The modern global economy is defying not merely forecasts but the very historical logic upon which those forecasts are typically built.

Once a year, the small Alpine town of Davos transforms into a metonym for global diplomacy. Heads of state, central banks, technology executives, and leaders of civil society descend upon it not just to speak, but to signal.

There are times in history when the global economy appears to mutter beneath its own breath. These are moments when the real story is not proclaimed but insinuated, when the story is written not on a page but in the palimpsest beneath it.