Easing of Davos blues..

Many of the elite of international business and politics gather, each year, at the Swiss resort of Davos to feel each others’ pulse.
The World Economic Forum may attract “the great and the good”, but as an event it is less staged than the great organised photocalls of statesmen and women gathered at a G8 or G20 event.
This year, an energetic debate took place between some of the West’s top bankers and a posse of regulators and economists led by the Chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, Lord Adair Turner and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
It is no surprise that banking was at the top of the agenda.
While talk of another Great Depression has disappeared, few anticipate a strong recovery in the countries most hit by the financial crisis. The overhang of debt and continuing shortages of available credit look set to act as a drag on investment, any rebound in consumer spending, or the revival in the enterprise sector.
The US Administration, in recent weeks, had announced plans to crack down on large banking institutions in response to the furious public reaction at the grant of large bonuses by financial institutions ( and by Goldman Sachs, in particular ) .Obama has proposed a tax on US banks aimed at raising over $100bn a year together with plans to force retail banks to offload risk taking activities.There has also been talk of a ‘Tobin tax’ on transactions aimed at curbing profit driven trading  ( the Tobin tax is named after a US Nobel prize winner, James Tobin )
At Davos, the senior Barclays bank executive Bob Diamond warned that any moves to clamp down on the size of institutions could serve to derail the recovery by hindering world trade.
The investor, George Soros tacked in two different directions, suggesting that a tax on banks would be premature while suggesting that proposals to break up the financial institutions did not go far enough.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy took aim at the Anglo Saxon financial model while Britain’s top regulator Adair Turner came up with some interesting suggestions on how best to prevent a repeat of the events of 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Turner called for a creation of a macro prudential body aimed at cutting down on lending and borrowing at a time when a credit bubble appears to be developing.
The Committee would be given the power to tackle borrowers as well as lenders.
But perhaps the participants might have been better advised to concentrate their attention on the key issue of credit supply. It it wise to be forcing financial institutions to raise their capital ratios at a time when individuals and firms are in particular need of credit support ?
One of the great current themes is the transfer of economic power from West to East, or as one commentator suggests from the debtor nations to the creditor nations.
During the week, there were reports that Greece had sought to sell its sovereign bonds to China. The reports, later denied, sparked a run on Greek bonds along with more speculation about the future of the Eurozone, speculation that focused unwelcome attention on other financially troubled peripheral EU states like Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
This served as a reminder that the road to recovery looks set to be bumpy indeed.