If you think we're out of the woods by now....

Don't think too soon.

* New Star Asset Management: great results but the shares get shellacked because of an uncertain outlook. CEO Howard Covington:

'As a result of the turmoil in the markets the visibility for next year has gone down.'

* US lending bank goes bust:

'ING Direct, a subsidiary of the Dutch financial group, is to take over the customers and insured deposits of NetBank, an online lender with $2.5bn (£1.2bn) in assets that was shut down on Friday by the US government following losses on subprime mortgages and other loans. The closure marks the largest US bank failure since the end of the savings and loan crisis in the early 1990s.'

The FT says we're now in no-man's land. The rate cuts have helped but:

'conditions in the interbank money market and other troubled corners of the financial system remain far from normal.'

The big question, after last week's dreadful US new homes data:

'[has] the credit squeeze has pushed the US economy on to a sharply weaker growth path that could end in a recession in spite of the Fed’s efforts on rates.'