The listed topic for this session was ‘can we withstand a major global shock?’ I'm going to take a few liberties with that title and re-frame it as ‘how do we withstand shocks?’ For it is inevitable that ‘shocks’ will come along 1 One way or another the human condition is characterised by things happening that were not well predicted and for which we are sometimes less prepared than we might, in hindsight, have wished to be.
So the question is not if such events will occur, but when. There is a business cycle, and there always will be. There is a cycle of fear and greed in financial markets; it was ever thus.