MarketWatch: Buried in the economic avalanche

Buried in the economic avalanche
Policy makers to hold balance of power in Davos

By William L. Watts, MarketWatch


LONDON (MarketWatch) -- A global economic crisis won't be enough to keep CEOs and high-flying financiers away from the helipads in Davos next week, but the corporate elite will no longer be the stars of the show when the World Economic Forum's yearly retreat for top executives, economists and politicians gets under way high in the Swiss Alps.

A crippled financial system and the threat of the deepest global downturn since the Great Depression have changed the equation, participants and observers say.

"This is not just another Davos," said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the large and powerful American labor union.

A regular foe of private-equity firms and an advocate of tougher regulation of businesses and markets, Stern will make his first trek to the mountain resort for the annual gathering. Stern said he hopes the current economic turmoil will result in a "humbling and mind-opening moment" for many of the forum's regular attendees.

"These experts have failed the citizens of the globe. They have wrought economic havoc with financial manipulation, greed and deregulation," he said, in a telephone interview. "I don't know if it will do any good, but there is a need for straight talk and ending the backslapping, self-congratulatory noblesse-oblige attitude that I think has been more prevalent in the past."

This year's annual meeting, which begins Wednesday and concludes Feb. 1, is being billed as a showcase for world leaders to weigh what's next for the global economy and attempt to put a stamp on what the world will look like once the dust clears. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Davos-stars-left-dig-out/story.aspx?guid=%7B76571337%2D57B5%2D4A0B%2D8A9C%2D85FC0DE6B156%7D

for the first time in their rotten, useless lives and nobody is more surprised at the events of the past two years than they are.

You see, they really believed Milton Friedman's drivel, that recycled mercantilism that said the supply side should be fattened at the expense of everybody else in the world and that the demand side would always be there, enslaved by debt if nothing else.

They are absolutely shocked to find out there is a tipping point when debt becomes so onerous all spending stops, including servicing that massive debt. Shocked, I tell you!

They haven't yet realized just how dependent they are on the rest of us, though. Maybe next year.