On Davos Absurdity
Love Gideon Rachman’s take:
On a “Davos night“:
A young global leader announced that we now had to listen to a discussion on climate change between Shimon Peres and Claudia Schiffer. (I’m not making this up.) I headed for the bar, since although there are many things that I find interesting about Claudia Schiffer, her views on climate change are not among them.
On a globalization seminar:
First, in the session for the whole group, there was a cartoonist drawing pictures on a whiteboard, to accompany the discussion. So when somebody mentioned the “Dangerous Dogs Act” in Britain, she drew a picture of a dangerous dog. Useful, I suppose, in case Professor Stiglitz was unfamiliar with the concept.
On the prestige game:
Since everybody enjoys the status game at Davos, the organisers have added a few extra twists. These include giving people different coloured badges to signify their different levels of prestige. Mere journalists get yellow badges; while “media fellows” like me get white badges. I was quietly congratulating myself on being a media fellow, when I bumped into the editor of “The Economist”. The good news was that he seemed to have the same colour badge as me. The bad news was that he was heading off to a closed session for “media leaders”, which I was excluded from. However, I was then cheered by bumping into another former Economist colleague, who is still stuck on the lowest rung of the ladder – “young global leader”.
On dinner:
I knew it was a good idea to go to the “classic clarets” dinner. Some crazed benefactor had donated an extraordinary collection of wines for us to taste: Latour 1952, Lafite 1962, Cheval Blanc 1975 – and six others.
Seated next to me was Victor Yanukovitch, the prime minister of Ukraine. Since we do not share a common language, we were unable to exchange the usual chit-chat – “faint whiff of pencil shavings” – that sort of thing. In the event, he had to leave half-way through. This was a lucky break for me, since he left behind unfinished samples of Latour and Lafite, which I swiftly poured into my own tasting glasses. It did cross my mind that there have been some unpleasant cases of poisoning involving politicians from this part of the world – so I hesitated briefly before knocking back Yanukovitch’s left-overs. But what the hell, you don’t get to taste Latour every day. I’m pretty sure I got away with it. I do feel fairly appalling this morning – but I think it’s just a standard issue hang-over.
Finally, on a more serious note:
Davos man does not seem to be particularly worried by the business implications of chaos in the Middle East. There were 17 sessions at the forum devoted to climate change – and just one to global political risk. A debate on “globalisation at the crossroads” considered three main threats to the world economy – failed trade talks, financial regulation and global economic imbalances. Nobody mentioned the war.
-Shlok
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