Some City economists predict that with consumer confidence battered and businesses nervous about spending and hiring, the Bank will want to shore up sentiment by reducing interest rates further from a record low of 0.5%.
We get hugely emotional about tragic events in the past, from the sinking of the Titanic to – can it really be? – the "sacrifice" of all those Regency dandies at Waterloo, and we mistake this cheap sentiment for an interest in history.
Last year at this time I cautioned against following the sentiment that ruinous interest rates lie ahead.
Business lobby group, the CBI, echoed this sentiment, saying greater interest rate certainty and clarity from the Bank should provide a shot in the arm for business and households.
Just as Pinterest has become increasingly important to marketers, it's been said that the first company to own sentiment, or the interest graph, in a social context will be a force to be reckoned with.
The degree of a sentiment type of interest c ∈ { fear, joy } in a tweet i, denoted as s i, c, is given by s i, c = { | W i ∩ L c | / | W i ∩ L | if | W i ∩ L | > 0, 0 if | W i ∩ L | = 0, where W i is the words in the text content of tweet i.
"Asking me how I feel can mean a lot," said Catherine Richardson, but the sentiment, and the interest, must be sincere.
Ad testing often relies on large surveys, which deal in reasoned reflections, rather than in the spontaneous, even unconscious, sentiment that really interests marketers; new technology promised better results.
If the Union could be persuaded not to attack the Confederacy, he predicted that "all those sentiments of common interest and feeling ... might lead to a political reunion founded upon consent".
But actually, the World Economic Forum's newfound curiosity about the possibility of allying populist sentiment to the interests of global political and financial elites is, if anything, lagging slightly behind the curve.
