Davos Watch...

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Davos Watch...

Bill Gates pledges $10bn for a 'decade of vaccine'

As if I (an old Linux hacker) didn't already dislike this guy enough already ...

First DOS, then Windows and now vaccines. Did Gates sign some deal with the Devil or something?

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

New lyrics, same ol' tune...:rolleyes:

Choose reform or recovery, bankers tell leaders at Davos

The world's bankers have descended on Davos to warn that heavy-handed reforms could choke off the economic recovery...

...Now, as governments in the United States, Britain and France are pushing for measures to curb their trading, tax their bonuses, and trim them so they are not too big to be allowed to fail, the bankers have come back to make their case against the proposed regulatory reforms.

The rush to create rules in various jurisdictions could lead banks to structure their businesses to take advantage of rules in different places, warned Joseph Ackerman, the chairman of Deutsche Bank.

“We will all be losers if we don't have an efficient market in place,” he said...

Bob Diamond, president of Barclays PLC, also had a warning, the type not normally heard in the collegial confines of the big-think atmosphere at Davos...

...“I've seen no evidence that suggests that shrinking banks and making all banks smaller or more narrow is the answer,” Mr. Diamond said during a panel discussion Wednesday on financial reforms. “If you step back and say large is bad, and we move to narrow banking, the impact of that on banks and on global trade, the global economy, would be very negative.”...

And here's the response from one heavyweight.

Question is, do we believe him...:p

In Davos speech, Summers warns bankers of reforms

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jan 29, 2:58 pm ET

DAVOS, Switzerland – Confronting bankers head on, President Barack Obama's top economic adviser told them Friday to put their customers first and insisted the U.S. government would push through new banking reforms despite pressure from lobbyists.

"Our challenge now is to put in place a new system," said Lawrence H. Summers, telling a crowd at the World Economic Forum that the reforms wouldn't last forever but should be able to protect a generation from banking excesses.

Summers, the top U.S. official in Davos this year, said there needed to be rules restraining how risky these banks can become. His session came after three days of complaints from senior officials in the banking industry that governments — and the U.S., in particular — risked choking off growth with a glut of new financial regulations.

The level of anxiety among financiers at the new populist push was reflected in a series of closed-door meetings at Davos on the subject of the regulation proposals, and bankers and financial regulators were expected to meet again Saturday on the forum's sidelines to discuss a range of issues, officials said.

Summers was adamant that "we are going to put in place a set of reforms that will make a real difference."

He said banks should be aware of their obligations to their communities in making lending decisions and to contain risk, especially when they benefit from taxpayer support after getting into trouble. He also questioned the bank's "paying out bonuses in large quantities."

The impact of government support for the banks has been far-reaching, he said. "Half a trillion dollars of market value exists today that would not have existed" if the government hadn't acted...

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

A thread to track the readings of the tea leaves coming out of Davos...

At Davos, the globalizers are gone

By Ian Bremmer
Saturday, January 30, 2010; 12:00 AM


For 40 years there's been a consensus view at the Davos World Economic Forum that globalization's increasingly free cross-border flow of ideas, information, people, money, goods and services is both irreversible and a powerful force for prosperity. As with meetings of the G7 group of industrialized nations, there was broad agreement on the proper role for the state in the performance of markets. Sure, a French cabinet official and an American investment banker might spar over the relative merits of state paternalism and Anglo-Saxon labor laws, but the bargaining table was still reserved for champions of Western-style free market capitalism.

No more.

Davos has always had its critics. For those who believe globalization empowers the rich at the expense of the poor, the forum exists to allow the wealthy to pretend they're at a film festival. There are the Hugo Chavez/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-type critics who insist that Davos represents post-modern imperialism with an alpine backdrop. There are the NGO critics who argue that the forum is more about partying than problem-solving. There are the conspiracy theorists who charge that Davos is simply the spot where Council on Foreign Relations commissars and their bosses at the Trilateral Commission make plans for the future and make time on the slopes.

But for the first time, some of the most powerful folks inside the Davos event are challenging the value of globalization. These aren't the have-nots of years past. These are the men and women driving some of the world's fastest-growing economies.

This massive change has its roots in 2009, when Davos served as the world's single most important multilateral gathering. The discussion was much franker and more open here than anything on display at the London and Pittsburgh meetings of the G20, the United Nations General Assembly or the climate change conference in Copenhagen. At Davos, leaders from the public and private sectors gathered for open discussion of the still-developing crisis, as a financial tsunami created a heightened sense of unity.

