Borrowers have counted on home equity money to fill in the gaps in their household budgets, using borrowing in place of saving.

Quantitative Easing (QE) are the latest buzz words in the financial markets. It is important to become intimately comfortable with these words because they will be the catch phrase of 2009 thanks to the latest interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan.

The US dollar has managed to hold on to last week’s gains, thus far, as lower trading volumes ahead of Thursday’s market closures has seen little in the way of volatility.

Trading volume will be light with Christmas ahead, but bad news on upcoming economic reports is still expected this week.

Professional system trader Art Collins shares his daily biases in the index, bonds and currency futures markets for December 22.

The Fed has taken interest rates to zero. They have clearly started a program of quantitative easing. What exactly does that mean? Are we all now Japanese? Is the Fed pushing on a string, as Japan has done for almost two decades? The quick answer is no, but the quick answer doesn't tell us much.

Take a look at the strong correlation between the price of oil and consumer prices.

After rising by a staggering 10% in two days, the EUR/USD fell just as quickly stopping out both longs and shorts in its wake.

The US dollar has many fundamental reasons to pull back, however, over the next week the big question is what sort of price action will we see?