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On May 12th, the International Monetary Fund adjusted its very grim global growth forecast to make it even more pessimistic.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said it was “very likely” the Fund would cut global growth forecasts further as the coronavirus pandemic was hitting many economies harder than previously projected.
“Incoming data from many countries is worse than our already pessimistic projections,” Georgieva said during a webcast conference sponsored by the Financial Times. “Very likely we are going to come up with the update to our projections some time in June, and at that point … our expectation is that there would be a bit more bad news in terms of how we see 2020.”
At the start of April, the forecast was that business closures and lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus would throw the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s Great Depression, with gross domestic product output shrinking 3% in 2020.
The IMF typically revises its World Economic Outlook forecasts in early July.
Georgieva said the worsening data was also likely to mean that emerging markets and developing economies would need more than $2.5 trillion in additional financing to grapple with the pandemic.
A month after the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings, Georgieva said IMF members still lacked agreement over an issue of new IMF Special Drawing Rights, a step last taken in 2009 that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in new liquidity for all IMF members, rich and poor.
“During our spring meetings, it was very clear the membership said, ‘Everything is on the table. Let’s see how this crisis evolves in the future.’”
Meanwhile, the US shale oil industry is in dire straits.
Chesapeake Energy Corp said it cannot access financing and is considering restructuring its debt of more than $ 9billion if oil prices do not recover after a sharp drop.
Applications from the company showed that the company’s total debt is more than $1 billion in debt repayment and interest expenses, of which $250 million in “senior notes” were due to be paid off this year.
The company said that a review of the value of its unused oil and gas reserves this quarter is likely to show a decline due to its troubled finances, which will reduce the ability to borrow for these assets.
Chesapeake reported that its net loss available to shareholders increased to $8.3 billion, or $852.97 per share, from $44 million, or $6.37, due to an impairment of assets of $8.5 billion. But at the same time the company said it would pay $25 million in weekly rewards to top managers.
Chesapeake, which had about 2,300 employees at the end of 2019, laid off about 13% of its workforce in April. In the last quarter, it terminated the contracts of most of the employees who joined it as a result of the acquisition in 2018 of the Texas oil producer WildHorse for $4 billion.
The company said it shut down wells and delayed the production of commercial volumes for sale in some areas, which will reduce its projected oil production by about 50% and 37%, respectively, in May and June. Shares of the company fell about 8% during day trading.
Similarly to Saudi’s Aramco – spending is being cut, but the shareholders and managers are still being paid “fairly” while workers are being laid off. There’s no way for that to backfire, of course, in the US alone, 20.5 million jobs were lost in the United States, and the unemployment rate reached 14.7% and US officials expect May to be even worse.
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IMF are wrong because they admire any growth. They should focus on quality growth and by that also waste and with no fanatisme.
A succes for that fx is windpower and solar energy replacing a lot of smog but fx also noise from cars and traffic. The same for insolation gainst heat and cold climate as well as noise. So many more live in larger and larger town kept together in small boxes.
I also allow me to add popuulation growth even so many think its a right to add millions and illins to the 7 billions, we already are. People dont wonder where the food comes from, but we see it well taking in all free land and in many parts of the world with lack of water.
Water lack fx in USA, The Nile, Aral Lake and Eufrat Tigris. Here so much water also is wated to the sky by old methods and well known salty areas are made instead of bread.
To quality growth is a must and we have to make IMF and very much the rest of the world to be more effective and for less ressources produce the same or more.
In foo I have seen big towers, where all green growth is controlled and there is no waste. We have to do that. By that we still can keep some nature instead of reestabling some artificial ones, where we even has to work to keeep them as some kinds of museums.
Is it really old days for Denmark, when we keep areas free as in the old days by Angus Cows from Skotland or Sheep from Holland. We even put out moose and think beavers and wolfes has more rights then us.
Its like us as human beings are not in the top of the system and is a part reducing those creatures, because they eat same things then us and even our sheep and cows.
Some might say thats no IMF but biology or enviroment. But is is.
To me this is a corner of it. Just reducing plasting makes me laugh and cry too. Its about being smarter and maybee reward world patents for replacing things, which can be replaced.
I fx was at the hopital a couple a years ago. It was a miracle what they had of eqipment. I will never go back to steel and glass. No way.There also was very good air and in the correct temperature and humidity.
When I speak for shorter pendler cars driving more kilomaters pr liter and You can get more and cheeper parkingspaces, it the same thing. Now its prestige here in Denmark to buy as big car as possible.
If itr was for me all those with kangaroo grill and that should have a sign saying: I dont pay enogh tax.
If people prefare to go by big cars, they should take the bus. They not even need to have a drivers license for it.
There is no lack of water. Its the most stupid thing a man can say as water is the most common material on earth.
Our drinking water comes via evaporation from the Sea which cover 75% of our planet, so how the fock can anybody believe this liberal bs?
Here is an article that looks at the high cost of unemployment on both health and mortality:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-high-ultimate-cost-of-covid-19.html
While the IMF is concerning itself with lower economic growth rates, hundreds of millions of people worldwide are suffering physically because of the global economic shutdown.
US , and russia should come together and destroy those chinese assholes :D