After official figures showed high street sales in January saw their biggest monthly drop in 18 months, saw the prospect of a double-dip recession looming larger Friday.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported sales volumes to have fallen 1.8% last month compared to December, with the exception of petrol, sales which fell 1.2%, a figure much worse than a 0.5% fall of analysts’ expectations.

While, the bad weather in January, including the VAT increase were expected to negatively impact retail sales, the extent of the decline has taken aback those observing.

Some of USA’s leading economists believe the nation’s economic growth will be stifled due to a dismal job market, a badly crippled real estate sector and banks that are hobbled, which all together will make its chances for a robust and sustained expansion, pretty slim.

Over the next ten years, U. S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will expand less than 2% per year, in sharp contrast to other steep economic downturns, whose aftermaths have usually elicited a growth surge in their immediate wake.

An Association of Consulting Actuaries (ACA) report indicates, with more and more employers moving away from high-cost pension schemes, nine out of ten defined benefit pension schemes are now closed to new entrants.

In addition, 18% of such schemes, such as, final salary pensions, are closed to future accruals from its members.

Quizzing 309 firms, ACA said the private sector situation was steadily deteriorating, with 91% of such schemes in deficit, already, as the government cuts regulatory burdens on company pensions.

According to a new report, in economic terms, it is one’s marital status that plays a vital role in helping cope with disability and health shocks.

Giovanni Gallipoli and Laura Turner, two economists with the University of British Columbia (UBC) basing their findings on data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) found, in marriages husbands i. e. the main-earners tend to transfer income and compensate wives, being the second-earners.

Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been promised unlimited financial assistance by the Obama administration Thursday, exceeding the $400-billion cap on emergency funding, without obtaining permission from the Congress.

The Treasury Department’s announcement on Christmas Eve means, the mortgage firms seized last year, will continue to run as arms of the government for the rest of Barack Obama’s current term of presidency.

The 200- lucrative final salary schemes, which include the pensions of British Airways, Shell and BT, some the country’s best known companies, as well as, of millions of people, paying out an annual pension based on a member’s final salary have been in deficit for the past year. But, for the first time the deficit has been seen to run into triple figures.

According to experts, the deficit will continue to grow, predicting pension deficit will cause a major company to go bankrupt in 2010.

Struggling to cope up with the demand, AT&T is looking for ways to encourage customers to use less wireless data, a company executive said Wednesday.

Ralph de la Vega, President and Chief Executive for Mobility and Consumer Markets at AT&T, told analysts at a conference in New York, there is an unprecedented growth in wireless date in the USA, in terms of smartphone penetration, 3G data, unseen anywhere across the earth.

In the USA, AT&T is the exclusive carrier for iPhone, whose owners are some of the biggest users of network capacity, from surfing the Web to downloading videos.

Variety, the Hollywood trade newspaper has put its web site behind a 'pay wall' as of Thursday, with only paid subscribers allowed access to its online content, even as it hopes advertisers will continue to remain with it, despite a smaller Internet audience.

Free access to Variety will be gradually shut off, with one in 10-visitors being asked for a user name and password, sent to paying subscribers.

Free access will be blocked within two months, with the exception of five free page views a month, bringing to an end the free online content that began in October 2006.