Global Recession Close to the Bottom: OECD

By Greg Keller

PARIS -- The deepest global recession in more than 60 years is close to bottoming out, but recovery will be weak unless governments take further action to remove uncertainty over banks' balance sheets, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday.

In its half-yearly economic outlook, the Paris-based OECD said it expects its member countries' economies to shrink by 4.1% this year, with only government rescue measures heading off an even worse decline.

But the recovery "is likely to be both weak and fragile for some time," Jorgen Elmeskov, the OECD's acting economics department head, said in comments accompanying the report. ...