By Mike Dolan and Ben Hirschler
DAVOS, Switzerland, (Reuters) – To gauge the mood of this year’s annual gathering of government leaders and business chiefs, you could do worse than call up a chart of global stock markets over the past week.
That picture of stock prices plummeting on the eve of the World Economic Forum and their stellar resurgence by the weekend captures both the black pessimism of bankers in Davos and also the persistently upbeat views of many company bosses.
Tuesday’s emergency U.S. interest rate cut had a lot to do with the market’s about face, of course. But the manic-depressive nature of the marketplace during the week did mirror the equivocal outlook of many of the 2,500 delegates who made the annual pilgrimage to the Swiss ski resort.
Leaders of some of the world’s biggest companies are preparing for a slowdown in 2008, yet many question whether even the United States will tip into actual recession.
And with China and India still booming, a global slump is simply not on their radar screens.
“There’s a lot of confidence out there in the broader global economy,” Mark Foster, CEO of Accenture’s business consulting unit, told Reuters. “Everyone is looking to navigate some of the troubled waters ahead but I think they are doing it with an underlying sense of confidence.”
Dow Chemical Co boss Andrew Liveris put it more colourfully: “What’s going on now should not have a “Chicken Little” atmosphere. The sky is not falling.”
And that was not just a brave face put on for the media.
“If you walk up to someone here and ask about their business, virtually all of them — outside banking — would say my core business is fine, we’re not feeling any consequences,” said Howard Lutnick, chief executive of financial services and trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
At the very least, the gloom was not universal.
“Dig a little bit and there are pools of confidence around,” said Gerard Lyons, economist at Standard Chartered.
BANKS VS THE REST?
Quizzed on the differing signals coming from the corporate world, some policymakers reckoned the very audible warnings from banks may be drowning out the rest.
The risks to the world economy are rooted primarily in the turmoil in credit and mortgage markets of the past six months and the stress has been felt most on bank balance sheets.
“The bankers are still concerned that all the shoes have not yet dropped. We do need to see full disclosure of the balance-sheet adjustments that need to be taken,” Jim Flaherty, Canada’s finance minister told Reuters.
But “the U.S. is a diverse economy and some of the more positive views reflect that. This too will pass,” he added.
Bank chiefs were in no mood to look at the bright side.
“The problems in the consumer market are spreading,” said John Thain, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, which has just reported $16 billion in mortgage-related losses. “The next area of concern is consumer credit.”
“It’s going to take some time for these things to work their way through the system,” said William Rhodes, chairman of Citibank, which reported almost $10 billion in writedowns in the fourth quarter of last year. “In a nine-inning ballgame, I think we’re in the fifth inning.”
POLICY SPLIT
The contrasting opinions may well go some way to explain the differing central bank reactions to the financial seizure.
The Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate cutting since September clearly shows its concern that the U.S. housing recession is going to broaden out and that the pain being felt by banks will be passed on to households and companies.
But the European Central Bank insists its first priority is to keep inflation in check, providing only short-term cash lending to squeezed banks to give them time to find alternative sources of funding now that many credit lines have dried up.
Its reluctance to cut interest rates is at least partly born of a belief the euro-zone economy will weather the worst of any U.S. downturn. And ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet said in Davos: “There is no contradiction between price stability and financial stability.” Yet for all the fretting in the West, the shifting balance of power in the world economy, the globalisation of markets and business firing up the developing world, is a key factor taking the edge off the gloom.
“With India and China being the drivers of the global economy their resilience will become a shock absorber, “India’s trade minister, Kamal Nath, said. (Additional reporting by Clara Ferreira Marques, Natsuko Waki, Anshuman Daga, Dominic Evans, Alex Lawlor, Sam Cage, Thomas Atkins, Bill Schomberg, Jonathan Lynn; Editing by Quentin Bryar)
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