Economic Leaders at Davos Have Lots to Say

Participants of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on Wednesday shared their opinions about collaboration and separate activity in the frameworks of global crisis overcoming.

Photo: Economic Leaders at Davos Have Lots to Say

French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged countries to respon to the demand for protection, justice and fairness through cooperation, regulation and governance, or "we will have isolation and protectionism."

"The signs of recovery that seem to herald the end of the global recession should not encourage us to be less daring; rather, we must be even bolder"

"We will continue to make the economy run unbearable risks, encourage speculation and sacrifice the long term to the short term unless we change banking regulation, prudential rules and accounting rules."

"We must take care to prevent too abrupt a tightening that would result in global collapse."

The Chairman of JP Morgan Chase International, Jacob Frankel joined him:

"We are falling to the trap of excessive interventionism, excessive protectionism. Money policy cannot do anything anymore. Interest rates are zero. Debt is increasing. This might stifle growth. Danger is, with excessive zeal to protect us all from debt crisis, governments will overly activist. Free trade is a win-win proposition."

Zhu Min, Deputy Governor of People's Bank of China elaborated: 

"Risk for sovereign debt crisis is real."

"If you are looking further, the current economic rebound is very weak, it's supported by government expenditure. We don't see a very strong growth engine behind the whole thing in the whole world. Soft landing, government stimuli (driven) rebound growth and landing in self sustainable growth. Even if we (have) soft landing, we need to land to structural economic growth. There is no guarantee everyone will be able to do soft landing. That's potential risk for the global economy today. The U.S. and Europe have around 10 percent of the unemployment rate.....

"It's (the financial sector) still very fragile. Balance mismatching is still a big issue. Obviously more regulation is deserved...."

"The real risk for the global economy is capital flow. Carry trade for dollar is a massive issue today. It causes huge volatility.

It's every important to have stable yuan. It's absolutely important that having stable yuan is good for China and good for the world."

Losef Ackermann, Ceo, Deutsche bank "There are some uncertainties about asset inflation, about commercial real estate in some part of the world, sovereign risk and certainly some of the global imbalances.

"We will continue to grow but at a more modest pace, on the global scale... you will see strong growth in the emerging economies...

"We should not underestimate the fact that we are in a transforming phase in the world economy."

Among others reporters also cited a governing council member, European Central Bank, Alex Weber's speech:

"We have to do monetary policy for the (monetary) union as a whole... we cannot take into our decisions developments in certain parts."

"We don't expect inflation to significantly surpass 2 percent, so what we are seeing is in line with our definition of price stability and on that end, I am not concerned," Weber told reporters. "We think rates are appropriate at the time."

Reuters has contributed to the report.