Obama economic adviser Larry Summers cautions that the U.S. economy still has a long way to go before it’s fully back to normal, even though fourth quarter annualized growth came in at 5.7%. Computer mogul Bill Gates promises $10 billion for vaccine research and delivery over the next decade, double what his foundation spent on [...]
The buzz in the halls here at Davos continues to be about financial regulation. Yesterday the world’s largest banks had a closed-door strategy session, and tomorrow they’re meeting with regulators and policy makers, including U.S. Congressman Barney Frank. This afternoon Deutsche Bank CEO Joseph Ackermann gave an update on what the financial services folks are [...]
Bill Clinton pops by to encourage continued support of Haiti and says the nation could emerge with an economy stronger than it had before. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou denies that his country is looking for emergency funding to finance its budget deficit. The heads of Bank of America, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Barclays and HSBC hold [...]
This is not official Davos business, but I want to quickly weigh in on the State of the Union. I’ve written before about how it’s tough for the federal government to explicitly set out to create jobs. Nonetheless, the President’s speech from last night had some decent ideas. Plus one really bad one. Good idea [...]
A lot of the talk here at Davos is, unsurprisingly, about financial regulation. At TIME’s Board of Economists yesterday morning, David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group had a nice take on why we probably shouldn’t hold our breath for a bunch of nations getting together to pass the same laws in order to prevent regulatory [...]
Congressman Barney Frank says he was caught off-guard by the timing of last week’s unveiling of the Volcker Rule, but he likes the idea and it shouldn’t be a problem to work into the financial-reform bill he’s got going in the House. Barclays chief Bob Diamond says he does not like the Volcker Rule and [...]
Each year TIME co-hosts the opening panel at Davos. And each year some schmuck like me has to immediately write up a story about the discussion to make the deadline of our European magazine edition. Since I’ll be working on that for a good chunk of the day, I thought I’d leave you with some early [...]
So far a big topic of conversation here in Davos is who decided not to attend this year’s World Economic Forum. Now, maybe that has something to do with the fact that the festivities don’t officially kick off until tonight and the panel discussions don’t begin until tomorrow, and so all people are left with [...]
I’ve arrived in Davos—which made this an interesting sign to see as I was walking down the street.
I’ll be blogging this week from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The theme of this year’s gathering of political and financial movers and shakers is “Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild.” Sounds like a plan to me. Last year’s meeting, which followed on the heels of the Fall 2008 meltdown, was [...]
