* or as the print version 'Observer' says:
"Capitalism is bust, for all but an elite"
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| Link to web site |
"More than 2,500 alpha men and women from more than 100 countries will descend on Davos this week, to spend four days discussing the world's urgent need to adopt 'resilient dynamism'. This, the organising watchword for this year's annual gathering of panjandrums at the World Economic Forum, is allegedly the way out of the crisis. It is meaningless.
"Who, for example, would support non-resilient stagnation? Western capitalism, and, arguably, global capitalism, has arrived at an apparent dead end. It is in profound trouble. But if the best answer to austerity and economic malaise is resilient dynamism every delegate should stay at home.
"... Yet reality will out. Everyone knows by now, even in Davos, that there can be no return to the world before 2008, relying as it did on abundant supplies of cheap credit. Equally, we need to grow out of recession, which needs more than continual deficit spending and ultra-cheap money or the alternative of endless austerity. The answer is the economic empowerment of ordinary men and women."
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| Link to Sunday Telegraph |
"We must fix the broken Western state model"
"When the world's political and business elite gather for Davos 2013, the discussion will no doubt range from terrorism to quantitative easing, from biofuels to the rise of the emerging giants of the East. What the touchstone theme should be, though, is 'the role of the Western state'.
"For the Western model is broken. Surely that's now impossible to ignore.
"... [But] what the Davos crowd should focus on, as boldly stated by Paul Polman, the chief executive of consumer goods giant Unilever, in his extraordinary recent interview with my colleague Kamal Ahmed, is:
"Governments need to get used to lower spending levels… individuals need to get used to lower pensions and welfare payments… and businesses need to get used to the costs that come with it and bear their part."
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Mayor, my son!
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Mayor, my son!
 |
| Link to web site |
** The Independent:
"Boris Johnson to make move from zip wire to high finance, in effort to boost economic credentials"
"Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is to spend less time on zip wires and more time on high finance to burnish his economic credentials as a serious politician on the international stage.
"With a possible eye on life after City Hall, Mr Johnson will later this month travel to Davos – to make a keynote address at the prestigious World Economic Forum, in the same slot previously filled by David Cameron and George Osborne.
"He is also planning trips this year to China, the Gulf and South America, to 'sell' London as a place to do business - and perhaps to sell Boris, the economic heavyweight, to a British audience."
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