Hilarious Charts Of The Day: IMF’s ‘Growth Forecasts’ Over Time

Hilarious Charts Of The Day: IMF’s “Growth Forecasts” Over Time (ZeroHedge, Oct 8, 2013):

The chart below, showing the historical change in the IMF’s periodic revisions of world growth and revised for today’s just released latest World Economic Outlook, shows that much taxpayer money can be saved if the monetary fund’s staff was replaced with dart-throwing chimps.

That the IMF saw 2013 world growth at 4.1% when the S&P500 was at 1,400 and now that it sees 2013 growth at the lowest ever in the series, 2.9%, when the S&P500 is just a whisker off its all time high is without comment.

* * *

Some other funny charts.

US growth forecasts over time – mind the 2012 GDP-boosting revision:

China, the world’s growth dynamo – big oops:

And, perhaps scariest of all, world trade.

No worries though, Bernanke is good for it.

And for some further amusement, here is what prominent economists are saying about the IMF’s Economic Review:

“The IMF Economic Review is quickly becoming the premier outlet for context-based macroeconomic research. In doing so, it is providing a great service to policymakers and a source of inspiration to real-world driven researchers.”

– Ricardo J. Caballero, Ford International Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, MIT

“The IMF Economic Review is devoted to state-of-the-art research on the global economy. Given the Fund’s unique position on the front lines of surveillance and crisis management, anyone interested in international economic policy or in macroeconomics more generally will find this journal to be essential reading.”

– Maurice Obstfeld, Class of 1958 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley

“The objective of the IMF Economic Review is to bring leading scholars, with cutting edge research, to the policy discussion. The first four issues of the Review have done exactly that. I am confident future issues of the Review will do the same.”

– Olivier J. Blanchard, Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department, IMF

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.