Andrew Busch, Economic Futurist and 1st Chief Market Intelligence Officer for the US Government, hoped to give some context for the audience when it came to the economy, allowing people to look five to ten years down the road.

He described the $14 trillion economic stimulus provided by the US Government that came extremely quickly, helping the US economy to grow its way out of the pandemic. But the speed of the growth came at the cost of high inflation.

Labour costs had gone up, particularly in the service industries, with people post-pandemic looking to travel. Labour shortages had hit the US hard, with two jobs available for every person seeking a job, he said.

This was an interesting indicator for the economy, with recession being predicted by some.

“If you’re thinking about a recession in the United States, it’s really hard to have a recession when the demand for workers is so strong,” he said.

The Fed’s raising of short-term rates and releasing treasury securities that they had bought during the pandemic back into the market had caused a lot of problems, because it happened so quickly.

“Volatility is going to continue for some time as the Fed raise rates,” he said.

Andrew felt the drop in oil prices was a good thing for US consumers. The global supply chain was normalising and the economy was equalising back to where it used to be. Retail sales were also positive for the US.

The big recovery for tourism was good news.

“Globally we have seen the US recover faster as far as spending on tourism goes. Hopefully this will continue,” he said.

Looking to the future, Andrew felt most economists were “awful” at predicting the economy.

“Go back to 2021. What were they predicting for 2022? 3% GDP growth. What did we get? Negative growth for the first two quarters,” he said.

They were not including the “X-factor” which their models did not pick up, events that could not necessarily be predicted, such as infectious diseases, short term war and disputed elections. X - factors that needed to be considered for the future included: China assisting Russia; Russia using nuclear weapons; bird flu going human-to-human; the US going into default; and President Biden possibly having a health incident.

Andrew talked about where he saw growth opportunities.

“‘Work from Home’ or ‘Work from Anywhere’ is averaging about 1 and a half days per week... What does that mean for tourism? It means you get four-day weekends. That’s fantastic for tourism,” he said.

Andrew worried about the enormous debt the US economy was under, at $31 trillion which he called “truly crazy”.

“By 2025, the amount of money that we will spend in the US on supporting the debt will be larger than our defence spending, at $800 billion a year. Something is going to break,” Andrew said.

At some point the US would have to raise taxes or cut spending, or both.

Opportunities for investment in the long term would come out of climate adaptation, where people would need to start thinking about commercial real estate in coastal locations as well as the location of their supply chains in such areas.

Crypto currencies would also provide opportunities for places such as Cayman, Andrew said.

“What an opportunity to come up with a regulatory framework… You could set the standard for the rest of the world,” he confirmed.