"Credit crunch will last another 18 months"

HBOS (aka the Halifax) has caught up with me:

Britain’s credit crunch will last for at least another 18 months, according to the head of the country’s biggest mortgage provider.

Andy Hornby, chief executive HBOS, said the economic squeeze would continue until house prices in the United States began to recover, which he does not expect to see until 2010.

If both of us are proved correct, I may then take my financial services business out of hibernation. I've spent the best part of 10 years trying to stop my clients throwing away their money, so I hope they'll believe me when I suggest that "the dark days are gone, the bright days are here," as Bobby Hebb put it (I love the Feliciano version).

Especially if the US economy begins to be run the Sarah Palin way.