WASHINGTON (AP) – World finance officials who meet in Washington this week confront a bleak picture: Eight years after the financial crisis erupted, the global economy remains fragile and at risk of another recession.
“Growth has been too slow for too long,” Maurice Obstfeld, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, warned on the eve of the spring meetings of the IMF, the World Bank and the Group of 20 major economies Thursday through Saturday.
The IMF on Tuesday downgraded its outlook for growth for most regions and for the global economy as a whole. It now foresees a weaker financial landscape than it did in January. Like the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the IMF has repeatedly overestimated the strength of the world economy in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Problems span the globe. China’s sharp slowdown has hurt commodity-exporting countries by driving down demand for everything from iron ore to coal. Prices of raw materials have sunk as a result.
A rising dollar has pinched American factories by making their goods more expensive in foreign markets and contributing to a sharp deceleration in U.S. growth since late 2015. The 19 countries that use the euro currency have struggled to gain any momentum despite aggressive easy-money policies from the European Central Bank. Japan’s economy is hobbled by consumers wary of spending.