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The British economy continues to go from worse to bad with consumer sentiment now at levels not seen since the early 1990s, growth slumping, house prices down nine months in a row, another bank with problems and the country’s biggest home builder rescued.

We will see some tidying up in our market today with the end of the financial year, but that won’t disguise the worldwide trend for the six months to June: it’s been the worst for 26 years and no one has got any confidence about the next six months.

Oil remains the only commodity in town, so to speak, the others are all sideshows, even gold which came to life Thursday and Friday and ended the week well over $US900 an ounce and at a one month high.

New Zealand is contracting and could beat the US and UK economies into official recession status.

Thanks to the US sub-prime crisis, the oil shock and higher local interest rates Australian shares look like having their worst financial year since 1981-82.

Australia is fully-mounted on the current global inflationary surge in energy: our energy exports are forecast to jump 81% in value in the coming financial year alone to $88 billion, the value of mineral exports is forecast to rise by a quarter and the value of rural exports could be up 12%.

The Western Australian gas crisis looks set to continue for six to eight weeks, but there should be a marked improvement from mid-August onwards.

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Car sales remain stronger than a year ago, despite a fall in sales of four-wheel-drive vehicles in May.

There will be a wary group of investors sticking their heads up today and wondering just where the damage in the financial engineering (property trust and associated entities) sector will end.

A bad week for markets around the world with three month lows explored in Australia, Europe, the US and parts of Asia.

There’s only one big event this week and that’s the two-day US Federal Reserve meeting in Washington that won’t see a lift in US interest rates.

Food & energy are the main drivers of the rise in inflation right now, although price pressures are broader in parts of Asia and Australia.