Davos 2015-The Global Economic Outlook

Mark J. Carney, Governor of the Bank of England; World Economic Forum Foundation Board Member Benoît Coeuré, Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank, Frankfurt Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan; Global Agenda Council on Japan Joaquim Levy, Minister of Finance of Brazil Min Zhu, Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC; World Economic Forum Foundation Board Member In 2010 the United Nations established a commission headed by Joseph Stiglitz to examine the causes of the financial collapse and to propose measures to prevent a recurrence. Two years ago I moderated a roundtable consisting of several economists (Fred Harrison, Nicolaus Tideman, Mary Cleveland, Adele Wick, Fred Foldvary and Mason Gaffney) to review and evaluate the commission’s report. The consensus of these economists was that none of the reforms proposed addressed the fundamental driver of global and national boom-to-bust cycles. That driver is speculation in markets for land and land-li