Posted on October 14, 2014 by iMFdirect

By iMFdirect editors

What a week it’s been.  Practical and existential questions on how to do good and be good for the sake of the global economy and finance dominated the seminars at the IMF’s Annual Meetings in Washington.

Our editors fanned out to cover what the panelists, moderators, and audiences said in a variety of seminars, and two big themes caught our eye.

Jobs & growth

With the global economy stuck in a low growth, high unemployment rut, how to reverse these trends is a hot topic.

The average unemployment rate in developed economies stands at 8.5 percent, and among young people it’s 13 percent, Christine Lagarde said in a day-long seminar on jobs and growth.

Inequality has reached critical levels.

“The world’s richest 85 individuals control as much wealth as the world’s poorest 3.5 billion people,” she said, citing research from Oxfam.

Even economists know money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a country bridges and roads.  While spending on infrastructure is a good for growth, who pays and what it means for the public purse is another matter.

And more important, can it over come the world economy’s lethargy, particularly in Europe?

“Yes, yes, yes”, affirmed Larry Summers of the University of Harvard.

Others were a bit wary.

“Will it come at the expense of something else that is valuable for growth, such as education, or research and development?” said Christina Romer of the University of California at Berkeley.