Heineken also blamed Sars, adding the smoking ban in New York, bad weather in the US and Europe and the strong euro. Oh yes, and the French for some reason stopping drinking beer.Um. You can be cynical and note that whenever companies are doing well it is thanks to the brilliance of their leadership, and please can they have more share options, but when they are doing badly it is because of unexpectedly adverse market conditions. Still, the fact that weak consumption should take these firms by surprise is disturbing – all the more so because it is a global problem that we here in Britain have been slow to notice.Britons have been unusually cheerful by world standards, maintaining spending while others have faltered. In the US, too, consumers have kept spending despite the rise in unemployment. Yesterday’s “confidence figures” suggest that they will keep it up a bit longer.In Japan, by contrast, consumption has been flat for several years, and in Germany it was down by half a percent last year, and it will be pushed to regain that this year. Only yesterday Italy revealed its lowest level of consumer confidence for six years.

Thanks to weak consumption, at least half the eurozone – Germany, Italy and the Netherlands – is in recession.But we all knew that. What is new is that now there seems also to be a wobble both here and, more importantly, in the United States.As so often in economics, the evidence is patchy. It would be nice if we could wait until the statistics clearly pointed one way or the other, but by then the damage is done. That is what has happened on the Continent, with the European Central Bank waiting too long before cutting interest rates, and a decade ago when Japan made the same error.In Britain it seems that the tax rises in the Budget may have had a more serious effect than the Treasury expected.

Unemployment rose suddenly last month, which may be a blip, but it came just as the rise in national insurance contributions hit company accounts.Shops in central London are having a terrible time, but it is hard to distinguish if this is the result of the fall in tourism, high-earners pulling in their horns or simply a reaction to the congestion charge. My guess is that what we spend will be determined largely by house prices If they come off sharply, we will cut back our spending. Largely but not entirely; if house prices are stable but taxes rise sharply, we could also be forced to make cutbacks, as some people already are doing.In the US, the picture is equally cloudy. This has been the slowest recovery from recession since the Second World War, for every time growth seemed to be getting going, it stalled. It has also been the one recovery that has not been accompanied by a fall in unemployment.