the united states where inflation remains stubbornly high. it still a problem for the world s biggest economy and that s because in the last hour or so we ve had the latest number of key measure of the central banks follows closely which is the personal consumption expenditures. it excludes volatile food and energy prices. as you can see, pc came in at an annualised rate of 4.6% in march which will maintain the pressure on the fed to increase interest rates when it meets next week. let s pick up with our correspondent in new york. just give us a bit more, what does it tell us about the health of the economy in america? it says those price increases that americans have been facing for many months now continue. that inflation number is starting to come down but inflation is still running much higher than the federal reserve s ideal target of somewhere around 2%. what it also shows is that despite the measures the us federal reserve is taking to try and cool down the us economy
we are nowjoined by the chief eurozone economist at the consultancy pantheon microeconomics. good news from spain and italy but at the same time germany with a contraction so quite a mixed picture. what does it tell us? i think it tells us that the core economies, france and germany, growth was sluggish at the start of the year and that was offset by very strong growth in southern europe, so spain and italy did well, portugal did well. greece is doing well. there is a bit of divergence so it s good news for the eurozone as a whole because the economy is keeping its head above water. the irish growth rate is volatile and goes up and down like a yo yo so i wouldn t pay too much attention to that. certainly we see divergence now within the major eurozone economies.