Gloomy in Lima: The autumn meetings of the IMF and World Bank conclude with a chill

AS LIMA bid farewell to the annual jamboree of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on October 11th the leaden sky that greeted the global economy’s great and good earlier in the week had cleared. But among the 12,000 delegates, policymakers, their retinues, academics and do-gooders departing the Peruvian capital, the mood was distinctly unsunny. Clouds will continue to hang over the global economy in the foreseeable future, all agreed; anxieties over China’s slowdown, weakening emerging markets, and the effects of the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold steady on interest rates have done nothing to dispel them.At least, quipped those optimistically inclined, sentiment on October 11th was no worse than on October 6th, when the IMF cut its forecast for global growth this year to 3.1% and to 3.6% next. Indeed, the meetings that took place in Lima brought little new information. There were the usual platitudes about the need for structural reforms. There were expressions of "deep disappointment" over the American Congress’s sad refusal to ratify the 2010 reform of the global financial institutions to allow greater say to emerging economies.Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s boss, presented a new "global policy agenda", pledging to respond to problems rapidly and in a co-ordinated fashion tailored to individual member countries’ circumstances. Jim Yong Kim, president of …
Source: The Economy