Spain has become the latest European country to slip into recession joining the Belgium, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia and the United Kingdom.
Click here to view an interactive map.
*Updated to include Romania and Bulgaria
Over the last several years, more Americans have found that aging has left them in the clutch of poverty. Between 2005 and 2009, the rate of poverty among American seniors rose as they aged, as did the number of people entering poverty, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
Poverty rates fell in the first half of the last decade for almost all age groups of older Americans (defined as age 50 or older) but increased since 2005 for every age group. Says Sudipto Banerjee, EBRI research associate and author of the report:
As people age, personal savings and pension account balances are depleted, and as people age, their medical expenditures tend to increase.
Britain’s economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012:
Starting real GDP at 100 in 2003 for the UK, U.S. and euro zone shows UK GDP flat since mid-2010 and well below the 2007 peak.
Survey data had been suggesting a stronger GDP number and perhaps points to upwards revisions to come.
If you have ever wondered why financial markets and economists are interested in purchasing managers indexes, here is why:
There’s a sense of relief among European policymakers that the worst of the euro zone’s crisis appears to have passed. Olli Rehn,
the EU’s top economic officials, talked this week of a “turning of the tide in the coming months”. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, speaks of “sizeable progress” and “a reassuring picture”.
At last week’s spring summit, EU leaders couldn’t say it enough: “This meeting is not a crisis meeting … it’s not crisis management,” according to Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen. All the talk is of how the euro zone’s economy will recover in the second half of this year.
But for the 330 million Europeans who make up the euro zone, the outlook has, if anything, darkened. As euro zone governments deepen their commitment to deficit-cutting, and rising oil prices mean higher-than-expected inflation, households can’t be counted on to drive growth. Not only did housing spending fall 0.4 percent in the October to December period from the third quarter, but unemployment rose to its highest since late 1997 in January.
No wonder most Americans feel like the recession never ended. A new paper from Emmanuel Saez, a Berkeley professor and expert on inequality, shows the overwhelming majority of income gains – 93 percent – accrued in 2010, the first full year of the U.S. recovery, went to the top 1 percent richest Americans. (Thanks to our friends at Counterparties for bringing the paper to our attention.)
The research suggests economic growth, even if it gathers speed, will not be nearly sufficient to close the income gap that has been the target of national Occupy protests. Instead, only drastic tax reforms of the sort seen during the 1930s might do the trick.
In 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery. Such an uneven recovery can help explain the recent public demonstrations against inequality. It is likely that this uneven recovery has continued in 2011 as the stock market has continued to recover.
Things are looking a bit unsteady in the euro zone’s economy. Just ask Olli Rehn, the EU’s top economic official, who warned this week of “risky imbalances” in 12 of the European Union’s 27 members. And that’s doesn’t include Greece, which is too wobbly for words. 
Rehn is looking longer term, trying to prevent the next crisis. But the here-and-now is just as wobbly. The euro zone’s economy, which generates 16 percent of world output, shrunk at the end of 2011 and most economists expect the 17-nation currency area to wallow in recession this year and contract around 0.4 percent overall. Few would have been able to see it coming at the start of last year, when Europe’s factories were driving a recovery from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. And it shows just how poisonous the sovereign debt saga has become.
Not everyone thinks things are so shaky. Unicredit’s chief euro zone economist, Marco Valli, is among the few who believe the euro zone will skirt a recession — defined by two consecutive quarters of contraction — in 2012. 
This year is “bound to witness a gradual but steady improvement in underlying growth momentum,” Valli said, saying the fourth quarter was the low point in the euro zone business cycle.
If it were about age, 40-somethings would cringe. But it seems a dead certainty that 40 now means 50 -- or even higher -- when it comes to predicting the chances of a recession taking place.
Going by past Reuters polls of economists, every time the probability hits 40 percent, the recession's already started or is perilously close to doing so.
After the brief recovery period from the Great Recession, Reuters once again started surveying economists several months ago on the chances of developed economies stumbling back into the muck.
““The recovery has finished, we are now contracting. The forward looking indicators suggest that things will deteriorate further in the coming months,” – Chris Williamson, chief economist at PMI compiler Markit.
Thursday’s PMI surveys make very worrying reading. Not a single economist out of the 37 polled by Reuters predicted the euro zone services number would fall below the 50 level that divides growth from contraction. In the event, it fell from 51.5 last month to 49.1 in September – its lowest reading since July 2009.
Economists like the PMI surveys because they have a very good track record of predicting moves in the economy. Before the Great Recession hit in 2008, they were among the first indicators that hinted at a downturn to come.
Economists busy revising down their third quarter gross domestic product forecasts had to backpedal a bit on Thursday after Commerce Department data showed a steep shrinking of the U.S. trade deficit — despite an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims. The trade gap shrank to $44.8 billion in July, Commerce Department data showed, down sharply from June’s $53.1 billion deficit and much lower than forecasts around $51 billion. The 13.1 percent decline was the biggest month-to-month percentage drop in the deficit since February 2009.
Argues Pierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision Economics:
The trade numbers are probably sufficiently better than expected to cause some upward revision in the GDP forecast. We’re seeing very strong growth in exports, offsetting some weakness last month, and the strength was in the right place, capital goods, without being centered in aircraft. There’s solid foreign demand for U.S. capital goods exports, so that’s a hopeful sign for the outlook. There’s enough strength abroad going into this apparent slowdown to keep the momentum going.
Or Am Ginzburg, head of capital markets at First New York:
The trade balance was better than expected, and despite worse jobless claims, that could move up GDP estimates and that is why we probably didn’t go down more than what we should have on the number. It was telling you there was no indication of the Hurricane Irene effect.
