Hello, I'm Philip Cockham, the Buttonwood Columnist of the Economist.

Welcome to Money Talks.

Coming up on the program, growth in the Eurozone is slowing down.

Is that a sign of future problems or just a sniffle?

Some on the ECB including the President might be looking at the slowdown and using it perhaps as a reason to hold off

making any big decisions and why the harder the Brexit the softer the cheese as

far as Ireland is concerned.

Authentic buffalo mozzarella doesn't have to be Italian. Oh no. So if you're looking for the taste of Italy...

Pungunjono. Look to cock.

First, commodity prices are rising. Oil prices now are above $70 a barrel. President Trump's

tweet that oil prices were artificially high could have a significant impact. The market is particularly sensitive at the moment to

geopolitical factors and the repercussions they cause. Henry Tricks is the economists, energy and

commodities editor.

Henry, oil is obviously the one that most people are interested in and causes most economic

damage.

Why is that price rising?

Well, it's been a combination of things but the market has been

getting tighter for the last year and a half or so and we've got to a point now

where OPEC and Russia who've been trying to engineer a deal to cut

back production enough so that stocks of oil reach their five-year average levels, they seem to have succeeded.

And so the market for the first time in a long time is actually looking tight.

And at that moment, it becomes particularly susceptible to comments, fears and there are any

...