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“Ten years on from the global financial crisis (and nine years into a U.S. expansion), economies remain at risk.” No, not our favorite quote…but an important one from the World Economic Forum (WEF). Every year, WEF gathers for its Global Competitiveness Report. Think of it as a stat sheet, ranking 137 economies around the world on 12 factors including quality of institutions, education, infrastructure, and innovation. This year, Switzerland, the U.S., and Singapore took the podium (in that order). But there was a darker underlying message. Put simply, global financial infrastructure is “ill prepared for the next wave of innovation and automation.” Economies like China and India have propped up their balance sheetswith bad business loans, doing their best impressions of the 2007 mortgage bubble. The thing is, if banks were “too big to fail” back then, what about now? The world’s 30 largest banks now hold $43 trillion in assets versus the $30 trillion they held in 2006.

John-Henry takes a few minutes to explain why Yuval Noah Harari, a professor who works with the World Economic Forum, uses the terms "useless people" and "useless class" in public discourse so frequently.