Our roundup this week features a plunge in German industrial output in December and increased retail sales in the UK in January, as well as figures suggesting a spike in the popularity of train travel and calls for £50 notes and other high-denomination banknotes to be banned.

Currency wars are hitting the headlines daily. As at the time of writing, the Kazakhstan currency, the tenge (no, I didn’t know it either) has been allowed to ‘free float’.

Another bumper week in the world of finance and investment has seen the dollar strengthen against the euro and yen, a significant profits leap and a change at the top for Prudential, and new UK bank Aldermore entering the stock market, while new figures have shown the UK saving rate has hit a 10-year high.

Last week the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, announced that the bank is to buy €60billion of Eurozone debt every month from March 2015 until September 2016. In total they will buy €1.1trillion.