At this evening's cocktail reception hosted by Yale University, Richard Levin, the school's president, was discussing the makeup of Obama's stimulus package, which he believes should include fewer tax cuts and more real spending on programs that will accelerate America's move to a green economy. "As industrial production drops, emissions are going to go down," he predicted, "and the sense of urgency to make the transition to green jobs will also go down. We mustn't miss this moment."
A few minutes later, I was talking to Jeffrey Rosen, Deputy Chairman of Lazard LLC (and Yale class of '69), when his classmate, Blackstone group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, walked up, clearly in an upbeat mood (unusual for financial types at Davos this year). He told us that, so far, he'd only been meeting with central bankers: "There is no other business to be done," he said with a shrug. "You are walking with your head high," I remarked. "I'm walking with my head still on," he replied. "That's the good news." The bad news? When I asked him for his estimate of how long the hard times will last, he told me: "Don't hold your breath. And don't buy new clothes."
In contrast, another Yalie, Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson/Reuters, said that he had just come from a session with former GOP Congressman Chris Shays. "He was the most optimistic person I've run into in Davos," Glocer told me. "I couldn't tell if it was because he wants us all to keep investing or because he really believes it."
Read More Davos Notes:
Contrite Bankers, Overflow Interest in Philanthropy, Mistrusted Americans
Davos '09: Less Glitz, More Anxiety
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confused freedom of markets - and consequently deregulation - with individual freedom. This was in the sophistic Milton Freedman, Friedrich von Hayek tradition of argument : economic freeedom is the most important freedom - in fact the only real freedom. Freedom of thought, of expression, freedom of the person are irrelevant, if not actually harmful...
The deregulation mania aggressively fostered by lobbies of whom former Republican Senator Phil Gramm is a notorious representative, led to the 1999 and 2004 deregulation laws which removed the separation between commercial banking and derivative speculation (hypocritically called investment banking) and allowed the derivative industry to "self-regulate". (speak of allowing a drunkard to regulate all the liquor he drinks) Independent supervisory bodies were eliminated.
Huge fiancial bets were placed that went unrecorded - "off the books" - another grotesque sophism.
Financial executives awarded themselves enormous "performance bonuses".
When the debt edifice started collapsing, good stock had to be sold off to pay for all the bogus derivative plays. In October 2008, millions of people saw their savings invested in the stock market
shrink or disappear.
So much for how the argument of "free market philosophy" was used to pull the wool over peoples'
eyes to hide the immoral financial casino.
The first is, how do we change our economy to embrace sustainability and still offer opportunities to the poor to increase wealth? One easy answer is reduce global population to no more than 2 billion people, instantly, but it's hardly a moral solution.
The second red flag is, what future problems are we creating with current scientific advances? We are rapidly reaching the point where one can genetically engineer our children. There is a lot of this kind of scientific research going on and no one is asking, "Just because we can, does it mean we should?"
We always speak of the harm we are doing as destruction of the planet when what we should say is, we are destroying ourselves. The planet will survive. It has survived many more, many larger catastrophes and will continue to do so. What is at risk is our species' chances of being around to witness it do so.
"As industrial production drops, emissions are going to go down," he predicted, "and the sense of urgency to make the transition to green jobs will also go down. We mustn't miss this moment."
is dangerously vague. "Green Jobs"? Seems like a potential for boondoggles, and worse like funding Carbon Credit nonsense that just enriches Al Gore's friends.
What is key is taking the opportunity to fund R&D into alternative energy technology, wind, wave, materials, cheaper solar, and perhaps most crucially better battery technology.
If you fund "green" programs where the primary objective is jobs, it will be largely wasted. If you fund "green" programs to shift money around with cap and trade nonsense you might as well just call up the Ponzi geniuses who brought down the banking system with worthless mortgages and pretend securities and have them run it.
The great thing about this as an R&D funding opportunity is that apart from the scale of the need (which almost requires government) you expect a lot of R&D to yield nothing commercial. It is built in to the assumptions. If you fund 10 R&D programs and 1 of them produces something significant and a couple of others produce something that might be useful and the other 7 just employ some engineers for a few years that is likely a huge success.
Better to seek EVOLUTION not REVOLUTION. Better regulation and coordination. More effective tax policy and government.
Reminiscent of the Titanic sinking: while the world economy is going down, drowning those poor lads who couldn't afford upper cabins, the wealthy passengers and captains continue to drink cocktails and congratulate each other on the upper deck. Millions of people die every year around the world because of the unreasonable decisions made by those money-swollen rotten barons of capitalism who meet in Davos every year. Giving them any kind of visibility is shameful. Man, this world is so, so, so sick.
You were amazing on CNBC this morning.
Anything you can do to drag some of our old rust belt industry leaders into thinking out of the box and embracing a world of collective knowledge as opposed to clinging to the pre defined and cemented notions of old the better our country will become.
Imagine no laptops in the oval office! From energy to autos to health care, we must modernize and become more transparent.
The democratization of information will finally lead to a renewed democracy of truth, logic and intelligent discourse.
Well, that's an interesting prospect.
We need a move to a green economy not only for the economy, but also for the ecology of the planet; from now on, no economic calculation should be made without estimating the costs to the environment.
The President of Yale is on target as long as we re-regulate Wall St. and capitalism in general.
We all carry the solution to the world's economic - financial crisis around with us in our hearts. The problem is not really an economic or financial one; it is a fundamental and ancient human problem. That emptiness in the human heart that so many try to fill with money and all the things that money can buy can only be filled by love, an active love. We might translate that love as honesty, fairness, practicality and compassion for starters. This love lying dormant in so many human hearts is the only limitless resource we have, but it is the very thing that we need the most to put order and harmony back into human affairs, just as it puts meaning and purpose back into each person's life. This limitless resource of love, unlike any other resource, is best discovered by giving it away.
People like to buy stuff, especially luxury goods to distract themselves from the fact they are mortal.
It only makes them more miserable. I recently went on Facebook and saw how self-centered people were and thought "if these people stopped writing insipid things about themselves and donated their time to a good cause for just an hour a week, wouldn't our world be better?"
My early life; high school years, were marked by 'successful commerce, LOCALLY owned businesses, a way to earn a living, employees were your neighbors thus treated with respect. The shops were closed on Weds. afternoons so people could go recreat that day. TV was more ENTERTAINMENT THAN SALES VEHICLE!
WHen did that model change, to never having enough, needing more more more?
And WHY?
Global Warming could create, through an International effort, a Reclamation Industry run regionally putting people back to work replanting forests and cleaning up the oceans for starters. We can run large pipelines of water for irrigation and turn arid land into farmlands. We need new factories built that can produce biodegradable products, and we need new ways to deal with waste among other things.
There are other technologies that scientists haven’t explored that might be used for generating clean energy and also space travel. Now is the time for Change.