In its current World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecasts US growth to be 2.3% in 2027 and the UK’s growth to dip slightly to 1.2%. There are two things fundamentally wrong with these estimates.
The first is that they are recorded after inflation estimates, to give so-called real growth. But government estimates of price inflation severely understate the reality of prices on the ground. And the second is that GDP is a measure of credit deployed in the economy, not whether it is deployed productively or not. Furthermore, the government gooses the numbers by running deficits resulting in excess non-productive credit.
How else do you think that governments have statistically banished recessions?
The only significant wobbles in GDP’s upward trend were the Lehman crisis of 2008/09 and the covid shutdowns of 2000. And even those were not that statistically significant. As for the other “recessions” GDP’s growth merely paused.
We mistake GDP growth for progress, an error proving fatal giving power to politicians masquerading as successful economic managers. As a consequence,
