Telegraph.co.uk

The arrival of Aldi and Lidl in the UK in the early 1990s sent shivers down the spines of established British supermarkets. Having watched the German discounters march across Europe, self-appointed retail experts predicted that they would undermine the UK's established chains and eventually dominate the British food retailing scene, opening thousands of stores.

It hasn't quite worked out how those experts predicted. Europeans may love Aldi and Lidl's discount prices but British snobbery (combined with the launch of value ranges by the major retailers) frustrated the discounters' expansion plans.

Despite a lukewarm reception from British housewives (and finding themselves the butt of endless jokes), the pair persevered, patiently pushing ahead with their plans.

That patience may be about to pay off. Aldi and Lidl finally appear to be making inroads into the UK market. Market share figures from TNS yesterday revealed that both Aldi and Lidl were delivering double-digit growth - with the stores growing 19.8pc and 12.3pc respectively in the 12 weeks to August 10.

With average customer spend remaining unchanged at £45 per month, the discounters finally appear to be attracting new customers. UK shoppers, it seems, are finally getting to grips with the no-frills offering and smaller ranges on offer at Aldi and Lidl.

The question is: are we witnessing a permanent change in shopping habits? Or merely a credit crisis-induced blip that will see shoppers desert the discounters when the good times return?

If TNS's figures are the first sign of a major shift in consumer behaviour, Aldi and Lidl certainly don't lack the resources to step up their expansion plans. Aldi was founded by Karl Albrecht, now one of the world's richest men with an estimated worth of some £13bn, while Lidl is part of the Schwartz Group, one of the largest grocers in Europe.

More than 15 years after they landed on these shores, predictions that the Germans could change the face of British retailing could actually turn out to be true.

Bear markets are always like this: an optimistic few weeks when prices gradually rise and it seems to all intents and purposes that we may have got through the worst. This is then followed by a profoundly miserable spell during which investors realise the gloom is going to last longer - much longer.

Prices still rise and fall, but they will tend to fall by much more than they rise, as investors' fear wins over their greed.

In the past week, markets have clocked on to the fact that the prodigious bounce over the past month or so was not a sign of the beginning of the end, but merely a false horizon.

The question that is now being asked in the markets is whether America is heading for an even worse slide in 2009 than it is suffering this year; whether when the effect of this year's tax cuts wears off the economy will face a major shock; whether the recent talk that the US had somehow managed to get through the crisis was entirely misplaced.

The trigger for the slide in stocks this week has been renewed speculation about the fate of state-backed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the question of whether shareholders will be wiped out.

However, underlying this are two more significant questions: are there more casualties to be found in the banking system, and is the financial system now embroiled in what experts call a 'negative-feedback loop'?

This phenomenon is simply a vicious circle where banks cut their lending, which in turn causes consumers to cut spending, which in turn leads the banks to restrict their lending even more as they worry about the economy - and so on.

In this light, the dollar's recent rise looks less like a vote of confidence in the US economy and more a recognition that the downturn in the rest of the world will be even worse than previously expected.

If you read the monetary runes, the recent slump in the growth of broad money on both sides of the Atlantic augurs extremely ill for next year.

How much is Brixton's watchtower worth now?

Tim Wheeler, chief executive of developer Brixton, is certainly miserable. He used the apocalyptic opening of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower to sum up the property market yesterday.

It is certainly difficult to know what Brixton is worth. Take, for example, Park Royal, the sprawling industrial estate on the edge of West London that Brixton owns a huge slug of. Not a single investment deal has been completed on the estate this year. So how far have values fallen?

With an absence of any information, the market has assumed the worse: Brixton currently trades at a 50pc discount to net asset value.