As we enter the second half of the year, it has become increasingly apparent that much of the optimism that greeted the start of the year, both in the financial markets and in the real sectors has faded, as indeed we suspected that it might.  In particular, we note that the optimism that greeted the European Central Bank's "LTRO" strategy has not so much faded as reversed (in fact, the policy was ill-thought out and may even have been counterproductive in that it allowed the bank runs that have destabilised much of southern Europe to occur) and we would also note that much of the early year improvement in the global real economic data appears to have been due to faulty seasonal adjustment algorithms within the data, rather than to "real events".  The timing of the Global Financial Crisis and the Japanese Earthquake in the first quarters of their respective years has led to the computer-generated seasonal adjustment factors becoming erroneously skewed towards ‘always' producing strong data in the first quarter (at the expense of weaker data in the third quarter).