by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Italy's recession deepened at the start of 2009, with first-quarter gross domestic product falling to its worst level since at least 1980, confirming the impression that Europe's fourth-largest economy is now headed for its worst downturn since World War II. Preliminary data from the national statistics office (Istat) show that Italian GDP fell 2.4% in the first quarter when compared with the last quarter of 2008. This follows a downwardly revised 2.1% contraction in the fourth quarter of last year. Annualised this means a 9.6% contraction rate during the three months, which is very high indeed.br /br /pa href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/Sg0skEokxwI/AAAAAAAAN6U/_zHT8IVLSh4/s1600-h/italy+GDP+one.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335970131734742786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 229px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/Sg0skEokxwI/AAAAAAAAN6U/_zHT8IVLSh4/s400/italy+GDP+one.png" border="0" //abr /br /br /Year on year GDP fell by 5.9%, which was also the sharpest drop since Istat's most recent data series starts in 1980 - or for ...