Economy Continues to Stagnate

Economists tell The New York Times that they see the current downturn lasting into next year. “It’s a slow-motion recession,” Ethan Harris of Lehman Brothers is quoted as saying. “In a normal recession, things kind of collapse and get so weak that you have nowhere to go but up. But we’re not getting the classic two or three negative quarters. Instead, we’re expecting two years of sub-par growth. Growth that’s not enough to generate jobs. It’s kind of a chronic rather than an acute pain.”

Rich and poor nations have more in common this year -- a growing sense of economic insecurity, the U.N. says in an annual survey of world economic and social trends released Tuesday. Their shared anxiety is largely due to "trade shocks" from rising oil and food prices, rattled financial markets, natural disasters and armed conflicts, the report said. As usual, though, it is the impoverished who fare worse. "The food riots that broke out in a number of countries in early 2008 have laid bare the fragility of economic livelihoods for those at the bottom of the development ladder," the report says. It lists 35 nations that need help because of a food crisis, led by Iraq, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Somalia and Lesotho, where food insecurity is greatest because of drought and windstorms or floods and, in some areas, fighting.

Nearly all Americans have felt the sting of inflation in recent months. But when you're retired and your sole means of support is a fixed amount that arrives each month — from Social Security and, for the lucky ones, a pension — the pain is especially severe. Until recently, many retirees had assumed they had enough income to retire on. That was before gas and food prices began racing out of control. "By any measure, people who are retired are bearing the worst brunt of the economic slump," says Jim Dau, a spokesman for AARP. "Because they're living on fixed incomes, they're just getting crushed on food and medicine that they can't do without."