Panic over?

I see it is now a month since my last post and a lot has been going on in the markets but I've found it hard to think clearly about where we are at. It seems the banks have now stopped panicing as if one bank had to fail on each side of the Atlantic before the bottom of the market was revealed, but now that is done (Northern Rock and Bear Stearns) the worst of the bad news from the financial sector is out.

Generally I'm going through a good spell with a recent MBO bid for Civica, bid interest in nCipher and a tug of war over British Energy which has been a long term favourite of mine. But I don't understand why confidence should start to return when bad news from the housing market and high street is still gathering momentum.

On Tuesday the headlines read "Largest house price drop in 15 years" but more significantly I read in the FT that a number of mainstream lenders have just stopped offering 100% mortgages. This surprised me for two reasons:
1. I didn't realise it had been so easy to get 100% loans! Probably on new build where developers offer incentives this means loans could easily have been 105% LTV or more.
2. It is only now some 9 months after the credit crisis hit that such lenders are withdrawing this product: still so keen to maintain market share at the expense of credit quality.
I expect there is a lot more to unwind: I am monitoring the house builders but a long way off looking to buy.