Thursday, January 29, 2009

IMF forecast worst world economic performance for 60 years

The IMF revise their growth forecast for the world in 2009 from 2.2% two months ago to 0.5% now.  Growth has virtually stopped.  50 million jobs will be lost globally.

The developed countries will experience major declines. The US economy will contract by 2%, Britain by 2.8% (the worst in the developed world), Japan 2.6%, mainland Europe 1.6% and a group known as "other advanced economies", which includes Australia, 2.4%. China will grow at 6.7% half its rate in 2007.  India will grow at 5%.

The volume of world trade will contract by nearly 3%.

In one sense the forecasts are optimistic - there is forecast to be a recovery to 3% world growth in 2010 due to expansionary monetary and fiscal policies around the globe.

1 comment:

bix1951 said...

Long ago my friend mentioned that every time someone gets cancer it increases the GDP.
What are we measuring?
We need a measurement of "GOODS" as opposed to "BADS"
no matter how many guns and bullets are produced,no matter how much is spent on prisons, no matter how much is spent on the "bads"
WE need to figure out how to count the "goods" and let that be our standard of how well the world is doing.