Crash, Crunch and Crisis 2.1 Economic Outlook - Is the End in Sight? revised its April projections upwards in July 2009 to -1.4%, on the basis of a more moderate rate of decline in economic activity.5 The OECD also raised its projections of economic activity for the OECD in June, attributing the slowdown in the fall of activity to inventory adjustment, recovery in non-OECD countries, some return of business confi dence and policy stimulus providing greater support.6 However, economic recovery is not anticipated before the end of 2009 at the earliest, while all these institutions are united in their agreement that recovery will be weak, slow and uneven. The origins of the current fi nancial crisis in the US property market crash and ensuing credit crunch are by now well-known1, although not always well-understood. A crisis that originated in the market for sub-prime mortgages in the United States has shaken the global fi nancial sector to its foundations and sent many industrialized economies spinning into recession, while slowing growth in major emerging markets. The size and scale of the global economic slowdown have proved staggering. At one point, virtually every major OECD economy was offi cially in recession2 (with at least two successive quarters of negative growth on record), with the sole exception of Australia.3 A fi nancial crisis on this scale has not been witnessed since the Great Depression (Insight 1). Indeed, the most lasting legacy of the crisis may well be for employment - in the US, recent analysis of employment fi gures by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that nearly nine years of jobs’ growth have been wiped out.7 The UN International Labour Offi ce (ILO) predicts that globally, some 50 million jobs could be lost over the current fi nancial downturn by end 2009. The ILO has advocated a “Global Jobs Pact”, calling on governments to work with unions and employers to implement crisis-response measures to sustain enterprises and Recent growth forecasts for the global economy have been mixed - the World Bank revised its growth projections downwards in June 2009 to a contraction of 3% for 2009 citing persistent risks,4 but the IMF Confronting the Crisis: ICT Stimulus Plans for Economic Growth 15