What's that? Did I hear someone ask where they could find a handy round-up of what happened at Davos last week? Well, the problem here is that not a lot actually happened; there was a lot of talking though, but let's just stick to the banking and finance developments.
The annual knees-up kicked off with a passionate speech from France's President Sarkozy on the need for financial and accounting reforms. As mentioned previously, Forbes wasn't overly impressed with the speech, but the Sunday Telegraph certainly was, noting that his comments on shareholder value versus long-term strategy went to the 'heart' of the recent global financial problems.
Where Sarkozy went others followed, with plenty of dignitaries lining up to call for financial reforms or banker bashing, including FSA chair Lord Turner (the WSJ had the bankers lined up against a wall).
Plenty of bankers themselves eventually joined in the fun (here too), as the global elite suddenly discovered their inner populist (Real Clear Politics takes a look). All was not well in banker-land though as the public criticism and submissions seem to have masked a real anger among bankers.
Jeremy Warner at the Telegraph isn't very sympathetic though, arguing that bankers have 'blown' the chance to avoid tough regulations by not reforming voluntarily last year.
This eventually led to a series of 'secret' meetings (here and here) between bankers and politicians as the bankers sought to head off thoughts of harsher reforms amongst law-makers. As the BBC's Robert Peston notes, it is in these kinds of secret meetings that the really interesting conversations happen, but for the most part, the public aren't privy to what gets said.
Some of the attendees did break from the populist script: Barclays' boss Bob Diamond went down fighting (although he later joined the calls for a global transactions levy to fund future bailouts), while Canadian PM Stephen Harper, after doing pretty much the same in the run-up to COP15, took a different line to everyone else.
After the last canapés were eaten, and the last champagne drunk, what did Davos actually achieve? Well, not much, judging by headlines like this. Larry Elliott in the Graun picked up on a growing consensus amongst business and governments about where they go from here (and he notes that David Cameron has been left out of the loop on this), and an agreement that the global economy is still weak. Gavin Hinks at Accountancy Age suggests the lack of doom mongering this year may provide a psychological boost to the world economy.
That the global economy remains weak seems to be the only consensus formed at Davos according to other commentators. The HP and The Times both noted that there may have been a contrite and cautious feeling in the air, as well as improved optimism from last year, but no one could agree on what to do about it.
The Times' of London and New York noted that this year saw a rise in the influence of emerging economies (The Times suggests that this foreshadowed the collapse of Western-style government), which will make any consensus harder to achieve in the future (something The Atlantic says will be exacerbated by the refusal of national borders to melt away).
Last year, Davos talked about how anything that smelt vaguely of capitalism would be snuffed out. Capitalism, you may have noticed, is still here. Will anything really have changed by next year?
The annual knees-up kicked off with a passionate speech from France's President Sarkozy on the need for financial and accounting reforms. As mentioned previously, Forbes wasn't overly impressed with the speech, but the Sunday Telegraph certainly was, noting that his comments on shareholder value versus long-term strategy went to the 'heart' of the recent global financial problems.
Where Sarkozy went others followed, with plenty of dignitaries lining up to call for financial reforms or banker bashing, including FSA chair Lord Turner (the WSJ had the bankers lined up against a wall).
Plenty of bankers themselves eventually joined in the fun (here too), as the global elite suddenly discovered their inner populist (Real Clear Politics takes a look). All was not well in banker-land though as the public criticism and submissions seem to have masked a real anger among bankers.
Jeremy Warner at the Telegraph isn't very sympathetic though, arguing that bankers have 'blown' the chance to avoid tough regulations by not reforming voluntarily last year.
This eventually led to a series of 'secret' meetings (here and here) between bankers and politicians as the bankers sought to head off thoughts of harsher reforms amongst law-makers. As the BBC's Robert Peston notes, it is in these kinds of secret meetings that the really interesting conversations happen, but for the most part, the public aren't privy to what gets said.
Some of the attendees did break from the populist script: Barclays' boss Bob Diamond went down fighting (although he later joined the calls for a global transactions levy to fund future bailouts), while Canadian PM Stephen Harper, after doing pretty much the same in the run-up to COP15, took a different line to everyone else.
After the last canapés were eaten, and the last champagne drunk, what did Davos actually achieve? Well, not much, judging by headlines like this. Larry Elliott in the Graun picked up on a growing consensus amongst business and governments about where they go from here (and he notes that David Cameron has been left out of the loop on this), and an agreement that the global economy is still weak. Gavin Hinks at Accountancy Age suggests the lack of doom mongering this year may provide a psychological boost to the world economy.
That the global economy remains weak seems to be the only consensus formed at Davos according to other commentators. The HP and The Times both noted that there may have been a contrite and cautious feeling in the air, as well as improved optimism from last year, but no one could agree on what to do about it.
The Times' of London and New York noted that this year saw a rise in the influence of emerging economies (The Times suggests that this foreshadowed the collapse of Western-style government), which will make any consensus harder to achieve in the future (something The Atlantic says will be exacerbated by the refusal of national borders to melt away).
Last year, Davos talked about how anything that smelt vaguely of capitalism would be snuffed out. Capitalism, you may have noticed, is still here. Will anything really have changed by next year?
I am sorry to say Davos is an elitist meeting/club to enjoy expensive hotels, canapes and champagne at an extortionate cost for each participant and often paid by either companies or governments.
I decided to see if I could find "One achievement attributable to this elitist conclave" and came up dry.
If some serious financial regulation is not implemented globally, we'll have another meltdown in a few years.
At that time my answer will be let them all go to the wall and go bust and then we need not worry about how much bonus they get and Mr and Mrs. average will not be picking up the largest part of the bill, the silly speculators and risk takers will.
What really irritates me is the lack of attention to one area, meaning AIG and Insurers who charged ridiculously low premiums for extremely high risk (e.g. CDS's) instruments; no one is shouting too loudly about that but should.
Regards,
Hodgson.
Posted by: J.V.Hodgson | 05 February 2010 at 04:22