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WEF Jobs Reset Summit: Building Back Broader in the Economic Recovery

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The World Economic Forum Jobs Reset Summit 2021 convened over 500 leaders this week from government, business and civil society to shape a new agenda for growth, jobs, skills and equity. The action-focused virtual event focused on laying the foundations of a new economy, one that provides opportunities for all.

“The pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities – without action, we can expect a K-shape recovery. The Jobs Reset Summit and associated initiatives are dedicated to urgently “building back broader” by expanding access to education, reskilling and quality jobs, by embedding gender parity, racial equity and social justice, and by providing a platform for important debates on new growth models, taxation, the economic outlook and job creation,” said Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.

Accelerating the Reskilling Revolution

Launched at the World Economic Forum’s 50th Annual Meeting, the Reskilling Revolution platform aims to provide one billion people with better education, skills and jobs by 2030.

A new alliance—SkillsLink—was announced at the Summit as a core component of the Reskilling Revolution. The alliance, focused on making skills the currency of the labour market, initially comprises 18 multinational companies and online learning providers, representing over 200 million learners worldwide. The alliance will adopt a common language for skills; recognize skills-based credentials; partner for skills-based learning delivery; and adopt and champion skills-based workforce strategies.

Additionally, Ministers of Education joined leaders from technology, online learning businesses and foundations to lay the groundwork for a new initiative on Education 4.0, dedicated to embedding a focus on education as a key part of economic recovery policies.

Good Jobs and the New Economy

An initial 14 companies formed a Partnership for New Work Standards aiming to set a new benchmark for a healthy, resilient and equitable future of work. Participating companies will co-create a framework for good work standards, with input from trade unions and independent experts, make commitments to raise the bar on good work for their sectors, and put a future of work strategy on their board’s agenda. Find out more about the founding companies here.

Building Back Broader: Policy Pathways for an Economic Transformation, a policy brief, was launched at the Jobs Reset Summit. As the world emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the report identifies the most urgent economic and social challenges and lays out concrete response options to shape an inclusive recovery. The areas of focus include fiscal and monetary policy, jobs and wages, education and skills, equity and social justice, building new markets, and managing frontier risks. Across these six areas, the publication emphasizes policies and partnerships that will offset the current trend towards K-shaped recoveries within and between economies and create more inclusive economic and social outcomes.

A quarterly Chief Economists Outlook was also published during the Summit. Based on consultations and surveys with the Forum’s Community of Chief Economists, this edition provides a snapshot of the state of the recovery and provides forecasts on growth, inflation, debt sustainability, the risk of economic scarring and social unrest.

Embedding Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice

The Partnering For Racial Justice In Business coalition, launched at Davos Agenda in January 2021, now comprises 58 organizations, representing 13 industries and 7 million employees. The group advanced its discussions on tackling racism in the workplace and driving systemic change to embed equity in the new economy.

The Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators are a global network of national efforts to close gender gaps and reshape gender parity for the future, supported by the Forum. At this week’s summit, Kazakhstan announced the establishment of an accelerator. The first of its kind in Central Asia, Kazakhstan joins Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Panama and Peru in creating public-private collaborations focused on increasing women’s participation in the workforce, closing the gender pay gap, and helping more women develop in-demand skills and advance into leadership roles.

Finally, the pandemic and its fallout has created an opportunity to increase the ambition level of businesses in making progress on social justice. A broad alliance of business leaders and corporate philanthropies came together at the Summit to better define and achieve ambitious targets on the “S” in ESG.

What Leaders said about Shaping an Inclusive Recovery

The event brought together over 500 leaders from government, business, academia and civil society to shape a new agenda for growth, jobs, skills and equity. Read what they had to say about the event here, with quotes from leading voices including: John Goodwin of The Lego Foundation; Wendy Clark of Dentsu International; Professor Mariana Mazzucato of UCL, Alex Liu of Kearney; Dr. Tariq Al Gurg of Dubai Cares; Sharan Burrow of ITUC; Badr Jafar of Crescent Enterprises; Gabe Dalporto of Udacity; and Lazzat Ramazanova of the National Commission on Women’s Affairs, Family and Demographic Policy of Kazakhstan.

Leaders from business and government are invited to join the key initiatives advanced at the Jobs Reset Summit 2021, namely the Reskilling Revolution, SkillsLink, the Partnership for New Work Standards, Partnering for Racial Justice in Business and the Closing the Gender Gap. Deloitte’s WorldClass initiative became the latest company-led initiative to join the Reskilling Revolution Business Alliance. WorldClass and the Forum encourage submission of innovative and scalable educational solutions on the UpLink platform.

