Davos Notebook

This is part of a series written by Anya Schiffrin, author of “Bad News,” and the wife of Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz. The opinions expressed are her own.

This morning at the Davos coffee bar I was, as usual, tucking into the stale Danish, when I spotted a Davos Wife (easily identifiable by the infamous white name tag) drinking a cup of green tea. My companion, a Glamorous Davos Girlfriend (GDG) (my husband was, of course at a meeting) congratulated her on her healthy choice.

“I am trying to detox because of all the crap I have been eating,” came the pithy reply.

It may sound like we Davos-goers are whinging ingrates – and that is certainly true — but one of the perennial complaints about Davos is the generally unwholesome atmosphere. Indeed the GDG – who juggles being a GDG with her job as a health consultant — is convinced that Davos is toxic.

Apart from the obvious problem of male egos, general pushiness and bad behavior there is the physical exhaustion that comes from the relentless string of panel discussions in oxygen-deprived basements rooms. It starts with the flight to Zurich and the schlepping of luggage and continues with massive sleep deprivation, stodgy food and the risk of broken bones.

- Michael Fertik is the founder and CEO of Reputation.com, an online privacy and reputation management company. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Agenda Council on Internet Security and recipient of the WEF Technology Pioneer 2011 Award. The opinions expressed are his own. -

China’s Internet is, in fact, the world’s largest intranet. This is not news to anyone who follows technology in the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese government doesn’t make any real attempt to hide its complete control over what happens behind the Great Firewall. The regime is open about its intent to ensure what it calls “harmony,” which more or less means that it will squelch civil debate that moves beyond a certain pitch or further than a few degrees off the median line. As China’s power grows online and offline, these patterns, taken together with the Chinese government’s technical sophistication, will be of fundamental importance to the overlap between digital freedom and privacy.

The Chinese play hard. They mean to keep their intranet secure and the integrity of their “harmonious” public web discourse intact. They do not hesitate to use their considerable technical prowess to spy on machines that are operated on their network.  As a friend of mine in U.S. intelligence circles says without hesitation, “If you go to China, there is a 100 percent chance that your equipment will be compromised.” Earlier this week here at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, I met a successful civil activist who routinely visits China for her work, and she casually reported a recent office visit from Chinese state security services who evinced specific and sweeping knowledge of her emails, calendar, and other information she keeps exclusively on her computer.

– Laurens de Vries and Emile Chappin are researchers at Delft University of Technology. Much of their research is funded by the Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation. The opinions expressed are their own. –

One of the key issues being debated at this year’s World Economic forum is energy policy, particularly how we best make the transition to clean energies of the future to mitigate global warming.

Nuclear power, like energies of the future — wind, solar, carbon capture — must rely on government subsidies to be economically viable. This is true of virtually all alternatives to fossil fuels, which is a consequence of the fact that the social costs of the pollution that they cause is not included in the price people pay for them.

The prize for most obnoxious party at Davos was won on the first night, with the Davos Tasting put on by the Wine Forum.

Wine tasting was historically one of the more interesting and enjoyable events that was put on at Davos, but it got nixed in 2009 when conspicuous consumption of first-growth clarets was considered inappropriate in the face of the global financial crisis. The consequence was much the same as attempts to cap CEO salaries: just as the executives end up making much more money through stock options, the wine tasters, freed from whatever decorum was imposed upon them by the official constraints of the World Economic Forum, showed just how out-of-control wine events can really be.

The plutocrats at Davos, of course, both western and eastern, are exactly the kind of people who spend thousands of dollars a bottle on fine wines. But they're also driven and single-minded executives who naturally gravitate to the obvious and middlebrow in other areas: if they're buying art, they'll plump for something shiny by Damien Murakoons (both Hirst and Koons are in Davos this week), while the big-name creative types here are the likes of Jose Carreras, Peter Gabriel, and Paulo Coelho.

This year’s World Economic Forum offers not one but two meetings of trade ministers on the never-ending Doha round. Besides the traditional Saturday lunch hosted by Switzerland on Saturday, this year featuring 26 ministers plus WTO chief Pascal Lamy, the EU is holding a dinner on Friday for the G7 – that’s the trade G7: Australia, Brazil, China, EU, India, Japan and USA.