Now the sense of crisis is gone -- and so is the unity. Sure, there are still plenty of delegates warning of the lasting effects of the financial crisis and global slowdown, plenty of anxiety that jobs aren't coming back quickly enough and that the worst is yet to come on sovereign debt defaults. But other delegates have moved beyond fear of what has already happened to anticipation of what's to come. They're talking about a wave of populism and protectionism -- and the momentum behind the drive by some governments to use state-owned companies, privately owned national champion firms, natural resources and sovereign wealth funds to dominate markets for political advantage. This talk of a need for new barriers and of the virtues of state-managed capitalism suggests that Davos -- and the global economy -- have turned a corner, and that free market capitalism now has new competition. We survived the shipwreck, and now we're free to go our separate ways.

Indeed, this edition of Davos leaves me wondering whether the new G20 era will eventually render this gathering obsolete. Next year, when U.S. and European delegates diagnose what ails the global economy and prescribe free market remedies of various kinds, they will face the skeptical smiles of others who believe the free market has failed and that the state should play a leading role in national economic performance.

There will be little left to agree on beyond the beauty of the backdrop.

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

And here's the response from one heavyweight.

Question is, do we believe him...:p

In Davos speech, Summers warns bankers of reforms

From the WSJ:

JANUARY 30, 2010, 8:02 A.M. ET
Bankers, Government Officials Discuss Regulation in Davos

DAVOS - Top bankers and senior government officials from major economies held informal private talks on regulation that participants called "constructive" but which produced little concrete result.

The meeting sought to build bridges between bankers and regulators after days of sometime acrimonious discussion in Davos about how much extra regulation should be imposed on banks following the financial crisis.

Laughter emanated through the closed doors of the invitation-only meeting, suggesting the debate was less adversial than others at the World Economic Forum this week.

Leading bankers including Joseph Ackermann of Deutsche Bank and officials from the U.K., France and China left the meeting quickly, making little comment other than that the talks were "constructive."...

[due_indigence]

Re: Davos Watch...

It's like the tick, gorged with blood, informing it's host that more blood will be required in order to keep their neat little symbiosis going.

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

From the WSJ:

JANUARY 30, 2010, 8:02 A.M. ET
Bankers, Government Officials Discuss Regulation in Davos

DAVOS - Top bankers and senior government officials from major economies held informal private talks on regulation that participants called "constructive" but which produced little concrete result.

A week of tense bankers, recovery hopes, star gazers


DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The top executive was on a roll -- Barack Obama didn't know what he was doing, he didn't understand business, he didn't realize knee-jerk pronouncements could destroy jobs.

It was a private, five-minute, expletive-filled tirade against the president for this reporter's benefit. Welcome to one aspect of the World Economic Forum's annual schmoozefest...

...For the second successive year, the recriminations arising from the financial crisis were a dominant theme.

Sure, the global economy looks better - people are no longer talking about financial Armageddon, while some CEOs are talking about investing more, buying companies and even hiring.

But many times when executives talked about a recovery, they also used words like "fragile" and then mumbled about whether the battle between bankers and politicians could upset it all...

...The release of the annual Edelaman Trust Barometer at Davos didn't help. It showed that college-educated, so-called "opinion leaders" around the world have lost a huge amount of trust in banks. In the United States, for example, the trust level has plummeted to just 29 percent of those surveyed from 68 percent in 2007.

No wonder that Junichi Ujiie, the chairman of Japan's largest brokerage Nomura Holdings Inc, said he perceived bankers were seen in the West as "public enemy No.1."...

...A meeting between the CEOs of top financial institutions failed to find common ground over regulatory reform, according to several who attended...

...By the Saturday, the bankers and regulators were reduced to using post-it notes and white boards in a joint brainstorming session that was inconclusive...

...Daniel Vasella, the chairman of Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG , said lack of trust in the system remained his big worry and made the risk of a double-dip slump "substantial."

Even some bankers are fast losing patience.

"I think the industry had better wake up before they get the wrath of God on them," said Joseph Perella, a veteran dealmaker and chairman of U.S. investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners...

...But then again perhaps we should just consult the astrologers, like Geneva-based banker and industrialist Prakash Hinduja. When asked at the WEF about the investment climate he had no hesitation in declaring 2012 will be a very bad year in the U.S. and the years heading into it not much better: "The astrology guides us on this," he said...[]

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

Well Folks, we haven't done this for a while. Time to resurrect and update an old thread...if for no other reason than some badly needed comic relief.

We are a bit late getting started but let's begin with the Davos Theme for 2013.

"The big idea guiding this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland is "Resilient Dynamism."...

Alas, no prizes. But whoever here can give the best explanation for what the hell that term means will receive the undying gratitude and admiration of the entire iTulip community. Have at 'er!!

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

Well Folks, we haven't done this for a while. Time to resurrect and update an old thread...if for no other reason than some badly needed comic relief.

...

Sure didn't take long to find a comedian. It just wouldn't be Davos without The Bankers, eh...

