Oil rose to $70 a barrel on Monday after Nigeria’s main militant group said it attacked a Royal Dutch Shell oil platform, outweighing a fairly bearish report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Bad news for car makers rallies the US$…  Yen comes back strong…  Singapore to devalue?…  German Chancellor Merkel gives warning… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

The US consumer confidence index plunged to an all-time low of 38 in October, down sharply from 61.4 in September. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg anticipated a reading of 52.

More from Bloomberg:

The dimming outlook signals consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, will deteriorate further, deepening the U.S. slump.

“The economy feels like it is contracting at a rapid pace,” Lewis Alexander, chief economist at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It’s clear that consumers have really been affected by the volatility we’ve seen in the last six weeks.”

The report underscores voter discontent with the country’s direction heading into the Nov. 4 presidential election. A majority of voters think Illinois Senator Barack…

With consumer confidence now testing generational lows, our politicians are, nevertheless, continuously assuring us that the economy is strong and that there is no cause for worry.

We aren’t scared of the peaks – what we are nervous about are the valleys…all the Fed’s hard work can be undone by a single day of trading… The global oil crunch…consumer confidence is out of gas as well – thank goodness for those rebate checks… The anniversary of the “Esperanto Money”…in central banking, the consequence of inertia and inactivity is almost always salutary…and more!

As the post-Memorial Day hangover lingers, and $4 per gallon gasoline becomes a national reality, expect more and more daily energy prognostications.

Spring sunshine may have arrived but the mood is still winter. The Anglo-Saxon consumer is at a low point. In the US consumer confidence is at a 26-year low says Morgan Stanley’s David Darst. And in the UK it hit an all time low point in April says the Nationwide building society.