Home > The Magazine > Features

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

The schmoozer of Davos prepares to bare his teeth

Rani Singh

Wednesday, 23rd January 2008

In the week of the World Economic Forum Rani Singh talks to Angel Gurría, head of the OECD, who has sharp words on capitalist ‘schizophrenia’ and a coded warning for Gordon

Gurría’s brightly lit office is in a former Rothschild mansion in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It is the eve of the annual Davos super-fest when the world’s most powerful political and economic leaders get together to mend the world and to network hard in a sleepy Swiss resort. Gurría is attending, along with the usual suspects: Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair (holding hands no doubt with his new J.P. Morgan boss James Dimon), Hamid Karzai, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Pervez Musharraf and — of course — Bono. Gurría is addressing some pet subjects at Davos: fighting corruption, safe water, and financial risk — the last most timely in a week of crash and burn on the markets.

Angel Gurría is dynamic and charismatic in a Latin-American way, leaning in close to make a point, touching my arm frequently and making eye contact throughout the interview. He contradicts me when he wants and I have to interrupt him if his answer is too long. As finance minister to Mexico, he was nicknamed ‘Señor Scissorhands’ because he curbed spending and turned the economy around. When he was minister of foreign affairs he encouraged dialogue and ‘consensus-building’. These qualities are useful in the post he took up 18 months ago.

The OECD, set up in 1961, is still the world’s leading economic forum, with 30 members. Some non-member countries are growing much faster than member nations, says Gurría, so Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa have been invited to join an ‘enhanced engagement’ programme. But, I ask — in this week of all weeks — what gives the luminaries mentioned above, along with the presidents of the European Central Bank and the World Bank and the head of the International Monetary Fund (and — oh — mustn’t forget Emma Thompson, mentioned on the VIP list alongside the UN’s Ban Ki-moon) the right to sit and pronounce on the rest of the world when the financial system is on the brink of crisis and three billion people still live on less than two dollars a day? Fiddling while Rome burns?

Gurría gets serious. ‘If you are suggesting that we as mankind . . . we are not doing our job well enough, I would accept that. We have a lot of work to do and we should do better, we should do more, we as society, we as international institutions . . . we are dealing with the greater challenges of globalisation, it is generating in many cases an increase in the levels of inequality in societies . . . that is undesirable.’ Though many of his international counterparts will be at Davos, Alistair Darling will be ‘missing in action’, perhaps wishing to avoid questions about how his country experienced its first run on a major bank since Victorian times. Explanations will be left to Gordon Brown.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Rani Singh | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (4)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

john problem

January 24th, 2008 11:56am

What a success Davos would be if these great intellects started thinking about how the financial system could be improved and rendered more stable. Have any good ideas ever come out of this august gathering? What is its purpose? If Alastair Darling will not be present but Emma Thompson will, is this a possible indicator of of who will be our next Chancellor? She would seem to qualify on two counts - almost certainly an equivalent knowledge of economics, if not more, and far more charisma.

mark

January 25th, 2008 1:53am

tThe warning signs were very clear and have been for a long time. Cash is king!! - "never a borrower or a lender be" remember that? - but instead we have had agressive advertising to people to not just buy a product, but, worse, to refinance a house, consolidate debt etc. To switch capital expenditure (house payments) into operational costs (Plasma TVs, holidays) is and always was complete madness. Did no-one see that the principles of accounting rules apply equally to a household account? We even see adverts to convert a future pension into cash today..? Maybe this is just the downside of capitalism? Or the inevitable outcome of individual "greed" and a desire to satisfy that NOW.

Colonial Mike

January 25th, 2008 7:23am

Bono at Davos? And I was always under the impression that pop star's talents lay in pop music, chemical substances and furious copulation, generally with multiple partners. Whose next? The idiotic Geldorf? "Posh" Spice? "Kicker" Spice? Mike Tyson?

Brenda Elvin

January 26th, 2008 8:22am

Great article, it's nice to see the human face (and thoughts) of leader's of large organisations.

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out...

Fraser Nelson and Daniel Finkelstein

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts?

For a bit of perspective, try thinking Jurassic

Christopher Lloyd

The first takeaways originated about 150 million years ago, says Christopher Lloyd; global travel is pretty ancient, too. And as for democracy...

Don’t confuse conversation with dialogue or quips

Catherine Blyth

Catherine Blyth says that conversation is an art: its essence is the acrobatic business of reading and changing minds — talking with people, not at them

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated

Want to cut taxes? First cut spending. Here’s how

Fraser Nelson

After a week of clamorous competition between the parties over tax cuts, Fraser Nelson offers a guide to paying for them: a programme of spending cuts that would preserve core services but shave off the fat of the Brown years. All that is needed is political will

The Tory quest for a fiscal Holy Grail is doomed

Irwin Stelzer

Brown’s golden rules have been exposed as a sham, says Irwin Stelzer, but the Tory response has been feeble. Their target should be the PM’s feathering of Old Labour nests

A quantum of respect for the forgotten master

Sinclair McKay

Sinclair McKay hails the pioneering novels of William Le Queux, true inventor of the modern spy novel, whose thrillers prefigured the Bond books by more than half a century

There is nothing magic about this Keynesian fad

Tim Congdon

Last week, The Spectator said that ‘Keynesianism is not the answer’. Here, Tim Congdon says the government’s economic recovery strategy is a sham based on outmoded leftist thinking

Clinton Democrats are to blame for the credit crunch

Dennis Sewell

Our current financial turmoil is not the fault of greedy bankers, says Dennis Sewell. In fact, the banks were bullied into lowering their lending standards by left-wing idealists intent on equal opportunities at any cost