The Global Risks Report 2018
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This year’s report covers more risks than ever, but focuses in particular on four key areas: environmental degradation, cybersecurity breaches, economic strains and geopolitical tensions. And in a new series called “Future Shocks” the report cautions against complacency and highlights the need to prepare for sudden and dramatic disruptions.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]"This generation enjoys unprecedented technological, scientific and financial resources,” but is "the first generation to take the world to the brink of a systems breakdown”
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World Economic Forum: The Global Risks Report 2018
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World Economic Forum: The Global Risks Report 2018
by vox_mundi » Wed 17 Jan 2018, 11:51:07
When a risk cascades through a complex system, the danger is not of incremental damage but of “runaway collapse”—or, alternatively, a transition to a new, suboptimal status quo that becomes difficult to escape. For example, even though a runaway collapse of the global financial system was averted a decade ago, the global financial crisis triggered numerous economic, societal, political and geopolitical disruptions. Many are still only poorly understood, but they shape a “new normal” that in turn will create its own disruptions, spillovers and feedback loops in the months and years ahead.
As the pace of change accelerates, signs of strain are evident in many of the systems on which we rely. We cannot discount the possibility that one or more of these systems will collapse. Just as a piece of elastic can lose its capacity to snap back to its original shape, repeated stress can lead systems—organizations, economies, societies, the environment—to lose their capacity to rebound. If we exhaust our capacities to absorb disruption and allow our systems to become brittle enough to break, it is difficult to overstate the damage that might result.
Optimists, if there are any left, be warned: the Forum also identified several more tail risks.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]- Simultaneous crop failures in the world’s bread-baskets
- Artificial intelligence “weeds” choke the internet
- New waves of populism in mature democracies, and nationalism drives tension around contested borders elsewhere
- Another financial crisis that overwhelms policy responses
- Bio-engineering and cognition-enhancing drugs for the wealthy entrench the gulf between haves and have-nots
- State-on-state conflict escalates unpredictably in the absence of international law addressing cyberwarfare
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World Entering 'Critical Period of Intensified Risks': Nuclear War, Extreme Weather Top List of 2018 Threats in Global Survey
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Extreme weather events and natural disasters are the likeliest global risks to occur in 2018, according to experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum.
WEF's latest Global Risks Report 2018, published Wednesday, showed that environmental disasters, cybercrime, large-scale involuntary migration and illicit trade were among the most notable risks, in terms of likelihood, facing the world this year.
As with previous reports, the top-ranking global risk in terms of impact was the use of weapons of mass destruction. But this was followed in the table of top 10 risks by three environmental risks: Extreme weather events, natural disasters and a failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation.
Stating that the planet is "on the brink," WEF noted that environmental risks have grown in prominence over the 13-year history of the report.
"Among the most pressing environmental challenges facing us are extreme weather events and temperatures; accelerating biodiversity loss; pollution of air, soil and water; failures of climate-change mitigation and adaptation; and transition risks as we move to a low-carbon future," the report said.
"However, the truly systemic challenge rests in the depth of the interconnectedness that exists both among these environmental risks and between them and risks in other countries," it added.
A Year After Trump, Davos Elite Fear Cyberattacks and War
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]The threat of large-scale cyberattacks and a “deteriorating geopolitical landscape” since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump have jumped to the top of the global elite’s list of concerns, the World Economic Forum said ahead of its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
The growing cyber-dependency of governments and companies, and the associated risks of hacking by criminals or hostile states, has replaced social polarization as a main threat to stability over the next decade, according to the WEF’s yearly assessment of global risks, published Wednesday
... 93 percent of respondents said they expect political or economic confrontations between major powers to worsen and nearly 80 percent expect an increase in risks associated with war involving major powers.
“To address complex issues like climate change, cyber-warfare and food security requires a multilateral response, but the political direction is going in exactly the opposite way,” ... “Trump is an example of this, but far from the only one.”
The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse Than the Last One
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.').. Companies have taken advantage of cheap money to increase their debt and buy their own stock, even though Trump and the GOP peddled the notion that decreasing their tax rate by a whopping 40 percent would move them toward diverting their money from the stock and bond markets into jobs and wages.
Financially speaking, 2018 will be a precarious year of more bubbles inflated by cheap money, followed by a leakage that will begin with the bond or debt markets. The GOP tax cuts won’t technically kick in monetarily for corporations until after the year is over in 2019, but the anticipation of extra funds will fuel more buybacks. This will help to provide cover for any rate hikes the Fed implements, because it provides corporations the ability to boost their own share prices further.
Meanwhile, the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and other smaller regulatory authorities in Washington will push for greater deregulation of the financial systems and banking industry on any level possible. If there is another financial crisis in 2018 or later, it will be worse than the last one because the system remains fundamentally unreformed, banks remain too big to fail and the Fed and other central banks continue to control the flow of funds to these banks (and through to the markets) by maintaining a cheap cost of funds.
Politically, no one in any position of power will do anything to fix any of this.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci
Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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