RIYADH (Dispatches) – Wall Street’s top financiers struck a pessimistic tone about the global economy at a flagship gathering in Saudi Arabia aimed at deal brokering, as a the Zionist regime’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip goes on.
The annual event is typically used by attendees to build relationships with some of Saudi Arabia’s biggest companies and its $778-billion sovereign wealth fund, drawn by the promise of deals as the kingdom seeks to wean its economy off oil.
But an escalation in the Gaza Strip into a broader conflict overshadowed the event dubbed “Davos in the Desert”, a nod to the annual gathering of world leaders and corporate bosses in the Swiss Alps.
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon encouraged Saudi Arabia not to abandon a United States-led initiative for the kingdom to establish official relations with the occupying regime.
“Despite what happened in Israel, I urge you all to keep up that effort,” Dimon told the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh. “It is the only way to get there with some leadership from Saudi Arabia, for the folks of the Middle East.”
Saudi Arabia is putting U.S.-backed plans to normalize ties with the Zionist regime on ice, two sources familiar with Riyadh’s thinking said, signaling a rapid rethinking of its foreign policy.
Geopolitical tensions heightened by the Middle East conflict pose the biggest threat to the world economy, World Bank President Ajay Banga said.
“There is so much going on in the world and geopolitics in the wars that you’re seeing and what just happened recently in Israel and Gaza. At the end of the day, when you put all this together, I think the impact on economic development is even more serious,” Banga said.
Although the globe’s top financiers dwelt little on the conflict, speaking instead about topics such as artificial intelligence, the economic fallout of war combined with record debts created a bleak backdrop.
“There’s no question if these things are not resolved, it probably means more insecurity, which means society is going to be fearful ... and ... we see contractions in our economies,” BlackRock Chairman and CEO Laurence Fink said.
Fink was flanked on a panel at FII by bank CEOs including JPMorgan’s Dimon, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, and Citi’s Jane Fraser. They spoke about topics including women in the workplace but also the implications of rising interest rates.
Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, said he was pessimistic.
“If you take the time horizon, the monetary policies that we’re going to see and so on, will have greater effects on the world,” Dalio said. “And you look at the world gaps, so it’s difficult to be optimistic on that.”