My advice is simple
Stay away from the USA / FAA route.
Unless they have an approved CAA course, you can obtain the list of CAA approved schools from the UK CAA either by e-mail or calling and requesting the information.
Try and keep to one or at most two training establishments which will document your progress and provide you with a training file containing your full records.
If you plan to go down the FAA and convert route, that will be cheaper than the same European course owing to the weakness of the US$, and the FI time will be of some value, but the time frame will be much longer as you will have to sit all JAA exams, and take several flight checks. Not to mention the cost involved.
Time will only tell what the result of the current fuel price increase will be, but for sure there will be more redundancies in the UK and Europe, in which case you will be in the same market place as many other trained pilots some type rated, others straight out of the Integrated schools.
And my experience has shown that recently converted licences are less marketable than the home grown JAA approved fATPL.
Bite the cost bullet and go down the JAA route and get an FI rating.
Work for a Flight school which has an air taxi operation if you can, then when the market improves apply to the airlines.
This aviation recession, will not last for ever, but with oil heading for the $150 mark cut backs are inevitable.