Daily Lessons from Life 25 January 2012 -

A few headlines to comment on actually. e.g. more Tibetan protesters killed in China, Obama's state of the union urshering a tougher stand against China on trade (which may means more troubles in the world economy), will high pay deter corruption of the elite government servants, etc. At the end, I settled on the elites in Davos confronting failures of Western capitalism to comment on.

"January 25, 2012 - AFP Davos elite confronts failures of Western capitalism

DAVOS, Switzerland - Chastened leaders of the global business elite admitted on Wednesday that the Western free-market model has come up short and faces being shoved aside by emerging power state capitalism.

Five days of public debate and private networking began with a stark warning from a debating panel of experts that the historic motors of the 20th century global economy have been weakened by inequality and yawning deficits.

'I think we have three to four years in the West to improve the economic model that we have, and if we don't do that soon I think we've lost the game,' warned David Rubenstein, managing director of the Carlyle investment fund.

Global labour leader Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, urged corporations and governments to work with employees to develop a new economic model - and warned of a backlash.

'Let's get a seat at the table for the real economy. Will the real economy please stand up, because the financial markets are killing you,' she said.

'No-one will like the social unrest that will follow.

'We must redesign the model. We must reset it. Stop the greed. Unless employers and workers sit down with governments, the system will continue to fail,' she said, calling for higher minimum wages to secure a consumer base.

Ben Verwaayen, chief executive of French telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent, said: "The consumer goes to the grocery shop and buys globalisation and then he leaves the shop with his two bags full of globalisation and turns to the government and says: 'Protect me from the results of this',' he said.

'We talk about doom and gloom here in Davos. If you would go to Brazil today and you were to talk to young people about where the world is they would have a quite different view,' he said.

Some 40 heads of government will join 2,600 titans of commerce and industry in Davos to discuss everything from the eurozone debt crisis to Iran's nuclear programme and trends in science and the arts.

Klaus Schwab, the founder and organiser of Davos, acknowledged that the line-up is not so spectacular as in recent years, as many leaders battle economic and political crisis at home."

I always look at this event and those who go to it as: egoeistic people. Seriously, it is just a time to be seen and be seen with in my opinion. Very much like to institution called: 'the Commonwealth' that I firmly believed has passed its useful date!

Lessons for me are:

1. Western capitalism as we practiced it today is broken. You cannot have a system where the WHOLE world is paying for the decisions by a few so-called bankers, more accurately called: gamblers, betting with other people's money without recourse and responsibilities when things go bad!! That is one reason why there is this: 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement in the USA and copycat elsewhere!;

2. you cannot have a situation where spending on credit or on future income TODAY as a norm. It is unsustainable and anyone who believes he or she can do it on a long term basis must be delusional or selfish to the point that he or she does not care about the dire consequences as there is NEVER any intention to honour any promises made!;

3. while welfare states are not desirable. Aged and unproductive old and older people are with us in this world. What can the Western capitalism do for them IF they have no saving and no money to pay for the housing, health care, etc?

The important question these very smart, supposedly, people that congregate at Davos should try to answer is: what is the sustainable economic model of the future 10 years that will serve the global population much better?

From President Obama's state of the union speech last night, more tension instead of cooperation, more protection of self-interest instead of collective interest are more likely than NOT!!