Davos elite warn of more volatility

DAVOS, Switzerland - Just as they were getting their swagger back, the global elite stumbled last week on an emerging market sell-off that served as a reminder of the risks the global economy still faces.

Veterans of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos seized on the wobble as a warning that expectations for a smooth upswing were misplaced, and that recovery would likely be volatile and uneven.

The euro zone crisis is out of its acute phase and growth is returning across the developed world but a revival fuelled largely by vast amounts of new central bank money is a capricious one.

The prospect of the U.S. Federal Reserve turning off its money taps this year, combined with political troubles in several emerging markets, drove last week’s sell-off and exposed some of the unresolved problems in both developing and advanced economies.

“I hear way too much optimism now,” Larry Fink, CEO of investment group BlackRock, told the forum.

“I think the experience of the marketplace this week is going to be indicative of this entire year. We are going to be in a world of much greater volatility.”

The return of growth in the United States, Japan and Europe masks festering problems from chronic youth unemployment to skills shortages and rising inequality that dampened any hubris in Davos.

Tech executives were exuberant about breakthroughs that are revolutionizing production, healthcare and communication but others warned those advances may kill jobs.

CEOs in Davos complained more vociferously than ever about a lack of talent for hire despite sky-high unemployment in rich and poor countries alike.

In the West, too many young people are graduating from expensive colleges with high debts and the wrong skills, while in developing countries a big majority are not achieving their economic potential.

Worldwide unemployment hit nearly 202 million in 2013, an increase of 5 million compared with a year earlier, the International Labour Organization reported last week.

Joe Kaeser, chief executive of German engineering giant Siemens, questioned whether the world was really seeing an economic recovery at all.

“Do we feel good because what we see is good?” he asked. “Or do we feel good because we just have eased the pain? How many jobs have we created? How many of those millions and millions of jobless people in Europe have we put into jobs?”

The year ahead will witness a marked shift in the balance among the world’s main growth engines, with the United States and other developed economies contributing more and emerging markets somewhat less than before. Reuters