Media and others begin to acknowledge how chronic the contraction is going to be...

Global powerhouse China, meanwhile, is expected to see its growth slow to 6.5 percent this year. India's growth is likely to slow to 4.5 percent.

All told, the lost output could be as high as $4 trillion this year alone, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner estimated.

Besides trillions in lost business, a sinking world economy means fewer trade opportunities and higher unemployment. It raises the odds more people will fall into poverty, go hungry or lose their homes. And while keeping a lid on interest rates and consumer prices, the global recession increases the risk of deflation, which would drag down prices and wages, making it harder for people to make payments on their debt.

SHOOT: Good to see the media and a few other playerz starting to play the doom and gloom game too. There is nothing wrong with taking a long, hard look at the cold, hard truth. It's a great place to start from and we've been dancing around reality for way too long. This blog has been saying for some time that yes, we are heading for a recession, and yes, it will be very bad, a Depression in fact (a worldwide contraction) and anyone talking about 'Recovery' right now shouldn't be taken seriously.

More: A Depression is coming - get grateful
Recession far from over

clipped from news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – The world economy is likely to shrink this year for the first time in six decades. The International Monetary Fund projected the 1.3 percent drop in a dour forecast released Wednesday. That could leave at least 10 million more people around the world jobless, some private economists said. "By any measure, this downturn represents by far the deepest global recession since the Great Depression," the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook. "All corners of the globe are being affected." Big factors in the gloomier outlook: It's expected to take longer than previously thought to stabilize world financial markets and get credit flowing freely again to consumers and businesses. Doing so will be necessary to lift the U.S., and the global economy, out of recession. The IMF's outlook for the U.S. is bleaker than for the world as a whole: It predicts the U.S. economy will shrink 2.8 percent this year. That would mark the biggest such decline since 1946.