WASHINGTON, Jan 23: The world economic crisis deepened on Friday as US President Barack Obama called for urgent action, Britain slumped into its first recession since 1991 and profits at US giant General Electric plunged.

Obama, who came to power this week amid economic turmoil and has pushed for an 825-billion-dollar (641-billion-euro) stimulus plan for the US economy, said the downturn was “unprecedented” and should be dealt with “rapidly.”

“Frankly the news has not been good -- each day brings I think a greater focus on the problems that we are having not only in terms of job loss but also in terms of some of the instabilities in the financial system,” he said.

Obama’s comments came after Britain joined the United States, the eurozone and Japan in a recession at the start of what promises to be an extremely challenging year for top world economies reeling from a credit crunch.

Howard Archer, an analyst at IHS Global Insight, warned of worse to come.

“Our current forecast is for UK GDP to contract by 2.9 per cent in 2009...This would be the sharpest contraction since World War II,” he said.

Meanwhile the crisis showed no signs of respite in other parts of the world.

US software giant Microsoft announced it would have to cut up to 5,000 jobs, Japanese tyremaker Bridgestone said it was shedding hundreds of workers and German computer chip maker Qimonda went bust because of a slump in demand.

Finland said its economy would shrink by more than 2.0 per cent this year, Spain’s unemployment rate surged to 13.91 per cent and a top government panel in India warned that economic growth would slow to 7.1 per cent this year.

In Russia, new figures showed industrial production falling by 10.3 per cent last month compared to December 2007 while the Russian ruble was expected to fall further after the central bank allowed it to devalue by up to 10 per cent.—AFP