Davos delegates with heads in the clouds must tackle financial crisis on the ground

Since the last crisis, countless opportunities have been missed to clean up banking and address structural problems in the world economy

When the big names from business, government and central banking meet over the champagne flutes in Davos this week, the official theme is "mastering the fourth industrial revolution". The World Economic Forum has asked participants to chew over the rise of the robots and what it means for every aspect of human lives from jobs to the environment. No doubt their conversations will be fascinating.

But while Davos delegates chat about hypotheticals between canapes, beyond the mountain resort some very real problems are playing out. Wild swings on stock markets, a plummeting oil price and patchy economic news frrom the world's two biggest economies, China and the US, have raised the spectre of a fresh financial crisis.

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