And now for a little light reading: UniCredit, in a recent Economic Flash analyst report, details beer consumption, sales, and demand in light of Oktoberfest, which gets underway this Saturday. Sales of beer have boomed for the past four years, and should boom some more. “The prospects of glittering sales this year are also excellent,” says the report’s author, Alexander Koch. There are price index charts on barley and wheat. And also on transport, beer, and chicken. (Transportation and beer prices have outpaced the price of chicken, in case you were curious). And plenty of useful facts about breweries, inflation risks, and visitor turnout. Cheers to Koch for injecting a little levity in an otherwise gloomy economic news week.