– The market is holding its breath this morning. It’s waiting to see what the fate Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) will be. According to MarketWatch, “the brokerage is believed to be in its last hours of independence.”

– After yesterday’s wild ride, US stock futures are pointing mostly down. S&P 500 futures fell 2.9 points to 1,249.10. Dow industrial futures fell 12 points. Only Nasdaq 100 futures are up. They rose 1.5 points to 1,783.25.

– It seems pretty clear from where we’re sitting that the government’s welfare for Wall Street shenanigans this year have convinced the market that it doesn’t need to worry too much about the demise of another big bank. Under the circumstances, what else could explain traders boosting the Dow yesterday by 164 points?

– Sure enough, rumors that Lehman is in talks for a federal government-chaperoned buyout are doing the rounds.

–”The only way to correct this problem is the same way all socialistic practices are corrected - the government’s involvement must be severed completely,” says Chris Mayer in The Daily Reckoning.

–The rest of the world isn’t in much better shape, say Addison Wiggan and Ian Mathias in The 5 Min. Forecast. According to the European Commission, Spain, Germany and Britain will fall into recession this year. Russia’s stock market is getting slammed because of the pullback in oil prices and the small matter of a bloody war in Georgia. Chinese home price growth is plummeting this year as quickly as it skyrocketed last year. Even emerging markets are going through the ringer. According to the 5, “Investors pulled nearly $30 billion out of emerging market bond and equity funds from June-August.” 

– Back in the good old US of A, housing market misery continues unabated. US foreclosure filings rose to a record in August, reports Bloomberg.

Owners of 303,879 properties, or one in 416 U.S. households, got a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or foreclosed on last month. That was the most since reporting began in January 2005. Filings increased 27 percent from a year earlier, about half the annual pace of previous months, because of high default totals in August 2007, the Irvine, California- based seller of foreclosure data said in a statement today.

– Hurricane Ike is giving crude oil a boost. The black goo is up from five-month low as Ike bears down on the Texas coast and 23%.

– Chris Mayer expects oil in the long-term to remain high. New demand and dwindling supply will see to it.

– The dollar lost some ground against the euro, after European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet said that inflation in the euro bloc is still the primary concern.

– Will Charles Delvalle’s standout prediction that the dollar will continue to rally for the next 6 to 12 months remain true? Only time will tell. If you think he’s right, buy into the buy into the Rydex Strengthening Dollar 2x Strategy H fund (MUTF:RYSBX).

– There’s still no immediate relief in sight for gold bugs. “Bullion tumbled 7.1% this week before today,” reports Bloomberg, “while the dollar rose 1.9% against the euro. Gold usually moves in the opposite direction to the U.S. currency as investors tend to buy bullion as an alternative asset when the dollar falls.” Indeed.

– J. Christoph Amberger, writing in Today’s Financial News, has more bad news for those holding the shiny metal. The biggest gold ETF, and one of the biggest gold holders on the planet, the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSE:GLD) has dumped 90 tons of gold onto the market. “With a major gold purchaser having turned into a major seller of physical gold,” says J. Christoph, “there is now a severe disturbance in the supply-demand ratio that supported the bull run of the past four years.”