And here the challenge looks significant

Rebuild. It was one of the watchwords in Davos this year, for the 40th edition of the World Economic Forum. The injunction was perfectly justified. Because what is the 2010 Forum will face 2,500 business leaders, nannies, academics, journalists and leaders associative or spiritual, is a huge field of ruins. While the world continues to turn and cases are distributed. But it is not enough. "There is a statistical growth, but there is a human recession", says Larry Summers, the Economic Adviser to us President Barack Obama. Even more striking: the economic certainties have collapsed with the implosion of Wall Street that almost instantly affected the entire planet. What is finance How should the business plan in time Why countries have harm to decide together, as shown by the Copenhagen Summit as well The master of the places, Klaus Schwab, said in his own way in his inaugural speech: "last year, the Governments seemed really involved in international cooperation." Today, we hope that they always are. "The French President gave a speech energetic and proactive, greeted with scepticism by the Anglo-Saxons, many at the forum. But the idea that it can no longer continue as before is always returned. At the time, business leaders became very discrete about their projects, even if many of them are in private real optimistic. And some policies have finally preferred to stay at home, such as Brazil's Lula and the Japanese Yukio Hatoyama. Davos 2010, was the forum of all doubts. Here are the column.

Tétanisés bankers

"My goal." To ensure that next year, no one speaks more of us here! "At the end of a gruelling week of forum, this large anglo-saxon banker can no longer. Throughout the week, the finance has been at the heart of the criticism. "Bankers have forgotten that they had before to be at the service of the economy," had Overture Nicolas Sarkozy. How to pay, how better monitor them These questions were ever returning.

Bankers who intend to express public opinion have benefited from Davos to attempt a counterattack and limit the risks of a populist drift. Fearing that the debate on the new financial regulation drags, their priority is now to move quickly. Their view, should be to establish an international framework concerning some key elements (supervision of the leverage effect, own funds, liquidity...), and then left then to national legislators to refine at the national level the new laws governing the financial activity. "International cooperation, it is very complicated." "Ten years on the practice in the eurozone", demonstrates Christine Lagarde, French Minister of economy, that is, also, pragmatic. "Can invent new laws." "It can also find ways to apply those that already exist by investing more in the supervision", argues a banker. Not sure that this is enough to calm public opinion.

Uncertain businessmen

Normally, the davosienne label is that it is not here to talk business. "It is yet here that I have had the first contact that led then on contracts or redemptions," says a French businessman. "I am here because my clients are there," evokes an another businessman. If taken individually, these businessmen in Davos seem to have the morale, some admit concerned to the community. In 2009, they have all declined drastically their costs to preserve their profitability; in 2010, they hope that the application will actually start. And here, both sides are opposed. Asians, especially numerous in the station of Grisons this year, seem little concerned. The Westerners, they find that unemployment remains high. "No mistake." Europe will not create many jobs in the next five years. "Hope this doesn't grow policies on go-ahead", concerned a great pattern.

Beyond conditions, corporate leaders seek policies to clearly redefine the rules of the game. Energy giants, for example, well be involved more in the name of the ecological cause, "but we need a clear, transparent and predictable framework, otherwise we cannot invest", prevents a gas giant.

Fragile States

Three bad students boasting the efforts that they will do so under the impassive gaze of the professor. Spanish José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Latvian Valdis Zatlers and especially the Greek George Papandreou were terribly contrite before Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, explaining all that they will fill their budget gaps that exceed 10 of the GDP. Full line of media focus, Papandreou accumulates promises - decrease in the salary of officials, reduction of public spending, increasing taxes. But he knows that it will be difficult to convince: "our main deficit, it's credibility, not finance." The Greece is at the centre of the current Paradox. Last year, States have shown that they were needed by injecting 5,000 billion in economies devastated by the breath of the financial explosion. They alone can decide the famous new rules of the game to prevent new disasters, under the influence of pressure groups - American finance deploys three lobbyists around each of the members of Congress, says Larry Summers, the only close to the President Barack Obama present at Davos. But, today, their very existence is threatened by the magnitude of the accumulated budget deficits. Yesterday the Iceland, today the Greece... And tomorrow Nouriel Roubini, Economist willingly catastrophic, lists of potential victims of a bankruptcy: "the Spain, the United Kingdom, the Japan, the United States...".

Déconfits economists

Davos as in Paris or Washington, it is not good be economist by days. The brilliant British historian Niall Ferguson, Harvard Professor, tackling the flamethrowers. "The difference between economists and historians. Economists love stories. From a story, they have a hunch, build a model, then use of math. Historians, like... real stories. "Moreover, they have much more worked on financial crises that economists (with the notable exception among these last of Ben Bernanke, become by chance President reserve federal). In the offensive, economists remain cois. It is true that the flamboyant Chicago school, which postulated the rationality of economic agents and the efficiency of markets, is a party in the decor. And that a more open as the "behavioural" economy, approach that attempts to analyze the competence of the human decision in all its dimensions, including psychological, or neurological, really off since only two decades. At the time, back to the fundamentals. The name of Adam Smith, considered the father of Economics has been cited on several occasions. Not Smith's "invisible hand" of markets which reconciles the interests of each and of the other, but the same Smith who wanted to help the poor in the "theory of moral sentiments", written in 1759, twenty years before his famous "research on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations". Yes, definitely, more that must be rethink, redesign, rebuild.

U do planet under pressure

Davos, it is not interested to the economy. When the businessmen and politicians let go the microphones, defenders of the planet who go up on stage and their message is worrying. "Influenza A (H1N1) did you not fear" You are wrong, launches the creator of a start-up company specialized in the eve of the pandemic threat. Businesses know that the threat will eventually materialize. Airlines cover against the risks associated with fluctuations in the price of oil. Tomorrow, they cover themselves against pandemics.

If the disease does not prevail us, need to eat to live. And here, the challenge looks significant. By 2050, the population expected to grow by 50 to exceed 9 billion. 3 Billion additional inhabitants are mostly come from the poorest regions of the world. Agriculture will have to make even huge gains in terms of productivity. Especially in Africa.

But in Davos this year, the ecological urgency until all concerned the oceans. "It takes inside all that there is good." "And we reject everything that is wrong," laments Enric Sala, an oceanographer. Today, 80 of the fish species are threatened and pollution in the Pacific, primarily as plastic granules, covers a vast area twice as the French territory. "12 of our land are protected areas." And only 0.5 of the oceans. "But the only way to save the fish is to create sanctuaries", explains the scientist. The goal defended in Davos: that by 2020, 20 of the oceans are protected. More a project which adds to the long list good resolutions here, compiled this year.

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