Davos Newbies

Beware clever words

“From the World Bank to the West Bank: a lot of people are beginning to make the connection.” Or so says an anti-capitalist demonstrator who will be on the streets of Washington this weekend. But what is the connection? The one the protestor either doesn’t want to know or won’t acknowledge is that the World Bank (together with the European Union) is a principal funder of the Palestinian Authority.

All in the family

“As with the Gambino family, the partnership enjoyed by the most senior managers at some of the world’s biggest companies is not a true one. They do not share fully in the downside, as the comparison between miserable earnings reported to shareholders and healthy rewards accruing to managers make clear. They are ersatz partners, like those in gangster movies — suppliers of a routine service who have arrogated the privileges of partnership without suffering the drawbacks.”

Where was this incendiary comparison of modern CEOs and the Mafia made? In some anti-capitalist tract? No, it’s the Financial Times’s Peter Martin holding forth in fine style.

Supporting democracy

Paul Krugman presses the point on the US’s cavalier attitude towards democracy in Venezuela. “Surely the worst thing about this episode is the betrayal of our democratic principles; ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ isn’t supposed to be followed by the words ‘as long as it suits US interests’.”