The world could soon be on the brink of a global recession as the economies of the United States, China and Europe slow more sharply than anticipated amid a collision of crises, the International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday.
In an update of the World Economic Outlook, the IMF said economic prospects had darkened significantly in recent months as war in Ukraine, inflation and a resurgent pandemic inflicted pain on every continent. If the thicket of threats continues to intensify, the world economy faces one of its weakest years since 1970, a period of intense stagflation across the globe.
"The world may soon be teetering on the edge of a global recession, only two years after the last one,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, wrote in a blog post accompanying the report. Put simply, the outlook for the global economy is "increasingly gloomy,” he wrote.