Falling stockmarkets and annuity rates have decimated pension income over the past 10 years, according to Moneyfacts. In its quarterly insight into personal pension payouts it revealed that the average personal pension pot has dropped by a staggering 60 per cent over the last decade. According to the survey, someone who had paid £100 gross per month into a balanced managed fund for the preceding 20 years would have built up a pension fund of £40,749 if they retired now, compared with £103,914 if they had retired a decade ago.

Despite all the problems in recent weeks, Greek debt currently trades at a spread that is only one-eighth the gap of what it was pre-Maastricht — meaning there is a lot of room for things to get worse. With Greece now facing a budget deficit of at least 9.1 percent in 2010 — and given Greek proclivity to fudge statistics the real figure is probably much worse — any sharp increase in debt servicing costs could push Athens over the brink. See below for the chart.

While Britain's top bankers celebrate their bonuses, Michael Robinson investigates the commercial property market and the nasty surprises that it may hold for the banks and for the long-suffering British taxpayers who bailed them out.

"U.K. 10-year bonds fell after a report showed house-price gains last month topped economists’ predictions, fueling concern that the government may struggle to sell record amounts of debt as inflation accelerates. The drop pushed the 10-year security’s yield near the highest this month as global gains by stocks cut demand for the perceived safety of fixed income. The U.K. sold 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) of bonds today, part of 225.1 billion pounds of sales planned for the fiscal year through March".

Property investment firm Telereal is selling 55 UK properties worth around £475 million. The company is believed to be the testing the market’s appetite for large portfolios with the sale of these assets. Telereal has appointed CBRE to sell the office properties, which are principally let to RBS. Significant prooperties included in the portfolio are the London offices of Coutts on The Strand, Drummonds HQ on Trafalgar Square and Child & Co HQ on Fleet Street. The properties will remain let to RBS until 2037. The sale is the majority of the 63 buildings acquired by Telereal in a 2008 £800 million sale-and-leaseback deal. More than 45% of the portfolio’s income is generated from the London properties.

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit. The bank declined to comment on the controversial deal. The Greek Finance Ministry did not respond to a written request for comment.

"The supposed boom in the property market is not all it seems. Reports may be indicating the prices are rising rapidly but the average is being skewed says property information specialist Hometrack. According to its research, prices are actually only rising in 7% of postcodes and the low volume of transactions is allowing wealthy buyers to distort the market." The article contains a list of every postcode that Hometrack thinks is rising. A little confusingly, there is no indication of what timeframe they're using. Can you find your postcode and if so, what % rise?

This is the first i saw of the - the stock market reference isnt relevant. Enjoy!

The markets will probably give Britain the benefit of the doubt until the election comes around. If the next government keeps flipping and flopping around like a bunch of particularly stupid headless chickens - as both the opposition and the incumbents are doing just now - then we're in trouble.

Views of Bob Janjuah, chief strategist at RBS. "Dear Readers, it seems to me that the events of the last few wks now tend to imply that we ARE headed towards Austerity in the US, something which is already clearly the case in China and the Eurozone. The UK will hopefully make this leap over the next few weeks/mths, before its too late – hopefully.... I now think we have begun the 3rd and final leg of the multi-yr bear mrkt which began in 2007 and which SHOULD, hopefully, finish late this yr, but which COULD (hopefully not) drag on deep into 2011. "