Global threats

UK, Japan enter recession and others look weak too

Last week, both Japan and the United Kingdom (UK), two of the world’s largest economies, reported that they had had negative growth in gross domestic product (GDP) for two successive quarters. This is generally accepted by economists as a signifier of an economy being in recession. Japan may have, as a consequence, slipped down the list of the largest economies — Germany may have a larger GDP than Japan, in which case the latter is now the fourth- and not the third-largest economy in the world. Not that Germany is doing too well, either. The former engine of the euro