We have a quiet week ahead in terms of economic reports, it looks as if the focus will remain on the credit markets. We have to wait until Friday for some key results.

Today’s UK results for mortgage lending from the Building Society Association, shows that amount for new mortgage lending fell from 3.9billion last time to 3.6billion.

On Friday we see the UK’s GDP figure which is not forecast to change from the initial result. In the US we will see the durable goods orders, this can be very variable, thus the core figure will be of more significance. Finally we will see the US new home sales which will have a greater significance than normal taking into account the weakness in the property market.

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It is ‘inflation’ week once more. We have both the UK and US inflation figures due out on Tuesday and Wednesday. Expectations are that the UK rate may drop 0.1% and the US will stay level. The BoE minutes are due out on Wednesday, although the inflation report published last week has already given us their thinking.

 Also of interest at the moment are the US housing figures, although this week we only see the new starts and permits.

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It is a relatively quiet week ahead with two exceptions, these being the US Interest statement and the Bank of England Inflation report. These two may provide sufficient fireworks or not, we will have to wait and see.

There are some that believe that the Fed will drop interest rates to bail out the ailing mortgage market. Realistically a quarter point drop is hardly going to make much of a difference.

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