From this morning's Wall Street Journal:
interactive.wsj.com
"Healing in the global economy now appears to be under way," said Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, early last week. He said the firm's "global economics team is, at long last, starting to contemplate upward revisions to our growth forecasts in the crisis economies of Asia and Latin America." For example, Morgan Stanley expects Brazil to grow 3% next year, compared with a forecast decline of 4% in 1999.
Another optimist is David Hale, chief economist at financial-services giant Zurich Group. He sees economic growth slowing in the U.S. in 2000 but picking up almost everywhere else. (He expects zero growth in Japan, though.) On the emerging markets, Mr. Hale is positively bullish, forecasting real economic growth of 1.2% in 1999, rising to 3.2% next year, and to 5.2% in 2001.
One thing Mr. Hale sees are some structural reforms in emerging-market countries, which will allow them to take advantage of an upturn in the world economic cycle, sometime in the next 12 to 18 months.
Of course, predictions of an upturn have been dashed before. The International Monetary Fund has been forced to revise downward its forecasts for 1999 and 2000 repeatedly -- four reductions since the fall of 1997. Even at this juncture, however, the IMF sees real world economic growth in the year 2000 rising to 3.5% from a projected 2.2% this year.
A return to growth would be the best news for the oil sector, particularly if the growth comes predominantly from the non-OECD countries. The WSJ article talks about the “big ease” that has taken place lately and the potential for the re-ignition of world growth. I, for one, believe strongly that this monetary stimulus will kick in by the end of this year.
-Robert
|
