Recession?

Warren Buffett, whose business and investment acumen has made him one of the world's wealthiest men, said in an interview published Sunday he believes the U.S. economy is already in a recession. Asked by Germany's Der Spiegel weekly whether he thinks the U.S. could still avoid a recession, he said that as far as the average person is concerned, it's already here. "I believe that we are already in a recession," Buffett was quoted by Spiegel as saying. "Perhaps not in the sense as defined by economists. ... But people are already feeling the effects of a recession." "It will be deeper and longer than what many think," he added.

A key measure of consumer confidence dropped in May to the lowest level in 16 years, as Americans grew more concerned about their jobs and more pessimistic about business conditions. The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index dropped to 57.2, the lowest level since October 1992, from a revised 62.8 in April. The index has now declined for five months in a row.

A closely watched housing index shows U.S. home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the first quarter. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller said Tuesday its U.S. National Home Price index fell 14.1% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988. During the 1990-91 housing recession the annual rate's worst was a loss of 2.8%, S&P said.

New home sales rose unexpectedly in April but remained near historically low levels, according to a key government report on the battered housing market. April sales came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000, a Census Bureau report showed, up 3.3% from a revised 509,000 in March. Home sales were down 42% from a year earlier. April's reading was the second-lowest annual rate since October 1991, behind March of this year.