The Buttonwood Gathering is The Economist’s flagship finance and economics event.

Now in its third year, The Buttonwood Gathering is renowned for bringing together leading executives, prominent academics and top regulators to tackle the biggest issues facing global finance.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the outlook for the global economy was dire. Today, the worst seems to have passed. And yet-the huge global imbalances that were the backdrop to the financial crisis in 2007 are arguably worse than ever. Countries from America to Japan sag under the weight of enormous debts which, since the crisis, have only grown bigger. In Europe, tension between highly indebted “peripheral” countries and the big European economies that are expected to rescue them threatens the future of the euro itself.

Meanwhile, emerging economies like China and Brazil continue to surge forward and threaten to overheat. The result is a complex shift in the balance of economic power-not simply from the West to the “rest”, but from countries lacking in natural resources to those rich in them, from those deeply indebted to those with savings to spare.

Is the ascendance of emerging economies, especially China, inevitable? How will global imbalances be resolved-and who will benefit? What are the consequences of the rich world’s addiction to debt? Who are the winners and losers in a world of scarce natural resources?

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