have reported a sharp fall in the number of business start-ups in Scotland.
On Friday Wachovia revealed a sharp fall in the value of its holdings.
This despite a sharp fall in the price of drugs in recent years.
5. Another big hit to G.D.P. — enough to knock nearly 1.3percentnt off the growth rate — was a sharp fall in business inventories, the stock of unsold goods that companies keep on hand.
However, the latest retail spending statistics did reveal a sharp fall in prices, suggesting that the sustained growth has been fuelled only by price wars.
Growth was affected by a sharp fall in production at the Grangemouth petrochemicals complex during an industrial dispute.
Disguised behind the rise in the averages is a sharp fall in all but a handful of giant growth stocks, trading at valuations higher than those of the "Nifty-Fifty" of the early Seventies.
