Welcome to the final set of news articles for the academic year 2006/7. I'm now taking a break for the summer from this monthly trawl through the papers. The next set of articles will be in September and monthly thereafter. In the meantime, if you're searching for news, there is a wide range of sites out there. Google news remains one of the best sites as it 'aggregates' news from a wide range of sources. However, if you want a slightly different view of the aggregated Google news, why not have a look at Newsmap? Don't forget also the The Guardian World News Guide (this gives you easy access to newspapers from around the world and gives a brief description of each one) and the main Guardian news archive. The economy section of the BBC news site also makes an excellent reference source to keep up to date and if you want constant access to the news from your PC, you could always download the BBC News ticker. If you have a web site of your own, you can even get an RSS feed from the BBC site or from Biz/ed. Biz/ed also has podcasts of news stories for you to download.

The focus of our news items this month is more macro than micro and to a great extent this reflects the balance of the news this month. Inflation has been in the news again with interest rates rising and we look at money supply growth and the extent to which this might impact on inflation in News Item 12. This month has also seen one leader on their way out - Tony Blair, and another on the way in - Nicolas Sarkozy. In News Items 10 and 11 we look respectively at their economic legacy and inheritance. Climate change has rarely been out of the news in recent months and this month is no exception. In News Item 6 we look at the bill that has gone through parliament to allow local authorities to implement road pricing, while in News Item 7, Larry Elliott (the Guardian's economics editor) argues that our spend, spend, spend culture is literally costing the earth.

As always, I hope that you find the articles useful for your studies. If your academic year is coming to an end, good luck with any exams and have a good break.

Passenger groups have reacted angrily to the raising of off-peak fares by South West Trains by around 20% on many journeys. The train company has increased unregulated fares significantly where there is little competition, but appears to have limited the increases on journeys where there is competition. Is this an abuse of their monopoly position?

A survey for Mintel has shown that consumer spending in the UK has broken through the £1 trillion barrier - up 9% from last year. This kind of increase is very effective at boosting production, but the monetary and environmental effects of this kind of spending are significant. The Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has had to raise interest rates four times since last summer. The environmental effects are arguably longer term, but perhaps need to be dealt with just as urgently. So is this level of consumer spending sustainable - economically and environmentally?

The article linked to below is an extract (printed in the Guardian) from a new book by Dan Atkinson and Larry Elliott (economics editor for the Guardian). The introduction to the article summarises its theme quite effectively:

"We don't manufacture anything any more. Most of the world won't buy our records or watch our films. Only our gift of the gab is keeping Britain's economy ticking over. But how long can the hot air last, ask Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson "