Word on the street is that the U.S. government is currently in the midst of melting down, into a hot, steaming pile of… executive orders.
(I had another word in mind, but “executive orders” will suffice.)
But the rest of the world seems to be making the best of things. If you don’t count Israel-Gaza-Lebanon-Iran, or Russia-Ukraine, or the Congo, or Somalia, or Myranmar, or Sudan, or the South China Sea.
To get a sense of how well things are going, I visited the World Economic Forum website. The WEF held its 55th Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland last month, and the theme for the week-long conference was:
Collaboration for the Intelligent Age
With that kind of a theme, we could easily presume the U.S. would not a be participant. After all, we just elected Donald Trump to a second term.
But much to my surprise, one of the keynote speeches at Davos was delivered by none other that President Trump… on January 23, just three days after his inauguration and two days after the federal government began to melt down, into a hot, steaming… But I repeat myself.
Apparently, President Trump was one of the few Presidents to attend the WEF conference. (He attended via Zoom, just long enough to deliver a speech and answer a few questions, and then got right back to making America great again.)
A few years ago, the Davos conference was the place to be in January, if you were a world leader and felt comfortable appearing in public without wearing a tie.
But apparently, elected world leaders were in short supply this year. Ties or no ties.
But what’s a few missing leaders, when over 3,000 business and government leaders still had enough money in their budgets to buy plane tickets to Switzerland?
Now that the affair is over, the website claims that “five top takeways” were especially notable.
Five is a good number, in my humble opinion. You can count them off on the fingers of one hand. Life gets too complicated when you have to count on the fingers of both hands. Which hand do you start with? So I’m happy they picked just five top takeaways.
1. Geopolitics: in need of constructive optimism
You can say that again.
1. Geopolitics: in need of constructive optimism
The need for optimism has never been higher, now that Donald Trump has committed the U.S. government to setting fire to the global economic landscape.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General at the World Trade Organization (WTO), advised “Don’t hyperventilate!” as Trump’s policies are enacted and implemented. Good advice. Nothing is harder than remaining optimistic while hyperventilating.
For readers looking for reasons to feel optimistic, you have to decide first if you like electric vehicles. President Trump doesn’t like them. But the Chinese, apparently, love them. As of 2025, more than 50% of the cars sold in China are EVs. From what I’ve heard, EVs last longer than gasoline and diesel vehicles, and require less maintenance. Unfortunately, when you rev the engine, it doesn’t make a noise. We like to rev our engines, here in America.
The participants at the WEF conference also sought other reasons for feeling optimistic. Mostly, at the hotel bar.
2. Climate, nature, energy: can it get back on track?
Mostly, no. I mean, optimism works fine at the hotel bar, but if we’re talking about climate and nature, better have another martini.
Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore quantified the impact of humans on the planet. “The world releases 175 million tonnes of greenhouse gases daily into the atmosphere.” The accumulated amount now traps as much extra heat as would be released by 750,000 first-generation atomic bombs exploding every day on the Earth. That seems like a lot. But everyone knew Al Gore was going to be a downer.
3. Economic growth, finance: confidence is key
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff raised questions about the U.S. fiscal trajectory.
“Both parties in the United States seem to think that debt is a free lunch,” he said. But it’s not just the United States government. Our college students also think debt is a free lunch. In fact, nearly everyone here in the U.S. thinks debt is a free lunch. So… we’re obviously confident. Isn’t that what Davos said they wanted?
4. Jobs, health, inclusion: rolling on – not rolling back
I get the impression, based on the photos on the WEF website, that most of the people who attended the Davos conference do not have ‘jobs’. They have ‘positions’. A ‘job’ is something belonging to a person who would never be invited to Davos. I have a job, and most of my friends have jobs. None of us would be invited to Davos.
If the WEF wants to know about ‘jobs’, I could tell them a thing or two. But that’s never going to happen.
Speaking for myself, I’m all in favor of jobs, health and inclusion. But if I recall my first grade math correctly, jobs, health and inclusion are three separate takeaways. So in my book, we’re already counting on the other hand’s fingers. Which I was hoping to avoid.
5. AI, technology, industry: race against time and a race against each other
Ursula von der Leyen noted, “From AI to clean tech, from quantum to space, from the Arctic to the South China Sea – the race is on.”
(She didn’t mention the race to go deeper into debt. But that was okay, because the Harvard economist mentioned it.)
As noted, the theme of the conference was ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age’, so hopefully, most of the attendees were intelligent enough to know who Ursala von der Leyen is. She’s President of the European Commission, and according to Wikipedia, she has seven children, which is two more than Donald Trump has.
Since we’re counting things.