MacroScope

CEOs are, of course, ebullient by nature.

So it's no surprise that confidence about growth prospects is bouncing back as emerging markets continue to barrel along and even sluggish developed economies show signs of recovery.

What is, perhaps, remarkable is just how far confidence has returned. The latest survey of 1,201 company bosses by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows it is back almost to pre-crisis levels.

But how much should we trust the bouncing boardroom Tiggers? There are also plenty of Eeyores in Davos, warning about fiscal deficits, growing economic imbalances and the rising threat from inflation.

Jim O'Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who coined the term BRICs back in 2001, is adding four new countries to the elite club of emerging market economies. But does his new edifice have the same solid foundations?

In future, the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, China and India will be merged with those of Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and South Korea under the banner “growth markets,” O'Neill told the Financial Times.

Hmmm.  Doesn't quite grab you like BRICs, does it? The Guardian helpfully offers an amended branding banner of  "Bric 'n Mitsk" (geddit?). But which ever way you cut it, it's hard to see a flood of investment conferences and funds floating off under the new moniker.

The programme may strike a different  note -- this year's Davos is apparently all about Shared Norms for the New Reality -- but much of the discussion at the 41st World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos this month will have a distinctly familiar ring to it.

Last January, the five-day talkfest in the Swiss Alps was dominated by Greece's near-death experience at the hands of the bond market and recriminations over the role of bankers in the financial crisis, as well as worries about China's rapid economic ascent and a lot of calls for a new trade deal.

Fast forward 12 months and not much has changed.

Ireland has joined Greece in the euro zone's intensive care unit and Portugal and  Spain are getting round-the-clock monitoring. The annual round of bankers' bonuses is once again stirring up trouble. China looms larger than ever on the global stage, after overtaking Japan in 2010 to become the world's second-biggest economy. And trade ministers who signally failed to make headway last year say they really must get down to business when they meet on the sidelines of Davos this time round.

Yesterday evening Reuters.com streamed an interview with renowned economist Nouriel Roubini live from our studio at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Reuters columinst Felix Salmon presented the interview and all the questions he put to Roubini were sent in by visitors to our Davos 2010 live blog.

Greece's economic woes, U.S. GDP and the trustworthiness of statistics coming out of China were just some of the issues being discussed. If you missed it, or if you want to see it again, watch the interview in the player below.

Being bullish is, of course, part of the job if you are a CEO.

But sentiment really is improving. The annual PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 1,200 industry bosses from 52 countries shows a nice pick in in the short- and long-term confidence curves, with 31 percent of those questioned now "very confident" about revenue prospects for the next 12 months and 81 percent plain-vanilla confident.

More remarkable, perhaps, confidence about sales looking out 3 years is now back up around its historic highs.

Many happy returns or midlife crisis?

The annual talkfest in the Alps records its 40th birthday this year but the rich and powerful will hardly be in celebratory mood as problems pile up in the post-crisis world.

How to withdraw the trillions of dollars in stimulus that helped the world avoid a rerun of the Great Depression, without spooking markets all over again?

What to do in the face of the world's lukewarm response to the hot topic of climate change?

Amid the sessions on managing risk, sustainable consumption and lessons from the recession, it’s refreshing to see that the World Economic Forum has carved out time to discuss the world of literature at its “summer Davos” meeting in Dalian, China. The aim of its panel on “Great Books for a Globalized World” is to ask, which classic and contemporary books from different cultures are essential for developing the personal values and professional philosophies of future leaders?

We asked one of the participants in the panel, Xie Youshun, professor of Chinese literature at the Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, China , to give us his list. It’s published below, right above the box where we invite your suggestions for essential reading for future leaders.

1. New History by Chien Mu
2. Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy by Mou Zongsan (aka Mou Tsung-san)
3. Heavy Body (collection of essays) by Liu Xiaofeng, Shanghai Renmin Press 1999
4. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
5. China 1957 (novel) by You Fengwei, Shanghai Wenyi Press 2001
6. Representations of the Intellectual by Edward Said
7. Face and Peach Blossom (2004 novel, aka “Renmian Taohua”) by Ge Fei
8. The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
9. Gates of Eden, by Morris Dickstein
10. The Lesson of this Century by Karl Popper

Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger will be live-blogging from the “Summer Davos” meeting in Dalian China. We’ll also be republishing related links of interest, from Twitter and elsewhere on the Web.

London is cheaper and warmer, at least compared with Davos, says London Mayor Boris Johnson.

"The fall in the pound is of huge value to London's exports and all sterling-denominated assets. We're seeing a very impressive effect here. We take advantage of the upside and the upside is that the pound is competitive," Johnson told Reuters.

"And everybody in Davos, once they finish this massive negotiation of egos, this complete vanity, should come to London. It's considerably cheaper and considerably warmer."

Was letting Lehman go down the biggest mistake of the crisis? Many, including George Soros in the Financial Times, have argued that letting Lehman go down sowed panic to markets, consumers and businesses.

Not so fast, says Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, in an interview in Davos:

"My position is this is a typical error of historical understanding in which a single event is blamed for much more than it can possibly have caused. You can say ‘Hank Paulson is to blame for my troubles' and if you can change one thing in the story it would have a happy ending.

It's like saying if only Princip had not shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 there wouldn't have been a First World War.