Friday 26th January
The final night's party at Davos had a slightly dream-like quality—as an almost random selection of celebrities drifted about the place. At various times I spotted Michael Douglas propping up the bar, George Soros queuing for Indian food and Shimon Peres engaged in earnest conversation in the corner. Rubbing shoulders with the rich, famous and powerful is in many ways a heady experience. Over the course of four days in Davos I was in the same room at various times as Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan—and even Muhammad Ali, who was there to pick up an award. But it can also be strangely demoralising to be surrounded by the super-rich. At a lunch on the Friday, devoted to the subject of "emerging multinationals"—the quiet old Indian gentleman opposite me, who had chosen the vegetarian option, informed me that his company now had a market capitalisation of over $2bn dollars. Sunil Mittal, an Indian telecoms entrepreneur, gave a presentation in which he mentioned that his company was now worth $15bn—and he was merely making a point about the growth of the market. The previous night I was at a party given by McKinsey and found myself queuing for a drink next to Eric Schmidt of Google, who I seem to remember is now worth $10bn personally. Now Davos is over, and he is going back to his mansion, while I return to my semi-detached in Acton.
The "India Everywhere" campaign was a huge success. Davos was full of confident and charming Indian businessmen, and the Indians provided the food and the Bollywood music at the final night's jamboree. Their charm offensive even extended to leaving gift packs in the rooms of selected journalists and delegates containing a pashmina and an iPod, loaded with Indian music. I was about to chuck the iPod away, assuming it was just some sort of trashy CD, when I belatedly realised what it was. Moved by this narrow escape, I inspected the thing very closely and found that, written in very small letters on the side, was the phrase "Made in China." (Note to the editor of the Economist: I am donating the iPod to Oxfam just as soon as I can get it back off my daughter).
If "India Everywhere" was one theme of Davos, "America nowhere" was another. Davoses have often been dominated by the US. In recent years, discussion of and anger over?American policy in Iraq has been dominant. There is also usually great interest in the fate of the US economy and developments in the American business world. Of course, these were still important this year, but somehow the interest seemed less intense. One seminar brought together John McCain and Mark Warner, a Democrat who is governor of Virginia—two men who could well be battling for the American presidency in 2008. But the session was scheduled for the graveyard slot of 6.30, when half the delegates are off at cocktail parties, and fewer than 200 of the more than 2,000 delegates turned up. However, there was one big exception to this new indifference to America. Bill Clinton still has huge star quality. His session on Saturday was packed out, and had the audience swooning with delight. When the unctuous Klaus Schwab, who was conducting the interview, said that Clinton might end up as the spouse of the next president of the US, Clinton shot back that he had no intention of marrying John McCain.
Bill Clinton may be a major draw, but apparently I am not. On the Friday night I was down to moderate a discussion over dinner on "Economic Blindspots"—devoted to the bits of the world that are not doing so well out of globalisation. Since this is not exactly my specialist subject, I was a little apprehensive and spent a couple of hours anxiously mugging up, before heading off to the hotel where the dinner was taking place. When I first got asked to do the session, a couple of months ago, it had an impressive cast list, including the presidents of Georgia and Mozambique—but they had both pulled out in the days before the dinner. That still left the Nigerian finance minister and Russia's minister for economic development. But when I got to the hotel, I discovered they had cancelled as well. That left me to moderate a discussion between two economists from the World Bank, a Chilean professor and the head of the Australian TUC. Fair enough, you might think. But unfortunately, the audience was rather sparse—in fact, only two people had shown up to listen to us. We all sat around feeling humiliated for a while. But the event quickly morphed into a pleasant and stimulating dinner party. And, as I left the hotel, it did occur to me that the complete lack of interest in our topic rather validated the title given to our abortive discussion—as far as Davos was concerned, we were definitely a bit of a "blindspot".
