Japan joins the recession club

Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, has officially slipped into recession, hurt by weak export growth and steep cuts in corporate spending amid the worsening global slowdown. It is its first recession since 2001 after the GDP shrunk by 0.1% in the third quarter (had previous shrunk by 0.9% in the April to June quarter). Until now, Japan has stood apart from most other developed nations because its banks were relatively unscathed by the financial crisis. But Monday’s data showed that America’s woes reached Japan via its exports, as Americans spend less on Japanese cars, televisions and machine tools. The decline adds to the grim outlook for the global economy, after Hong Kong and the European Union released data on Friday that showed they were in recession. Europe’s largest economy, Germany, also announced last week that it was in recession.