Business news with words earnings+inflation+recession. 3 news.

Virtually any investor looking for an excuse to turn negative on the markets would have found it during this intraholiday week: Geopolitical instability? Check. Rocketing fuel costs? Check. Bad news on the housing market? Check. All that, of course, was piled atop a mound of worries about inflation, recession, stagflation, consumers' mood, corporate earnings, banking write-downs and (distressingly) more.

Virtually any investor looking for an excuse to turn negative on the markets would have found it during this intraholiday week: Geopolitical instability? Check. Rocketing fuel costs? Check. Bad news on the housing market? Check. All that, of course, was piled atop a mound of worries about inflation, recession, stagflation, consumers' mood, corporate earnings, banking write-downs and (distressingly) more.

Does the latest financial crisis signal the end of a golden age of stable growth? IF ECONOMICS were a children's tale, a long period of rising incomes and improving living standards would always be followed by a big, bad recession. Rising unemployment, falling spending and contracting output--such is the inevitable reckoning for the good times of plentiful jobs and abundant earnings that went before. The hangover needs to be commensurate with the party. No country has had it quite so good as America. For the past 20 years or more its economy has managed an enviable combination of steady growth and low inflation. To add to its good fortune, spending has routinely exceeded its income--leading to a persistent current-account deficit--without any apparent ill effects on the economy. The occasional setbacks have been remarkably small by historical standards. At the start of 1991, for instance, America's GDP fell for a second successive quarter (a common definition of a recession). But output soon recovered and by the end of the year had surpassed its previous peak. The next downturn, in 2001, was shallower still, with GDP dipping by less than half a percent.