Hellfire and Brimstone on a Tuesday Afternoon
The first afternoon at the World Business Forum, our after-lunch speaker was David Rubenstein, billionaire investor and founder of the Carlyle Group, former Carter advisor and generally very bright guy. His rapidly delivered speech was like a ticker-tape coming almost too fast to read, fact and stat, fact and stat, stat stat stat stat. Recession is way worse than most people think. Taxes will increase substantially following recovery. Government will continue too involved with business for a long time. NYC will no longer be the world's financial capital. The dollar will cease to be the world's primary reserve currency. On the other hand, he says, a downturn like this creates great investment opportunities, and lots of room for innovation. His was a rapid, bleak, but fairly balanced presentation. Sobering, disturbing, worrisome, and factual.
Jeffrey Sachs, on the other hand, gave what can only be described as a disappointingly shallow and politicized analysis of the world's problems in his "Economics for a Crowded Planet" talk.
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