IMF warns world is facing a ‘synchronised slowdown’ to the weakest pace since the GFC

OCTOBER 16, 20192:01pm

But tech entrepreneur Matt Barrie, from freelancing marketplace Freelancer, told news.com.au the IMF’s report echoed grim claims he had been making for some time regarding the wider economy.

“I’ve been using a similar term over the last couple of months — I think we’re in a synchronised global recession where monetary policy is starting to run out of puff. And you can only cut interest rates so low before you start having real problems … and very strange things start happening in the financial system,” the CEO said.

“Australia is in a relatively worse situation than many other countries.

“We were reasonably successful in avoiding the Asian financial crisis, the dotcom crash and the global financial crisis, but I think this time around we won’t be so lucky.”

He said the reason was because our economy lacked the complexity and diversity to weather the storm, as Australia relied mostly on iron ore, coal and “immigration dressed up as education”.

We’re still in a per-capita recession, globally we’re in a slowdown and we’re also globally in a synchronisation of currency devaluation … we’re going to see monetary stimulus run out of steam,” he said.

Mr Barrie said our birthrate was below the replacement rate and our wages were stagnating, and that while we may have “fooled ourselves” into believing we’re a wealthy country, the opposite was actually true.

“The simple fact is the rest of the world is catching a cold and Australia will have to pay the piper for its complacency in not building a strong economy with diversified industries — and I think that time is coming very rapidly.”