Following on from Nigeria’s rebasing of its GDP numbers, giving it a huge growth boost on paper, it is Israel’s turn to tinker with the numbers.  This time, though, the end result was not positive.

The country’s Central Bureau of Statistics said on Monday that the first-quarter jobless rate was 6.7 percent. This a good 1.3 percentage points higher than the announced fourth-quarter figure.

In a world of slowing growth (China), minimal growth (United States) and outright recession (Britain),  it is startling to hear that Nigeria’s economy is likely to shoot up by 40 percent in the second quarter this year. Yep. Forty percent. Four – O.

An investigation by Reuters Lagos correspondent Chijioke Ohuocha came up with this staggering figure — which if borne out will lift Nigeria close to continental rival South Africa and raise it about 10 places on the IMF’s global list to around 3oth.

The trillion euros lent out by the European Central Bank for three years at a rock bottom interest rates were supposed to do two things –  throw a comfort blanket around Europe’s wobbly banks and pump money into  moribund economies. Some new data from struggling Spain confirms that while there may be a bit of a case for the former, the latter is still falling short.

Mortgage lending by Spanish banks  had their largest annual drop in more than six years in February – coming in at essentially half of what they were a year earlier. There are all kinds of reasons for this, not the least being that large numbers of Spaniards are out of work and house prices are still tumbling with at least one estimate being that they remain as much as 30 percent overvalued.