The Cayman Business Outlook, a set fixture in Cayman’s conference calendar, today is debating how politics, economics and technology will impact our lives in the future, at the Westin Casuarina Resort on Seven Mile Beach.
The one day conference, which according to conference host Anwer Sunderji, chairman of Fidelity Group, is aimed at a cross-section of Cayman’s population rather than just financial services professionals, will attempt to capture how the fundamental changes of this decade are going to profoundly influence how we live our lives.
These changes range from the impact of social media and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe to the question whether the influence of the US as a global superpower is going to wane and give way to a resurging China.
Keynote speaker George Friedman, founder and chairman of Stratfor and author of The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years, argues that “the United States is far more powerful than most people think” and its problems are “trivial compared to the extent of its power.” Despite the recent crisis, Mr. Friedman predicts America will dominate every sector including the economy, technology, politics and military in the 21st century, whereas China will suffer from political fragmentation and economic crisis and Europe and Russia may break up.
His views will be contrasted by Gideon Rachnan, Financial Times journalist and author of Zero Sum Future, who has a different take on how the US, Europe and China will impact global stability in the future.
In his book Mr. Rachman retraces how the win-win assumptions of globalisation are slowly pushed aside by a new zero-sum logic according to which one country’s gain appears to be another country’s loss. The zero-zum logic gives rise to conflicts within the European Union, a growing rivalry between the US and China, and nationalism and protectionism worldwide. In this new world of anxiety, which is less prosperous and less stable, it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with global problems from resource shortages and climate change to nuclear proliferation and terrorism, Mr. Rachnan believes.
Economist Alex Tabarrok, author of the blog “Marginal Revolution” will discuss how the economy reacts to these global changes and social media analyst Anthony Williams will explain how social media have changed the landscape of the 21st century.
From a purely local perspective delegates can expect Premier McKeeva Bush’s outlook for Cayman in the year ahead and a local panel debating Cayman’s report card in terms of good governance and transparency. The panel is moderated by former Monetary Authority Chairman Tim Ridley and will feature Governor Duncan Taylor, PPM Chairman Antony Duckworth, Auditor General Alastair Swarbrick, and Information Commissioner Jennifer Dilbert.
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