Updated 11:27pm 18 May 2013

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Nevill Boyd Maunsell

Manufacturing output fell in February but rate of decline slows

Manufacturing output fell by 0.9 per cent between January and February, the slowest rate of decline for six months.Read

Everyone got a bit of something from G20

Well, Sarko didn’t storm out. The loonies didn’t storm in. Anything Brazil’s Lulu Silva muttered about the white skins and blue eyes surrounding him escaped the microphones. Everyone got a bit of something without actually rubbing anybody else’s face in the dirt. The 20 rallied behind a communique that read really quite sensibly. Best of all, no one took a pot-shot at Obama.Read

Banking survey forecasts credit more available next quarter

The credit crunch is at last starting to lose a little of its grip, though it remains tight and lenders expect to ease it only marginally in the coming months.Read

House prices lift in West Midlands but owners wary of future

House prices have fallen by less in the West Midlands than across the UK generally so far this year – but the region’s homeowners are distinctly more nervous about what the future holds than people elsewhere.Read

CIPS research: Construction activity index up from February low

After shedding jobs faster than at any time in the past 12 years, construction companies now seem to expect the industry to take a turn for the better, writes Nevill Boyd Maunsell.Read

PMI indices hint at recession bottoming out

The first sign that British industry may have passed the deepest point of the recession came yesterday with a sharp improvement in the Purchasing Managers Index for March.Read

Home-owners cut mortgage debt by record amount

Homeowners paid off their mortgages to the tune of £8 billion in the final months of last year, following a growing trend that began last spring, and an all-time record since the Bank of England started tracking these numbers in 1974.Read

Solihull doorstep credit company S&U sees shares rise

Shares in S&U jumped 42.5p to 340p yesterday after the Solihull doorstep credit company reported resilient full-year results under-pinned by £37 million of new bank facilities agreements with HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland fixed until 2012.Read

Gordon and Mervyn divided on the Budget? Don't be daft

Gordon himself was not there. He was away in Strasbourg urging the continentals to “save the world”, in a phrase he no longer uses - by throwing money at the recession. Yet only 24 hours before governor King had told the Treasury Select Committee that he and Chancellor Darling were already doing quite enough money-throwing and money-manufacturing for now and that there is no headroom to borrow more to fuel a populist recession-busting Budget.Read

Can Carrick be correct again?

The sun is gleaming, daffodils blooming, songbirds twittering, but rarely has human spring fever been so dismally absent. The stock market has given us one of its periodic reminders that share prices can still occasionally go up as well as down – but that stopped abruptly enough yesterday.Read

Crash is a trip down memory lane

As the stock market sinks back to where it was in 2003 at the nadir of the dot.com disaster, hammered by a relentless flow of appalling news, people beyond a certain age may be forgiven for taking a trip down memory lane.Read

Found: a happy car salesman

Far-fetched as it may seem, I found myself discussing the time of day on Monday with a member a supposedly extinct species, a positively cheerful car salesman.Read

Darling hoping for a lucky break with his Budget

Now we know why Chancellor Darling has opted to deliver his Budget on April 22, waiting longer into the spring than any previous Chancellor that I can recall.Read

Sorry seems to be the hardest word for King

The Bank of England’s Mervyn King is no follower of fashion. He refused point-blank yesterday to apologise, even pretend to apologise, for getting us into the present fix by not cutting interest rates last summer.Read

Bank of England to begin buying corporate bonds

This could be followed next month by a campaign to buy gilts, stock issued by the Government to fund its borrowing – in effect printing money rather than raising it in the market to cover the ballooning gap between tax revenues and public spending.Read

Bigger worries than oil prices

Petrol prices are creeping up again. At a pump I pass most days I noticed that a queue builds up most mornings and vanishes in the afternoon.Read

Bankers won’t go without their bonuses

We might as well face it, we are not going back to the dear, dead days when bankers, like everybody else, were paid a salary to do a job and got on with it.Read

Bank is pulling out all stops

One of the few certainties we have left is that the Bank of England’s quarterly “Inflation Report” next Wednesday will not contain the word “panic”. Central bankers don’t use words like “panic”. If they did everybody else would panic and central banks exist to see that they don’tRead

Midlands businesses doubt effect of lowest ever interest rates

Widespread doubts about whether the Bank of England’s half point cut lowering its Bank Rate to one per cent would have any meaningful impact marked the reactions to the move in the West Midlands.Read

Paucity of mortgages, not cost of, hits housing

The Bank of England is all set to cut its interest rate again tomorrow. Everyone says it must. There will be shock horror all round if it doesn’t.Read

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Nevill is The Birmingham Post's economics editor and based in the newspaper's London office.