WASHINGTON – World leaders will meet Nov. 15 in Washington to address the global financial crisis — the first in a series of summits to mitigate what economists predict could be a long and deep downturn.
In making the announcement, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the first meeting will focus on the underlying causes of [...]

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday her government was scrambling to salvage a rescue plan for Hypo Real Estate, saying she would not allow problems at the stricken commercial property lender to infect the entire banking system.
“We won’t allow troubles at one financial institute to affect the entire system," Merkel said on Sunday. “The German [...]

MUNSTER, Ind. - Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a vote Friday in the Democratic-controlled Congress on a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax, a plan that Barack Obama dismissed as a political stunt that would cost thousands of construction jobs.
"It’s a Shell game. Literally," Obama said to laughter from his campaign audience, adding it [...]

WASHINGTON - Employers buffeted by talk of recession slashed 80,000 jobs in March, the most in five years and the third straight month of losses.
At the same time, the national unemployment rate rose from 4.8 percent to 5.1 percent, the clearest signal yet that the economy might already be shrinking.
The new snapshot of the job [...]

BRUSSELS, Belgium - As fuel prices soar to record highs and airlines struggle to maintain profitability, the unglamorous but fuel-efficient turboprop regional airliner is making a remarkable comeback.
The revival of the propeller-driven planes — which typically consume a quarter to a third less fuel than equivalent jets — marks a significant new trend in the [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Tuesday described the economy as being in "sharp decline," the closest he has come yet to conceding an election-year recession has set in.
Appearing tired after a weekend of helping to broker a fire sale takeover of Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns to keep it from [...]

WASHINGTON — Dangerous cracks in the nation’s job market are deepening. Employers slashed jobs by the largest amount in five years and hundreds of thousands of people dropped out of the labor force - ominous signs that the country is falling toward a recession or has already toppled into one.
For the second straight month, nervous [...]

Public views of the national economy are now more negative than at any point in nearly 15 years, and few people believe that the kind of stimulus plan being devised by President Bush and Congress is enough to stave off or soften a recession, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
More than eight in [...]

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - Chrysler LLC scrambled to maintain its inventory of plastic parts after a supplier filed for bankruptcy protection.
Plastech Engineered Products Inc. apparently failed to negotiate a bailout package with its customers, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Dearborn-based Plastech agreed to supply Chrysler through the weekend, spokeswoman Michele Tinson said.
The bankruptcy filing had [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers cut payrolls for the first time in 4-1/2 years in January, the Labor Department said on Friday in a report that showed the slowing economy was at growing risk of sliding into recession.
A separate report showing a modest revival in manufacturing at the beginning of 2008 took some sting [...]

DAVOS, Switzerland (AFP) - World business leaders and political powerbrokers wrapped up their annual gathering in Davos on Saturday by revisiting the issue of global economic uncertainty that clouded this year’s event.
International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was to lead a round-table discussion on the economic outlook for 2008 amid talk of a US recession [...]

The United Nations has warned of "clear and present dangers" that the United States will take the world economy to a near standstill this year.
As some of world finance’s leading analysts predict a US recession this year, the world body says America’s problems with housing credit and a weakening currency threaten to drag the world [...]