Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has today admitted that the developed world will enter a recession.
“Having taken action on the banking system, we must now take action on the global financial recession,” he said, speaking to Members of Parliament (MPs). “[There will be a] recession in America, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and – because no country can insulate itself from it – Britain too,” he continued.
These comments echo those made recently by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England.
Leader of the opposition David Cameron said that Brown should take some of the blame for the crisis. “He claimed the credit in the boom, why won’t he take responsibility in the bust?”
Sushil Wadhwani, who was formerly a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee also reacted to these recent comments. “The committee has been too slow to acknowledge the risks of a recession and they have fallen behind the curve,” he said. “The consequence of their relative inactivity so far is that the recession is likely to be deeper and more prolonged than was necessary.”
Markets today continued to fall dramatically. As of 15:30 UTC, the FTSE 100 index had fallen by 152.18 point to a value of 4077.55, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell back below 9,000 with a 2.89% drop.
| 8,726.69 |  306.97 |
3.40% |
|
| 1,662.29 | 34.39 |
2.03% |
|
| 920.42 | 34.63 |
3.63% |
|
| 9,564.01 | 231.79 |
2.37% |
|
| 19,251.70 | 951.56 |
4.71% |
|
| 892.590 | 154.090 |
14.72% |
|
| 36,604.17 | 2,439.22 |
6.25% |
|
| 4,041.96 | 187.77 |
4.44% |
|
| 4,566.96 | 217.45 |
4.54% |
|
| 3,315.21 | 160.19 |
4.61% |
|
| 5,954.89 | 230.59 |
3.73% |
|
| 256.14 | 13.22 |
4.91% |
|
| 1,973.11 | 116.24 |
5.56% |
|
| 16,220.00 | 590.00 |
3.51% |
|
| 8,986.70 | 808.30 |
8.25% |
|
| 4,120.10 | 131.30 |
3.09% |
|
| 8,674.69 | 631.56 |
6.79% |
|
| 14,266.60 | 774.57 |
5.15% |
|
| 1,895.82 | 62.71 |
3.20% |
|
attribution 1,2
