Cometh the seeming slowdown in the economy, cometh the high pressure Ben Bernanke speech to tell us what the Fed thinks about it. The Fed chairman will speak on the US Economic Outlook at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, at 3.45pm ET tomorrow.

The speech is actually long-planned – although the economic news has made it a lot more significant – and speeches on this topic follow a set pattern. Mr Bernanke is likely to dicuss the growth outlook, the inflation outlook and then the policy consequences. Read more