httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhe0H66ppOM

• UK will go to the polls on May 6^th, Conservatives still lead in polls
• Greece continues to hurt the euro, Germany not helping
• US jobs report slightly down on expectations
• RBA raise rates by 25bps to 4.25%

All this and more is available on our blog. Click here  http://www.worldfirst.com/blog

Today we have published our ‘World First Economic Calendar’ (attached to this email). This calendar seamlessly fits into your existing Outlook calendar and details the important releases for upcoming week.) This does however not work in Outlook 2003 or on a Mac however development is going into releasing calendars in those formats. Simply open the attachment (selecting replace if you downloaded last week’s)

So 4 weeks it is. Gordon Brown will ask the Queen today to dissolve parliament like a big legislative alka seltzer; the tonic of which will hopefully quell and calm the sick and tired economy. Battle lines have been drawn and battle buses have been unveiled but in the grand scheme of things, and certainly from an FX point of view, nothing much has changed.

The weekend has been kind to the pound as a Sunday Times/ICM poll showed a 10 point lead for Cameron’s Conservatives. This is a winning majority and enough to prevent a hung parliament and his comment on Friday that an election with no clear winner would surely damage the economy has been looked on as prescient.

But nothing much has changed and I expect the pound to continue to trade awkwardly for the next month.

If the pound was done favours by some in the political sphere then the euro was most certainly not. The problems in Greece continue to rumble on and comments from the Greek Deputy PM that the problems are likely to spread to Portugal and Spain are not likely to help matters. The other thing weighing on the single currency at the moment are  is the necessary fund raising has taken a new slant with the launch of a ‘Zorba’ bond. This is Greek debt which is being specifically pitched at the US market. This is probably due to investor fatigue in Europe.

Germany has also angered other European countries by standing by its beliefs that the Greek should not pay a discounted rate of interest on any funds it is loaned by the EU. Most wanted to give Greece a rate of about 4%, Germany wants 6%. It’s as if your neighbours’ house is on fire and your haggling over the price of your garden hose.

It seems so long ago but Friday saw Non-Farm payrolls released in the US. They rose by 162k in March, which was slightly down on consensus estimates. The main falls were seen in the finance and information industries. The dollar initially lost weight as a result of the reading but is roughly in the same place as it was at Thursday’s close.

Overnight the RBA have raised interest rates in Australia to 4.25%. This had long been predicted even against the poor retail sales figures released last week and we expect rates to rise to 5% by the end of the year.

Data today comes in the form of Construction PMI from the UK and the minutes of the latest Fed meeting.