Individual countries may try to remedy excess production capacity by exporting more goods, but this shifts the calamity from one country to another doing no good for the global economy. If policy makers are allowed to walk down this path, protectionism will throw a spanner in the works of recovery as countries race to retaliate against each other.
But first we have to do away with the illusion that global growth will return to five percent. Growth will likely land one, maybe two, percentage points lower and stay there for a while, as the world waits to see how a rebalanced and restructured global economy will fare.
Taken together the US, Europe, and Japan account for more than half and may be even two-thirds of the global economy depending upon the calculating method. Europe is trying hard to reform its economy, but results are still disappointing. Japan is facing a low-trend growth, if growth at all, due to demographics and the inability to restructure.
And we are unlikely to see private consumption drive US economic growth as it has done for many years. The paradigm has changed. The halving of the oil price from summer 2008 to summer 2009 should have led to higher private consumption, but it didn’t. A number of factors – the stock market, bankruptcies, and bailing out of GM to mention a few – depressed the willingness to spend and it is not clear to which extent better data will renew consumer confidence.
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