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.

When U.S. Department of Energy analysts told you more than a month ago that gasoline prices would peak at about $4 a gallon around Memorial Day, we told you they were wrong. Gas prices, we said, were destined to head much, much higher.

Citigroup has slashed its earnings outlook for Wall Street investment banks Goldman Sachs Group, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Morgan Stanley because of a tough operating environment, according to a report by Thomson Reuters.

The second quarter has seen lower client-related trading volumes, little banking activity, losses related to ineffective hedging and reversals of gains on fair valuing liabilities, [Citigroup analyst] Prashant Bhatia wrote in a note dated May 16.

Later today at noon, to be precise the Bank of England will announce its latest decision on interest rates. So what’s it going to do? The question is a lot harder to answer this month than we’ve been used to for the last few years.

I’ve been begging analysts to get real and take off those rose-colored glasses for months now. Their unwarranted optimism has resulted in two incredibly wrong-headed predictions.

Financial commentators around the world keep asking, they want to know if we’ve finally hit rock bottom, after more than $300 billion in losses. In fact, CNBC asks this question so often that it’s starting to sound like bored kids on a long road trip… “Are we there yet?”

Another sign that the US has entered a recession?According to a survey released today, US consumer confidence is the lowest it’s been in over a quarter of a century.

This month the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers has fallen to the lowest since March 1982’s level of 62.0.

According to Reuters, this is “when the ’stagflationary’ period of low growth and high inflation was still fresh in the memory of many Americans.”