Halifax Bank of Scotland (LON:HBOS) is in trouble. In case you haven’t been paying attention to Britain’s markets, the US has exported its real estate collapse and credit crisis to the Britain. And now the country’s largest mortgage lender is groping for anything to prop itself up.

So far HBOS has posted nearly GBP£4 billion (about $7.95 billion) in writedowns from the Britain’s failing real estate market. And in lieu of selling chunks of itself to foreign banks to bring capital back into the company, HBOS’s shareholders just voted today to issue 1.5 billion new shares in a rights sale next month.

The news on the Street is not looking good. The Fed, it seems, is spoiling the party. Few expect it to slash rates further.

Then there’s oil. The black goo rose 87 cents to $137.61 a barrel in electronic trade this morning.

MarketWatch has S&P 500 futures down 6.5 points to 1,311.80 and Dow industrial futures down 54 points.

Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia expects a ‘highly differentiated’ performance in stock markets for the rest of the year.