The predictable downward revision cycle for the global economic outlook has officially begun. That’s the message from the semi-annual World Economic Outlook just released by the International Monetary Fund, which reinforces earlier revisions from several prominent private forecasting teams.

The revision, largely in response to the war in Ukraine, is a big one – a sharp reduction in world economic growth to 3.6% for 2022, fully 1.3 percentage points below the IMF’s global growth forecast of 4.9% made just six months earlier. To its credit, the IMF warned that this was coming, with an interim downward ...