The irony is that until recently the Bank was worried about the obdurate strength of consumerexpenditure at a time when the public sector was turning into a big spender.
He notes that with little fanfare the Fed recently switched its inflation benchmark from the Personal Consumption Expenditure deflator to the Consumer Price Index.
The release from the ONS also gave the first expenditure figures for the last three months of 2012, with consumer spending up 0.2%, exports down 1.5% and imports down 1.2%.