WASHINGTON - December 24, 2008 - The United States has fallen deeper into recession, data showed on Wednesday, with the number of people filing unemployment claims reaching a 26-year high and consumers cutting spending for the fifth successive month.

WASHINGTON - December 24, 2008 - In the week ending December 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims was 586,000, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 556,000. The 4-week moving average was 558,000, an increase of 13,750 from the previous week's revised average of 544,250.

WASHINGTON - December 23, 2008 - Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told Democracy Now today:

“The economy is on the brink of an absolute catastrophe. I’ve been saying for six or seven months now that we’re in 1931. In 1931, a recession that started with the Crash of 1929 tipped into a fifteen-year Depression. We are on the precipice of that. If we are very lucky and if we do everything very right from now, we will probably have a two- or three-year very bad recession. If we’re not very lucky or if we don’t do everything right, we could easily have a ten- or fifteen-year Depression, a repeat of the 1930s.”