Before it became the meeting place for the global elite, Davos was known as a place where those suffering from TB came to be treated. Thomas Mann set his story The Magic Mountain in a sanatorium in the small Swiss town and rarely have the links with Davos’s literary past seemed more appropriate than now, with the global economy in rehab after a three-year sickness still not shaken off. There have been plenty of relapses since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The first couple of weeks of 2023 have seen a modest improvement in the short-term outlook but that doesn’t mean the long-term problems have been cracked. The structural problems facing the global economy – weak investment, poor productivity, the climate emergency, rising inequality, political fragmentation – are still with us.
