• Not everyone is quite so optimistic though, Paul Krugman reckons that talk of a rapid recovery is premature. Data from Europe is also showing Germany having problems. Rising reposessions and rising unemployment would seem to support the pessimists.
• Rising share prices have led a number of businesses to tap their shareholders for cash, among them Travis Perkins and Lonmin, Debenhams (who have been saddled with a load of debt thanks to their previous Private Equity owners) and Ford.
• And finally, having spend the last week moving ever upwards, the FTSE finally ran out of steam and spent most of this week dropping back, although for now, things have levelled out. Pound is slightly down against the euro, no real difference against the dollar.

Ask most people what happens in Parliament and they will describe PMQs. They will describe it as overgrown public school boys cheering their side and shouting down the other side. They will describe it as feeding-time at the zoo. They will not recall the questions asked, the answers given or the points conceded.At best, it is a missed opportunity. While people wax lyrical about the ability to question the Prime Minister on the issues of the day, the reality is that most questions from backbenchers consist of

would the PM not agree with the statistics handed to me by the Whips that show that we're great and the Opposition are rubbish

And

would the PM not agree with my feigned outrage and admit that in fact we are lovely and his side is very naughty

While the exchanges between the PM and Opposition Leader are little more than practiced fencing. Indeed, the only questions that give the PM serious pause for thought tend to come from rogue backbenchers, often as not from the PM's own party. During the Halcyon days of the Blair ministry, it seemed as if the only opposition came from behind.

However, it is not just a wasted half hour.

It is one of the few parts of the Parliamentary week that attracts general interest as it can cover almost any part of the action of the state. While there is other, important business going on in the House that rarely receives televisual coverage, PMQs has its own weekly show. It gives the impression that all Parliamentary business is conducted like the refectory of a minor public school during a food fight.

The reality is very different. Committees are usually pretty serious and most debates in the Commons would do credit to the institution if seen by more than the handful of people who watch BBC Parliament. Even on the occasions when the Commons is packed and emotion is running high, it manages to retain enough of the theatre without becoming farce. However, no-one sees this. They just see PMQs and the simultaneous roars of approval and negation.

Unless and until MPs of all parties grow up, stop waving order papers, stop shouting and stop making stupid points, PMQs will do more harm than good.

Unless and until that happens, we should get rid of PMQs.

• Information about the US banking stress tests is slowly being released, it's been suggested that an individual is selectively leaking certain details. The results are apparently better than expected, Bank of America needs another $34 billion, Citgroup needs another $50 billion, a few other banks also need smaller top ups.
• A mood of generalised optimism apears to be breaking out with some talk of us being "through the worst of it", Ben Bernake is cautiously optimistic and a couple of investment banks have revised their eurozone forcasts upwards.  your correspondent has doubts, rising US unemployment, record losses at Toyota and a halving of sales at GM would indicate we're not out of the woods yet.

• The government has agreed a deal to help troubled van maker LDV along with a Malaysian buyer, extra cash for Jaguar Land Rover appears not to be forthcoming as talks appear likely to break down.
• Your correspondent is impressed with the efforts of the Columbia journalism review has compiled a list 727 financial journalism stories, that could have been considered warnings of things to come.
• The Bank of England has kept rates steady at 0.5%, but has decided to put forward a nother £50 billion for quantitative easing, the ECB has cut rates from 1.25% to 1%.
• And finally, the FTSE rally continues, and the pound remains largely unmoved.

I'd have to admit, I wasn't entirely sure whether this was true or not, so I did a bit of digging and found some stats on the national debt (courtesy of UK Public Spending) and made a graph.

Labour years in red and Conservative years in blue and the thing that immediately strikes me is that the Tory argument about Labour leaving the nation in debt is quite simply not true. For example, far from being profligate spenders running up debts, we see that the Atlee and Wilson governments did a very good job of reducing the national debt, even the Callahagn government of the 70's left the national debt slightly lower.

We can also see that the accusations that the current Labour government was irresponsible with the finances don't cut much ice, about the worst you can say is that the government ran very slight deficits.

Finally, we can see that for all the Tory scaremongering on debt, we have a long way to go before we even come close to the debt levels we've seen in the past.

From David Cameron's spring conference speech.

Secondly, there's the government's decision to scrap parts of the Interception Modernisation Programme. This could be an indicator that some of the more "database state" projects are first in line for aggressive cost cutting, although given that certain elements of the IMP will be kept. This would seem more like a cost saving measure than any kind of change of ideological direction.

Finally, we get to the political implications. The media don't seem to be rating it highly as an issue, although scrapping it would be bound to have a political cost since it is a pretty big U turn and a lot of media coverage will focus on money wasted so far. It might be enough to win some people back to Labour's banner, although I think that most people who feel pasionately on civil liberties issues would regard it as too little too late.

On balance, I'd have to say that it doesn't quite look like the government is going to call time on ID cards. There isn't much to be gained politically and it's hard to identify any great cost saving. Personally, although I've argued in favour of the the policy in the past, it's pretty low down on my list of priorities so I won't be shedding any tears if I'm wrong.