IT'S difficult to know how interested people are in the markets given that this week kicks off (so to speak) three weeks of wall-to-wall football. As a matter of fact, I enjoy watching soccer (my fantasy football team ended up in third place this season), so I'm not the sort of person who'll want to leave the country until the whole thing is over but there's a touch of overkill about three weeks of it.

Also I think there should be some kind of physique check on people who buy the football jerseys of their heroes. It's one thing seeing some bloke who obviously hasn't taken any exercise in the last eight years wandering around in a Gazza shirt, quite another to see him strutting his stuff in something emblazoned Del Piero.

I took quite a lot of stick from my male colleagues for remarking that Patrick Kluivert had a fairly decent body when he took off his shirt and ran around the pitch after scoring the goal that put us out of the European Cup (I think) but, for female readers, if Patrick's on the pitch it'll be a game worth watching! Anyway I have a few quid on the Netherlands to win even though they always disappoint in the end. The Bank of England disappointed all those who thought that the next move in base rates was some time away. I know I once said in this column that official moves in rates were rarely a surprise even when the media reported them as such. But this move caught most people on the hop. I guess it was because there had been such intense speculation about the bank's intentions at the last two meetings when it decided to hold rates steady that nearly everyone thought they'd do the same this time.

Most people thought that they'd wait to see further evidence of a slowdown in manufacturing which would mean potentially less need for a rate hike, but it seems that concern over potential inflationary pressures held sway and rates were jacked up.

It threw the markets into a predictable panic (at least that much was predictable!) especially ahead of the US non-farm payrolls data on Friday.

Of course, before the whole Asian crisis blew up in our faces, the next move in the Fed rate was also expected to be up. But economists in the US believed that a sharp drop in demand from the Far East would ease inflationary pressures and they feared that an upward move in rates would plunge many Asian economies into further financial turmoil. So, taking a global view, the Fed has left rates unchanged since March 1997.

Domestically, in Ireland, we're taking not so much the global view, but the euro view. Once again, we've got an economy where classicists would suggest we need higher rates. But, placing our euro-membership hats firmly on our heads, rates here are set to fall by the end of the year.

It's only in Britain that they've responded to a domestic economic situation with a domestic reaction and it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing pans out for them. Economists in Britain have been pretty negative about it since most didn't predict a rate rise this time they can't really say it was a brilliant idea and the markets have been lukewarm about it since the initial shock wore off.

Bit like Glenn Hoddle leaving Gazza out of the English team (I can't help the football analogies. I'll try to keep them to a minimum) our own economics team in NCB has received a lot of attention since the publication of Population and Prosperity Sustaining the Boom. Basically the research points to sustained growth in the size of the population which will maintain the forward momentum of the economy. It's a really interesting piece and if you haven't read it yet, you should.

But the part that has received significant attention is the forecast on car ownership. Apparently car ownership in Ireland is way below the EU average and so the forecast is for about 100,000 new car registrations every year. I cannot imagine what Pearse Street will be like at 5.30 on Monday to Friday evenings if even 1 per cent of that total ends up using the route which is one of the only ways to get across the river. It's a nightmare as it is. Now you know why we moved to the IFSC Insider information on traffic chaos!

Anyway, the research underlines the need for proper economic and strategic planning to cope with the years ahead, but then there's always been research telling governments what would be a good idea to do and there's always been governments commissioning more research just to be sure. And when it comes to traffic measures I'm sure if you laid all the reports from end to end you'd have enough for a six-lane motorway from Belfast to Cork.

Strategic planning hasn't exactly been my forte over the last few years. When I moved to what is often described in the property pages of the papers as "the leafy northside suburb of Clontarf" I invested in a whole range of household electrical equipment so that I could be handy around the home. About six years ago the house was littered with boxes containing a lawnmower, a strimmer, a hoover, a washing-machine and various other items which require a remote control.

I never checked the guarantees on any of them but I can't help feeling that they all ran out at much the same time just as the throttle on the lawnmower fell off, the strimmer ceased to strim, the motor in the hoover gave up the ghost and the door of the washing-machine refused to open unless persuaded by a gentle kick.

When I regaled this tale of woe to a friend, she told me that most of these appliances have a life-span of about four years. Four years! Is she serious? No wonder the economy is booming. It's full of people who have to replace half of their domestic electrical equipment in one fell swoop.

Have I replaced it all yet? Nope. In fact the only thing I replaced was my hifi and since the last hi-fi I owned had a turntable it was probably about time. So at least I can listen to the soothing sounds of music while the house falls down around my ears.

And I can drown out the sound of 100,000 cars whizzing by the door while the TV is switched off for the next three weeks (unless Patrick Kluivert is strutting his World Cup stuff, that is).

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB Stockbrokers.