The meetings may attract some interest as this year is seeing a renewed push to conclude the Doha round, now in its 10th year, after leaders of the G20 (that’s the financial G20 not the trade G20) said 2011 was a window of opportunity.

For those who think this might join a long list of missed deadlines, I offer this story from Jean-Pierre Lehmanne, founder of

By Peter Thal Larsen
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Bankers are back on the front foot. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Jamie Dimon led a chorus of his peers warning of the dangers of excessive regulation. In front of a packed meeting, the JPMorgan chief told French President Nicolas Sarkozy, "Too much is too much". But his complaint is misguided -- and his new offensive premature.

It's not hard to see why Dimon is frustrated. JPMorgan weathered the crisis well, and has emerged even larger and more formidable than before. Dimon and other crisis survivors like Peter Sands of Standard Chartered feel they are being blamed for the sins of less capable peers -- most of whom retired to the golf course years ago.

By Mari Pangestu, who is the Trade Minister of Indonesia. The opinions expressed are her own.

The world continues to face great uncertainties. Global recovery has been uneven, unemployment high and current account imbalances have led to continued tension including the use of currencies and other mercantilist policies for protectionist purposes. And we have yet to conclude the Doha Round of World Trade Organization Negotiations. So what do trade policymakers have to do to face this situation and ensure trade continues to contribute to growth and development?

For Indonesia, trade has recovered to higher than pre-crisis 2008 levels and in line with the higher growth in emerging economies. Like other East Asian economies, Indonesia is increasingly integrated with the region, clearly indicating that East Asia is a growing market with the rise of its population, middle class and purchasing power.

This is part of a series written by Anya Schiffrin, author of “Bad News,” and the wife of Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz. The opinions expressed are her own.

Shoes …

The deepest fear of the Davos Man is not fear of failure or of giving a boring speech but of falling. Not falling from the heights of being at the greatest confab of businessmen the world has ever known but of slipping on the ice that forms when the winter sun meets the piles of snow that line the streets of this Alpine resort.

An undignified tumble is, of course, highly humiliating and so it’s rarely talked about. No one admits to slipping but a highly unscientific poll conducted by me shows that nearly everyone admits to seeing someone else take a tumble at one time or another.

One of the big changes to the ecology of the Davos conference center this year, after its $37 million revamp, is that there's now a whole level at the top which is off-limits to the working press and accessible only to fully-fledged delegates with coveted white cards. There are a couple of conference rooms up there -- called Aspen 1 and Aspen 2 -- which is normally no big deal, given that the working press isn't allowed in to conference sessions anyway.

One thing which hasn't changed, however, is the way in which everybody bumps into everybody else in the conference center. Which is fine, just so long as you're not deliberately keeping a very low profile and trying to avoid the press. Like Nick Clegg, for instance, with his 7% approval rating.

And so today we have a rather hilarious double oxymoron. Nick Clegg is having a press event, where he'll be talking to Arthur Sulzberger; the email invite says that "sign-up is required as there are a limited number of seats available." That makes sense, given how everybody's wanting to talk to him right now. But then we're told that "the session is off-the-record," which is always disappointing, for a press event. And then we learn that it's in Aspen 1 -- it's been deliberately put in one of the two rooms which the working press can't get close to.

By Joe Jimenez, CEO of Novartis. The opinions expressed are his own.

As the global economy begins to see signs of recovery, with momentum from emerging markets like China, Russia, India and Brazil driving recent economic gains, there is a lot of buzz about how companies can best capitalize on the new growth opportunities these markets can offer.

In fact, many of the sessions here at the World Economic Forum in Davos are focusing on ways to encourage innovation, enhance trade and drive growth in emerging markets. This year, it is extremely important that we discuss health care and economic imperatives at Davos.

Governments in emerging markets are increasing their commitment to expanding access to healthcare, but this is putting significant pressure on healthcare budgets. So we need to find ways to work together with government officials and key stakeholders in these markets to jointly address the evolving healthcare needs.