News release: “What began six months ago with a massive de-leveraging in financial markets has turned into one of the sharpest global economic contractions in modern history. As investors repatriated overseas assets and credit conditions were tightened, firms around the world had to scale-back production and postpone capital spending plans. Faced with unprecedented loss of wealth and rapidly weakening labor markets, consumers reined-in spending, especially for durable goods.
This update of the projections in the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report (GEP) of December 2008, reflects the rapid deterioration in financial and economic conditions—and the increasingly negative interaction between weakening economies and fragile financial systems—that have come to the fore since late 2008 for virtually every country in the world.”