Thread by @MarioNawfal

The World Economic Forum has ended - Here is what you need to know…

(a thread)

The WEF 2023 kickstarted on Monday in Davos, titled “Cooperation in a Fragment World: Addressing pressing crises, tackling future challenges”

Crises are a permanent thing these days, and so is the WEF. What’s interesting is how different the array of crises which need tackling looks this year versus the last WEF meeting.

This year Covid-19 was far behind on the agenda. So are the rising gas prices which occupied most of the mind space during WEF 2022.

The focus this year was more on - Can central banks calibrate rates just right to bring down inflation without triggering a global recession?

Not just the theme but the setup is different this year. Last year the Covid-19 crisis rescheduled the WEF for May, an unprecedented move. When I was there talking crypto, I didn’t have to freeze my ass off in the snow!

Another major thing worth noting: At least 634 CEOs registered for the conference this year, 40% more compared to WEF ten years ago.

More CEOs attending somehow meant less political leaders. Some prominent political figures didn’t attend WEF 2023 such as Biden, Macron, Jinping, Sunak, and Putin.

Putin was not invited.

Only Scholz (Germany) attended from the G7, alongside Ursula von der Leyen (EU Commission President)

CEO’s outlook for 2023 appears bleak.

PwC's global CEO survey, which polled 4,410 CEOs in 105 countries in October and November 2022, found that 73% of CEOs believed global economic growth will decline over the next twelve months. The survey was released as the WEF kicked off.

"The bleak CEO outlook is the most pessimistic CEOs have been regarding global economic growth since this question was asked 12 years ago...

This marks a major departure from the optimistic outlooks of 2021 and 2022, when 76% and 77%, respectively, thought economic growth would improve," as per PwC.

Attendees from the circle of royalties include British actor Idris Elba, and his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba, who is a UN goodwill ambassador, Jared Kushner, …….

……. will.i. am, member of the Black Eyed Peas and CEO of the i.am Angel Foundation, Máxima (queen of the Netherlands), Mathilde (queen of the Belgians), and Albert II of Monaco (prince of Monaco).

Elon Musk also did not attend, in his words “not because the WEF is a gathering place of people scheming diabolical plans about the planet, but because it is boring af.”

The George Soros dinner at Davos has been a tradition but this year he too was not present. He will instead give a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.

During the WEF meeting last May, the airports around Davos recorded 1,040 private flights—double the number of an average week.

Last week was likely more.

It was as if the emissions of 350,000 cars had been let into the atmosphere in that period, according to a report by Greenpeace and CE Delft.

Day 1 of WEF was a slow one.
The official agenda marked only three events, all too lame to mention.

Day 2 of WEF turned the heat on and mish-mashed several divergent topics including energy, the metaverse, the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine.

Ursula von der Leyen emphasized solidarity and the ongoing support that will be given to Ukraine, Olena Zelenska said 'Everyone has a right to life,' and Finland’s Sanna Marin insisted that 'We have to stand behind the rules-based order.'

Decarbonization, decoupling and dependencies were on the agenda, in the context of the future of trade and growth. It remains unclear how decarbonization and decoupling will bring back economic growth.

WEF has always been about pledges, and Day 3 at Davos brought forth more of those.

The Publicis Foundation launched the first cross-industry coalition to erase the stigma of cancer in the workplace, which already has been signed on by more than 30 giant employers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Another WEF panel discussed “The Future of Jobs” which was further spiced by another panel talking about responsible capitalism (I still struggle to understand what that phrase means).

Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, appears on a panel to explain the challenges of building the metaverse.

Those challenges must have been enormous because the first release of Horizon World looked as if it was designed with MS Paint (no offense intended)

An American CEO at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead 2023 luncheon was heard saying: “I hate talking about China. Fuck. You can never say anything right”.

A European entrepreneur outside the Congress Centre where his badge would not allow him entry was heard complaining: “I still don’t understand the business case for being in there. They livestream everything anyway”.

Surprise surprise: the metaverse was the focal point on Day 4 at Davos.

Neal Stephenson, the science fiction writer who coined the term “metaverse” in 1992, appeared on a panel talking about the future of the metaverse.

Neal finally closed the big semantical question which has been bothering us for the past 2 years.

- How would you describe the metaverse now, Neal?
- “Nascent.”

Equitable development (the cousin of responsible capitalism?) was in the focus during a panel titled “Enabling an Equitable Transition.”

We must be facing a problem of too much growth (hear this, inverted yield curves), thus we have to tone down.

Dual-use technologies were the topic of a panel featuring the director of the FBI and Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister.

Who said you can’t learn something new at Davos?

What kind of regulation crypto needs, was the focus of a separate panel where the main highlight was Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple.

CZ gave advice befitting a sage, to bidding crypto entrepreneurs: "Work closely with regulators,” he said.

Even though Binance has deliberately avoided US and UK regulators.

They did however make strides in multiple other jurisdictions.

Asked about the state of the economy in 2023, the economist Kenneth Rogoff said: Business is so strong. There’s no reason for this kind of gloom—in the US, that is.

What about that gloomy PwC CEO survey from Day 1?

Olaf Scholz wrapped up his keynote in Congress Hall with a bold prediction: “My successor will address you at the WEF in 2045.”

Day 5 brought both, the fire, and the wrapper of a glorious week.

Former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, Singapore minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan Chase’s asset and wealth management business, and others, together came up with a short list of strategies for keeping economies on a growth track.

The strategies:

1) Go green
2) Innovate

The theme of the afternoon was: trees. John Kerry, the US climate envoy, spoke first, praising the progress on climate that he saw at Davos but lamenting deforestation.

Laura Alber, CEO of Williams Sonoma, said: “I’ve flown over Indonesia and cried at the clear cutting in Borneo.”

But then she said her company is halfway toward planting 6 million trees, and tears were no more.

It is worth noting that nobody during the entire afternoon mentioned the scientific opinion that growing trees at best won’t save the world and at worst, is a “dangerous diversion”.

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

But it's better than nothing I guess...

Only the chef-activist Jose Andres sounded a skeptical note: The rich love to talk about planting trees, he said, because it offers such a clear, countable target.

Andres further added: You know why there are no trees in Haiti? Because people need wood to cook their food.

Sounds logical.

At a conversation hosted by the Wall Street Journal, Lars Erik Nicolaisen, the deputy CEO of Rystad Energy, explained why he thinks the world will converge on 1.6°C of warming by 2050, and not the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°. “The devil is in the decimals, " he said.

Then came a superb elevator pitch – startup founders, learn - If deforestation was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon emissions in the world.”—John Kerry, the US climate envoy, making a pitch to save the Amazon.

It was the last day at Davos, so what was the point of maintaining decorum?

A panel titled: “Widening Europe’s Horizons,” effectively revealed the chasm between Western and Eastern Europe. Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, complained about the EU’s treatment of the Balkans.

When Jamil Anderlini, the editor in chief of Politico Europe asked Serbia’s Vučic if he considered Putin a war criminal, Vučić shot back: “I didn’t know you’d become a prosecutor and judge.”

The Indians accused Pakistan of backing terrorists; Khar described how, under Modi, India has suppressed its minorities and been provocatively aggressive against Pakistan.

Nothing scary, just the same old bad blood typical for South Asia.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was grilled on the street by well-trained activists on the effect of the vaccine.

And for the critics:

The WEF really is just a very upper-class version of the equally squalid monster conference of the IPCC, said Rex Murphy.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has had a change of heart, he no longer considers WEFers as “super villains, just hilariously idiotic”.