Christine Lagarde's view of the future ... and mine

Here's an example of me posting something because it gets it into play, and removes a piece of paper from my pending tray, even though I haven't achieved a complete analysis.

I watched Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, give the annual BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on 4 Feb 14.  Her title was A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century
- the text is on the IMF site.

Here are the notes I made as I watched:

• digital revolution
• hyper-connectivity
• tweet and the Arab Spring
• we can eradicate poverty
• we could have more frequent financial crises
• the UN recognises almost 4,000 non-government organisations
• with more connection we have less consensus
• three big challenge areas:

1. demography & migration
2. environment:  water, food, energy - climate change - pay for the damage caused
3. income inequality - economists see importance now - inclusive growth

• global interest before self-interest
• rekindle the Bretton Woods spirit

Yes, that's it, that's my notes.  The speech reached across the world and way out into the future.  It's worth reading the whole text via the link above.

My difficulty is that even the IMF still seems to see growth, ok, inclusive growth, as the answer to all things with the implication that it is a sustainable model into the medium term (many decades) future.  

I simply don't agree.  It seems to me that the emerging economies are being guided, beguiled, suckered or forced into repeating the same mistakes the developed economies have made in their financial management.  The program on China by Robert Peston this week only reinforces that view.

We need a business model for the world that is 'beyond growth'.  I say 'beyond' because clearly we need some more growth to climb out of the current mess, if that is even possible (and Moneyweek says for the UK it's not - we will apparently collapse like Greece).  However we should be thinking now about the multi-decade strategy that creates stability and prosperity (and equality) without relying solely on continued growth for ever.

Watch this space (blog) for further thinking.