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U.S. bank trouble heralds The End of dollar Reserve system

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The US banking system is broken, stresses ‘The Asia Times’. That doesn’t portend more high-profile failures like Credit Suisse. The central banks will keep moribund institutions on life support.

But the era of dollar-based reserves and floating exchange rates that began on August 15, 1971, when the US severed the link between the dollar and gold, is coming to an end. The pain will be transferred from the banks to the real economy, which will starve for credit.

And the geopolitical consequences will be enormous. The seize-up of dollar credit will accelerate the shift to a multipolar reserve system, with advantage to China’s yuan as a competitor to the dollar.

Gold, the “barbarous relic” abhorred by John Maynard Keynes, will play a bigger role because the dollar banking system is dysfunctional, and no other currency — surely not the tightly-controlled yuan — can replace it. Now at an all-time record price of US$2,000 an ounce, gold is likely to rise further.

The greatest danger to dollar hegemony and the strategic power that it imparts to Washington is not China’s ambition to expand the international role of the yuan.

This crisis is utterly unlike 2008, when banks levered up trillions of dollars of dodgy assets based on “liar’s loans” to homeowners. Fifteen years ago, the credit quality of the banking system was rotten and leverage was out of control. Bank credit quality today is the best in a generation. The crisis stems from the now-impossible task of financing America’s ever-expanding foreign debt.

America’s chronic current account deficits of the past 30 years amount to an exchange of goods for paper: America buys more goods than it sells, and sells assets (stocks, bonds, real estate, and so on) to foreigners to make up the difference.

America now owes a net $18 trillion to foreigners, roughly equal to the cumulative sum of these deficits over 30 years. The trouble is that the foreigners who own US assets receive cash flows in dollars, but need to spend money in their own currencies.

Before 1971, when central banks maintained exchange rates at a fixed level and the United States covered its relatively small current account deficit by transferring gold to foreign central banks at a fixed price of $35 an ounce, none of this was necessary.

The end of the gold link to the dollar and the new regime of floating exchange rates allowed the United States to run massive current account deficits by selling its assets to the world.

In effect, the market worries that buying inflation protection from the US government is like passengers on the Titanic buying shipwreck insurance from the captain. The gold market is too big and diverse to manipulate.

The dollar reserve system will go out not with a bang, but a whimper. The central banks will step in to prevent any dramatic failures. But bank balance sheets will shrink, credit to the real economy will diminish and international lending in particular will evaporate.

Southeast Asia will rely more on its own currencies and the yuan. The dollar frog will boil by slow increments.

It’s fortuitous that Western sanctions on Russia during the past year prompted China, Russia, India and the Persian Gulf states to find alternative financing arrangements. These are not a monetary phenomenon, but an expensive, inefficient and cumbersome way to work around the US dollar banking system.

As dollar credit diminishes, though, these alternative arrangements will turn into permanent features of the monetary landscape, and other currencies will continue to gain ground against the dollar, concludes ‘The Asia Times’.

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Mastering Writing Skills: Write Effectively for Academic and Professional Success

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Most people underestimate the importance of knowing how to write. In school, students are assigned paper after paper. The results help teachers grade their knowledge. But, that’s not the main reason why these are assigned. Essays and other papers give students practice, and a chance to learn effective writing. It’s a lifelong skill that not only serves to land them a passing grade but can also help them boost their professional success later on.

How to Master Your Writing Skills

If you want to make sure that you learn how to write better, both for academic and professional success, here are some tips and tricks for you.

1.Ask Someone to Write for You

The best way to learn how to write is to read what you need to write. If you aim for academic success but don’t know how to craft a paper that gets you an A, get some writing help from a reliable service. Today you can simply go online and request to write my essay and you’ll receive a top-notch assignment. This isn’t just to help you meet a deadline or land a high grade. You can also use it for college learning – to read what a good paper should look like.

When you have a finished piece of writing, this can be your guide. Students often order papers online to meet deadlines or make sure they get a high grade. Even if this is the case, use the opportunity to learn, too – next time you need to craft a similar paper, refer to the one written by an expert to boost your writing skills.

2.Read What You Like

Reading is an amazing way to boost your writing skills. How is this possible, you wonder?

For starters, reading books, articles, other papers, or anything else – can boost your vocabulary. When you read, you also come across different writing styles, giving you ideas for when you need to write.

Even though it might not seem this way when you actually read, reading gives you a lot of useful information that is stored in your subconscious.

3.Practice Writing

If you want to master writing, truly master it, you need practice. Those essay assignments are not enough. You should do some free writing, too. Start your blog or journal, write letters to your peers, join a writing workshop, etc. Just write for the sake of it – practice is very important!

