The IMF released the World Economic Outlook Update on Monday, with expectations for 3.5% growth in global output this year and 3.6% for next unchanged, but with a notable shift in sources of growth.
With China continuing to outperform expectations, as the US disappoints, IMF managing director Christine Legarde joked on Monday that the funds headquarters were likely to be in Beijing a decade from now.
From the IMF blog:
“The distribution of this growth around the world has changed, however: compared with last April’s projection, some economies are up but others are down, offsetting those improvements.
Notable compared with the not-too-distant past is the performance of the euro area, where we have raised our forecast. But we are also raising our projections for Japan, for China, and for emerging and developing Asia more generally. We also see notable improvements in emerging and developing Europe and Mexico.
Where are the offsets to this positive news on growth? From a global growth perspective, the most important downgrade is the United States. Over the next two years, U.S. growth should remain above its longer-run potential growth rate. But we have reduced our forecasts for both 2017 and 2018 to 2.1 percent because near-term U.S. fiscal policy looks less likely to be expansionary than we believed in April. This pace is still well above the lacklustre 2016 U.S. outcome of 1.6 percent growth. Our projection for the United Kingdom this year is also lowered, based on the economy’s tepid performance so far. The ultimate impact of Brexit on the United Kingdom remains unclear.”
USA is unable to grow because of deep structural problems. Too much has been and is being spent on dubious military requirements. Growth figures are faked and it depends upon printing U$. The divisions within the country are growing as the populace are exploited and thrown to the wolves of Wall Street. Bad policies like militarising the police are being implemented to prevent legitimate protests and the courts fill overcrowded prisons with racialy profiled blacks and asians. Can Trump overcome the hordes of greedy and lying neocons in the administration?