Leave the complications in the lobby

TODAY (Thursday, June 20), The Manila Times will hold its annual Midyear Economic Forum, which is usually one of our most popular events. I will be moderating the roundtable discussions among the speakers as I usually do. While this is one of the more enjoyable items on my vast menu of work functions, I do find it a bit frustrating, particularly in our forums where the focus is on the broader economy.

The reason for this is that the main product of forums like these, whether one of ours or someone else's, is a lot of sunshine blown up everyone's skirt. I understand why, of course; when the implied aspiration is something big, such as "growing the economy" or "making energy sustainable" (the broad topic of the last big forum I attended), these events are more pep rallies than substantive examinations of relevant issues. And that's not entirely a bad thing; if the intended consequence is to motivate people, it's best to keep things positive and save the discussions about possible points of failure for when details become unavoidable.