Mohamed A El-Erian, president of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse (Random House, 2016)

The International Monetary Fund’s revised World Economic Outlook is sobering. It is rare for the organisation to revise down sharply its projections for economic growth just one quarter into the calendar year.