Tempting though it is liberally to sprinkle this piece with musical puns, I'll resist and instead confine myself to serious of analysis. When it comes to Warner Music, EMI is nothing if not persistent. In some guise or other, EMI's chairman, Eric Nicoli, has been trying to merge with Warner Music for more than six years, yet up until now, he's always been thwarted. The pessimists believe that the recent pick-up in the pace of the world economy is a signal that neither the rise in energy prices, nor the rise in interest rates, will prove sufficient.We will see - but I for one find that graph on UK rates an intriguing indicator of what might be in store..

A new recruit to those ranks is Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley, who has up to now been very concerned - see opposite. The former believe that US rates are high enough to bring about a gradual adjustment: savings will come up, the current account deficit will narrow, the dollar will fall a bit but won't have to fall very much. At the moment there is a tug-of-war between the optimists and the pessimists. So maybe mortgages will have to be 5.5 to 6.5 per cent.US rates are, of course, much more important to the world economy than UK ones. We have discovered that mortgage rates of 4.5 to 5.5 per cent do not seem to have checked the rise in house prices, even though prices are within a whisker of an all-time high in relation to earnings. In the case of money, if 5 per cent interest rates do not bring supply/ demand into balance then rates have to go to 6 per cent.The easiest way to see this is to look at the UK.

If central banks try to resist that trend, they find their currency depreciates, they impose more inflation on their people and that inflation mops up the cash.In the case of oil, if $75 a barrel does not correct the imbalance in the supply/demand of the stuff, then the price has to go to $100 a barrel. Just as the world economy copes for a while with more expensive oil and raw materials, so too it copes for a while with more expensive money. But gradually inflationary pressures mount and the price of money is forced up So the world gets higher interest rates. But gradually both the cash and the savings are absorbed by rising asset prices and rising economic activity.

The central banks create a huge amount of cash and Asia saves like mad. Business confidence in the main European economies has risen very strongly (next graph). It is also strong in the UK, a relationship which Credit Suisse has spotted and which would seem to suggest that the next movement in UK interest rates will be up, not down (final graph).Intuitively this makes sense. Asia saves even at these low interest rates.So in the global money market there is lots of supply and unbalanced demand. The question seems to me to be at what stage rising global confidence will suck up the liquidity that has been created, and force interest rates up further.Within the developed world there is a rising appetite among businesses to invest more. But outside the US, particularly in Asia, there is no huge intention to borrow.