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One Countercyclical Business

1:33 PM, January 29, 2009 | Comments (0)
Spend a day or two here, and it seems that every business, in every sector, in every geographic area, is suffering. There seem to be no safe havens, and few truly countercyclical industries this time around. But I think I may have found one: white-collar...

Wall Street Bigshots: Conspicuous By Their Absence

7:59 PM, January 28, 2009 | Comments (0)

Depression Era Thrift Is Back In Style

5:06 PM, January 26, 2009 | Comments (0)

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ISSUES 2009: How to Fix the World

 

  • Davos Dispatch: 'Every Time a Bell Rings...'

    Daniel Gross | Jan 30, 2009 01:05 PM

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  • Davos Dispatch: What Davos and 'Star Wars' Have in Common

    Daniel Gross | Jan 30, 2009 01:03 PM

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  • Davos Dispatch: Day Two

    Daniel Gross | Jan 30, 2009 01:01 PM

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  • The Spirit of Davos

    Daniel Gross | Jan 30, 2009 10:22 AM
    Like the carpet in my room at the Club Hotel, the Spirit of Davos is getting a little frayed this year. The overwhelming mood here is one not so much of gregarious friendship—this is Switzerland, after all—but of civility and politesse, a certain consideration. In the real world, when a CEO or private equity bigshot doesn't want to talk to a reporter, his p.r. person will (sometimes rudely) say no. Here, they'll make pleasant chit-chat, give you an off the record quote or two, and move on. Davos is like a large, mobile country club. And there are certain things country club members just don't do to one another—like embarrassing one another socially or financially. (Ahem,, Mr. Madoff)

    But the rising financial and geopolitical stress have made it difficult to maintain the veneer of civility. The big news from last night? A well-attended forum on the Middle East, featuring Shimon Peres of Israel and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ended in a storm of controversy.  Erdogan left the stage in a fit of pique, arguing that Peres's impassioned defense of Israel's Gaza offensive—at one point he asked Erdogan how Turkey would respond if it were attacked in a similar manner—was "in a manner not in line with. . . the spirit of Davos." He was also angered that moderator David Ignatius of the Washington Post had tried to keep him within prescribed time limits while Peres had spoken at length. Erdogan said he'd never return. Two things: First, Turkey and Israel, it will be recalled, are supposed to be allies. Second, droning on beyond allotted time frames isn't rude at Davos. It's a sign of Davos Man's virility. That's what people do here. They talk—a lot, and at length. If people angered at the inadequate speaking time allotted them and the over-generous speaking time allotted rivals were to start boycotting the World Economic Forum en masse, next year's edition could safely be held in a Starbucks in Cambridge, Mass.

    The less-than-generous spirit could be seen elsewhere. I had dinner with a group of executives in the airline, shipping, and auto industries, where (ALERT!: NAME DROP WARNING!) I was seated near Nissan's worldly and sharp CEO Carlos Ghosn.  During the evening, an Indian industrialist, prefacing his remarks by saying that he didn't want to be on the record criticizing a competitors, went on to make the case as to how one of India's most well-known industrial names had made a series of poor decisions and would probably need a bailout.

    Make no mistake, the Good Time Charlies are still here. At a paparazzi-packed lunch on philanthropy, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair provided a double-shot of charisma, bonhomie, and humor. But they made introductory remarks and quickly left together. Shorn of their offices, Clinton and Blair have been reduced to bit players on the global stage. And so the spirit of these cuddly politicians, who craved affection, no longer dominates. Instead, the large geopolitical presences here are brooding, stand-offish—Chinese premiere Wen Jiabao and Russia's Vladimir Putin. Putin has proven himself to be not particularly clubbable. A few weeks ago, in the dead of winter, he essentially turned off the supply of heating fuel to much of Europe.

    Even though we're in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, schadenfreude is a sentiment that is generally frowned upon. At Davos, the powerful and wealthy congratulate themselves for taking time out of their busy schedules to ponder the plight of the less fortunate. One of the events organized by a non-government organization is the "Refugee Run," a simulation of life as a refugee, complete with hostile, armed rebels, power outages, and barbed wire. (My politically incorrect first thought on reading about the event: I don't need to travel 4,000 miles to see shell-shocked people living hand-to-mouth. I work for a media company.) And yet, in the hallways and in the plenary sessions at the private dinners and in the informal cocktail hours, there has been an avalanche of schadenfreude over the travails of Wall Street. At a dinner Wednesday night, as noted, "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, his gray beard set off by a black turtleneck, was positively giddy over the failure of Lehman Brothers—not just because he may have profited from the volatility in the financial sector but because it gave this preening smart guy great pleasure to see so many stupid people who had enjoyed unwarranted success prosper. His next book should be a memoir: The Gray Peacock. Ah, the spirit of Davos.

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  • One Bright Spot

    Michael Freedman | Jan 30, 2009 02:34 AM

    There has been much hand wringing here about the specter of protectionism, and in particular about the "Buy American" plan in Barack Obama's $819 billion stimulus package, which passed the House of Representatives this week. The fear is that it will trigger a round of protectionist policies in countries throughout the world, and it only added to the sense of economic gloom that has pervaded this year's forum. But there is one bright spot amid the despair: executives here from the renewable energy sector are confident that business will be just fine. After all, built into the stimulus package are billions of dollars worth of tax credits and incentives for solar, wind and other alternative energy companies.

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