A fully stocked fundamental calendar tapered off into the end of the week with no indicators scheduled for release Friday. The market clearly needed the break, as shorts took the opportunity to take profit, allowing GBPUSD to close on an up day. However, despite Friday’s modest recovery, the damage was already done. The 385 point loss over this past week was the largest since the decline through August 17th. As you may recall, that Friday’s low marked the end of a nearly 1000-point sell that began in July when the now infamous credit crunch took hold of the market. Looking over the newswires for today, while there were no indicators, there were a few notable headlines. In his quarterly press conference, BoE Governor Mervyn King joined US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet in demanding China to allow its currency to strengthen more quickly. Also, the Nationwide Building Society released a forecast for zero housing price growth in 2008 – setting an ominous tone for Sunday evening’s Rightmove survey.