[B]UK[/B] [B]Consumer Confidence[/B] unexpectedly improved in February according to Nationwide, a retail financial services firm. The metric rebounded from a record low in the previous month register at 43, beating economists’ expectations of a print at 38. The improvement came courtesy of an uptick in the future expectations portion of the survey: 77% of the people polled in February said they expect conditions to be the same or worse in the future versus 82% in January. It remains to be seen if the optimism can be sustained considering 40% of British mortgage holders are expected to be in negative equity by 2010, creating a negative wealth effect that would be disastrous for spending. The outlook is made all the more grim by forecasts calling for the unemployment rate to surpass 8% for the first time since 1996 by the fourth quarter of this year. The Bank of England is set to announce monetary policy later this week, with mixed expectations likely to create substantial volatility for the British Pound.