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From Brexit to Trump: Why conventional wisdom at Davos is always wrong

Did the global elite's devotion to borderless capitalism sow the seeds of a populist backlash?

The populist surge of 2016 is seen by many as a repudiation of the economic policies advocated for decades by global executives in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: Bloomberg)
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The populist surge of 2016 is seen by many as a repudiation of the economic policies advocated for decades by global executives in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: Bloomberg)

Matthew Campbell and Simon Kennedy | Bloomberg
Kenneth Rogoff can pinpoint the moment he started to grow concerned Donald Trump would be the next US president: It was when Rogoff’s fellow attendees at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last January said it could never happen. “A joke I’ve told 1,000 people in the months since leaving Davos is that the conventional wisdom of Davos is always wrong,” says the Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. “No matter how improbable, the event most likely to happen is the opposite of whatever the Davos consensus is.”
 
The repeated failure of business and