and we see commerzbank and blessing says he expects loans to be down.sooner or later, the market is going to stop it. >> with that in mind, why is it that we're seeing this massive rally in the banks still? yesterday in the u.s., bank of america higher by 7%. even if you take away some of those silly trades like aig brought that stock up by 60% plus. commerzbank, 2% rise. the list continues. that is their job. that's the function of it. given that the banks led on the way down with the write-downs and subprime in all of the crisis indicators, go back to november and december, you saw the battlic rates start to move up. then the ism numbers, as well. some people in the real world were having to make betts into '09 or 2010. sooner or later that was going to take hold in the bax, especially given the amount of support that they've had from central banks. now people are going to start looking harder at that now to see signs of translation into the real economy and you're not getting it. banks lending into the uk economy contracted 10% compared to this time

he's the senior economist at commerzbank securities. and mr. dixon, thanks for being here.do you expect any surprises, upside or down side in the gdp number? and for that matter, the weekly jobless claims number that we're going to get this morning? if so, how do you think the market is going to react after yesterday when we had good economic data and the market did basically nothing? >> you have to decipher between what's happening in the economy and what's happening in the data. it's a backward-looking indicator and getting more backward by the day, if you like. so i guess the markets have factored in the notion that this number is going to be revised down from, as you said, is % to 1.5% negative. on a day when markets are looking to sell, that would be a good excuse for markets to dip. in terms of the initial claims numbers, we're not looking for an awful big move. i guess they're going to hover around the same levels we're seen over the past week or two. at least it's not getting any worse. >> so there is this ongoing debate, of course, over whether we're going to see a

commerzbank, about 2.3% for that company. deutsche telekom, up about 2.3%. commerzbank upgraded the stock today. we heard the numbers coming through yesterday. some said it was a bit of a mixed picture. others say it was more stable. tomorrow we get -- strangely enough, on a saturday, we get real data coming through on the greek division, otce, that might give us a bit more clarity when it comes to future trade. but in terms of volume, slightly lower. adam. >> thank you, patricia. in north asia, we saw some resilience out of japan and south korea. take a look at the major indices. once again, we saw significant leadership out of the chip plays in japan. elpida memory was one of the strongest performers as dram chip prices saw very strong exchanges in taiwan. meanwhile, the latest to tell you about, the latest coming from toray industries. they cut their loss estimates to 5 billion yen from 15 billion yen. but the rest of them, of course, they were under a lot of pressure, particularly aoc which is the second largest oil and gas refiner. numbers were very bad

also this week, the bre, which is a subsidiary of german commerzbank is due to report numbers later this week. that's all from warsaw. now out to adam in singapore. >> thank you, blah za for that. the u.s. trading picture worsened in terms of the u.s. futures picture throughout the morning trading session. we saw the markets lose quite a bit of ground today. in japan, the nikkei 225 closing higher by 0.2% and the topix was up by 0.2%. all these markets getting a boost into the green thanks to the dramatic gains we saw on commodity prices, particularly on the london exchange which boosted the trading houses up in japan and the oil stocks up in japan and korea. of course, it was all about the autos in korea, the world's number one automaker coming out with numbers after the close. they posted a net loss for the third consecutive month of $194 billion yen, but the company rose its forecast ever so slightly. they also hiked their sales target ever so slightly by 100,000 units to 6.6 million units for the rest of the fiscal year. but automakers did fairly well today as they posted gains in te

we had numbers out for commerzbank. traffic numbers from halfport, they weren't bad.ing out with euro zone business sentiment, that is dramatically better on the expectations from a reading of 76 to a reading of 93. but current conditions are up sugar creek or down sugar creek, whichever, with 23 points or so. but there is -- there seems to be all indication that we're coming off the trough. and we've got board room drama at continental. so a mixed bag out there. stephane, how about paris? >> it's way below the average level we have on the french market. still, a mixed session for the cac 40. up 0.2% right now with still the financials dragging the french markets lower on the back of ing numbers, which were lower than expected for the second quarter. societe generale, credit agri goal trading lower, as well. on the other end of the board, we have one of the top gainers on the cac 40 which yesterday in the united states posted a lower than expected loss for the second quarter, so that was positive news for the whole sector for the semi conductor, st micro, the second b

let's get straight out to peter dixon, senior economist at commerzbank for a bit more on these figurespeter, the july figures coming in ahead of expectations, it doesn't seems like retail sales have dropped in the way that you may expect from a recession. >> that is right. if you look at sales overall, over the last 15 months, we've been flat. it's not such a good story, however, for nonretail systems where spending has clearly collapsed. i guess you could argue that the temporary cut has helped a little bit and remember that employment has not hasn't collapsed at quite the extent we have anticipated and maybe that would help sales to more or less hold flat. >> an interesting note, as well, that the main driver on month on month growth has been from furniture and electrical stores. that would be odd as i would have thought with people worried about losing their jobs because you would think those individuals would hold back from buying things like furniture and electrical goods. could we see, if unemployment does continue to res increase, retail sales could lag further out? >> it's enti

commerzbank is mixed. the food and drink on that unilever story and we had avava in the uk who say they're going to ipo a bit and the market didn't care that they cut their dividend. they were happy just to hear the earnings news. now over to christine on that in singapore. >> hey, jeff, thanks for that. a couple of things moving the asian markets today, earnings continued to be in focus. in china, the shanghai market slumped 2.1% on speculation china will take more steps to reign in liquidity after the central bank said it will deploy a variety of tools to tweak monetary policy. the other market we're keeping an eye on is australia, up 1.4%. a surprise jump in employment data gave the markets reason to believe the rba will hike as early as december this year. in hong kong, earnings in focus, shares of pc brand lenovo jumped reversing early declines after the company reported a smaller than expected first quarter loss, the hang seng surging almost 2%. finally in japan, the nikkei 225 roads 1.3%. automakers