Japan -- the world's second-largest economy -- is in a recession, government officials announced Monday.

Japan's Cabinet Office confirmed that its economy fell another 0.1 percent in its third quarter, following a 0.3 percent drop in the second quarter.

The country's Gross Domestic Product -- second to the United States -- has fallen by 0.4 percent this year.

Major indexes around the globe have plummeted over the last two months. The Russian stock market has lost 65.5 percent of its value since the start of the year. Stocks in Japan and the United States have been equally hard hit, falling 42 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

In Europe, the pain has been particularly acute. The European Union on Friday officially declared that the 15-nation group had entered into a recession, with its gross domestic product declining 0.2 percent for the second straight quarter.

Japan's recession announcement was not unexpected. Part of the problem is the strong yen, which skyrocketed in recent weeks as turmoil in the world's financial markets and concerns about a global recession drove investors away from high-yielding currencies such as the euro and the pound.

As a result, lower-yielding currencies like the dollar and the yen surged in value because they are considered by many investors to be a safe-haven.

Since Japan is such a big exporter of goods, a more robust yen hurts profits for Japanese firms as sales from abroad get translated back into yen. The more that the yen has climbed, the worse Japan's stock market has performed, which has resulted in a ripple effect on European and U.S. exchanges.