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"Imagine that you could construct the ultimate Davos panel. ... How about this? Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Fritz Schumacher, all no longer with us, kept in line by the IMF's Christine Lagarde, thankfully still alive and kicking, and one of the standout performers last week.
"The capitalist class gathered in Davos has spent the last few days wringing their hands about unemployment and the lack of demand for their goods. What they seem incapable of recognising is that these are inevitable in a globalised economy. There is a tendency towards over-investment, over-production and a falling rate of profit."
"That's a gloomy analysis, Karl. Wages are growing quite fast in some parts of the world, such as China, but I'd agree that inequality is a threat. Maynard, do you think things are as bleak as Karl says?"
"No I don't Christine. I think the problem is serious but soluble. ... [But] the balance between fiscal and monetary policy is wrong; currency wars are brewing; the financial sector remains largely unreformed, and aggregate demand is weak because workers are not getting a fair share of their productivity gains."
"Some of my friends in the Austrian school of economics would favour doing nothing, in the hope of a cleansing of the system, but I wouldn't. Unlike Maynard, I wouldn't support measures that would increase the bargaining power of trade unions, and I've never been keen on public works as a response to a slump. ... I think monetary policy should be set in order to hit a target for nominal output – the increase in the size of the economy, unadjusted for inflation."
"I am greatly disturbed by the way the debate is being framed. There is an obsession with growth at all costs, regardless of the environmental costs. Climate change was rarely mentioned in Davos: this after a year of extreme weather events. It is frightening that so little attention has been paid to global warming, and almost criminally neglectful of governments not to use ultra-low interest rates to invest in green technologies, Christine."
"If we carry on as we are, the next generation will be 'roasted, toasted, fried and grilled'."
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