Monday 14th July 2008

It looks like another wave of doom and gloom over in the States as the news that one of the largest mortgage lenders IndyMac Bank has failed. Greater concern as to the health of the US Mortgage Market has been alleviated somewhat on the back of news that the Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae vehicles, which guarantee or own over half of US mortgages at around £2.5 trillion, are to be rescued to the tune of around $11 billion. They will get new credit lines from Congress and the Fed will also lend further to them if required. This led to a recovery of the US currency.

Oil has jumped to over $147 a barrel this has been put down to Iran’s latest missile tests which seem aimed at provoking a reaction from Israel. The fact that any conflict would take place around one of the worlds richest supplies of crude worries the market and this, allied to long term supply problems in Nigeria, has sent the price of crude spiralling once more.

Closer to home, the FTSE finished well down last week, triggering bear market conditions not seen since the dot com bubble burst in the early 90’s. It looks like UK banks are going to look after one another now, at a price. Bradford & Bingley are looking for cash buyers and with breaking news, Alliance & Leicester are reported to have received a takeover bid, the source of which is yet to be named. The signs that the UK economy is slowing down were reinforced yesterday as we see the number of profit warnings among companies rise.

PPI is out today and with both input and output expected to be higher, an inflationary indicator which may cause the MPC concern when deliberating over next months rate decision. MPC member Kate Barker has stated in the white Times today that although there is the need to drive inflation down to the 2% target, they would not keep rates at levels "that would make excessive economic downturn inevitable."

On the currency side we will see the majority of inflation sensitive data out this week.

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