Trade figures released this morning showed that the UK's trade in goods deficit was unchanged between February and March.

To return to my refrain, pretty much monthly, since the financial collapse started: the issue is not currency (neither the Euro nor the Drachma); the issue is not deficits. The issue is banking - and bankers.

When the Greeks leave the Euro, clearly the Greek economy will, short term, absolutely tank. Import costs will rocket and so will the prices of basic commodities to the poor ordinary Greeks. Internally held Euros stuffed in biscuit tins and mattresses may help to cushion the immediate blow, and the drachma will float freely massively up and down making everyday life very difficult.

There will be real hardship for ordinary people and businesses who did nothing to cause this impending poverty crisis on our own European doorsteps.

But once the drachma settles down on the currency markets and stringent exchange controls operate (and other old fashioned levers get pulled) then the Greek economy will start to sell things to itself, localise its economy initially; and then eventually its exports will become attractive to all of us.

Never mind the cheapest winter and summer sun holidays available for decades for us poor, benighted, north Europeans!

Hopes are rising that GM Europe will soon announce a 'reprieve' for its Ellesmere Port plant, after gaining support from the UK government on new model launches and supply chain efficiencies as well as concessions from workers on wages and flexible working.

GM Europe had earlier announced it was looking to cut up to 400,000 units of capacity a year from its European operations from 2014 (when its current deal with unions expires), with the firm suggesting that Ellesmere Port and Bochum in Germany were the most vulnerable.

That enabled the firm to kick off a fresh round of its well-honed divide-and-rule strategy, pitting plants and governments against each other in a bidding war to offer the most concessions to the firm. It's a typical feature of the auto industry, controlled as it is a in a top-down way by giant, mobile 'original equipment manufacturers' (OEMs) keen to screw down costs by playing off sites against each other.

Last week, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report which found that private sector jobs created under the £1.4 billion Regional Growth Fund cost between £4,000 and £200,000 per job. For the whole UK, they estimate that the Fund will create around 41,000 net new jobs, with around 8,600 of those being located in the West Midlands.

The current unemployment rate for the West Midlands is around 9 per cent which is - when converted to something meaningful - is the lives of about 240,000 people.

Or, in other words, whilst welcome, these 8,600 new jobs might shave next to nothing off the total unemployment for the region.

The coalition government's £1.4 billion Regional growth Fund has been severely criticised in a damning report (read here) by the National Audit Office (NAO). The report states that the RGF has failed to achieve value for money, spending as much as £200,000 generating a single job. And of particular concern the NAO notes that the RGF could have created thousands more jobs if the government had applied tighter controls.

Deputy PM Nick Clegg had previously claimed the fund could generate up to half a million jobs. I'd still like to see the calculations behind his claim as that figure is wildly out-of-line with the NAO's estimates. While the RGF may create 328,000 jobs in total, these are of various durations and the NAO estimates that only 41,000 extra full-time equivalent jobs could be created over the next seven years as a result of the RGF, at an average cost of £33,000 per net additional job (which is "broadly similar" to past programmes with comparable objectives).

Ever since the financial crisis began to subside the debate has raged about how we grow our economy based on manufacturing and trade. As many companies in the West Midlands will tell you, this is nothing new and they have been quietly exporting their way around the globe way before the need to find a new economic model began.

Benjamin Disraeli is reported to have coined the phrase 'lies, damned lies and statistics'. Last week's GDP figures certainly attracted plenty of attention and, criticism in some quarters for confirming the UK is supposedly back in recession, when a raft of business surveys, including EEF's have painted a rather more positive picture.

When the first quarter GDP numbers came in even I was surprised, even though I've been warning that we're on the edge of a double dip recession for months. I had expected poor manufacturing figures and awful construction figures for the early part of this year to be offset by stronger service sector growth, and that overall the UK would have done just enough to avoid slipping back into official recession. That didn't happen.

Of course, the first quarter GDP growth figures carry a big health warning as they cover only 40% of the data and are a first estimate. They may be revised back upwards, as indeed they were in late 2009, but for now at least, it's official; we're back into double dip for the first time since the 1970s.

Unemployment declined by 35,000 in the three months to February to 2.65 million, the first fall since May 2011. While that's of course good news, the number of people claiming unemployment benefit is still rising, with the total number of people in receipt of jobseeker's allowance standing at 1.61 million in March.

Nevertheless, some analysts see the recent slight fall in unemployment as the first sign that the economy has returned to modest growth. Let's hope they are right.

Youth unemployment also declined slightly, by 9,000 in the three months to February, leaving 1.03 million 16 to 24 year-olds looking for work. The unemployment rate for this age group is still over one-in-five, the worst in 25 years, and what's especially concerning is that there was another increase in the number of young people who are long-term unemployed.

In fact, over the last year, the number of young people claiming jobseeker's allowance for 12 months or more has tripled.

Last Sunday I chaired a debate at the Town Hall in Birmingham on what an elected mayor might do for the city, which can be seen here.

Over a hundred people attended and the discussion ranged from what business wanted from a mayor, through jobs, transport and education, and to how a mayor could help the inner city and other deprived areas in sharing in the wealth that the city generates.

Much of the discussion through the two panels was about power: what extra powers would a mayor have as compared with the current set up?