What to watch for at this year's World Economic Forum

Bruce Upbin at Forbes has a nice walk-up to the forum and lists the following as things to keep an eye out for this year:

- Cameron could use the moment to deliver the “we’re leaving the EU” speech (We asked if leaving the EU would be good or bad for the UK)
- Medvedev caps big Russian contingent this year as he (Putin) using Davos as a launchpad for his agenda as president of the G20 in 2013.
- Russia’s competitiveness will be addressed in report coming out this week called “Scenarios for the Russian Federation” in a major plenary session with Medvedev reacting to it at that session.
- The massive purchase of bad debt and printing of money has made ECB and Japan’s central bank now close to one-third of the EU and Japan’s GDP.

Along with those items of note, the follow are the three main agenda items that the WEF has set for itself:

Davos organizers have prioritized 3 areas to take action on:

- Growth and food security in Africa
- Climate change, with Davos attendees are expected to add $500 million to a green tech fund this year
- More power parity for women.

Regarding the last item, our Ross Chainey points out that only 17% of WEF delegates this year are women, according to The Guardian.

Davos leaders uneasy over glut of easy money

Reuters' European Affairs Editor, Paul Taylor, writes: "The world is awash in easy money, with consequences that are starting to worry some central bankers and business leaders at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF), though so far inflation fears seem overdone."

Paul says that, in taking unconventional steps (such as keeping interest rates at historically low levels and buying government bonds) in order to reduce unemployment, raise nominal GDP and ensure the smooth functioning of the sovereign bond market, central banks have alarmed purists who worry that "the guardians of sound money are losing their independence to governments and will find it hard to get the genie back into the bottle."

Read Paul's analysis in full here.

The mood at Davos this year? How about 'muted'?

The official theme at Davos this year is "resilient dynamism" but the mood is much less chipper, Reuters' Ben Hirschler reports:

"So what is the overall business mood in Davos? The consensus seems to be that we are heading for a slow recovery. But nobody is betting the bank on that and, in any case, the Davos elite has got it badly wrong in the past (they notably failed to spot the financial crisis coming). UBS boss Axel Weber summed it: 'The major economies are recovering but it is a recovery that is slow, it is muted.' For Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris the current economic outlook is 'not promising'. So how do businesses find growth? The first step, it seems, is to find a new word to describe the problem. 'We need to crack the algebra for growth, which is becoming harder and harder,' according to Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent."

Summers: "The budget deficit is not our only budget deficit", cites infrastructure, health care, employment #Davos

Nice phrase by Summers: Deficit reduction is "necessary hygiene" but it won't solve our growth problem #Davos

Reuters correspondent Lauren LaCapra sends us this from the Congress Center...At a panel session Wednesday morning, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was his usually combative self -- taking on fellow panel member and hedge fund manager Paul Singer in a battle over whether banks like JPMorgan are too opqaue. But when Dimon left the event, it became clear that he had protection: he was wearing cufflinks emblazoned with the "FBI" logo, for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Asked by someone what the cufflinks were all about, Dimon said a friend gave them to him.