‘Broken France’ feels much healthier than Britain

Some business stories are useful economic signals, some are not. For example, I’m not building any hopes on news that Ferrari sales are up 15 per cent thanks to buyers demanding ‘cashmere and corduroy’ interiors. Indicative of greater realism among the very rich is the statistic that superyacht sales are down by a third following a spectacular two-year boom. And far more worrying are other maritime bulletins, one from the Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Mærsk, the other from the fiefdom of the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.

Maersk has downgraded its forecast for global container demand this year to a fall of 1 to 4 per cent, on the basis of slowdown in China and lower stock-holding by western companies. The latter are afflicted by higher borrowing costs, illustrating how raised interest rates combat inflation: reduced demand (coinciding with a freeing-up of logjammed shipping) has brought Shanghai-to-Rotterdam container rates down by 80 per cent from their post-pandemic spike.