4.Don’t Skimp on the Editing Part

Editing is as important as writing itself – maybe even more important. While some mistakes might be acceptable in school, these are never welcome in professional circles. A single, unintentional mistake can have a devastating effect and ruin the quality or the message in your writing.

Research and writing are tiring, but this is no reason to skip the editing part and submit the work in a rush. If you want to learn to write better, you need to start by editing your work. When you proofread and edit it, you can find the most common mistakes you make and learn how to avoid them.

5.Focus on the Structure

The first draft is often a result of free writing. It’s good to write with the flow without focusing on the details, the mistakes, or the structure. This allows your thought to run without interruptions.

But, you can’t submit the first draft of any writing – not if you want it to be good.

In addition to editing the mistakes out of your writing, focus on the structure, too. Structure makes sure that your ideas get across to those who read the content.

Outlines are very useful for this. Many students see them as a waste of time since they aren’t formally required. However, a good outline can actually cut down the time you spend on editing and formatting your task. It will also make sure that the information in your essay flow and are clear to the reader.

6.Ask for Feedback – and Use It!

Unless you’ve mastered the skill of writing, you’ll make mistakes. This is how you learn, and there’s no shame in it. It’s also the time when feedback can really help you. Ask your mentors, your peers, your parents, and friends to take a look at your writing. Ask them to be blunt and tell you what flaws they find in your writing.

You might not accept all of their notes and feedback, but learning how others view and understand your writing is very useful.

Wrapping Up

Writing requires some talent but most importantly, it requires practice. It is something you learn in time, which is why it’s assigned at every academic level.  So, practice, practice, and practice some more. This is how you’ll master the skill!

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FORBES: Where is the Russian banking crisis?

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“Sanctions were supposed to kill the Russian financial sector. It did, and it didn’t. Where is the Russian banking crisis?” – FORBES is perplexed.

Yes, sanctions have hurt Russia’s financial institutions. But a Russian banking crisis, one that looks like we have seen in the U.S. recently with Silicon Valley Bank and in Switzerland with Credit Suisse, has not occurred.

There were never any runs on Russian banks. The ruble strengthened. And while most banks are protected by the state – led by Sberbank and VTB – the Russian Central Bank has spent much of the last decade working to clean up the financial system.

For this reason, Russian banks have survived the West’s sanctions regime and stock market delistings better than anyone would have imagined. For a cynical Russian, watching Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse burn down while their bankers are gainfully employed is like smirking before the camera lens in front of a burning building.

Had the sanctions come at the time when the Russian Central Bank was cleaning up its “zombie banks” – all hell would have broken loose. But seeing how much of that mess was swept away prior to the 2022 sanctions regimes taking hold, Russia’s banks remain safe and sound, even if Russian investors in those banks have lost their shirt.

The sanctions policy, the hardest ever taken out on Russia, is 13 months old. New ones pop up regularly. It is unclear what can possibly be next, as Russia’s financial institutions have already been largely cut off from the Western system.

Russia’s financial sector, and its banks at home, aren’t making headlines like banks in the U.S. and Europe are. They have withstood the onslaught of sanctions.

They’ve lost their European and U.S. assets, which will not be recovered for years to come, if ever. Sberbank CEO Herman Gref said in press reports that Sberbank is “the most attacked entity” in the country, which experiences “unprecedented challenges in terms of complexity and power.” He said Sberbank lost nearly all of its assets abroad, leading to massive write-downs.

Yet, Russian president Vladimir Putin smirks at the burning buildings of Credit Suisse and the lost $200 billion in Silicon Valley Bank deposits, needing unprecedented FDIC support to protect account holders. The bank is now insolvent. His biggest banks remain only because most of Russia’s banks over the years have been folded and rendered insolvent. And a danger to the Russian financial system was liquidated.

“Thanks to the professional actions of our banking community, government agencies, and the efforts of the central bank, I want to emphasize that we managed to overcome all these (sanctions) difficulties in general,” Putin reportedly said in Moscow earlier this month after meeting with Sberbank’s CEO. He said that Sberbank’s current stable position was “a good signal for the whole economy.”

With sanctions expected to remain for a long time to come, will Russia’s heavily sanctioned banks fold one day, too?

“Who knows what will happen in Russia, because we all only know what we read in the press and what we read in the press is that Russia did a smart job handling their banks pre-sanctions and so after sanctions they have managed okay,” says famous commodities investor Jim Rogers from his home in Singapore, who has been a director of Russian fertilizer company PhosAgro. “We saw the ruble go down when sanctions were first imposed, then it went up. So in that case alone, the market tells me that somebody in Russia did something right,” he says.

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