(Nov 18): A decade of playing vigorous sports, coupled with poor sleeping and working habits, slowly resulted in a slip-disc problem for Howie Lee that required surgery.
Similarly, events such as the US-China trade war, Brexit, the unrests in Hong Kong, tepid growth even amid a low interest rate environment in many economies did not occur overnight. Rather, their genesis can be traced to the global financial crisis, says Lee, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, speaking at a recent forum organised by The Edge Singapore.
“The world never recovered from the 2008 crisis,” says Lee, who received a hearty round of applause after disclosing that he had had the operation done just days before the forum. Unfortunately, the world economy is not ready to recover as quickly as Lee did from his recent surgery. The outlook, he says, is bleak.