World Economic Forum Misses The Mark?

The World Economic Forum opened its annual meeting on Monday evening in Davos Switzerland. This five day in person event is one of the global networking events of the year where you can rub shoulders with some of the most influential people in the world.

These folks hold sessions on everything from the economy to energy, to health care to climate change.

The output of the conference seems more like a highly choreographed Hollywood production than a conference designed to influence change. The documents are highly polished and extremely superficial in their treatment of the issues. The footnotes are filled with academic style references. But I found all of the papers I read so far lacking in substance.

On opening day the WEF published the Chief economists outlook for 2023. This 31 page document is based on a survey conducted of the chief economists in the months of November and December. So the outlook is pretty current in terms of the sentiment of these economists.

Remember, the WEF takes a global perspective, not just Europe or USA or Africa.

100% of the chief economists surveyed said that Europe is expected to be weak or very weak this year, and 91% said that the US is expected to be weak or very weak this year.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com