TIME EUROPE
WEB EXCLUSIVE
So Long, Farewell
On the last day in Davos, a few last panel meetings and catching up with friends
By DON MORRISON
The final panel discussions are playing to half-empty houses. Hurry or you'll miss Softbank's Masayoshi Son on the Internet in Asia. Or economist Lester Thurow on managing the New Economy. Or directors Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Mann on the death of cinema. Taxis are lining up outside Davos' hotels for the two-minute, $12 trip to the train station. In the lobbies and corridors, partipants are cheek-kissing each other goodbye (typically with three busses, in the extravagant European way). The 30th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is drawing to a close, not with a bang but a slobber.
So what have we learned? That globalization has its discontents but is on the whole a good thing. That the U.S. tendency to act unilaterally is irritating its allies. That Russia is a mess. That China is a big country with lots of promise, if only its bureaucrats will stop trying to strangle the Internet. That nearly all the world's major economies will continue to expand this year, though stock markets will remain volatile. That string theory may someday explain everything about the physical universe. That the world's policymakers need to pay more attention to global warming, AIDS orphans, endocrine disruptors, nuclear proliferation and other very important problems.
Not that the week's work was all platitudes and conventional wisdom. On the meeting's penultimate day, several important attendees committed real news. Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said he will call for the resignation of General Wiranto, the former army chief, from his cabinet post because of alleged responsibility for human rights abuses in East Timor. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said his company wouldn't follow AOL in acquiring media companies but would instead focus on developing software. AOL chairman Steve Case said he wouldn't eliminate my job when his company takes over Time Warner later this year.
We also learned that some old friends had changed jobs, professions, countries and family situations since we last gathered. Deutsche Bank chief strategist Kenneth Courtis confirmed that he has defected to Goldman-Sachs. Economist Rene Cortázar has become head of Television Nacional de Chile. Barbara Erskine, the World Economic Forum's widely loved director and press chief, is finally going off to start her own consultancy, though she will continue to do projects for the Forum. And there will soon be an opening in President Wahid's cabinet.
So as the sun sinks slowly over Jacobshorn and we bid a fond farewell to Davos, we are reminded why we came to this odd burg in the first place. Not so much because we'd get crash courses in economics, diplomacy, the Internet or particle physics. But mostly because we'd regain contact with old friends and make some new ones. And be reminded that even the people who run the world, when seen in ski clothes struggling for footing on a slippery sidewalk or sweating like veal calfs in an overcrowded conference hall, are pretty much like the rest of us: affable, irritable, hungry for human contact.
Davos 2000 homepage
TIME Europe home
More stories from TIME Europe and related links
E-mail us at mail@timeatlantic.com
COPYRIGHT © 2000 TIME INC. NEW MEDIA
|
|
|
