the reason for the recession was the recent game changes by W3C.
they increased the number of workers, mostly high tech for various corporations. which had a 2 part result.
1. With the higher staffing, came higher production levels, which in turn lowered demand, and price.
Along with the manual lowering of the price that came with the change, some products that where main stays of the econ, like OIL and EP, mentioned above, had the their prices cut by more than half.
2. Also with the higher staffing, many countries that ran a "tight ship," of 95% or so employment where hit really hard. Countries that had been floating as few unemployed workers as possible, where now short over a million workers... Making certain products like Furniture, and House Hold Products in short supply...
I've already noticed that the "recession," is actually into recovery, I haven't checked how many corps have closed, but as they do, and new corps are build to match new areas of short supply... Its getting better every day. Already my enterprises have mostly recovered. And some of my countries are still figuring out where they can import new workers from, but for the most part, my empire has already recovered, with out loosing any corps.