DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – A hedge fund investor told me she attends the World Economic Forum each year “so that I’ll know what to short.” In a world awash with geopolitical and economic pessimism, the dominant mood at this year’s Davos, her argument is that it might be time to go “long” on optimism.
One can quibble with her premise that Davos is a place more for conventional wisdom than investable solutions. As the world’s leading convener of global and business elites for most of the past half-century, the WEF often has been ahead in identifying trends, including the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and in generating positive change, such as CEOs’ increased focus on social responsibility.
That said, there’s no doubt this year’s prevailing theme was a collective gloom without ready solutions. One of Europe’s most murderous conflicts since World War II grinds on without resolution; the global economy grinds toward recession with slowing growth and growing inflation; and COVID with all its variants persists into its third year, with a particular pounding of China and related supply chains.
Yet there was another narrative on display in Davos as well.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has jolted the collective West from its slumber. Europe has responded with more collective purpose, and its taxpayers are funding weapons for a Ukraine fighting for shared freedoms. Even Davos’ newest elites, the cryptocurrency crowd, are exploring ways to deploy aid more effectively and swiftly to Ukraine even as they lick their wounds from billions in losses from the Terra crypto scandal.
That Davos for the first time took Russians off its invite list underscored that there are some crimes the global community must oppose.
“In Davos, our solidarity is foremost with the people suffering from the atrocities of this war,” said Klaus Schwab, the Forum’s founder and executive chairman. The WEF called for a “Marshall Plan” for the reconstruction of Ukraine, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Davos crowd via video that it should use seized Russian assets to help accomplish that task.
Not present was China’s President Xi Jinping, who has used the Davos stage to preen as a champion for a better world, most recently on Jan. 17 when he spoke to a virtual WEF session.
“We need to discard Cold War mentality and seek peaceful coexistence and win-win outcomes,” he said, just a matter of days before he signed a joint statement with Putin agreeing to a relationship “without limits.” That, in turn, was a little more than a month before Putin launched his war.
One wonders whether Xi ever tried to convince Putin of what he told his January Davos audience: “History has proved time and again that confrontation does not solve problems, it only invites catastrophic consequences.”
The week’s most repeated story was that of how Ukrainian business leader and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk transformed the perennial “Russia House” into “Russian War Crimes House.”
Prominently located on the ski…
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