articole economice din reviste de specialitate

Un articol din THE ECONOMIST despre previziunile PIB-ului la nivel global


World economy
A mixed outlook

Apr 14th 2008
From Economist.com

IN ITS recent semi-annual World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund sees few silver linings in the storm clouds gathering over the world's richest economies. The world economy as a whole is expected to grow by 3.7% this year, well down on the fund's last estimate in January of 4.2%. America is expected to enter a mild recession this year—its growth forecast has been cut from 1.5% to just 0.5%. The prospects for Spain, Canada and Italy are also gloomy. But the forecast is sunnier for the developing world, whose economies are predicted to grow by 6.7% in 2008, led by China and India.

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Si cateva comentarii ale cititorilor, unele chiar haioase

Asian Viewpoint wrote:
April 15, 2008 04:44

A more appropriate name for the IMF should be AMF standing for American Monetary Fund.
There are many positives in an American prolonged recession. Oil prices will drop and global warming emissions from America will drop. There is plenty of fat in America obscene consumtion that can be cut off to benefit the rest of the world.

Ra vinder Makhaik wrote:
April 15, 2008 04:27

The mixed outlook gives Asia a buoyant thumps up.
Given the prevailing high oil prices, the food crisis, the weakened dollar and fears of an American recession, whether the Asian economies (India and China) can match results with your projections remains to be played out.

just a reader wrote:
April 15, 2008 01:59

I agree with most of what Missionpeak writes. However, I don't believe China is in a good position, even relative the US economy. China's growth is a result of a couple of factors; one of which is supplying the US consumer with cheap goods. The other factor is its relative starting position as a transitioning economy.

Since the Great Leap Forward, China has become selectively more democratic and thus tries to maximize economic growth while not relinquishing too much control to the people. This ~30 year controlled growth has worked well, but in order to keep growing - and at its current pace - China will need to decide whether or not too fully embrace democracy and all that come with it. If it does not, then its growth will solely depend on the good will (wallets) of the US consumer. My hunch is that the Olympics will expose China's miracle growth engine as nothing more than a facade - concentrated in a few key regions – and expose the harsh realities of China’s economic policies. After all, this is a country that at one point forced peasants to hand over all metals to the government in order to industrialize, and this policy hasn’t changed. Just what is being handed over – think 3 gorges damn.

China isn’t growing, or exhibiting the same growth patterns as the industrialized western economies. The Chinese government understands this, and is trying to endogenize growth via artificially creating a middle class so that they can decouple from the US economy. As it stand right now, if China could no longer export goods to the US, there would be no internal mechanism in which to sustain its growth or economy at the current rates. The analogy would be, why is the grocer is selling you goods for cheaper than other grocer on the block knowing you could afford more? The reality is that China needs to couple with a strong economy in order to develop its own economy.

As for growth in general – developing countries and countries in the mists of recovery tend to grow at a much higher rate than developed ones. So for China and Australia not to exhibit high rates of growth relative to the US at this point would be highly suspect. Also, the growth must be put into context. Why is the Chinese economy growing? Why is Australia booming? Didn’t China and Australia put into effect a FTA in 2005? Doesn’t Australia have large deposits of natural ores? Doesn’t China need these resources in order to produce goods to ship to the rest of the world?

This should also raise questions of how growth is distributed around the global economy. How lagged is growth from one economy to the next? I think if all economies are linked, it’s all a matter of the lag.

Finally, forecasts are meant to instill either a bit of caution or optimism, not cause panic or any sort of exuberance. So any forecast is never truly revealing of what is really going on. The forecast of slowing growth around the world leads me to believe that policy makers are readying themselves for a global slow down to be weathered by the developed countries first followed by the rest of the world (if the developed countries experience a protracted or deep recession).

jl.mozilla wrote:
April 14, 2008 17:30

what if Americans hadn't invade Iraq? Much better or the crisis could be still loom large?

Missionpeak wrote:April 14, 2008 17:02

Many Americans think U.S. is rich and China is poor. Exactly the opposite is true. This is because the removal of gold's backing from paper money has created a virtual explosion in credit and liquidity. The sheer amount of liquidity around the globe is incalculable.

This excess funny money causes people to feel rich and almost everything to be more expensive. Today, stocks, real estate, automobiles, and gasoline become more expensive as the dollar becomes cheaper.


While some people do become richer in this system, funny money actually punishes working people who save money. It devalues the value
of your work and your savings, even though you may feel wealthier.

In overly simplistic terms, China and many countries in the world today lend us billions of dollars to buy their goods. They send us products like computers, televisions, cars, candies, and wines, and we send them funny money in return.

Since they can't spend those dollars at home, they simply lend them back to us so we'll buy more of their products. That would be like me going to my local grocery store and asking them for a loan so I could buy their tomatoes. A logical person would say, "That makes no sense." Yet it's exactly what happened after 1971, and to many highly educated people -- bankers and politicians, for instance -- it somehow does make sense.

Getting deeper into debt does make sense as long as you can repay your lender with cheaper dollars, and as long as your lender is willing
to take those cheaper, less-valuable dollars. To use my earlier analogy, it would be like buying an orange for $1 on credit and then paying him back for it a year later with 80 cents. As long as the grocer is happy with this arrangement, things are fine.

In real-world terms, one of the reasons the U.S. dollar only buys approximately 110 yen today, instead of 360 yen in the 70’s is because
the Japanese allowed us to continually devalue the dollar -- that is, to pay our debts with cheaper dollars.

Over the years, the yen got stronger and the dollar got weaker simply because we, as a nation, printed more and more money, all the
while consuming more and producing less. Japan would lend us money and we would buy their products. Japan's economy boomed, and so did ours.

The problem today is that China isn't willing to play the game the way the Japanese did. If we drop the purchasing power of the dollar,
the Chinese, by pegging their currency to the dollar, also drop the value of their currency. The irony is that we accuse China of playing
games with their money. It's more honest to say that China just isn't willing to play the game we want to play.

But an even bigger problem is looming: It seems like the rest of the world is less willing to play our money game. That's why the European Union introduced the Euro. If China creates an Asian equivalent of the Euro (which, admittedly, is a long shot) then the U.S. dollar could be in real trouble.

If the oil-producing nations stop accepting the dollar and switch to gold, things will definitely get sticky. The world might be tipped into a global recession and possibly even a depression.