A Comedy Of IMF Forecasting Errors: Global Trade Tumbles More Than 50% From IMF’s 2012 Prediction
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
01/21/2014
The most notable feature of today’s set of numbers is the IMF’s forecast of world trade. In a word: it is crashing. Consider that 2013 world trade was expected to grow by 5.6% in April 2012. Now: it is more than 50% lower at just 2.7%! Yet what is truly hilarious and certainly head scratching, is that somehow the IMF now anticipates a pick up in global growth in 2014 from its previous forecast of 3.6% to 3.7%, even as global trade is revised lower once more to the lowest prediction for 2014:, and currently stands at just 4.5% compared to 4.9% in October 2013 and 5.5% a year ago (it goes without saying that the final global trade number for 2014 will be well lower than the IMF’s optimistic forecast). How global GDP is expected to grow on the margin compared to previous forecasts even as trade contracts is anyone’s guess…
The Rest…HERE
