Maurice Obstfeld hasn't been chief economist at the International Monetary Fund for a full month yet and he's already being asked if a worldwide recession is looming.

"Global recession is certainly not our baseline scenario," he said in response to a reporter's question on Tuesday as he cut the IMF's estimate of growth this year to 3.1 percent, the weakest pace since 2009.

Maurice Obstfeld

Photographer: Stephen Jaffe/IMF via Getty Images

Others are less confident. They're eyeing the China-led slowdown in emerging markets and falling commodity prices, while worrying that even the U.S. is vulnerable to foreign economic forces and that central banks now lack the power to fight back.

Just hours after Obstfeld spoke, Citigroup Inc. economists were warning that "continued sub-par growth is likely to put the global economy back into recession." They've already penciled in a 55 percent probability of such an event in the next couple of years.

The relatively good news for finance ministers and central bankers gathering in Lima for the IMF's annual meetings is that most economists are siding with Obstfeld and advising investors not to panic about the economic outlook.

Historical Guide

"We are struck by the negative spin many commentators are putting on recent developments," Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America Corp., said in an report to clients last week.

His review of past worldwide recessions finds they've been caused by three things, none of which are a present danger. Central banks aren't fighting inflation, commodity prices aren't surging and the U.S. economy isn't facing serious problems.

The global economy was previously able to withstand the Latin American banking crisis of the 1980s, currency turmoil in Europe and Mexico in the early 1990s and Europe's more recent fiscal woes, Harris said as he noted that "history is on our side."