The UK advertising market is set to slowdown this year after falling retail sales put the brakes on company spending, causing one influential player to downgrade its 2011 forecasts.

The cost of clothing, footwear and electrical goods at Britain's shops fell for the second month running in April, with the annual rate of inflation easing to its lowest since the beginning of the year, as retailers sought to lure consumers with Easter discounts, according to a new survey published today.

As was widely expected, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) left interest rates on hold yesterday at 0.5 per cent – but analysts are warning that the next move in rates will be upwards and could come as soon as next month: the long reign of ultra-low interest rates is drawing to a close.

Britain's public finances enjoyed that rarest of months in January: a surplus rather than a deficit for which further borrowing was necessary. Government receipts exceeded spending by £3.7bn last month, the Office of National Statistics revealed yesterday, the best month for the public finances for two-and-a-half years.

Question: As first-time buyers, we've just exchanged on a £185,000 two-bedroom home but are having horrible second thoughts about the whole thing.

Outlook So what do Sarah Palin and the gang that the Princeton University professor Alan Blinder describes as the "economic equivalent of the Flat Earth Society" make of the latest US inflation figures? Their terror is that the Federal Reserve's decision last month to begin another round of quantitative easing will send inflation soaring. Well, not so far. The figure for October was 0.6 per cent, the lowest rate recorded since records began in 1957.

Notebook

Outlook: The Western world is facing a nominal crisis: too much debt, too little inflation and an absence of effective conventional policy levers

Soaring cotton prices threaten to put further pressure on inflation amid a chorus of warnings over the likely impact on price tags.

Outlook: Unless a decent recovery is already in the bag, the public will have doubts about the potency of policymakers and the tools at their disposal

Economic Life: Nouriel Roubini, sage of our time, wants more concerted action for fear of something much worse. He says the US faces a revival that is sub-par for many years

The colossal expense of rescuing Ireland's troubled banking sector has hit the republic's international credit rating once again.

Outlook: The US is showing signs of traumatic economic weakness, not seen in the post-war period. Avoiding the doubledip would not be a sign that the trauma is over

US Outlook: If the stock market's reaction to his testimony before Congress this month doesn't jolt Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke out of his complacency, then maybe the little tap on the shoulder he got from his colleague James Bullard might.