Larry Elliott in Davos, Ian Traynor in Brussels and Patrick Wintour
The International Monetary Fund added to Gordon Brown's woes last night when it warned Britain will be at the bottom of the league table of major developed countries this year, in the weakest year for the global economy since the second world war...
After seeing activity collapse in every continent over the past three months, the Washington-based fund said it expected the UK economy to contract by 2.8% this year – its worst single-year performance since the Great Depression of the 1930s...
Brown was forced to admit for the first time yesterday that the UK is in "a deep recession", sounding a very different note from his claims in the autumn that Britain was better prepared than other countries to resist the downturn...
The forecasts from the two organisations came as business leaders gathered in sombre mood for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos...
News International chief Rupert Murdoch told delegates the crisis was getting worse: "It's going to take drastic action to turn it around, if it can be turned around quickly. I believe it will take some time. We've been living in the western world way above our means. We've been on a great binge and it's come to an end; and we have to live though the correction."
Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, said: "People in the UK and the US are going to get poorer. They will have to spend less than their income for a while."
Read entire article: Britain Faces Worst Year Since 1930s
And more: George Soros Selling Off Sterling
...Mr Soros also warned that the scale of the current economic crisis was now potentially even worse than the Great Depression in the 1930s and urged Western nations to set up "bad banks" to absorb their toxic assets.
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