Managing Director at BlackRock: "The economic situation is complex, but there is room for optimism"

"For 30 years we were lucky. It was a great time to be a central banker and I was there,“ Alex Brazier, Managing Director at BlackRock, said at Calcalist’s and Bank Leumi’s Mind The Tech conference held in London.

“Think of the economy as an engine - the engine only got stronger, every time there was an economic problem - we just gave more gas and accelerated. There was rapid growth and stable inflation, a dream. But It has changed. The economy car of the Western world encounterd engine problems - it overheated and it needs to slow down. You either have to press the brakes or let the engine warm up. For 30 years we have not faced such a situation.

"Why did the engine start to stall? There are three reasons for this - the first was temporary, because of the coronavirus. Bottlenecks were created, things didn't get to the right place in time. But the more fundamental reason - we are getting older, the aging population means less labor force and many countries are experiencing this. At the same time there was a decrease in available energy sources because of the war between Russia and Ukraine. The third reason is an unstable geopolitical situation, supply chains were damaged and this also led to a slowdown."

You can watch his full remarks in the video above.