US in recession since December 2007: official panel
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US economy has been in recession since December 2007, a panel of economists charged with the official designation of business cycles said Monday.

Economic slump and spending woe sink Wall Street
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks slid on Monday as news pointing to the deepening economic slump around the world punctured last week’s market enthusiasm, with financial services companies and retailers among Wall Street’s biggest casualties.

comScore: Black Friday Sees $534 Million in E-Commerce Spending, Up 1 Percent Versus Year Ago
comScore (NASDAQ : SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported its tracking of holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 28 days of the November – December 2008 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $10.41 billion has been spent online, marking a 4-percent decline versus the corresponding days last year, while Black Friday saw $534 million in online spending, up 1 percent. For the combination of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, online sales were up 2 percent relative to last year.

November car sales slide shows auto crisis worsening
MILAN (Reuters) – Car makers reported tumbling sales across Asia and Europe Monday as the recession drove buyers from showrooms and drew a warning of more gloom for next year.

Auto Dealerships Teeter as Big Three Decline
The National Automobile Dealers Association predicts that roughly 900 of the nation’s 20,770 new-car dealers will go out of business this year, and automobile analysts say the number of failed dealerships could rise into the thousands next year… The economic toll of a mass failure of dealerships around the country has already begun to harm the broader economy. In October alone, 20,000 employees of auto dealerships lost their jobs nationwide, more than half of those who were newly unemployed in the retail trade, according to the Labor Department.

Meltdown far from over, new mortgage crisis looms
WASHINGTON (AP) — Black Friday’s retail shoppers hunting for holiday bargains won’t be enough to stave off what’s likely to become the next economic crisis. Malls from Michigan to Georgia are entering foreclosure, commercial victims of the same events poisoning the housing market. Hotels in Tucson, Ariz., and Hilton Head, S.C., also are about to default on their mortgages. That pace is expected to quicken. The number of late payments and defaults will double, if not triple, by the end of next year, according to analysts from Fitch Ratings Ltd., which evaluates companies’ credit.

AP IMPACT: Under pressure, US eased lending rules
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.