The PayPal co-founder, Facebook investor, and manager of the hedge fund Clarium Capital Managment had a far better year than most in 2008 (Thiel says Clarium was flat for the year). So where does he think things are headed?
What has surprised you most over the past year?
In a weird way I was most surprised by the ways in which so …
Earlier today I was talking with Donald Grimes, an economist at the University of Michigan, and we got to playing around with some data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He was making the argument that a lot of the things in the stimulus bill meant to help people whose livelihoods are threatened—things like extending unemployment …
Values is a very fashionable word here at Davos this week. A lot of people seem to agree with Tony Blair’s assessment that the current financial crisis is the result of a neglect of ethical and moral values in the financial world. Bill Gates doesn’t.
“I don’t think the failure was fundamentally an ethical failure,” he said when The …
Tony Blair says he recently ran into an old friend from his leftie university days.”Ah, I told you,” his friend said. “I told you capitalism is going to end.”
Blair doesn’t buy it. “The free enterprise system as a whole has not failed,” he says. “The financial system has failed. … We’ve been taught a very old lesson, which is that …
This is the first in a series (I hope) of three-question interviews from Davos. I’ve been stationed on the same sofa in the Davos Kongresszentrum all day writing an article for the magazine, but I did manage to have a chat this morning with the guy on the next sofa over, Federico Sturzenegger. Sturzenegger is a former Argentine economic …
It’s morning in Davos, and the 2009 edition of the World Economic Forum has finally begun. Oh frabjous day!
TIME’s annual economics panel—featuring World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, Morgan Stanley Asia chairman (and former chief economist) Stephen Roach, Turkish industrialist …
The old-media business model is collapsing all around us, yet somehow newspapers and magazines and TV networks find the money to send big crews into the Swiss Alps for an annual business conference. Why is that?
1) For the global TV news networks—BBC World, CNN International, and CNBC’s various iterations—it’s the equivalent of …
The World Economic Forum gets going tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, but due to a clerical error and/or an extremely generous interpretation of the word “young,” I am a member of group called the Young Global Leaders (YGLs) of the World Economic Forum. And today is the big YGL day. We spent the afternoon trying to solve the global financial …
Crossposted from the TIME Davos blog:
I met up with my colleague and fellow TIME Davos blogger Michael Elliott at the Kaffeeklatsch in downtown Davos, where we sat in front of my MacBook Pro and discussed the big opening session on the global economy that Michael is moderating Wednesday morning. We both agreed afterward that he probably …
A video that I posted on the TIME Davos blog:
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We knew the housing market was bad, especially in Florida, but you’d still think Dick Fuld would be able to get more than a hundred bucks for a house that cost him and his wife $13.75 million less than five years ago.
On Friday, Cityfile.com, a web site that bills itself as “a guide to the most notable and influential New Yorkers,” …
I’m in Davos this week for the Great Boondoggle in the Alps. I’ll be posting on the TIME Davos blog, but plan to cross-post all my contributions here for those who get these posts via RSS or e-mail (or just can’t be bothered to click over to another blog). So here’s the first one:
The World Economic Forum in Davos is still a couple …
