Davos Forum Founders Lash out at IMF (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Davos Forum founder attacks IMF for "human disaster" in
Asia                
Date: Wed Jan 27 10:46:15 CST 1999

   GENEVA, Jan 27 (AFP) - The managing director of the upcoming World
Economic Forum at the Swiss ski resort of Davos accused the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) of fostering a "human disaster" in
Asia.
   "I am outraged by the errors of analysis and the action of the IMF
which transformed a manageable crisis into a human disaster," Claude
Smadja told the Swiss weekly magazine L'Illustre.
   The Washington-based fund wanted to imprint the US model of financial
capitalism on a global scale and this arrogance had consequences whose
damage still had to be measured, said the key administrator of the Davos
forum, which opens Thursday for six days.
   The jamboree, into its 29th year, will gather together world leaders
in business, finance, science and politics in an agenda of seminars,
roundtables and private meetings.
   Smadja admitted that he himself had been enthused by what he called
the US model.
   "Many of us were caught up in the euphoria" of the 1990s when the
United States economy was expanding and job creation was buoyant while
Europe staggered along, he said.
   Solutions to the Asian crisis lay in a blueprint, neither European or
American, based on the long-term and not centered purely on the
stockmarket performance of companies, he said.
   "Even if the next two or three years are extremely hard, Asia's
fabulous development will continue," he said.
   Smadja, along with other World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab,
ridicules the idea sometimes put forward of Davos being a place where
world leaders conspire to impose a brand of reckless capitalism.
   "With time and success, a myth has been born," he said. 
   That explains why the turnout for the annual talk fest in the eastern
Swiss station is so huge.
   Companies represented at Davos this year represent a turnover of five
trillion dollars (four trillion euros), or five times the gross domestic
product of France, Smadja said.