Why inflation is bad news for the high street. You’d expect the slump in the housing market to take its toll on the high street. And indeed it has.

Uh-oh. We must really be in trouble. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has singled out Britain’s economy for especially gloomy treatment in its latest six-monthly take on the world economy.

It is easy to think about the credit crunch in terms of banks. The banks made these weird structured products, the banks are responsible for the borrowing rate, the banks falling market cap is dragging on the FTSE, etc.

You can’t blame Fannie Mae for trying. Last year saw British property buyers snap up around 20,000 homes in the United States.

I’ve mentioned more than a few times here that unemployment is a lagging indicator. What that means is, that things get bad in the economy, and then the jobless figures start to rise, not the other way about.

Existing US home sales dropped in February, according a National Association of Realtors (NAR).

The NAR pending home pending home sales index, a leading indicator of existing home sales, dropped 1.9% in February. The index is down 21.4% from the February 2007 level.

There has been plenty of shrill calls for government to intervene in the housing crisis, but what can – or should – government do?

It’s the end of an era. The last widely-available 100% mortgage product has been taken off the market. Abbey, the UK’s third-biggest lender, has yanked the no-deposit deal. It’s also planning to raise its tracker mortgage rates by up to 0.35%.