23/1/2015: Davos 2*&%: I am not a fan... Why?

Narcissistic, self-obsessed, publicity equivalent of the Maybach Exelero and about as useful for its stated purposes too, Davos World Economic Forum is an media fest ritual that probably costs the world more trees (chopped for all the glossy publications it generates) than anything else on the global events calendar every year.

Corporates and their media love it. Journalists are awe struck by its trappings - from hotel rooms prices, to cost of basic meals, to who they bump into in the corridors. Big wigs of global business have to have it, because, apparently, they have trouble (with all their private jets and first class travel seats) meeting each other in real life in New York or London or Singapore, where they live. A handful of select, usually consensus-circling economists and pundits provide a backdrop of 'intellectualism' to the gathering. You can't tell sell-side from buy-side because it is all sell-side - sell your own image.

Yes, I am not a fan. And to explain why, let me give you this link via @CapX by @DanHannanMEP which explains the entire Davos event in its headline: http://www.capx.co/davos-is-a-corporatist-racket/.

H/T to @msgbi for highlighting the article.

21/1/2014: Davos: Outdated Irrelevance of Banality?

If you do need to know exactly why the World Economic Forum at Davos is a vacuous undertaking, go no further than this:

The top 5 risks the #WEF survey delivers to us as a break-through insight into the future from all this 'intellectual' elite gathering in Swiss Alps this week are so... how should I put it mildly... banal? well-rehearsed? predictable? all of the above?

If we already know what Davos is just setting 'ahead' for the discussion, what on earth can be the point of following this global navel gazing ego fest?..

More to the point: Water crisis, Climate change, High unemployment, and Fiscal crises all have been at the core of Davos discussions in previous years. Apparently, the Greats of this World still can't resolve any of them. Time to fuel up that Learjet, cause pressing 'risks' are upon us...

21/1/2014: Four Reasons to Worry About Income Inequality

Not being a fan of 'relative poverty' concept for a number of economic reasons, here's my real concern:

Source for both charts: http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf

The core concerns I have are that

• Extreme disparities of wealth and income distributions can lead to inequality of opportunity and, as the result, to non-meritocratic distribution of wealth and income over generations. 
• Extreme divergence in wealth and income distributions can lead to the decline of democratic participation and thus to a rise in political extremism.
• Extreme differentials in income inequality the wake of a major economic crisis compound long-term effects of the crisis and reduce the rate of recovery, including structural recovery.
• In the current crisis, the core cost of the crisis befell the highly indebted households, primarily from middle and upper-middle classes, plus lower-skilled unemployed. Exit from the crisis, therefore, requires repairing their balancesheets more robustly than the balancesheets of the top 1% earners. The fact that we are witnessing the opposite effect tells me that the underlying causes of the crisis have not been addressed. We have wasted trillions in scarce economic resources and achieved preciously little for it.