"People are worried about where the world is going-and with good reason".

The EIU's annual economic forecast, held at the International House of Japan in Roppongi on Tuesday 16th September 2008, gave us little reason to doubt the significance of this statement. Led by Graham Davis, the director of EIU Japan's corporate network, the seminar painted a particularly gloomy economic picture-of the world's economy as a whole, of global commodities, of politics in Japan and of an imminent slump in China. In the first of 3 keynote speeches, Robert Ward, EIU's director of global forecasting, went as far as to say that "the world has ended... there will be no end to the financial instability". Referring to the still-declining US market, Ward announced "we are in the midst of a nominal decline bigger than that of the great depression of the 1930s". In case anyone failed to grasp the import of Ward's message, he offered the 100-strong audience two acronyms to take home. There will be no more "NICE"-non-inflationary consistent expansion-he claimed. Instead, things will become even more "VILE"-volatile, inflationary and little expansion. These words raised some laughter, but the meaning was starkly clear.
And what of Japan? Graham Davis took to the stage to predict that, although the country is still generating wealth (predicted to come 2nd only to the UK over the next 13 years) there will be no good news for the Japanese economy in the next 12 months. Last year over 6 trillion yen was sucked from the national money pot and Davis argued "the wind has come out of Japan's sails".

Although the corporate and financial sectors are in generally good health, the economy is still vulnerable it seems. "We really need a decent government to address long-term structural problems" Davis postulated

Even China could not escape the line of EIU fire. Duncan Innes-Ker, the senior editor of the Economist China, talked of "market weaknesses" and the great "Olympic curse". He warned the audience to watch out for the 3 Rs over the coming months: Regulations, Renmibi, and Raw materials. China, it seems, may not be the rampant growth story we have all heard about.
Since the EIU seminar took place on the very morning that the world's fourth-largest US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, declared bankruptcy, it is perhaps little wonder the EIU audience will remember "VILE" for a very long time.

The seminar was filmed by the Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School of Business and is available to students.