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The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said its survey results were “awful” and the worst since it began in 1989.

Elsewhere, a separate report suggested it had been the worst December for UK retail sales in at least 14 years.

On 23 January, official figures are set to confirm the UK is in recession with six months of negative growth.

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The BCC report, based on a survey of almost 6,000 firms which employ 680,000 people, pointed to plunging domestic demand, falling exports and plummeting confidence in the last three months of 2008.

“It is clear that the UK economy is facing a very serious recession, and the downturn is deepening at an alarming pace,” said the BCC report.

“The results highlight a frightening deterioration in the UK economic situation.”

Its latest survey – which covered the last three months of 2008 – showed “no positive features” it added, with both the manufacturing and service sectors worsening.

Manufacturing, home sales and orders, employment expectations, investment, confidence and cash-flow have all hit record lows.

In the service sector, every key area was at a new low.

BCC director general David Frost called for a national recovery plan to be “rolled out as soon as possible”.

“These are truly awful results with the scale and speed of the economic decline happening at an unprecedented rate.

“Quite frankly the last time I saw anything of this magnitude of decline was when I worked in the West Midlands in the early 1980s,” he said.

Nortel, based in Toronto, had more than $1 billion in assets and debt, according to a Chapter 11 filing of its U.S. subsidiary today in Wilmington, Delaware. Fourteen affiliates of Nortel’s financing unit are seeking similar protection in Delaware. Five units filed for bankruptcy there under Chapter 15. Nortel said Canadian affiliates also will seek protection.

The 2.7 percent slump marked the sixth straight month of declines, the longest string since comparable records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Labor Department data showed the global collapse in commodities caused prices of goods imported by the U.S. to fall for a fifth month.

Today’s sales figures indicate the hit to spending in the recession is even deeper than estimated, and spurred a sell-off in stocks. The loss of 2.6 million jobs and declining home and stock values are squeezing households, hurting retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to Tiffany & Co., which today said its holiday sales fell 21 percent and cut its earnings forecast.

“There is a major retrenchment going on,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., a New York forecasting firm. “All that policy can do at this stage is cushion this. You can’t short circuit it.”

“They have already hit zero,” said Charles de Trenck, a broker at Transport Trackers in Hong Kong. “We have seen trade activity fall off a cliff. Asia-Europe is an unmit­igated disaster.”

Shipping journal Lloyd’s List said brokers in Singapore are now waiving fees for containers travelling from South China, charging only for the minimal “bunker” costs. Container fees from North Asia have dropped $200, taking them below operating cost.

Industry sources said they have never seen rates fall so low. “This is a whole new ball game,” said one trader.

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) which measures freight rates for bulk commodities such as iron ore and grains crashed several months ago, falling 96pc. The BDI – though a useful early-warning index – is highly volatile and exaggerates apparent ups and downs in trade. However, the latest phase of the shipping crisis is different. It has spread to core trade of finished industrial goods, the lifeblood of the world economy.

Trade data from Asia’s export tigers has been disastrous over recent weeks, reflecting the collapse in US, UK and European markets.

Korea’s exports fell 30pc in January compared to a year earlier. Exports have slumped 42pc in Taiwan and 27pc in Japan, according to the most recent monthly data. Even China has now started to see an outright contraction in shipments, led by steel, electronics and textiles.

A report by ING yesterday said shipping activity at US ports has suddenly dived. Outbound traffic from Long Beach and Los Angeles, America’s two top ports, has fallen by 18pc year-on-year, a far more serious decline than anything seen in recent recessions.

“This is no regular cycle slowdown, but a complete collapse in foreign demand,” said Lindsay Coburn, ING’s trade consultant.

Idle ships are now stretched in rows outside Singapore’s harbour, creating an eerie silhouette like a vast naval fleet at anchor. Shipping experts note the number of vessels moving around seem unusually high in the water, indicating low cargoes.

It became difficult for the shippers to obtain routine letters of credit at the height of financial crisis over the autumn, causing goods to pile up at ports even though there was a willing buyer at the other end. Analysts say this problem has been resolved, but the shipping industry has since been swamped by the global trade contraction.

The World Bank caused shockwaves with a warning last month that global trade may decline this year for the first time since the Second World War. This appears increasingly certain with each new batch of data.

Mr de Trenck predicts Asian trade to the US will fall 7pc this year. To Europe he estimates a drop of 9pc – possibly 12pc. Trade flows grow 8pc in an average year.

He said it was “illogical” for shippers to offer zero rates, but they do whatever they can to survive in a highly cyclical market.

By declaring an emergency, Mr. Bush opened the door for D.C. to get additional Federal funding to deal with the unique challenges that will accompany the influx, reports CBSNews.com’s Brian Montopoli.

An emergency declaration doesn’t mean that a dangerous event has been identified or is expected to occur.

Federal authorities hope the new tip-sharing system overcomes a drawback of another version, which lets police report their suspicions to the FBI but doesn’t allow officers to search the system for similar patterns in other jurisdictions.

In his last days in office Bush presented Tony Blair and John Howard with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, hailing them as “the sort of guys who look you in the eye, keep their word, and tell the truth.” Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe also received the award.

Tony Blankley, also a former Reagan speechwriter, a former Newt Gingrich press secretary, and currently a Fellow at right wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, makes the call in his new book American Grit.

Blankley says that the US needs a “new nationalism that puts America’s survival first.”

In his opinion this equates to subjecting all eighteen year olds to two years of required military service.

“If we don’t do a lot of things smart and tough, we could get overwhelmed by the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of radical Islam.” Blankley told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Monday.

“We’ve failed to exploit our energy. We’re not paying enough attention to what our kids are learning — Bill Ayers is actually a senior person in guiding the curriculum design of America.” he said.

“I don’t like it, I love the volunteer army … but we don’t have enough troops,” Blankley stated.

“When George Bush wanted to have the surge, he was told by the senior generals we didn’t have the extra 20,000 troops to finish the war. … Now Obama wants to go to Afghanistan … but he says we don’t have the troops unless we pull them out of Iraq. What happens if Pakistan goes jihadi? We don’t have the troops to go in there and stop them from taking over the nuclear weapons.”

The next question, and I must apologize in advance for once again making it an un-strenuous one, is: Who else will be approaching Bill Clinton for advice, counsel, and “input” on foreign affairs? It appears from the donor list of the Clinton Foundation that there is barely an oligarch, royal family, or special-interest group anywhere in the world that does not know how to get the former president’s attention. Just in the days since the foundation agreed to some disclosure of its previously “confidential” clients—in other words, since this became a condition for Sen. Clinton’s nomination to become secretary of state—we have additionally found former President Clinton in warm relationships with one very questionable businessman in Malaysia and with another, this time in Nigeria, who used to have close connections with that country’s ultracorrupt military dictatorship.

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The press pool following the president-elect reported that he left his temporary home at Washington’s Hay-Adams hotel Tuesday evening and arrived a short time later at Will’s home in the Maryland suburbs. A press pool photographer shot a photo of Kristol, an editor of the Weekly Standard, and Brooks, a columnist at the New York Times.

The message is “an invitation” from bin Laden to take part in “jihad to stop the aggression against Gaza.”

The audio message was posted on a radical Islamist Web site known for posting statements from bin Laden.