But for a few months it was not clear how much comfort we should take from that, because the economic news from abroad seemed to be so dire. As one metric, the IMF’s forecasts for global output in 2009 as at last February were for growth of ½ per cent. That was already a marked reduction from a few months earlier.
Subsequently they were cut further, and when released in late April showed an expected contraction of over 1 per cent, which would be the weakest outcome for at least six decades. BIS Review 97/2009  1  Forecasts for Australia were inevitably marked down as well.