Global Upgrade

We've been talking a lot lately about how the international economic situation will affect the recovery here in the United States. The global economy is not a zero-sum game; as other countries grow their economies, ours will benefit from our ability to sell them our goods and services.

So when the International Monetary Fund increases its predicted global GDP number for 2010, that's good news for our American economy as well. In an interview over the weekend with a Japanese newspaper, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn noted that he would be raising his estimate of this year's global growth from 3.9 percent to 4 percent. That's a small move, but as recently as last October, the IMF had pegged global growth at 3.1 percent. The outlook just keeps going up and up.

Looking ahead, for 2011, the IMF has forecast global growth at a healthy 4.3 percent. If that prediction holds - or if it gets revised upward, as has happened to so many IMF predictions - it will go a long way toward pulling the American economy back to full strength.