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&lt;p&gt;While many of the attendees of the World Economic Forum at Davos were busy celebrating a brighter economic future on the horizon (and getting wasted at glamorous McKinsey parties), a small but vocal group delivered a more somber verdict: the world economy isn&#39;t nearly as well-off as the optimistic Davos consensus seems to suggest.  For consultants at firms not named McKinsey, it&#39;s a solemn prospect indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;float: left;&quot; src=&quot;http://www.vault.com/VCM/articles/wef.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; width=&quot;215&quot; height=&quot;231&quot;&gt;&quot;The fundamentals haven&amp;rsquo;t been addressed at all,&quot; warns Barrie Wilkinson, senior partner at Oliver Wyman&#39;s London office and author of the report &lt;em&gt;The Financial Crisis of 2015: An Avoidable History&lt;/em&gt;.  &quot;The things that caused the previous crisis&amp;mdash;loose monetary policy and trade imbalances&amp;mdash;they&amp;rsquo;re actually bigger now than they were then.&quot;   Wilkinson&#39;s warnings come in stark contrast to the &quot;very positive mood&quot; on display by many chief executives and government leaders at this year&#39;s summit.  From David Cameron to Dmitri Medvedev and even to Jim Flaherty, Canadian finance minister, optimism ran high that the world had learned the lessons of the recent economic crisis.  &quot;The systemic reforms that have been accomplished are significant,&quot; Flaherty asserted.  &quot;We need to communicate better that financial institutions globally are operating on a very different basis today, that they are operating with higher capital and are better regulated.&quot;  Consultants from McKinsey, selected to help write this year&#39;s World Economic Forum annual report, suggested that the fundamentals of the global economy were so good that it could support a $100 trillion credit expansion (double today&#39;s figure) &quot;without increasing the risk of a major crisis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wilkinson, for one, couldn&#39;t disagree more.  He argues that the financial mechanisms that govern much of the world economy need to be fundamentally improved; recent measures for reform, he says, are cosmetic in nature and thereby incapable of deterring a repeat crisis in the years ahead.  Such a crisis, the Oliver Wyman man suggests, would be too much for the global economy to handle.  &quot;If there is another banking crisis, the Western governments are just in no shape to stabilize the system, they&amp;rsquo;ve expended their entire arsenal on the last round of fiscal injections,&quot; Wilkinson said.  Other consultants expressed similar pessimism or, at least, cautious optimism. &quot;The good news is in the U.S. we&amp;rsquo;re seeing renewed growth,&quot; said Joe Saddi, chairman at Booz &amp;amp; Co.   &quot;But there is still an unemployment situation and it remains to be seen if there is a credible strategy for dealing with the deficit.&quot;  Add these concerns those of Bain chairman Orit Gadiesh (gov&#39;t vs. business, world water shortages, demographic trends) Ernst &amp;amp; Young CEO Jim Turley (demographic changes, economic trends), and Roland Berger CEO Dr. Martin Wittig (wayward business strategies) and you&#39;re looking at a bona fide opposition voice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So who to believe?  Are consultants just a bunch of nay-saying perma-bears, or are they more likely to cast an objective eye at the forces shaping today&#39;s global business dynamics?  On the other hand, are politicians like French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde (&quot;we learned from our mistakes and we learned from the crisis&quot;) speaking with economic data or poll data in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One thing is for certain: we&#39;re about to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For more information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; Bloomberg: Lonely Analyst Warns of 2015 Bank Crisis Amid &#39;Upbeat&#39; Davos&lt;br&gt; Business Insider: World Economic Forum Says We Need $100 Trillion More Credit&lt;br&gt; Bloomberg: Geithner Says U.S. Economic Recovery Still Too Weak to Reduce Unemployment&lt;/p&gt;

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