"...Amid calls for stricter regulations of the banking industry, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon came under fire Wednesday after telling corporate and political leaders at the World Economic Forum that banks had been wrongly "scapegoated" as the cause of the global economic crisis, and resisted calls for increased regulation of the financial industry..."

More...

[jpatter666]

Re: Davos Watch...

Sure didn't take long to find a comedian. It just wouldn't be Davos without The Bankers, eh...

"...Amid calls for stricter regulations of the banking industry, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon came under fire Wednesday after telling corporate and political leaders at the World Economic Forum that banks had been wrongly "scapegoated" as the cause of the global economic crisis, and resisted calls for increased regulation of the financial industry..."

More...

Sounds like you just found a use case for Resilient Dynamism.

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

In the best Davos tradition for emitting turgid mumbo-jumbo:

Davos 2013: strong focus on circular economy and collaboration

Jo Confino talks to Peter Lacey, Accenture's Asia Pacific director of sustainable services, at Davos 2013 about global transformational change. There are strong signals from leaders at the World Economic Forum annual meeting that have the potential to drive serious innovation. Focus is now very much on the idea of the circular economy, of eliminating waste, and shifting business models from products to services and collaborative consumption...

What next? Statements from the Sustainable Services Consultants about how to "leverage Coriolis forces to increase corporate angular momentum in the circular economy"?

All we can hope is that "circular economy and collaboration" means something other than everyone holding hands while the bankers flush us down the toilet.

P.S. Does anyone know if the first reference for the "Circular Economy" has hit the business sections of the bookstores yet? I gotta get me one of those...

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

The 2013 Davos "Chutzpah Award" goes to UK PM David Cameron for telling Starbucks to "smell the coffee"

"David Cameron launched a broadside at multinational tax avoiders yesterday, warning them to “wake up and smell the coffee” as he pledged to lead the global fight against “aggressive avoidance.”

In an apparent swipe at Starbucks and other multinationals, the Prime Minister said the public had “had enough of businesses who think that they can carry on dodging their fair share or that they can keep on selling to the UK and setting up ever-more complex tax arrangements abroad to squeeze their tax bill right down.”

In a passionate speech in Davos, Mr Cameron said that Britain would use its leadership of the G8 to clamp down on tax avoidance as part of a drive to boost trade and efficiency, particularly in Europe..."

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

Some things never change. Apparently still upset about the results of the Battle of Agincourt here's the latest outburst from the French about their cousins across the Channel that live in that clueless, cultureless, Bangers & Mash eating nation founded by...gasp...the French:

'If Britain wants out of EU we will roll out the red carpet for you'
France's foreign minister Laurent Fabius doesn't seem fussed about Britain's referendum to leave the EU. "If Britain wants to leave Europe we will roll out the red carpet for you," he told French radio (from Davos) this morning.

The comment is a jibe on much-reported remarks by Cameron last year in which he offered to "roll out the red carpet" to French firms wishing to avoid high French corporate taxes by re-basing to Britain.

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

Here's a contender for the Davos 2013 "You Couldn't Make This Up If You Tried" award:

Charlize Theron has been given an award for her humanitarian work.

Theron, who won the best actress Oscar in 2004 for Monster, was honored by the World Economic Forum for her work fighting HIV among impoverished young people in South Africa, where she was born.

"There is an incredible brain trust in this room. I feel like I’m getting smarter just by osmosis."

Almost makes one nostalgic for Brad and Angelina...

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

Well Folks, we haven't done this for a while. Time to resurrect and update an old thread...if for no other reason than some badly needed comic relief.

We are a bit late getting started but let's begin with the Davos Theme for 2013.

"The big idea guiding this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland is "Resilient Dynamism."...

Alas, no prizes. But whoever here can give the best explanation for what the hell that term means will receive the undying gratitude and admiration of the entire iTulip community. Have at 'er!!

While all those Davos delegates were trying to figure out the "Circular Economy", they had a chance to take a break and engage in some circular wordsmithing:

On Day One: neatly dovetailing with the meeting’s overall theme of ”Dynamic Resilience,” an address by Christine Lagarde is titled, “Resilient Dynamism".

[GRG55]

Re: Davos Watch...

Davos 2013: strong focus on circular economy and collaboration

Jo Confino talks to Peter Lacey, Accenture's Asia Pacific director of sustainable services, at Davos 2013 about global transformational change. There are strong signals from leaders at the World Economic Forum annual meeting that have the potential to drive serious innovation. Focus is now very much on the idea of the circular economy, of eliminating waste, and shifting business models from products to services and collaborative consumption...

Somebody needs to tell Angela Merkel about the Circular Economy. She seems stuck in that old fashioned German rut about making real stuff. From her speech at Davos:

“EU member states can only grow when they produce goods that can be sold on the international market place,” she said."

Clearly she needs a visit from Sustainable Services with some of their transformational change training materials...