The leaders of the world’s largest countries are dangerously unprepared for the consequences of a serious global slowdown, a senior executive at the International Monetary Fund has warned.

In particular, governments will find it hard to use fiscal or monetary measures to offset the next recession, while the system of cross-border support mechanisms — such as central bank swap lines — has been undermined, warns David Lipton, the first deputy managing director of the IMF.

“The next recession is somewhere over the horizon, and we are less prepared to deal with that than we should be?.?.?. [and] less prepared than in the last [crisis in 2008],” Mr Lipton told the Financial Times on the sidelines of the American Economic Association annual meeting in Atlanta. “Given this, countries should be paying attention to keeping their economy on a level trajectory, building buffers and not fighting with each other.”