GDP figures show that the decline into recession has been sharper than the recessions of the 1970s, 80s or 90s. Due to a revision to the GDP estimates, data now shows that the UK economy has officially been in recession for a year.
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Recession worse in Exporting economies

GDP figures for the first quarter of 2009 are now being released across the OECD nations, and some quite staggering declines in these economies are being observed. The data tells an interesting story – the recession is hitting the big exporters of manufacturing the worst.
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Risk of deflation?

The latest inflation figures show that the headline CPI rate has fallen this month to 2.3 per cent, down from a peak of 5.2 per cent last September, and within the targeted range of 1-3 per cent. The fear of possible deflation (which is already well underway on the RPI measure) remains, although on a month on month basis prices have actually risen for the past three months.
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Stock markets rallying

Stock markets around the world bottomed at the beginning of March, and since then have been on a strong upward trajectory. The FTSE has risen 28 percent since its nadir, and the DOW is up 29 per cent. Other major international exchanges are showing similar upward trends.
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Do recessions get worse for each additional country simultaneously in recession?

Volterra research using a database of historic GDP for 17 major Western economies since 1871 has shown that there is a strong relationship between the number of economies simultaneously in recession and the size of the recession in each country. For every additional country in recession at the same time, the mean size of the GDP fall in any country in a single year increases by 0.25 per cent.
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