George Osborne was forced to share some harsh truths with us all when he presented his Autumn Statement last week: growth in Britain will be weaker than previously expected over the next five years, borrowing higher and austerity longer.

Markets reacted strongly to Barack Obama’s re-election with investors fearful that a split Congress will crash the US straight into a “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax rises and spending cuts. Traders I know say the markets are likely to fall heavily over the next few weeks…

The election on November 6 is just a fortnight away now and either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will be handed the task of kick-starting the world’s largest economy.

China has expressed its own concerns about the eurozone’s fixation with austerity at the expense of growth. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond apparently it happens to be a good time to be a construction worker in Brazil at the moment with the football world cup less than two years away and the 2016 Olympic Games and $500bn worth of infrastructure projects also in the pipeline.

ROLL up, roll up – the circus is in town. More than seven years of waiting are almost over as athletes from 204 countries descend on London town for the Olympics.

NOT even the champagne at Henley or strawberries at Wimbledon can lift the mood in the City at the moment. The rain keeps falling and the sky is permanently grey.

AND so the drama continues. Last weekend it was Spain’s turn to get an eye-watering bailout for its beleaguered banks – yet few of us here in the City believe the €100bn rescue will bring the eurozone debt crisis any closer to a resolution.

Barring Greece – where exit from the euro and a return to the drachma could ultimately be decided at a second election on June 17, I am told that speculation about a Spanish bailout and imminent action from the European Central Bank to prop up the eurozone’s banks is growing by the day.

Well, as I write, volatility has returned big time to the markets and this volatility is actually what spread betters really need to make the quick money they are always after!