The recession tightened its grip on U.S. businesses and consumers in February, according to economists, who are predicting the largest one-month job loss in almost 60 years.

“Pink slips continue to fly,” said Meny Grauman, an economist for CIBC World Markets.

With output still falling at a dizzying rate, most companies are shedding unneeded workers and cutting back the hours of those remaining. Strapped by debt and seeing their paper wealth evaporating, many consumers are spending as little as they can.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and others have been investigating whether Texas billionaire Allen Stanford was involved in laundering drug money for Mexico Gulf cartel, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing federal authorities.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged Stanford and two executives of Stanford Group Co with an $8 billion fraud.

Mexican authorities detained one of Stanford’s private planes as part of the investigation, which has been ongoing since last year, ABC reported citing unnamed officials.

The most commonly number quoted in the media is the “official” unemployment rate – known as U3 (the bottom line of the three in the chart below) – which now stands at 7.2%.

But to get the real picture, you have to add both in what the government refers to as “discouraged” workers (U4) and “marginally attached” workers (U5) – those who have stopped looking for work, or who haven’t looked for work recently (represented by the middle line of the three in the chart). That number (U6) depicts an unemployment rate t that’s approaching an eye-popping 14%.

And it gets worse.

If you include the people that the government doesn’t even count – such as unemployed farm workers, the idle self-employed, and workers in private homes – the unemployment rate approaches an astonishing 18% (top line).

The United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.

Governments across Europe declared states of emergency and ordered factories to close as Russia cut all gas supplies through Ukraine yesterday in their worsening dispute over unpaid bills.

José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, accused the two countries of taking the EU’s energy supply “hostage” amid a cold snap across the Continent, and urged them to reopen the pipelines immediately.

Schools and factories were closed and trees were felled to keep home fires burning after Russia turned off the gas taps to more than a dozen countries. It was a clear demonstration of the dependence of the Continent on Russian gas supplies.