IMF: Nobody immune in global recession

The International Monetary Fund forecasts a prolonged, deep global recession, in a crisis that nobody will escape, with recovery slow and difficult. Weak capital flows to emerging economies in the downturn will hammer Eastern Europe in particular, the IMF said in a two chapter release of its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO), stressing that no country is immune from the global meltdown. "The current recession is likely to be unusually long and severe and the recovery sluggish," the multilateral institution said on Thursday. The IMF offered no timeline for a recovery from the first global recession in six decades. "There is some glimmer of hope that the stress is receding," said Stephan Danninger, an IMF economist. But he said any improvement would merely reduce 'extreme levels of stress' to still 'very high levels' of economic stress. Last month, the IMF predicted the first global contraction in 60 years, of between an annual negative rate of 0.5 percent and 1.0 percent in 2009. The world economy is expected to gradually stage a 'modest recovery' in 2010, with growth between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent, the report says.