VIEW FROM THE GROUND: So the US recession wasn't really a recession at all, just a bit of a blip in the unremitting nirvana that is the powerhouse of the economic world. Maybe when we're looking at the 20-year charts in 2012, the tech-wreck will just be a downward spike that barely registers in the middle of the graph.

My mailbox is full of good data at the moment - US annualised growth of 1.7 per cent in the final quarter of last year, stronger purchasing managers' indices and a buoyant housing market. Consumer confidence shot up in March too.

All of which led to Mr Alan Greenspan telling Congress that an economic expansion was already under way and so, as far as markets are concerned, signalled an end to the cycle of interest rate cuts that began at the outset of last year.

As always, Mr Greenspan is trying to sound a note of caution. He noted that household spending had held up better than expected during the past couple of years and suggested that spending was hardly likely to shoot up now just because companies were feeling better about the future. And there are a lot of companies that can't feel better about the future yet because, of course, the high-tech and telecoms sectors are still shot to pieces.

Nevertheless, the analysts can't wait for things to get better and are already urging investors to look at the markets with an eye to opportunities. Scarily, some of the opportunities are being touted in those very same tech sectors and the mantra is the same - stocks (but only the good ones) look cheap.

Unfortunately, as an investor it's almost impossible to define what cheap means to an analyst these days. Is it simply that a stock is not overvalued? Because some of the techs probably still are. Is it because a stock has fallen 80 per cent from its highs? Who knows!

Anyway, the whole thing about economic recovery and investment for the average person is not forgetting the rules about a real product and a real business plan. Because companies that have both are more likely to weather economic storms in the future, thus protecting your investment.

I'm sure that one day third-generation phones, Bluetooth technology and digital television will be at the forefront of those plans, but when that day will actually arrive is anyone's guess.

You'd think that, for most of us, digital TV would be the easiest concept to get to grips with but I've never managed to get my head around it as a mega profit centre. I've read all the articles about millions of specialist channels that will be readily available to the viewing public but I wonder who'll bother to look at them? And how will the channel providers actually make any money since surely they need a critical mass to make the venture worthwhile?

I have slight experience in this since I once did an interview for a digital TV company which, they assured me, could be accessed by millions (if not billions) of subscribers. Unfortunately they didn't actually have billions of subscribers. As far as I could make out, their list consisted of the managing director's mother, grandmother and his auntie. Still, he was very enthusiastic about the technology and about his business plan, which was all about getting the swathe of people in the ultra-modern office to sell advertising space on the channel.

I had a sinking feeling at the time that digital TV was going down the same road as websites, all chasing the same advertising buck. You tell advertisers that there are potentially loads of customers and you set your rates accordingly. Eventually the advertisers realise that potentially loads of customers don't actually translate into any - you have to be selling something on your site (or showing something on your TV station) that people want to buy or see.

And whether people want to see me banging on about the difference between writing books and dealing in the stock market, or whether they want to watch a Vauxhall conference football match is very much open to question. Which is why I was surprised at the whole ITV Digital/Football League deal.

Not because football isn't seen by many as a meal ticket to fleece investors and fans alike, but because only a certain quality of football is. I would've thought that the honchos at ITV Digital would have realised that (with the exception of the Nick Hornby-type fan - and even Nick supports a Premiership team), most people want to watch high-quality football. And that the market for subscribers who want to watch a Saturday afternoon tussle between Rochdale and Macclesfield is pretty small.

Of course, the other problem is the spending of the money by the football clubs. Rather like companies who award their boards with massive option packages, it's now accepted that many clubs pay their players the kind of salaries that are hardly justified by their talents. There may be some good players and good games in the Nationwide League but nobody except the die-hard fan wants to pay to look at them.

Sport as a business is notoriously tricky. It worked for Sky and the Premiership (although whether even that model will continue to work in the face of ever increasing demands of the footballers is open to question) but, like the private investor trying to pile into a market that's already reached the top, ITV Digital bought the wrong product at the wrong time and for the wrong price.

Footballers will - like software programmers - eventually learn that there's a finite demand for their talents and that the price the market will bear for them can go down as well as up. Football clubs will learn that a love of the game - like a belief in technology - can only take you so far and, after that, you have to have a business plan if you want to keep paying your players. And the fans will learn that it's cheaper to go to Macclesfield and watch the damn game than view it live from seven different camera angles in your living room. They might even have a better time too.