Ep 106: The Global Financial Crisis - The Mathematical Causes

This week on the podcast we are tackling something dear to all our hearts, money.The Global Financial Crisis has hit many people hard, with the resultant economic recession causing job losses, stock market crashes and company failures. But what started it all? Why are we in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?I spoke to Nick Davis from the World Economic Forum to answer some of these questions and to toss up ideas on how we might emerge from the crisis. The World Economic Forum is an independent international organisation committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Nick is based in Geneva, Switzerland and is Associate Director and a Global Leadership Fellow within the World Economic Forum Scenario Planning Team. The team examines possible world scenarios that could arise in the future. The scenarios are not attempts to predict the future; rather, they aim to sketch the boundaries of the plausible. They are built on a thorough analysis of factors – social, political, economic, environmental, technological – that could shape the future environment of a given business, region or policy area. They explore the possibly diverse eventualities of how the world might look if the most uncertain and important drivers unfold in different ways. Some of the scenarios they have looked at include the world's ageing population, the future of engineering and construction and what the world's economic systems might look like post-crisis.