​Last October, during IMF meeting in Tokyo, the financial institution presented the new macroeconomic projections for 2012, by adjusting the estimates submitted in July of this year. In this regard, IMF raised its estimate of global growth from -0.2% to 3.3%, explained by the high relative growth in emerging countries (it was adjusted from -0.3% to 5% in the latest revision). US will have a growth of 2.2% against the expected contraction of - 0.1 in the preliminary estimate, in the meantime the European prospects worsened because it adjusted from -0.1 to -0.4 of decline for this year. However, the estimates revised for 2013 show an improvement in global growth as the global economy would grow 3.6% (against the previous estimate of - 0.8% previous), emerging countries 5.4% (-0.3% prior). These estimates show two things: what occurs in the Euro Zone and what occurs with the most important economies from the block of emerging economies.

There are two countries with pressures in European growth estimates: Spain and Italy that are expected to have negative growths. And there are two countries, Germany and France, which will have a lower growth than the expected in the latest adjust of growth estimates. This decrease is also seen in some of the major emerging economies. It is seen in the case of China that has lost near to 1.5% of the expected growth for 2012 in the latest adjust. Also the growth projections have been adjusted substantially downward for India and Brazil, though this didn’t happen with Russia.

The challenge for advanced economies is to achieve fiscal consolidation in order to achieve a sustained growth, but it is something that some consider too hard because a recession may occur in Europe as the one after the Second World War.  In that sense, if one recalls the experience of UK after the First World War, this country had a large fiscal deficit due to the costs of the war. After 1921, Winston Churchill decided to reduce it and they have fiscal surpluses every year since then. Nonetheless, UK had a debt that exceeded the 200% of the GOP in 1933. Then UK ended with a recession. So, fiscal consolidation is not a strategy that will be successful by itself.

In that sense, monetary policy will be the accelerator of global growth, standing out like in the crisis of 2008-2009, central banks of the  world have been very aggressive taking reference interest rates close to 0% when they saw that the product fell and to boost investment. On the other hand, the European Central Bank has helped banks even by giving them liquidity. But they have also sterilized the money supply. In the case of the US, the Federal Reserve has announced it will keep its rates close to 0% beyond 2015.​ 

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