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mpc: 4 One possible explanation of the decline in equity prices was a fall in the expected growth rate of corporate earnings. This was consistent with the somewhat adverse macroeconomic news over the past month in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In the United States, companies had generally been revising down their forecasts for earnings per share over 2005, and that might be indicative of a more widespread deterioration in corporate prospects. The downgrading of GM and Ford debt might also have weighed on investor sentiment. In the United Kingdom, within the FTSE 100, the share prices of retailers had fallen some 7½ percentage points relative to the rest of the index since the beginning of the year, reflecting the perceived prospects for household spending.