Usually...But this year's version has already seen its share of fireworks. First there was the speech by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, which Bloomberg financial news branded as ‘absurd.’ The Russian leader took the financial whiz kids of Wall Street to task for causing, in his words, the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Putin laid the blame for the global financial crunch firmly at the feet of American-style capitalism, with a little gloating to boot.
“Just one year ago we heard the words of our American friends from this tribune about the fundamental strength and the cloudless prospects for the US economy,” Putin said, before adding that now “the pride of Wall Street, the investment banks, have virtually ceased to exist.”
Economist and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson scoffed at Putin’s take on how the world got in this economic mess (apparently ignoring the fact that this is an opinion now being voiced in many parts of the globe...), saying “the idea of the Russians lecturing the West about how to run the economy is absurd.” I’ll be really interested then to see how Prof. Ferguson reacts when France's Nikolas Sarkozy and German's Angela Merkel take their whacks at the US financial system this April at the G20 economic summit (my earlier post ‘Make Way for Moral Capitalism’ should give you an idea of where Merkel and Sarkozy are coming from).
But Putin wasn't the only world leader making waves at Davos. Turkey’s PM, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stormed off the stage after a heated exchange with Israel’s Shimon Peres, saying he would never return to Davos. Erdogan said he left after not getting time equal to Peres’ to address the gathered crowd. The two clashed, not surprisingly, over Israel’s recent military campaign in Gaza. Erdogan didn't hold back saying that Peres “killed children on beaches” and scolded the crowd for applauding Peres because he “killed people. And I think that is very wrong.”
According to the BBC, Peres couldn’t understand why Hamas fired rockets into Israel saying, “there was no siege against Gaza. Why did they fight us, what did they want? There was never a day of starvation in Gaza.” But, due respect to Mr. Peres, I think the Gazans might disagree. Israel maintained a blockade of Gaza - even after agreeing to lift it as part of the earlier cease-fire agreement with Hamas. As a result, many families in Gaza relied on food assistance programs sponsored by the UN and, yes, Hamas, to survive. So while technically Peres is right that “no one starved,” it doesn't mean people weren’t going hungry.
Who knew an economic forum could be so interesting?
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