Last week, it was European economic power house Germany slipping to recession. Now it's Japan, the world's second biggest economy and it's the first recession there in seven years.

As The Times reports, it's a lot worse than what was expected with inflation dropping 1.6% , suggesting that Japan is again in the grip of the deflation monster and the economic growth figures looking a lot worse than was expected. Economists now predict that Japan won't recover until 2010 and the worst is yet to come.

The news comes after the G20 endorsed goals to stave off future disasters but as Forbes reports, it's been a pretty uninspiring effort. Don't expect it to galvanize markets.