Ground Floor/Sheila O'Flanagan: Last week it was WH Smith and it's confusing three for two offers, this week it's Boots, the chemist where it's almost impossible to buy one item because you feel duty bound to pick up something else and get a third free.
Like WHS, Boots has a new chief executive in Richard Baker (formerly Asda) and - as with Kate Swann for WHS - his task is to revive the fortunes of the once high-flying chain. Yet again, the initial keystone to reviving fortunes is to axe jobs - apparently there are plans to make almost 1,000 staff redundant.
The Boots website doesn't confirm or deny the speculation, stating that as part of its Getting in Shape initiative the company has embarked on an "efficiency programme" with the aim of making savings of at least £100 million over the next three years. Rather snappily, Boots says "when we have something to say we will talk to our people first".
The consensus though is that Boots had a good retailing experience over the end of the year and is likely to report a 4 per cent increase in like-for-like sales over the last quarter. The word from Boots is that its discounts and promotions worked well which makes me wonder how BOGOF (buy-one-get-one-free) can work in a chemist but not a bookstore.
Again, though, in the same way as bookstores have seen increasing competition from supermarkets in discounted pricing, Boots has also come under severe pressure from supermarkets.
I prefer buying books in bookshops and lotions and potions in a pharmacy and though both of these considerations go out of the window when I'm in the local behemoth, it's a generalisation that works for me. But it seems I'm not a typical shopper any more.
Meanwhile, there are jobs worries in the US again. I don't think that there was a single analyst left unshocked by the news that only 1,000 jobs were created in December - and that on the back of a very disappointing 57,000 in November.
Everyone had thought that the holiday hiring season would bump up the number, but it certainly looks like the big US retailers were worrying à la Boots and WHS and didn't employ any part-time workers in December at all. Naturally, the dollar was thrown out of the window as a result.
As you should know by now, currency predictions either don't happen at all or happen with the speed of a lift plummeting to the ground floor. The woeful jobs data (and the trotting out of the jobless recovery phrase yet again) means there isn't a hope in hell of the Fed hiking rates any time soon. Again, forecasters had been predicting an upward move for this year but that now seems later rather than sooner.
It's likely that there will be more positive news out of the States in the next few weeks (the space technology agencies are already getting very excited about the jobs prospects in George W's desire to send a few Americans to Mars and presumably the dollar will bounce on any positive data.
Loretta Mester, who's head of research at the prestigious Philadelphia Fed, has suggested that by mid 2004 we'll be seeing jobs gains of between 150,000 and 200,000 per month. Hopefully Loretta's bonus doesn't depend on her getting the statistics right; as I pointed out last September, the US needs to create 150,000 jobs a month just to maintain the status quo.
While we're waiting for that to happen, though, the dollar will stay under pressure, not least because of the fact that there have been Asian sales of the currency over the last month or so. It's been a long time since the Japanese have been net sellers of the greenback so this could be a worrying development for dollar bulls.
Of course the flip side of the weak dollar is the stronger euro. Its weakness since its conception has not been a good thing.
Investment over the past number of years has been into the US rather than Europe and although that had much to do with the kind of economies we're talking about, it was also due to the fact that being a euro bear was paying dividends.
Now the strength of the euro against the dollar is causing exporters to complain that they are being priced out of the market. The whole concept of the euro-zone is that exchange rate fluctuations shouldn't matter because we're all trading with each other. Obviously, we're not.
There have been calls in some quarters for the ECB to cut rates now that the euro is pounding the dollar. The euro, of course, isn't doing anything the Americans don't want it to do.
But ECB economists have argued that they need some time to consider the rate situation. We are, it seems, in the middle of an upturn in the world economy and to cut rates might cause an inflationary spike in Europe.
Oh please! I don't think a rate cut in Europe would make much difference to demand. Notch it up a little, perhaps. The Americans will have initiated at least two policy changes before the Europeans do anything.
It's not up to us. It never is.
