I sit here, staring at the latest transmission from the high priests of global finance, and I am struck by a profound, nauseating sense of déjà vu. The International Monetary Fund—that unelected cabal of gray-suited vampires who wouldn't recognize a gallon of milk if they drowned in it—has descended from their ivory tower to toss the plebeians a crumb of optimism. They have raised their forecast for global growth. Huzzah. Break out the confetti and the stale crackers. By 2026, the world economy is expected to expand by a blistering, earth-shattering… 3.3 percent.

Let’s be clear about what is happening here. The IMF isn’t predicting a renaissance; they are predicting that the corpse of the global economy will continue to twitch at exactly the same rate it did last year. They call this "stability." I call it the flatline of a civilization that has run out of ideas. The headline is designed to soothe the furrowed brows of the Davos crowd, assuring them that the peasants won’t be storming the gates with pitchforks just yet, provided we can keep the GDP numbers hovering slightly above absolute zero.

And what, pray tell, is the engine driving this mediocre survival? What is the great savior of humanity’s economic soul? Is it a sudden burst of tangible productivity? Did we figure out cold fusion? Did we decide to stop bombing each other long enough to build a bridge? Of course not. Don’t be an idiot. The IMF explicitly credits the "booming investment in artificial intelligence."

There it is. The punchline to the cosmic joke. The global economy is being propped up by a glorified spell-checker that consumes the energy of a small nation to generate six-fingered anime girls and corporate emails that nobody reads. We are banking our collective future on the "productivity gains" of a technology that is currently best known for hallucinating legal precedents and helping college students cheat on essays. This is what the suits in Washington and Brussels call "output." In the twisted logic of modern economics, billions of dollars spent on server farms to train algorithms to sell you toaster ovens you don’t need counts as "growth."

Meanwhile, let’s discuss the other pillar of this rosy forecast: the "fading drag" of tariffs. The IMF notes with a straight face that the economic damage from global trade wars is dissipating. Do not mistake this for a solution. The trade wars haven’t ended. The politicians—those parasitic narcissists on both the Left and the Right—haven’t suddenly held hands and decided to play nice. No, the "drag" is fading simply because we have all accepted the abuse. The pain has become background noise. We have normalized the dysfunction. The Right screams about protectionism while buying cheap plastic garbage from overseas; the Left screams about fair trade while sipping coffee harvested by indentured servants. The tariffs remain, the prices remain high, but the statistical models have simply adjusted to the new baseline of misery. The wound hasn’t healed; the nerve endings have just died.

This is the state of the world in the eyes of the economists. A 3.3 percent expansion fueled by hype, vaporware, and the quiet resignation of the working class. It is a shell game played with numbers that have long since detached from reality. When they say "global growth," they don't mean your life is getting better. They don't mean your rent is going down or your grocery bill is becoming manageable. They mean that the aggregate line on a graph in a boardroom in D.C. is moving up and to the right, ensuring that the asset class remains insulated from the squalor they’ve created.

I look at the Right, thumping their chests about "market resilience," ignoring that the market is rigged by monopolies and propped up by government spending they claim to hate. I look at the Left, praising "international cooperation" and "sustainable development," ignoring that this growth is built on an infrastructure of resource extraction and digital surveillance. Both sides are complicit in this farce. They are cheerleaders for a game where the score is made up and the players are brain-damaged.

So, by all means, celebrate the IMF’s forecast. Take comfort in the fact that in 2026, the economy will grow at the exact same lethargic pace as it did previously, fueled by the fever dreams of Silicon Valley and the numbness of a populace too tired to complain about trade barriers. We aren't building a future; we are just inflating the bubble a little bit more, hoping the pop doesn't happen until after the next election cycle. It is a pathetic, grinding continuity of failure, dressed up as success by people who have never worked a real day in their lives. 3.3 percent. Try not to spend it all in one place.