Monday 21 January 2019

The Davos 2019 Global Risk Report

The 2019 World Economic Forum has started in Davos. The Americans are highly likely to be absent from this year's Davos due to the ongoing government shutdown, not only Mr Trump has cancelled his trip to Davos, their top officials in Trump's administration are not coming to Davos either. With the absence of the Americans, it could be a great chance for China to further spread its influence. One of the most interesting topics so far I think is the Davos 2019 Global Risk Report (https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/01/21/1548075481000/Davos-has-produced-an-amazing-new-guide-on-precisely-how-not-to-think-about-risk/).

In the list, the risk that can potentially cause the risk is weapons of mass destruction relating to geopolitical conflict and the risks which have the highest likelihood are extreme weather events and failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation and natural disasters. From the Report, we can see that environmental risk has been the most significant risk ahead of us in 2019, since the environment-relating risks are on the top of both two lists, showing that people are really concerning the environment issue at the moment. Since Trump became the US president, the US administration has been drifting away from its previous policy and withdrawn America out of the Paris Agreement, as Trump himself never believes the theory of climate change. Furthermore, the Report does not see economic risk as a major risk. The likelihood of asset bubbles in a major economy is at the bottom of the list and there is no economic risk on the list of the significance of the risks. Are these analysts accurate about their forecast of economic risk?

Overall, I agree with the Report on the environment-relating risks; however, I think the Report might underestimate the economic risk.

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