After being wrong about this year twice already, the International Monetary Fund could be going for a hat-trick by cutting its forecasts for Australia again.
Not that it matters because despite forecasting early and often it's usually wrong, ignoring the famous advice of the late legendary movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn who is supposed to have said "never make forecasts, especially about the future".
For the benefit of the Australian Bureau of Statistics he might have added never guess, especially if you don't know.
It turns out the leap in unemployment in July to 6.4 per cent never happened. Whew!
But there would have been a jaw-dropping 172,000 jobs lost in August had it not decided its seasonal adjusting was wonky. In fact, unemployment has been stuck on about 6 per cent for three months.
Anyway the fund seems to be feeling a downdraft in global growth.
Although its forecast for Australia for this year (2.8 per cent) and 2015 (2.9 per cent) remain, they're still well below the new lower one for the rest of the world which is relying almost entirely on growth in the US rising from 2.2 per cent to 3.1 per cent.
Incidentally, for the first time since the global financial crisis the unemployment rate in the US is lower than ours.
So if the US is improving and we're standing still – not exactly stagnant, but still sluggish - should you be investing there rather than here?
Those running your super fund think so. Most fund managers are shifting their tilt from Australian to overseas, often US, stocks.
The trouble is that Wall Street will soon have to stand on its own feet for the first time in seven years. Since 2008 it's been mollycoddled with near-zero interest rates and the Federal Reserve printing a mother lode of money.
For all intents and purposes this has been free money for the banks, including ours. It lowered their borrowing costs in wholesale markets and some of the money would have found its way into their high dividend-paying shares as a punt on the dollar.
The extra US dollar printing ends this month and there's endless speculation that the Fed will raise rates next year, though not by much.
And if it does it'll only be because the US economy is roaring along as unemployment falls which, here's hoping, will soon be the case.
With the US accelerating and Australia braking, Wall Street would seem a better bet than our market, especially when broker profit forecasts suggest both have the same valuation starting point.
But then a lift in Wall Street should flow on to us. And don't write off China, our biggest benefactor, just yet. While the IMF forecasts a slight slowing in its growth it has the advantage it can order its economy about. Property prices falling? No worries, it's just halved the required deposit for a home loan.
Rather than flitting to offshore markets the case for staying home is just as strong.
Especially when an improving US economy rubs off on everybody else.
