First look on the bright side. The Spaniards are determined to pay £10 billion for BAA, almost double what the market was worth before Ferrovial came on the scene. That money has to go somewhere.

A good chunk of it is heading in the first instance into hedge funds who bought out supposedly long-term British institutions early in the proceedings. The hedge funds may well try to repeat the trick with some other British utility.

The favourite bet is Cent-rica, which Russian Gazprom said earlier this year it would like to buy, to secure for itself a stake in the British gas market. Since then the Russians have done conspicuously nothing, possibly for fear of stirring a political rumpus, which Gazprom's shareholder, the Russian Government, prefers to do without. It may also have watched developments at BAA and wondered how to value a British utility.

One way or another, though, that £10 billion will get re-invested. At some stage, even the thought that it is there waiting in the wings should do the stock market a bit of good.

On the less bright side, consider is what this is going to do for BAA's airports. Top-priced bids have a way of working out badly. Look at Vodafone's monstrous £23.5 billion write-down last week against the price it paid for Mannesmann.

Ferrovial is certainly paying top whack - it is also taking on £5.3 billion of BAA's debt - without even knowing whether it faces a Competition Commission inquiry that could force it to dismember its quarry. However things pan out, it is going to be harder, not easier, to pay for BAA's much-needed investment programme. That could well mean making the airlines pay more, and higher rents for the retailers - it was newly- privatised BAA's brainwave back in the 1980s that an airport could be a shopping Mall with captive customers that made it such a valuable property.

The winners from higher charges at BAA' airports will be its competitors - not least Birmingham.

For the second time in less than a month, Ben Bernanke has well and truly spooked Wall Street and the rest of the world's stock markets with it. Why can't this man talk in riddles like Alan Greenspan?

Yet his intentions are still less clear than they seem. He has announced, twice over, that he won't stand for inflation and will put up US interest rates to counter it even if the American economy is getting queasy.

What he does not say is whether he is shooting for a "neutral" interest rate that just stops stimulating the US economy with cheap money, or a "tightening" intended to squeeze it.

The difference is critical, argues Brewin Dolphin's Mike Lenhoff. A tightening would slow the growth of company earnings. Most surprises would be nasty. Share prices that look appealing now would lose their appeal.

Mr Lenhoff doubts that plain-speaking Mr Bernanke has that in mind. Provided he doesn't, the stock market has nothing to fear from him - and Brewin's target for the Footsie to finish the year at 6100 can still stand.