This report is not for the faint-of-heart as it is long and treacherous and filled with words and phrases like "raising potential output" and "strengthening international cooperation". Far be it for me to summarize the most current document but I thought I would copy a key table (see the bottom of this post) and then go on and on a bit about some of that.
First, notice that the title of the table says the global recovery is continuing at a faster pace. Yet, the top of the table says that after growing at 3.6% in 2017 (technically this is a forecast since we have not yet shopped for Halloween much less Thanksgiving or Christmas in 2017) we will grow at 3.7% in 2018. For those of you who know a little about statistics, I doubt that 3.7 is statistically different from 3.6. For those of you who were never punished by a Stats class and don't know a standard deviation from your local neighborhood deviant, this means that the entire publication is suspect. While the thousands of words in the report support this view of faster growth, we all know that the main table of the report says the world will not grow faster next year. It might grow faster. It might grow slower. And Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Read down farther and you will learn the following world areas/countries will grow slower in 2018 than in 2017:
Advanced Nations
Euro Area
Germany
Italy
Spain
Japan
UK
Canada
Russia
China
Emerging Europe
Mexico
Given the title of the report and table say that world growth will be faster, there must be some places that will grow faster in 2018. The table says these places will grow faster -- the US by a smidge, France, CIS less Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Low Income Developing Countries.
How you can average the growth rates of the slower list with the faster list and come up with faster world growth is a mystery to me. If I was writing this report based on this table I would say that the world seems to be on its last JD of the night. Or maybe -- "While growth in our bigger world markets is stuck in first gear, we see some hopeful spots for growth in some developing countries."
Second is the part of the title that claims that 2018 is a window of opportunity. I recall being in high school and thinking that my bedroom window provided a great opportunity to escape in the wee hours of Sunday morning. But when was my bedroom window not a window of opportunity? And so it goes for the IMF -- why is 2018 going to be a window of opportunity that wasn't there in 2017? And the answer is that the IMF thinks we have kicked the policy can down the road long enough because growth was too weak in too many countries. But now that so many countries are doing so much better, they will button down, quit kicking cans, and attend to important things like economic growth.
Wow --- what is the IMF smoking because I would like some of it. No, the world is not growing any faster according to their own numbers and mostly is growing faster in places like Kokomo (fictional one of the song and not the one in Indiana), Gotham, and Atlantis. And in what places will politicians in 2018 resoundingly decide that long-term economic growth is their number one priority? Watch France. Their child Prime Minister is trying such things and every union in France is suggesting that statues of Emmanuel Macron be broken into tiny little pieces.
If that isn't enough, the IMF has the audacity to imagine that this is a great opportunity for countries to get together in a pro-growth fit and further reduce trade barriers and expand international economic cooperation. Really? Have they looked around? What part of the world is not cracking up? Have they read about Spain or Brexit? What free trade agreement is universally loved?
From the above you would think that I am either into my third JD of the morning or that I am pessimistic about 2018. I won't comment on the former since children might be reading this but I am not pessimistic. My reading of the world economy is that modest growth is good since it doesn't create huge imbalances and threaten high inflation. Momentum is our friend as more and more countries attach to a slightly stronger world economy. The biggest risks arise from the absence of what the IMF predicts -- that we will continue to kick the growth policy can down the road and countries will outdo themselves with counterproductive protectionist policies. That is -- the economy is fine -- it is the politicians that we have to worry about. Let's hope they take an extended vacation.
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