In this morning's Opening View, it was noted that Barclays (BCS: sentiment, chart, options) is considering making some acquisitions. The initial reports from the Daily Telegraph noted interest in Lehman Brothers (LEH) and UBS (UBS), along with Britain's Alliance & Leicester. While BCS had no comment, I found comments from NCB Stockbrokers analyst Irfan Younus rather interesting. Younus noted that BCS CEO Bob Diamond " ... has said several times since last summer that he would not want to miss out on the chance of taking advantage of the current market turmoil to grow in the U.S."

In the midst of reading an article on BCS and their desire to expand, I found something rather interesting dealing with Diamond and his opinion of the current U.S. slowdown. The CEO believes that the slowdown will be "shorter and shallower than many are predicting." He also believes that his bank is well-positioned to move quickly, thanks to low write-downs compared to some of its U.S.-based rivals. This positioning gave Diamond reason to move the U.S. to "very high" on BCS's priority list. These statements were made back in February, but were reiterated and I think carry some hint as to what other countries think of our economic situation.