I.M.F. Asks Rich Nations for Support --- WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund, showing heightened concern over a slowing world economy, said on Tuesday that cash-rich countries like Germany needed to step up large public investments to help keep the flagging global recovery on track. -- The comments — from the fund’s managing director and its lead economist — reflect growing concerns within the I.M.F. that Germany, which recently passed China as the country with the largest trade surplus in the world, is not doing enough to spur growth in Europe. -- At a news conference at the start of its semiannual meeting, an event that attracts financiers, policy makers and central bankers from around the globe, the fund’s top economists highlighted a shift in the global economy in which many major nations are failing to keep up with what is still a relatively modest recovery in the United States. -- In an interview on Friday, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the fund, said global growth risked being stuck in a rut for a long time. “If nothing gets done in a bold way, there is a risk of a new mediocre” level of growth for the global economy, she said. -- And she took note that Germany could do more to stoke growth in Europe. “Given Germany’s current position, it could certainly spend more on infrastructure,” she said. -- The fund’s growth worries were underscored on Tuesday when Germany said that orders for industrial goods in August shrank by the largest amount since 2009, plunging 4 percent on a month-over-month basis. -- For investors, the warnings in the I.M.F. forecast and the report from Germany helped send the broad stock market down sharply on Tuesday, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index falling 1.5 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq each fell about 1.6 percent. -- The I.M.F. brought its estimate for global growth this year down to 3.3 percent from 3.7 percent and reduced its forecast for 2015 to 3.8 percent. The fund pointed to weaker growth in China, Europe, Japan and Latin America — Brazil in particular — as the main culprits behind the broad retrenchment. -- Germany’s growth forecast for 2014 was cut sharply to 1.4 percent from 1.9 percent. -- Its estimate for United States growth in 2015, 3.1 percent, outpaces all major industrialized countries and exceeds as well a number of emerging markets, which in theory are supposed to grow at a substantially more rapid clip. -- The assessment reflected a broad acceptance by global investors that, at least for the near future, the United States economy was set to advance ahead of many large economies, not just in terms of growth but also in corporate profitability and international competitiveness. -- As a result, large investors and central banks have become aggressive purchasers of the dollar, betting that the currency will keep rising in value against the euro, the yen and the wobbly currencies of countries like Russia, Brazil and Turkey. -- Economists have been warning for some time now that a situation in which the American economy becomes the prime engine for the global recovery brings with it significant risks by creating financial uncertainty in emerging markets as currencies weaken and capital flows reverse. - Read More, NYTimes, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/business/imf-lowers-world-growth-forecast-pointing-to-us-as-a-bright-spot.html?ref=world