INTERNATIONAL chartered financial analyst (CFA) Jay Taparia says the global recession will last for another four years.“People ask, ‘how long do you think the global recession will last?’ I was going to say about two to three years but now I’ve extended it to four years. “We have a lot of global debt, a lot of pension liability levels, the cost of living is increasing more than incomes, and there is the issue of money being spent that should not be spent,” Taparia told said. His prediction came during a lecture on What The World Has Learned And What It Is Still Learning: Global Forecasting, last Wednesday at Frank Collymore Hall.Taparia, the managing director of his company Sanskar Investments, said, “You have to ask the question: why is it the economists failed to predict the last nine of the past 11 recessions?“That is the biggest question. . . . So what really should our process be and how should we forecast? Well, instead of relying on one statistic, why not put several of them together and come up with a conclusion?” Taparia told participants mainly from the financial sector.He said also, “Half of the jobs gone during this recession will never come back. That is the reality . . . but the problem is, it is going to get worse. We are going to be risk managers first. You can read the numbers all you want [but] there is something called event risk that you will never be able to predict – that is the risk we take with our investments,” he said.Elizabeth Morgan, country manager for CMMB Barbados Limited, said her company was doing a lot to educate both staff and the general public. She said it was the level of attendance that was disappointing, however. (MM)
