Mid January means it's Davos time, that ego-serving, outrageously expensive, complete waste of time to which every CEO of a public company who attends should be immediately fired by his/her board of directors if they have any regard for the well-being of the share holders. You could put a serious dent in world poverty if you applied the waste of this week in an effort to distribute some food. But every once in a while something quite out of the ordinary occurs which gives, for a fleeting moment, legitimacy to the whole, sordid affair.
Yesterday, British PM David Cameron delivered perhaps one of the most important speeches heard in Europe in the last 50 years. It was entirely political and aimed not only at his fellow leaders in Euroland but especially at the voters back home. The PM is facing some tough battles: A referendum later this year as to whether Scotland remains part of the UK or fulfills the dream of Robert the Bruce and becomes an independent nation. He sits at the the head of a divided conservative party with the very real chance of having to call an election if things go just a bit out of kilter, and finally, the direction in which the EU appears to be going is not one that he can support on behalf of his electorate.
Cameron indicated that he had the willingness to stick with the EU but under far less restrictive membership that has been proposed. But most strikingly...and some would say shockingly...he made it quite clear that unless accommodation is reached he was prepared to put the question of continued membership to the British people in the form of a straight up or down referendum later in the year. Phrased in that manner, there are few who doubt that the result would be for the UK to withdraw. Few suspected that he would announce such a bold plan, brilliantly delivered, or so I am told by an old friend, a British diplomat who was present. Undoubtedly, this has solidified his position within the Conservative Party and has put a very large cat among the pigeons of the EU leadership to the point that Angie wasted no time in announcing that she was more than willing to discuss the UK's concerns at an early date. No word on Frankie but I doubt he received this well. Unfortunately, the poor guy's got himself in the middle of a war in Africa and is probably screaming mad that Cameron pulled this off whilst he was otherwise pre-occupied. Pure speculation on my part by the way. In any case, this is a very important event and now that he has let his intentions known in regard to a referendum, Dave's next act is going to be keeping the back-benchers in place for surely the cry will be, "Bugger the rest, referendum now!" A high risk strategy indeed.
Among the common man group, Jamie Dimon waxed poetic about bank regulation today and we'll talk about that a bit tomorrow. But under the caption of "You Can't Make This Stuff Up," came the announcement today the the chief actuary for Greece had been arrested for producing budget deficit numbers that were too high thereby, "thereby doing damage to the Greek State." The reason? Simple really. It was to insure that the size of the bailout from the EU could be justified. Greece, which got itself into trouble by submitting deficit numbers that were too low has just done a 180 and probably gotten half of Europe enraged at them again. Really, You Can't Make This Stuff Up.
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