Is St Valentine's Day good for the economy?

PLANET BUSINESS:Although this year's festival of romance falls on the least sexy day of the week, the event is still sure to drag a few anti-social souls into recession-battling restaurants.

From tonight, establishments will likely be cashing in on celebrating couples’ enduring ability to tolerate each other’s blathering and/or stony silences over a bottle of the house red and a two-spooned dessert.

Gourmands who would prefer their favourite culinary haunts didn’t close down will therefore benefit from the trade injection brought about by February 14th’s love-off, even if they themselves are not participating. So how will the rest of the domestic economy fare?

Across the Atlantic, open hearts are predicted to open enough wallets to boost consumer spending, with a new survey from the US National Retail Federation hazarding that the average American will spend $116 on Valentine’s Day this year, up 11 per cent on last year.

According to a 2009 Microsoft survey by Microsoft’s Windows Live Group in 16 countries, Irish people spend less on Valentine’s gifts than any other European nation. In 2009, this amounted to an average spend of just €16 – a card-and-chocolates outlay that fell some way shy of the €109 average in Denmark.

Still, there are alternative ways to use your love life to patriotically boost the economy. Divorcing your partner will also add to your country’s gross national product – and not just because Hallmark and its peers have a card for that too.

STATUS UPDATE:

Dry wells:WikiLeaks cables indicate the US believes Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, has overstated its reserves by up to 300 billion barrels, or 40 per cent.

Golden nuggets:Fast food giant McDonald's has reported a 7 per cent rise in sales at its European restaurants, citing demand for McCafe hot chocolate and Chicken McNuggets.

Platform pals:The London Stock Exchange is to merge with the operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange, while Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext are also in "advanced" talks.

£56 million

The cost in compensation payouts and emergency engineering work to Rolls-Royce following the Qantas A380 engine blowout last year .

Slippery slope

EU single market advocates are now taking to the ski slopes with an attempt to introduce a euro-wide qualification for ski instructors – those patient people who spend their working days trying to show hapless novices the only really important move in downhill skiing: how to stop without the aid of a tree.

It’s all part of the EU’s drive for labour, um, mobility. So have the ski schools of Europe heretofore been populated by unqualified cowboys who merely send batches of brightly padded tourists up on the cable cars and tell them to make their own way down? Not quite, as five countries already recognise a stringent “Eurotest” qualification for sensible slaloming guidance.

The French, however, are in favour of introducing a pan- European professional card, with Alpine authorities telling news wire AFP that it would make it easier to catch unqualified ski instructors in the act – before they disappear off-piste, perhaps.

Coalition’s separate accounts

The banking truce was supposed to signal a crackdown on bonus culture and the beginnings of a credit flow to businesses as promised by the Liberal Democrats’ election manifesto. Instead it has resulted in the resignation of the party’s treasury spokesman, complaints that the deal has been less than magical for British taxpayers and accusations that UK chancellor George Osborne had conducted a banker-friendly act of sorcery that economists claim is unlikely to get financial institutions lending again.

No legislative wizardry, it seems, can stop Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond from pocketing an £8 million bonus just so he can live up to his surname.

"Tim came out to LA in January and we had lunch, and that's when we came up with the 1+1 = 11 concept"

Arianna Huffington describes the high-powered, mathematically-challenged cut-and-thrust of her deal to sell news site the Huffington Post to AOL boss Tim Armstrong.