The “Recovery” Word Becomes Taboo For Global Elite
By Chris Hughes and Rob Cox
Spare a thought for the business and financial elite as they slide along the icy byways of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Life is undeniably picking up for them and it would be nice to say so. But the economic recovery has its winners and losers, and it looks bad to be a beneficiary at a conference whose overarching theme is “inclusive growth.”
Most of the chief executives, bankers and politicoes gathered at the WEF are, at best, only mildly optimistic in public. From panel to podium, many delegates acknowledge there’s more to cheer about than last year. A G2 comprising the United States and China is leading global growth. A slowdown in emerging markets – even the implosion of an Argentinian peso or Turkish lira – won’t change that.
On the sidelines, WEFers are much more positive. There’s talk of boosting productivity by making investments instead of opting for crude job cuts. January’s M&A boomlet could become self-perpetuating. In the words of one senior Wall Street banker, executives are “looking for validation of what the markets are telling them.” They are being told what they want to hear. Business hasn’t felt this good since before the crisis.
But to say openly that things are better than that would be unseemly. It takes the chutzpah of a Jamie Dimon, the outspoken chief of JPMorgan, to say “the moon, stars and sun may be aligned” for better times.
This year’s WEF has rightly preoccupied itself with the quality rather than the pace of the recovery. The image of out-of-work 20-something graduates in Madrid or Minneapolis haunt the forum. They are at risk of being seen as unemployable if they are out of the labour market for more than a couple of years. Quick fixes are elusive. As Eni Chairman Giuseppe Recchi remarked, it is “difficult for a company to hire a 30-year-old without work experience.”
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http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2014/01/24/the-r-word-becomes-taboo-for-global-elite/
