IMF Serves Up Lavish Banquet Of Doom
It's not lookin' good.
That's the short version of the IMF's new World Economic Outlook. The long version came in at a truly "impressive" 185 pages, most of which no one will ever read.
Global growth will be just 2.7% in 2023, the Fund projected. That'd mark the slowest pace of global expansion in more than two decades if you exclude the pandemic and the financial crisis (figure below).
"Overall, this year's shocks will re-open economic wounds that were only partially healed post-pandemic,"
In Europe, and the world, now is the time to navigate towards less reliance on fossil fuels. This is such a no brainer. If it is possible at all, now is the time. Every effort should be made
This move requires investment at a time when borrowing costs are escalating. In other words, even though it’s paramount for the global economy to go green, the global economy wasted the golden years of easy money on stock buybacks. In the US this falls squarely on the right for politicizing and demonizing climate change. We’ll see if voters actually punish them for getting into bed with big oil though.
The executive summary, if honest, is “We are pretty much all in the s**t and will remain there for a while.” “Some of us won’t get out.”
“The effort to protect the global economy “starts with” trying to convince Vladimir Putin to cease and desist from wars of conquest and, relatedly, discouraging Xi Jinping from getting any bad ideas from Ukraine about what is or isn’t possible vis-à-vis Taiwan.”
Cooling down the bipartisan efforts in Washington to push China into a corner should be added to that “to do” list.
Agreed on your point about what’s the point of this report. What exactly is an emerging market economy that’s fully reliant on the IMF and G12 economies for its own survival supposed to do?
I realize no one has a crystal ball and anything is possible, but is there a decent chance that when Putin’s reign is over, and maybe the Russian masses have a voice in how they are governed, we could see a truly democratic Russia that wants a good relationship with the West? Just asking for informed thoughts.
“when Putin’s reign is over, and maybe the Russian masses have a voice in how they are governed” – unfortunately, I don’t think the second follows from the first.
Wishful thinking.
The surviving oligarchs have every reason to take immediate control. And not just to continue with the pillaging, but rather their lives depend on it in that any true incoming democracy would have them all going to jail at best.
H-Man, when it is raining, you don’t need the nightly news report to tell you it is raining.