From boom to doom – the IMF paints a vastly different picture from 2006

Ten years ago, the World Economic Outlook forecast good times for ever - now deep pessimism reigns, with a possible Brexit only the most immediate threat

Cast your mind back 10 years. It is April 2006 and finance ministers from around the world are gathering in Washington for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Gordon Brown is Britain's chancellor of the exchequer. Alan Greenspan has just retired as the chairman of the Federal Reserve and is considered to be the greatest central banker who ever lived. The blossom is out and the mood is upbeat. The global economy is having its fastest burst of prolonged growth since the early 1970s.

A lot has changed since. The venue is the same. The occasion is the same. But the atmosphere is completely different. Back in 2006, the IMF saw no reason why the boom could not go on for ever. Its flagship half-yearly World Economic Outlook expected activity to keep humming along. It saw no sub-prime crisis, no collapse of Lehman Brothers, no Great Recession.

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