(Prosperity - Laura E Kirkpatrick)
Special Davos Edition
Does the writers' strike leave you jonesing for visions of the beautiful and powerful, and the invite to the Vanity Fair Party at Craft hasn't arrived yet?
Look no further than Davos, Switzerland. January 23-27 saw more power wattage than all of the Oscars combined (even if Al Gore got to go to both last year) meet there with the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. This party is more Skull and Bones than Pirates of the Caribbean – it's a meeting of the people who really hold the power – economic and social – in our expanding global society.
The goals set here, and the conversation held both on and off the record, create the agenda for almost every facet of business, finance and any economy around the globe– or as they put it, "an interdisciplinary and systemic view of the major economic, political, societal and technological forces currently at work in the world." Unlike the star-lettes and lads walking down a red carpet, these folks dictate so much more than what style ABS will be knocking off this season. What they decide may directly influence whether the everyday person can afford a knock-off or not. For more on the goals set by the World Economic Forum, view the Millennium Development Goals.
Participants included world leaders, scions of business, economic geniuses and more than a handful of Nobel Prize winners. They met to discuss the roles of technology, business and politics in improving the global society. And while the insults may have been polysyllabic and civilly delivered (gotta love translators), with the current economic problems, there were still some barbs flying.
On the Economy: George Soros - one of my heroes – declared open season on the Fed, by stating the dollar dead as the reserve currency. "The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom," Soros said. "It's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency. . . We need a sheriff, we need a new sheriff, not the Washington consensus."
India basically wore a "You Never Were My Boyfriend" t-shirt - telling the conference on the first day that China had overtaken the US as its main trading partner – protecting India from the economic instability of the times. China however, was more hopeful of a global relationship and recovery. The overall tone of discussions were at worst pessimistic (the US is headed for a recession lasting greater than a year in length), and at best, cautious. But no matter what, current US policy took a beating.
From Soros to the head of the International Monetary Fund, there was a demand for intervention. As The Guardian points out, everyone seems to have rediscovered Keynes General Theory and John Maynard Keynes' view of interventionist policy, where governments wield fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, booms and depressions. The idea is that a weak economy can be strengthened by a government taking measures to increase demand by increasing its expenditures (including deficit spending) and managing a consumer friendly interest rate
While we looking things up - here's a breakdown of a couple of terms that were thrown around a lot:
Decoupling – In terms of the current markets, it's shifting reliance on American trade, protecting countries from aftershocks of a possible recession in the United States. Everyone (except for India) agreed that there was too much connection between economies for other countries in Europe and Asia to not be effected by the US.
Reverse Couple – well that's co dependency to you and me. The good news is that unlike a go-nowhere relationship, Reverse Coupling means that international economies will feel the positive aspects of globalization. That is cooperation may prevent a compete global recession.
Bill Gates called for "creative capitalism" as the balm to the current economic problems. Yes, Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft, the company the European
Commission announced it was launching a probe of antitrust and monopoly investigations against on January 14. Hmm, if he starts talking about creative accounting, we're all in trouble.
On Women : Over 40 of the women assembled met for a woman only dinner on January 25. Rupert Murdoch, Bono and those crazy guys who brought us all Google were the waiters. Annie Lennox and others spoke passionately on the need for action to decrease maternal mortality.
Unfortunately, only 17 percent of the delegates were women, and if you read New York Times' recap of the women's initiative dinner, you might have noticed that many of that group were wives of delegates. Um, can we talk about the headline for this article too?
Over 2 million people around the world posted responses on youtube to "The Davos Question" – What one thing do think countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008? Among those submitting video responses: President Shimon Peres of Israel; President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal; President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan; former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger; and rock star Bono. The resulting global conversation may be viewed at www.youtube.com/Davos.
For more video of the Forum, check out CNBC.
