Davos Forum Focuses On Protectionism, Macbeth, Tupperware

Davos, the snowy Swiss vale that plays host to the World Economic Forum every year, has this time been less a self-congratulatory haven for hearty backslaps and skiing, and more a po-faced arena to assess what went wrong, and how to make it right again.

While everyone wonders if Messrs Deripaska, Rothschild and Osbourne got all cosy again, many people didn’t bother to show up in the first place – Darling and Miliband bailed, Brangelina was replaced in the “actors with thoughtful faces” category by the rather less starry Jet Li, and former Davos regulars like Dick Fuld and B Ramalinga Raju were weirdly absent this year. And after Israeli PM Shimon Peres was given the lion’s share of debate time to opine on Gaza, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan walked off, vowing never to return to Davos (though the two kissed and made up via telephone later); Peres for his part said that none of this crisis nonsense would have ever happened if we had just followed the Ten Commandments. Which number is “Thou shalt not allow small countries to overextend themselves while continuing to trade in highly leveraged products”? I forget.

Putin did show up though, and made a bit of an idiot of himself by pointing the finger at U.S. financial policies while his own currency continues to resemble the sort of thing you’d find in a Monopoly set. Niall Ferguson called him “absurd”, and the ruble fell 3.5% against the dollar after Putin’s speech. But to be fair to him, some of his words chimed with much of what was being said elsewhere – he warned against “unrestrained state interference” and “blind faith in the omnipotence of the state”, just as other commentators, like HSBC’s Stephen Green, were warning against protectionism, ie a retreat from international markets back to localised trading. Also noting an anti-protectionist strain is Sir Martin Sorrell, writing in an FT blog that has a beautifully gloomy air lent by its blunt haiku style: “Far too crowded. Probably 500 people over the top. Last year 2000 was heavy, 2600 is too many.”

A sober tone then, but not sober enough for the aforementioned Ferguson, who said he found a “Great Gatsby quality to Davos…There’s a sense of ‘let’s have the party anyway,’ and ‘let’s talk about the post-crisis world,’ as though that could be soon”. The FT’s Gideon Rachman seems more up for a good time, lamenting the lack of “loud music and dancing”, and opting for a “South African jazz party” and a talk on “leadership lessons to be learnt from Macbeth” conducted by the son of Lawrence Olivier. Sounds wild!

But there is some light amongst the dark. The hills have been rocked to avalanche-inducing proportions by the glorious news from the hottest panel in town – job cuts at Tuppaware are unlikely! You know your economic forum isn’t what it was when cigar-chomping investment bankers are replaced by guys crowing about plastic food receptacles.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | January 30, 2009 11:56AM |