Oil dropped a dollar to below $66 a barrel today, Friday, after unemployment data hardened views economic weakness would sap energy demand and that last month’s rally was overdone.

Wall St slides on bank jitters, earnings outlook caution… US dollar rallies broadly as equities worldwide tumble… Government debt shines on banking worries flare up… Oil drops over 8 pct on economic outlook, dollar rise

Just how deep and how long will America’s recession be? This is the question raised in today’s Financial Times.

Will it be a V-shaped recession – short, shallow and followed by a rapid return to normal rates of growth? Will it be U-shaped, in which the initial downturn is followed by a protracted period of weak growth and a slow return to the trend rate? Or could it even be an L-shaped recession – with economic weakness lasting for many years, as in the US during the Great Depression or Japan in the 1990s?