World Economic Growth: Revised Down, Again

Global growth forecasts are still being rapidly revised downwards…

Goldman Cuts Global Growth Forecast to 1% Contraction (Update1): “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut its forecast for the global economy for the second time in eight days after predicting a deeper recession in Europe.

“Following the reduction of our Euroland growth forecast to minus 3.6 percent in 2009, the world economy is now likely to contract by 1 percent this year,” said London-based Goldman economist Binit Patel. On March 5 Goldman lowered its 2009 outlook for world gross domestic product to a drop of 0.6 percent from a 0.2 percent decline.

Finance ministers from around the world are meeting near London today and tomorrow to find a way to battle the world recession. Governments have pumped billions of dollars into financial systems to prop up banks and other industries after the worldwide credit squeeze stifled growth.

European retail sales fell for an eighth month in January, a report today showed. Industrial production in Germany, the region’s largest economy, dropped 7.5 percent from December, the biggest decline since data for a reunified Germany began in 1991. Factory orders plunged 38 percent from a year earlier.”