Well, finally someone admits something we all know, we're in a recession:
We're in a recession,'' Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``It's going to widen, it's going to deepen.
six months, the economy lost 438,000 jobs. Manufacturing and construction shed 235,000 and 261,000 jobs, respectively, and in recent months, layoffs spread to finance and retail sales. If the economy is to pick up in the second half, the Friday jobs report will have to confound forecasters, who are generally pessimistic
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the organisation that fosters cooperation between central banks, has warned that the credit crisis could lead world economies into a crash on a scale not seen since the 1930s.
In its latest quarterly report, the body points out that the Great Depression of the 1930s was not foreseen and that commentators on the financial turmoil, instigated by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, may not have grasped the level of exposure that lies at its heart.
Industrial production declined 0.7 percent in April, the Federal Reserve said in Washington today, more than twice the drop forecast by economists. Separate figures from the New York and Philadelphia branches of the central bank indicated the slide may continue this month.
"This is not a field of specialty for me, but my general feeling is that the recession will be longer and deeper than most people think," Buffett said. "This will not be short and shallow.
"I think consumers are feeling gas and food prices," he added, "and not feeling they've got a lot of money for other things.
there had been a "collective failure" to grasp the extent of leverage in the financial system and the risk that it could be unwound in a disorderly fashion. Conditions may get worse as the limping U.S. economy leads to more credit losses
Members of the Federal Reserve's policy-setting committee worried at their most recent meeting that housing and financial market stress could trigger a nasty slide in the economy, even as inflation pushed higher, minutes of the meeting released on Tuesday show.
With the national economy now joining Michigan in recession, The Detroit Free Press is beginning an important series that should be widely read: Living on the Edge
former National Bureau of Economic Research President Martin Feldstein:
I'm afraid, because of a lack of liquidity in the credit markets," he said.
The Fed's new credit facility, announced on Tuesday, "can help in a rather small way ... but the underlying risks will remain with the institutions that borrow from the Fed, and this does nothing to change their capital," Feldstein noted.
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