Does Christine Lagarde in her spare time use the pen name of Tyler Durden?

Durden is the name assigned to every author on ZeroHedge, a relentlessly negative — if sometimes prescient — financial news blog.

Lagarde is the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and she and her colleagues at the international agency have taken a pretty pessimistic outlook on the global economy this week.

The IMF’s official world economic outlook is entitled, simply, “Too Slow For Too Long.” Here were the adjectives used by IMF Chief Economist Maurice Obstfeld in his introductory remarks, in just the first two paragraphs — “increasingly negative,” “too slow” and “progressively less optimistic.”

Also read:IMF cuts global growth outlook

Lagarde herself, on Thursday, was saying a durable recovery is becoming elusive, that the risks to financial stability have increased, that advanced economies are being held down by weak demand, crisis legacies, unfavorable demographics and low productivity growth, and that emerging markets are being weighed down by the recessions in Brazil and Russia as well as the rebalancing in China.

The IMF absolutely should present the economy without rose-tinted glasses. But there are a number of reasons to think the IMF’s pessimism isn’t well founded.

The data being released across town from the IMF’s spring meetings seem to suggest that. On Thursday, the Labor Department said jobless claims fell to levels last seen in the 1970s. Jobs growth has confounded, for months now. Manufacturing sentiment has improved of late. Retail prospects do remain dark, but that owes as much to the changing consumption patterns of the U.S. consumer than any macroeconomic sign.

It’s not purely a U.S. phenomenon, either. Europe isn’t any great shape, but its economy has been grinding higher for months now. China is showing tentative signs of improving domestic demand. India’s been great for some time.

Traders seem to agree. That multinational corporation bellwether otherwise known as the S&P 500 SPX, -1.11% has bounced 14% from its February lows. Hard-hit commodity prices also have been on the rise, another sign of global demand.

Of course, the market may be wrong, and maybe the bearishness from the IMF will in retrospect look sagacious.

But there’s a danger in making every economic hiccup sound like 2008 all over again. Lagarde risks sounding like Chicken Little — or Tyler Durden.