Forecasters see U.S. leading global downturn

IMF Predicts credit crisis will cut world economic output sharply

WASHINGTON (Associated Press Wire Service)- The world economy will slow sharply this year and next, with the United States likely sliding into recession reflecting mounting damage from the most dangerous financial jolt in more than a half-century.

The International Monetary Fund, in a World Economic Outlook released today, slashed growth projections for the global economy and predicted the United States — the epicenter of the financial meltdown — will continue to lose traction.

"The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s," the IMF said in its report.

The IMF now projects that the global economy, which grew by a hardy 5 percent last year, will lose considerable speed, slowing to 3.9 percent this year. It is forecast to weaken even more — to just 3 percent — next year, marking the worst showing since 2002. In the past, the IMF has called global growth of 3 percent or less the equivalent to a global recession.

The IMF's projection was made before the Federal Reserve and six other major central banks from around the world slashed interest rates today in an attempt to prevent a financial crisis from becoming a global economic meltdown.

The Fed reduced its key rate from 2 percent to 1.5 percent. In Europe, which also has been hard hit by the financial crisis, the Bank of England cut its rate by half a point to 4.5 percent, while the European Central Bank sliced its rate to 3.75 percent.

Also taking part were the central banks of China, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland. The Bank of Japan said it strongly supported the actions.

The financial crisis, which erupted in the United States in August 2007 and has quickly spread around the globe, entered a tumultuous new phase last month, badly shaking confidence in global financial institutions and markets, the IMF said. It has triggered a cascading series of bankruptcies, forced mergers and radical government interventions — such as the United States' unprecedented $700 billion financial bailout — to stem the fallout.

The new projections come before a gathering of the world's top economic powers on Friday and the weekend meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. The jarring financial crisis is likely to figure prominently in those discussions.

In the United States, the economy, which grew by 2 percent last year, is projected to slow to 1.6 percent this year. Growth would screech to a virtual halt in 2009, barely budging at just 0.1 percent. That would mark the worst showing since 1991, when the country was pulling out of a recession.

"With a recession now looking increasingly likely, the key questions are, how deep will the downturn be, when will a recovery get under way and how strong will it be?" the IMF asked. Much will hinge on how effective the United States' steps to stabilize financial markets and get credit flowing more freely again turn out to be. Another important factor is whether these and other actions turn around U.S. consumers, whose retrenchment is hurting the economy.

Economic leaders battling weak growth, inflation
The IMF — and many private economists — believe the U.S. economy will probably contract in the final three months of this year and the first three months of next year, meeting a classic definition of a recession. The economy's last recession was in 2001.

The government's bailout package is aimed at thawing lending by buying bad mortgage-related debt from troubled financial institutions. The idea is that the banks' books would then be cleaner, putting them in a better position to lend and get the economy moving.

The IMF said this effort should help to stabilize markets but even so "the process of balance-sheet repair will be long and arduous." Credit availability is likely to remain constrained throughout 2009, the IMF said.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned in a speech Tuesday that the economy's outlook for this year has darkened and the pain could last for some time. His remarks were seen as heralding the rate cut Tuesday.

Looking at other countries, Germany's growth will slow to 1.8 percent this year, down from 2.5 percent last year. France's growth will weaken to just 0.8 percent, compared with 2.2 percent in 2007. Britain's economy will see growth taper to 1 percent, down from 3 percent last year. Canada's growth will tail off to 0.7 percent this year, from 2.7 percent last year.

In Japan, growth will cool to just 0.7 percent, from 2.1 percent last year.

Global powerhouses China and India will see growth clock in this year at a robust 9.7 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively. Even if those projections prove correct, they would still mark downgrades from their blistering performances last year. Russia's economy should grow by a brisk 7 percent this year, down from 8.1 percent last year.

Inflation around the world remains high, driven up by surging energy and food prices through much of this year.

It will be tricky for Bernanke and his counterparts in other countries to navigate weak growth and inflation pressures, the IMF said.

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Also today:

A new, more powerful Fed emerges in crisis

Central bank is increasingly aggressive in attempting to stabilize economy

Dusting off Depression-era emergency powers, the Federal Reserve is extending its reach over the economy as never before, pushing the limits of its authority, if not exceeding them.

Now the nation's central bank is even becoming a source of loans for companies other than banks. Radical steps by the Fed under chairman Ben Bernanke — all in the name of seeking to halt the panic sweeping financial markets — are turning it into a financial colossus. They're also putting the government deeper in debt and taxpayers further at risk if the various moves fail.

And it's being done with little direct interaction with Capitol Hill. The Fed does not depend on Congress for its budget, including its payroll, and is as much a creature of the nation's banking system as part of the federal government.

On Tuesday, the Fed announced it will buy vast amounts of corporate debt, some of it unsecured, in hopes of renewing the flow of money in so-called commercial paper markets. That is where many companies turn for short-term loans to finance their most basic day-to-day operations, such as purchasing supplies or making payrolls.

That action came just a day after the Fed increased a short-term loan program to as much as $900 billion by the end of the year — exceeding even the government's $700 billion bailout plan enacted on Friday.

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Iceland teeters on the brink of bankruptcy

Struggling nation takes $5.4 billion loan from Russia, nationalizes bank

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - This volcanic island near the Arctic Circle is on the brink of becoming the first “national bankruptcy” of the global financial meltdown.

Home to just 320,000 people on a territory the size of Kentucky, Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector that set out with Viking confidence to conquer swaths of the British economy — from fashion retailers to top soccer teams.

The strategy gave Icelanders one of the world’s highest per capita incomes. But now they are watching helplessly as their economy implodes — their currency losing almost half its value, and their heavily exposed banks collapsing under the weight of debts incurred by lending in the boom times.

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World struggles with unified response to crisis

Stocks plunge as U.S. officials urge for a ‘forceful and coordinated’ move

NEW YORK - Governments and central banks around the world grasped at measures to contain the fast-spreading financial crisis on Monday, but global stocks still plummeted as investors bet the $700 billion bailout could not avert a recession.

The response in Europe was fragmented, leading top U.S. officials to call for a “forceful and coordinated” global reaction as the Dow industrials fell below 10,000 for the first time since October 2004.

Like the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped more than 4 percent, and European stocks buckled even more with FTSE 100 and the FTSEurofirst indexes down more than 6 percent each.

Emerging markets, which had gained most from the boom in commodities demand and surging global expansion in the last three years, were also sucked into the vortex. Trading was halted in markets as far afield as Brazil and Russia when indexes in there nose-dived 15 percent.

“This is a stampede,” said Valerie Plagnol, chief strategist at CM-CIC Securities in Paris.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement from the 27 member states of the European Union saying individual countries would do all they could to safeguard the financial system.

The EU pledged to protect people’s savings and maintain financial stability while euro zone finance ministers gathered in Luxembourg in an attempt to attack the crisis in unison. But some analysts were pessimistic that European powers could stop the rot.

Walter

Sources: Associated Press, Bloomberg, Leer Financial, IMF, REUTERS, NY Times, Wall Street Journal