Wells Fargo's earning's announcement last week and Bank of America's announcement this morning have provided more evidence that despite the all the news of doom and gloom for the financial sector of the economy, the largest banks in America are still quite profitable (B of A earned 3.41 billion in the 2nd quarter wth revenue rising to 20.32 billion from 17.73 billion).  As the cloud of impending collapse of the nation's financial system starts to clear, investors are beginning again to focus on the threat of inflation, the value of the dollar and the potential values in the stock market.  In this environment for us to see  lower rates, we will most likely need to see further stock market weakness and the price of oil to come down.  The key pieces of economic data this week are June Leading Indicators (released today with results as expected wih a minor decline), the Fed Beige Book on Wednesday (expected to continue to show sluggish growth and an uptick in inflation), Initital Job Claims for the week ended 7/19 (to be released on Thurs - this could be problematic if job claims fell because they are expected to increase due to auto manufacturer's temporary plant shutdowns for new model year retooling), June Existing Homes Sales (on Thursday and expected to be down slightly), and June Durable Goods Orders and June New Home Sales (on Friday and expected to be down slightly).  If the data from these economic reports is better than expected, that will tend to put upward pressure on rates and if the data comes in at expectations or worse that will support steady to fractionally lower rates as long as the stock market does not shrug off negative news and stage a rally.