WEATHER REPORT

Weather report

The euro crisis casts a chill over a sunnier economic picture.

WASHINGTON, DC

http://www.economist.com/node/21553042

 

UNTIL recently, the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, due to be held this weekend in Washington, DC, looked set to coincide with blossoming optimism about the world economy. But the euro crisis is again casting an unseasonal chill.

Things look brighter than they did even a few months ago. America’s fragile recovery continues. After a disastrous 2011, Japan is on track for 2% growth in 2012, thanks in part to a boost from reconstruction spending. And the European Central Bank’s interventions in the banking system in December and February have pulled the euro area back from the brink. The IMF’s newest World Economic Outlook nudges up expected global growth in 2012 to 3.5%, from 3.3% in January. In September last year, the IMF reckoned there was a 10% chance of global growth dipping below 2% in 2012. Now the chance is just 1%, it says.

Inflationary pressures that buffeted emerging economies have been dampened by the global slowdown from 2011, allowing more room for monetary easing. The Reserve Bank of India surprised markets on April 17th by cutting its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points, despite an IMF inflation forecast of 8.2% in 2012. And a well-managed slowdown appears to be in progress in China. The fund has raised its forecast of Chinese output growth to 8.2% in 2012.

How China does is of critical importance to emerging markets. A recent paper by the Inter-American Development Bank, for instance, estimated that the impact of Chinese output variations on Latin American economies has tripled since the mid-1990s, while the effect of American economic wobbles has halved. America nonetheless remains crucial: it is still Latin America’s largest trading partner, and the fund reckons a strengthening US recovery will help growth in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to outstrip that in Brazil this year.

But the sky is anything but clear. Although the IMF reckons the prospects for a broad and destabilising commodity-price spike are falling because a decade of rising food and metals prices has bolstered production, oil remains a dangerous exception (see left-hand chart). Although oil prices eased this week after talks about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a supply shock which caused oil prices to spike to 50% above the baseline forecast (of about $115 a barrel) could reduce global output over the next two years by 1.25%.