The world economy.(AT A GLANCE ...)(Statistical table)

* The global recession will be the deepest in postwar history as world GDP grows in 2009 by just 0.5 per cent and global trade shrinks by 4 per cent.

* Further fiscal easing through measures being proposed but not yet formally passed by the time of our forecast, mainly in the US and Japan, is vital to temper the global setback.

* Even with President Obama's budgetary stimulus, the US economy will contract by 1.5 per cent in 2009.

* Without the extra fiscal support, Japanese GDP would shrink by 2.8 per cent this year, the most in the G7 economies; with the stimulus it will fall by 1.7 per cent.

* Chinese growth will slow to less than 6 per cent this year.

The economic outlook has darkened still further. On the basis of fiscal packages already enacted since the Autumn, world GDP will grow by only 0.5 per cent in 2009 and 1.7 per cent next year. Incorporating the big boost planned by President Obama in the US and new measures in Japan, Canada and the Netherlands, global output will rise by 0.9 per cent this year and 1.9 per cent in 2010.

Global prospects have deteriorated over the past three months for two main reasons. First, although governments may have staved off a collapse in financial systems through emergency bank recapitalisations and bank-funding guarantees last October, banks remain sick and are clamping down on credit as they seek to shrink swollen balance-sheets. Second, there has been a collapse in world trade focused on capital goods and cars. Whereas the US and Europe have been most affected by credit rationing and jammed-up corporate-bond markets, Asian economies like Japan have been hit hardest by the fall in trade volumes.