OECD has the right recipe for the global economy

Singapore

THE "new mediocre" as an epithet to describe the global economy suggests a fatalistic resignation to sombre world circumstances - akin to a dull acquiescence in the inevitability of terrorists routinely blowing people up at European airports or railway stations.

For this reason, I believe it is a phrase to be avoided. My fellow panellists at a discussion I moderated at a March 24 session of the Boao Forum - the annual Asia-focused economic symposium in Hainan, southern China - joined me in rejecting the implicit pessimism in the panel's title: "The looming new mediocre". Instead, we focused on some positive features of the world economy.