US depression likely
Updated on 05 December 2008
Amid a collapsing car industry and housing market freefall, more than half a million jobs have been lost in the US in just one month, the biggest drop in 34 years.
It has made the threat of a widespread depression now a very real possibility.
At the opposite end of the scale oil prices are down to below $40 a barrel, in a sign of increasing economic turmoil that will inevitably spread across the Atlantic to the UK.
