As the world’s financial policymakers convene for their annual meeting on Friday in Peru, the dangers facing the global economy are more severe than at any time since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008.The problem of secular stagnation — the inability of the industrial world to grow at satisfactory rates even with very loose monetary policies — is growing worse in the wake of problems in most big emerging markets, starting with China.
This raises the spectre of a vicious global cycle in which slow growth in industrial countries hurts emerging markets which export capital, thereby slowing western growth further. Industrialised economies that are barely running above stall speed can ill-afford a negative global shock.Policymakers badly underestimate the risks of both a return to recession in the west and of a global growth recession. If a recession were to occur, monetary policymakers lack the tools to respond.There is essentially no room left for easing in the industrial world. Interest rates are expected to remain very low almost permanently in Japan and Europe and to rise only very slowly in the US.Today’s challenges call for a clear global commitment to the acceleration of growth as the main goal of macroeconomic policy. Action cannot be confined to monetary policy.There is an old proverb: “You do not want to know the things you can get used to.” It is all too applicable to the global economy in recent years. While the talk has been of recovery from the crisis, forecasts of future gross domestic product have been revised sharply downwards almost everywhere.Relative to its 2012 forecasts, the International Monetary Fund has revised its estimate for the level of US GDP for 2020 downwards by 6 per cent, Europe by 3 per cent, China by 14 per cent, emerging markets by 10 per cent and 6 per cent for the world as a whole.
These dismal results assume no recessions in the industrial world and the absence of systemic crises in the developing world. Neither can be taken for granted.We are in a new macroeconomic epoch where the risk of deflation is higher than that of inflation and we cannot rely on the self-restoring features of market economies. The effects of hysteresis — where recessions are not just costly but stunt the growth of future output — appear far stronger than anyone imagined a few years ago.Western bond markets are sending a strong signal that there is too little, rather than too much, government debt. As always, when things go badly there is a great debate between those who believe in staying the course and those who urge a serious correction. I am convinced of the urgent need for substantial changes in the world’s economic strategy.