Here’s a turn-up for the books: we have such a vast oversupply of houses in the UK that Gordon Brown is proposing to spend £200m to buy up some of the excess.

President Bush insists the US economy is in a “downturn,” but legendary investor Warren Buffett warned today that the US is in a recession — one that will be more severe than most people expect.

“This will not be short and shallow,” said Buffett on CNBC. “I think consumers are feeling gas and food prices and not feeling they’ve got a lot of money for other things.”

Speaking about the ongoing US credit crisis, Buffett said: “I think there will be rippling secondary, tertiary effects …

A spritely performance from “Old Europe” – France and Germany – helped Eurozone growth exceed expectations in the first quarter.

I really wouldn’t like to be the man in charge of sorting out the UK economy today. Almost every piece of economic data so far this week has been as bad as it could be.

Good old assumptions. They’re an economist’s best-friend. If the world seems too hectic or complicated — simply assume that it isn’t. Then everything will be fine.

You can’t deny 2007 was the year of living dangerously in financial markets. So far this losing streak has continued through the first quarter—with the notable exception of soaring commodity markets!

The papers have kept us in stitches today…a ‘Gas Tax Holiday’? Really? Waiting for the showdown between Hillary and Obama…the Fed has created bubble-like conditions in the commodities markets – but Kevin Kerr tells us all is not lost. Buffett tells it like it is…the art world’s big test…and more!

It’s not only the clouds outside that seem to be lifting. Optimism broke out in various quarters, reflected in global equities. The Dow closed above 13,000 on Thursday. The Nikkei closed above 14,000. The FTSE 100 was over 6,100 by mid-day Friday.

The Fed once again cut interest rates on Wednesday, this time by a quarter of a percentage point. So what does this mean for the U.S. economy as well as the central banks in Europe?

In much of the discussion about the collapse of the U.S. housing market, commentators have assumed that the massive run-up in property prices that preceded the subprime-mortgage meltdown were simply the result of a speculative frenzy that became a full-fledged market bubble.