The IMF on Tuesday released its latest World Economic Outlook, suggesting “Resilience Under Strain, Urgent Choices”. But the choices are ones a government wishing to win an election would likely ignore.

The IMF, as a rule, always sees a need to cut spending and lower taxes. Given its history of lending money to countries in severe debt, that’s no shock, and, even if the austerity it prescribed ruined lives, the IMF is very much in the Margaret Thatcher “the medicine is harsh but the patient requires it” mould.

That’s important given what it thinks are “urgent choices”.

But first we always get a sense of how the IMF see the world when we look at the titles of its outlook. A year ago, it was Global Economy in Flux, Prospects Remain Dim, followed by Global Economy: Steady amid Divergent Forces. That, as I suggested at the time, was an extraordinary way to describe a world where Donald Trump was threatening Greenland and had just launched an insurgency into Venezuela.

Since then, of course, there has been nothing “steady”, and the IMF outlooks went from Global Economy in the Shadow of War to Global Economy in Crosscurrents of War and Technology.

Now apparently all is resilient despite the strain.

For Australia the update slightly downgrades forecasts for economic growth over the next couple years. The big downgrades, though, came last October, before the US and Israel’s war on........

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