Wall Street futures are down this morning as further weakness in the U.S. dollar and mild anxiety about what the U.S. Federal Reserve will do about interest rates hangs over the markets.

The U.S. dollar is down against most major currencies, but the Canadian dollar has edged up a mere 0.04 of cent to US76.66¢.

The Street consensus is that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board will leave interest rates unchanged when it meets Tuesday. This is an indication of continuing concern that the American economy is still weak. Investors will be looking for indication of future trends in the Fed’s accompanying monetary policy statement.

Here at home, Statistics Canada says that there was a 3% decline in housing starts in urban centres in November. There were 13,509 total housing starts as compared to the 13,990 starts in November 2002. Construction of single-detached homes climbed 3% from 6,787 in November last year to 7,006 this year while multiple unit starts fell 10% from 7,203 to 6,503 over the same period.

In London at midday, the stock market is down 0.5% at midday, declining 21.5 points to 4,345.5. In Frankfurt, the DAX is down 1.3%. Paris is off 0.9%.

Japan’s key index fell 3.2% due to Friday’s declines on Wall Street and the U.S. dollar’s slump against the yen. Tokyo’s Nikkei average fell 328.12 points to 10,045.34. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell 137.29 points, 1.1%, to 12,177.44.

In Toronto, the stock exchange slipped 3.06 points to 7,990.28. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 68.14 to 9,862.68. The Nasdaq fell 30.98 points to 1,937.82. The Standard & Poor’s 500 declined 8.22 to 1,061.50.