From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We are seeing the emergence, development and evolution of entire monetary systems live, unfolding before our eyes. You have Bitcoin and Ethereum and can imagine them as international monetary systems that bring-together local ecosystems. We used to have gold as a key reserve asset, and now it's the US dollar.
Taken together, mass migration, mass starvation and mass extinctions are what we will see if we sleep walk into a future of unmitigated climate change. These stresses will ruin economies and drive competition over dwindling resources.
There are three devils that inhibit economic growth. The first is that the government takes up too much of the economy. The second is that taxes take too much out of the economy. And the third is that there's too much regulation.
Africa is an enormous continent, larger than the US, China and Europe combined. It represents 20% of the global land mass, and only 10% of the world's population. It offers an un-crowded space of opportunities including minerals, natural resources, water and agriculture.
Risk of a double dip recession in advanced economies (US, Japan, Eurozone) has now risen to 40%.
Around the world you've got somewhere between 1 and 2 billion people who are living in abject poverty. Economic growth offers the opportunity to reduce that 1 or 2 billion to 100,000–200,000 in the next phase.
The neo-liberal capitalist mindset has also been a huge contributor to loneliness. Since the 1980s, alongside Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, a new form of economics came to the fore which enshrined the pursuit of self-interest over the pursuit of collective good. That generated the mindset we see today- me first, dog-eat-dog, greed is good… that inevitably begets a world where people feel less connected to each-other, more atomised, and many ended up feeling marginalised and unseen.
The world of business is scared without realising that it, itself, is the cure.
These revised capital adequacy guidelines will shield banks from another crisis in the format we have seen but provide little or no protection against events which could occur such as systemic capital disruptions from terrorism and conflict.
If I was selling research, why not genuinely sell something in the business world? I realized that entrepreneurship might be the key to growth and economic solutions.
In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence (or the lack of it) matters.
You are only ever one click away from looking at another alternative… The ability for the consumer to shop-around has made it difficult for some operators to realise the need for transparency in pricing… particularly when your product is built around opacity.