Monday Evening

Stocks have again risen - in Europe and the US.

Gold and oil are also up.

According to governments, sentiment is improving. The position is that the world is heading deeper into recession, there is a systemic fault in the world's financial system which is being buoyed-up by daily injections of billions of dollars into the money markets and banks. In addition, we are promised huge public spending programmes.

If I sound too negative about all this, then people will accuse me of being 'negative' and of 'talking us deeper into recession'. So I won't do that and instead I will ask you to consider what would happen to your household budget if, on getting a final demand from the bank, you decided to borrow more and go on a spending spree. As our American cousins say...go figure.

What we want to hear is the money market rates are reducing and that billions of dollars per day are no longer required to keep banks working. That seems a long way off, right now.