You can actually get more of a sense of the mood at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from looking not at their latest forecasts, but at the kind of vocabulary they’re using around them.
Words like “ominous”, “perilous” and “significant vulnerabilities” rather sum it up. The IMF is getting very nervous about the state of the global economy and its underlying financial system.
The worries can be separated into the short term and the long term.
In the short run, the IMF thinks that central banks are trapped on the horns of dilemma. On the one hand, underlying inflation looks to be considerably more stubborn than previously hoped.
The cost of living crisis may persist longer than hoped, causing real economic pain across much of the world.
On the other hand, the efforts to bring that inflation under control (via higher interest rates) threaten to cause problems of their own.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year (and, to some extent the government bond market rollercoaster in the UK last autumn) were both driven in part by rising interest rates.
That leaves central banks facing a nerve-wracking challenge – on the one hand, trying to resolve the cost of living crisis could actually provoke more financial explosions.
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Ed Conway reports from the heart of the IMF in Washington
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