To assess the impact of the August news on the state of the euro-area economy, we compared the estimate of € obtained at the end of August with an alternative estimate obtained assuming that we had no August data concerning survey expectations and financial markets, thus replacing the actual data with their forecasts, as it is the case for those components of € that are not yet available when the estimate is finalized (at the end of the month; see Figure 5).
Figure 5: The August “surprise”  BIS Review 123/2007  9  The result shows that with respect to the trends implicit in financial and survey data up to July, the actual turnout in August implied only a minor downward revision. It is still too early to draw definite conclusions but the fall is very modest indeed.