The late Sir John Templeton always advised that you buy at the point of “maximum pessimism”. It sounds like great advice, but as Julian Marr points out in The Telegraph this morning, it’s actually not that helpful.

Looks like the market’s latest little bounce is petering out in the face of the overwhelmingly grim economic reality again.

The reality is that regardless of how much money the US government pumps into Freddie and Fannie, the US financial system is in big trouble – and the sooner they face up to it, the better…

What goes up, must come down. It’s just a shame that, having stacked up a debt mountain of more than £1.4 trillion, we’ve got so far to fall.

British consumers are running out of credit. Stock markets took a serious hammering yesterday. The FTSE 100 lost nearly 150 points to close at 5,518. Over in the US, the Dow Jones dived by more than 350 points, to close at 11,453. This morning, the Asian markets followed suit, with the Nikkei 225 sliding nearly 300 points to 13,544 points.

Editor’s Note: Fed does nothing, says same old thing. Basically, this was the upshot of the Fed’s latest policy meeting.

The risk of inflation has increased, said the Fed. The downside risk to growth has decreased.

John Stepek is not convinced that the Fed is committed to bringing down inflation. “The only part of the Fed that’s actually remotely worried about inflation is the single member of the ten-strong rate-setting committee who actually voted for a rate hike last night,” says John in Money Morning.

“Because the truth is that by leaving rates on hold last night, the Fed actually cut them…”