Online retail sales continue to defy the economic downturn while their brick-and-mortar counterparts struggle. But while online sales continue to grow, the rate of growth is slowing.

US airlines are forecast to lose a record $7.2 billion this year, in part because most use gas-guzzling elderly Boeing 767s as opposed to newer, more fuel-efficient planes common in European fleets.

American Airlines, Continental and Delta have all announced cutbacks due to rising fuel costs.

Consumers are also being squeezed. USA Today reports that summer airfares in the US are set to rise by as much as four times thanks to spiraling oil prices.

“The sector-wide downturn is pretty textbook,” says Theo Casey in Fleet Street Daily.

The US, which most economists now agree is on the brink of recession, could be facing a slew of bank failures as a result of the ongoing credit crisis.

“We’re going to have some more bank failures that will come back more to historical norms and may go above that with time,” said John Dugan, the US comptroller of currency in an interview with the Financial Times. “That is a natural consequence of the economy going from historically exceptionally benign credit conditions to something that is more normal to something you would get in a downturn.”

Thinking the unthinkable…profiting from a vacuum in the news stream.Millions of causalities in the war between inflation and deflation, but no clear winner…emerging markets are now using more oil than the United States. Sad news from Zimbabwe…an updated version of The Demise of the Dollar and more!

“The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them!” The above observation was penned by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and may be very prescient in today’s economic and financial conditions.