Managed by the world’s best Treasurer.

That’s the only logical conclusion to be drawn from today’s IMF forecast, confirming that “Australia leads the world“.

According to the 10,000 staff at the International Monetary Fund, Australia will “medal” in first place in the world economic growth race next year. I’d say they’d take the gold medal but quantitative easing has reduced that to a rubbish medallion made out of milk bottle tops and manufactured by a small child in China.

3% growth next year.

Must be true, I read it in the paper.

Just out of interest, what’s the IMF’s track record in this prediction game then?

Well, according to their own figures, their average margin for error from actual growth rates for western economies has been 39%.

So…. going by past performance (and that’s usually a shit method of prediction too), we could see growth rates of anywhere between 4.1% or 1.8%. Or a completely different figure. You choose.

How did they do in predicting economic shocks? Pretty fucking awful, come to think of it. Completely missed the events of 2008 and variously predicted better recoveries than were experienced for the USA and worse than the one that actually occurred in Australia.

They’re about as good at predicting as anyone else with an historical graph, a pencil and a ruler placed at the end.

I’m not certain what will happen next year, but I am certain of this; no-one in the IMF is going to stand up at the press conference and say any of the following;

- A country will exit the Euro and devalue
- China will have a hard landing
- The USA will engineer another bloody oil war
- Apple will pop
- Something else will happen that the markets don’t like

Any of which would make a prediction of growth about as accurate as the average Australian’s understanding of the non-ANZAC casualty numbers at Gallipoli.