Anxiety in the air as Davos World Economic Forum kicks off

DAVOS, Switzerland — As stock markets around the world took another dive amid concerns over plunging oil prices and China’s slowdown, anxiety clouded the air in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, where the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting kicked off Wednesday.

With Europe’s main indexes down an additional 3 percent or so, and many around the world officially in bear territory, powerful global executives in Davos voiced a high degree of concern over the outlook for the global economy.

Biden turned to the theme of the 45-year-old annual gathering of political and business leaders in the Alps — the Fourth Industrial Revolution — and expressed hope that it would produce “far more winners than losers” in his speech at a conference where roughly two-thirds of the 2,400-plus participants are business leaders.

[...] as for consumers, Sorrell said, they remain wary nearly eight years after the global financial crisis saw the collapse of many banking groups and triggered the deepest recession since World War II.

Min Zhu, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, which cut its global growth forecast on Tuesday, said political uncertainties are behind much of the recent market volatility, and the reason for companies’ reluctance to invest $7 trillion or so of cash lying in the banks.

The plunge in oil prices was also identified as a growing threat to the world’s goal to reduce emissions.

The head of the International Energy Agency, which advises oil-importing countries, said the drop in costs for oil and gas threatens to reduce governments’ incentives to improve energy efficiency — in transportation networks, for example — as well as the installation of renewable-energy plants.

Fatih Birol says the push for energy efficiency is motivated less by environmental concerns than by an interest in saving money, which is disappearing as fossil fuels become cheaper.