MILAN (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is planning to cut its U.S. growth forecast for this year due to higher taxes and spending cuts, Italian news agency ANSA said, citing a draft of the IMF’s next World Economic Outlook report.
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FRANKFURT — The euro zone remains vulnerable to shocks because of weak banks and incomplete regulatory safeguards, the International Monetary Fund said Friday, in a warning to European leaders not to slacken their efforts to build a more resilient financial system.
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After slowing down in 2012, the Canadian economy is expected to gain new momentum in 2013, the IMF said in its annual review of the country’s economy.
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OTTAWA — The Canadian and global economies will continue struggling to maintain momentum this year, but in a relatively hopeful new outlook, the International Monetary Fund says it sees light at the end of the tunnel.
The IMF now expects Canada’s economy will expand by a modest 1.8 per cent this year — two-tenths of a point weaker than it forecast three months ago — and by 2.3 per cent in 2014, off one-tenth of a point.
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Ottawa may have to do more to tame Canadian households’ high levels of debt, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.
Ottawa’s latest round of tighter mortgage regulations came over summer when it lowered the amortization period to 25 years from 30 years and cut the amount of money consumers could borrow against their home, among other changes.
While the real estate industry has been blaming the changes for the recent slowdown in sales, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto when November sales fell 29 and 16 percent, respectively, the IMF says more may be needed, as the debt-to-income level continues to creep higher.
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The Canadian economy is expected to pick up speed – a little – by the middle of next year, though external risks still “loom large,” a new forecast said Wednesday.
The country’s gross domestic product will grow 1.8 per cent next year and accelerate to 2.25 per cent in 2014, the International Monetary Fund said in its preliminary assessment of the Canadian economy. That’s down slightly from its October forecast of 2 per cent growth for next year.
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The IMF, at long last, is becoming at long last a much more open institution. Gone are the days when the institution acted as a handmaiden of Western – and mainly U.S.– economic orthodoxy. It is even throwing a gauntlet down to the mighty U.S. Federal Reserve, questioning the effects its constant monetary boosting has on the rest of the world.
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This is more for the history books, but, well, that’s something – especially when the existing narrative isn’t quite right.
Remember the kerfuffle over International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde’s cash call earlier this year? She raised more than $450-billion (U.S.) to bolster the fund’s reserves to deal with a worst-case scenario of a series of sovereign defaults over the next couple of years.
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Maybe it is too much to say the global financial system is coming apart at the center, but I don’t think it’s too much to say global cooperation is close to complete breakdown based on the recent dismal IMF meeting.
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Let us not delude ourselves: without growth, the future of the global economy is in jeopardy
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde issued a blunt warning to the Fund’s 188 member countries today that they were losing momentum in reforming the global financial system.
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