The spotlight is on many of the business world’s leaders this week as they congregate in the Swiss mountaintop town of Davos to attend the annual World Economic Forum. And they are not in a good way. Their souring outlook on their own companies’ future prospects paints a dire picture for the rest of the world economy. But there’s just one thing: A lot of economic news these days is pretty, pretty good.
The theme of this year’s event is a foreboding term from academia: polycrisis. Made famous by perhaps the internet’s greatest wonk, Columbia professor Adam Tooze, and amplified by Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini, it refers to when the world doesn’t have just one crisis but many impacting upon one another, with dramatic economic results. The WEF cautioned in a report last week that an era of polycrisis could begin within the next decade. The report actually found that the current period, characterized by climate change, the war in Ukraine, and persistent inflation, are just the first seedlings of even greater crises to come. The CEOs gathered in Davos seem unaware, though, that the world is showing signs of dodging a recession, let alone a polycrisis.
