A market that is surprisingly surprising…the meanest reverters in the whole financial world. Robert Mugabe: Freddie’s new CEO?…expecting the sun to come back over the housing market. Americans and Brits caught in no-man’s-land…pouring petrol on an already blazing country…and more!

In energy news, oil traded lower for the day, continuing a string of recent declines since hitting an all-time high over $147 a barrel several weeks ago. Crude for September delivery fell another $2.54 to finish at $122.19 a barrel, its lowest price in 12 weeks. September reformulated gasoline also fell 6.1 cents, ending the day at $3.0132 a gallon.

The base metals all went on a tear on Wednesday. Copper was down from the pre-dawn hours to the first part of the New York morning, touching $3.74, but then rallied sharply to finish just below its intraday high at $3.8065/lb., up nearly 3 cents.

The base metals were all deeply in the red on Thursday. As soon as copper had closed above the psychologically-important $4 mark, it gave it right back, dropping precipitously through the pre-dawn hours and then trading flat to finish near its intraday low at $3.8945/lb., down 21 cents.

This terrifying news of rising inflation and rising bond yields had the curious effect of producing a sort of fight-or-flight reaction in the Mighty Manly Mogambo (MMM), in that I start involuntarily crying like a baby.

The news on the UK economy just keeps getting worse. Last week’s news was unremittingly glum - from falling house prices to income squeezes, most of us are quite a bit worse off than we were a year ago.