The recent Money Programme piece regarding Marks & Spencer on BBC2 made interesting viewing for anyone who, like me, is intrigued by how big businesses manage to lose the plot. From a store that was named retailer of the year in 1994, and which posted record profits in 1997 and 1998, to a company that issued a profits warning last month, the change in fortune is stark and frightening.

At the end of last year, I thought that M&S might be a recovery stock for 2000 - mainly based on the assumption that someone would try to take them over. The shares rallied on that possibility in January but the bid for the company foundered and M&S was on its own again, which meant a slide in the share price was inevitable.

What was particularly interesting about the programme was how the chain of command in the company meant that staff didn't make their concerns known to store managers, who were equally reticent about expressing their fears to regional managers and board members.

Almost everyone was afraid to tell the chief executive that he was getting things wrong. It is not that hard to believe that stores actually tried to hide what was really happening but it is a sad reflection of a corporate culture that people who should have said something kept their mouths shut.

Of course, when you've been with a company that is practically an institution, it is always difficult to accept that times have changed and that you have to change with them. Maybe it is also difficult to accept that you are behind the curve when it comes to innovation and marketing.

The new advertising campaign, under the stewardship of chairman Luc Vandevelde, is certainly innovative, although whether it's effective is another matter. While I'm perfectly prepared to accept that the naked woman running up the hill is an accurate reflection of the shape of British (and Irish) women, there is that rather worrying aspirational factor. You know you might look like that, the question is, do you want to? Fortunately, I'm at the advanced age where I couldn't really give a damn, but if M&S want to tempt women who'd prefer to look like Kate Moss into their store, they're in for a a disappointment.

Nevertheless, and despite the concerns about the future, I'm beginning to be a little more optimistic about M&S. You might remember that I first became negative on them when I stood in one of the shops and realised that there wasn't a single item worth buying. And I wasn't alone because there weren't many other shoppers in the store either.

But last week, things were different. There were queues at the tills and I was a buyer too. Unfortunately for M&S, the items I bought weren't exactly mainstream fashion. I splashed out on thermal underwear - certainly nothing that Kate Moss would be seen in but essential for living in a house with no heating during the worst weather we've seen in October and November for a long, long time. Maybe that will help them in Britain too, given the devastation that the recent storms have brought.

Although I stood at the till feeling a little bit old and frumpy with my vests, I noticed that they were, in fact, practically walking off the shelves. So maybe M&S have tapped into a thermal zeitgeist that will haul them back into the race. But not, I suspect, before the worst possible scenario for them - store closures - takes place.

I guess my friends in England will be happy if Mr Vandevelde succeeds where Richard Green bury and Peter Salisbury failed, even though he is a foreign manager. Given the outpouring of angst over the appointment of the Swede, Sven-Goran Eriksson, to that other bellwether of the national psyche, the football team, it seems a difficult time to be English.

It seems odd that the UK continues to examine its collective navel in terms of an erosion of home-grown abilities while Europeans come in to take leading roles. Yet, the respective currencies reflect almost the opposite, with the euro seen as a sickly patient in comparison with a robust pound.

Commentators have been supporting the euro a little more after the recent intervention, although, as we've seen so many times before, intervention is of little value in itself. As many people continue to point out, until there is a shift in capital flows from the US to Europe, it is unlikely that the euro can make a sustained move higher.

Since the US economy has begun to show further signs of slowing down, those flows may begin to take place, although still at a slow pace. However, even with the euro economy exhibiting a slight slowdown, growth is still above trend and employment continues to rise, particularly in countries that have implemented labour reforms. It is still partly the shackled labour market in Europe, which compares so unfavourably with the US, that makes investors and entrepreneurs look to the other side of the Atlantic.

Nevertheless, a halt to the euro's inexorable slide would be welcome news for Wim Duisenberg, who must be feeling battered and bruised at this point. Duisenberg held a more dovish press conference last week when he announced that the ECB was keeping interest rates unchanged, while Christian Noyer, the vice-president, announced that the bank would focus on core inflation in its policy-making decisions. This will exclude energy costs, which have been a big factor in pushing the headline rate about the ECB's target of 2 per cent. Including energy, euro inflation is 2.8 per cent. Excluding energy, it is just 1.6 per cent. If you don't like the game, change the goalposts.

Whether any shifting of goalposts following the close-call US presidential election will have a sustained impact on share prices in the country is debatable.

There had been a tradition that the markets preferred Republican incumbents to Democratic ones, but the Goldilocks economy and the past eight years have been good for the US stock holder, so that horse doesn't really run any longer. (Even though some businesses, like tobacco and defence, tended to do better under Republican administrations.)

The bottom line, though, is that it's probably a good time for Bill Clinton to leave the job. The economy is slowing, tech billionaires have been reduced to mere millionaires and the dollar might be at the start of a weakening cycle. Always nice to leave just before things take a turn for the worse.