Davos, Switzerland

Friends, welcome to Part V of this journal, these jottings from the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, way up in the Alps: Thomas Mann country (no, I don’t mean L.A.). For the previous four parts, go here, here, here, and here.

One evening, I moderate, or “facilitate,” a dinner panel called “Political Art: What Now?” The term “political art” makes my blood run cold, because I think politics usually cheapens or corrupts art, and who knows? Art may cheapen and corrupt politics. But many people like the mixing, and it is not always illegitimate, so there you are.

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I would like to mention the featured speakers at this dinner. There’s Romero Britto, a young American who was born in Brazil, and who paints and sculpts. He specializes in art that is optimistic, playful, and joyful—making him a rarity. There’s Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics. He also has strong ties to the Tate, the Royal Academy of Music, and other cultural institutions. Marc Forster is a film director, responsible for such movies as The Kite Runner and Quantum of Solace, the Bond flick. He lives in L.A., of course. But guess where he’s from? Right here in Davos. Local Boy Makes Pretty Darn Good.

There’s a Russian artist—a painter—named Alyona Kirtsova. There’s Richard Kogan, who is both a pianist and a psychiatrist. He combines the two, too, co-chairing the Music/Medicine Initiative at Cornell. Not every day do you meet a man who studied at both the Juilliard School and Harvard Medical School.

Louise Neri is the director of the Gagosian Gallery in New York. And Mallika Sarabhai is a very famous dancer from India (Gujarat province). She runs the Darpana Academy of the Performing Arts, which was founded by her mother.

I meet an interesting young journalist from La Croix, a French newspaper. “Is it religious?” I ask, as the name implies. Yes, says the journalist: “We are not affiliated with the Catholic Church, but we write from a Christian perspective—sort of like your Christian Science Monitor in America.” La Croix turns out to be the second-oldest paper in France: The oldest is, not Le Monde, but Le Figaro. And, like everybody else, La Croix is intensely trying to figure out what to do about the Web: Do they go online only? Do they retain a paper you can hold on to? Do the website and the paper have separate content? What?

These are interesting times for the media—great for media consumers, nerve-wracking for media owners and workers.

Taking center stage at the Congress Center is Angela Merkel, that remarkable woman: scientist, political theorist, politician—chancellor of Germany. As usual, she is sober and realistic—almost scientific. But she talks about optimism and confidence, too. When she does so, she does not sound terribly optimistic or confident. That is simply her manner: markedly unflamboyant.

And she sounds more like a social democrat than ever before—at least, in my exposure to her. Capitalism and its champions have been rocked back on their heels; Merkel seems jolted by recent events, as one might well.

In her speech, she denounces the “irresponsible speculation” that occurred, “particularly on the American real-estate market.” She further inveighs against “the excesses of the market”—the general market—and a lack of transparency. She says, “Markets must serve the real economy—and they have forgotten that, in recent times.” She notes that “freedom for the individual needs to be limited, if it takes freedom away from others.” And, more than once, she socks it to “unfettered capitalism.”

Have we seen much “unfettered capitalism”? Not in my lifetime, really, unless it took place in Hong Kong, Singapore, or some other such place. But even the most liberal (in the old sense) have “fetters.” Our problems, as a rule, have been too many fetters, not too few.

And Merkel does caution that we must not again succumb to “experiments with command economies.”

What is “essential now,” she says, is “to restore confidence”: for “confidence is a pillar without which companies won’t invest, banks won’t grant loans, and consumers won’t spend money.”

Merkel represents a car-making country, of course. And she is “worried” about America’s subsidies to its auto industry. She hopes that this subsidizing will not last long—“because it leads to distortion in the market and constitutes protectionism, quite frankly.”

And let there be no doubt that the chancellor is a “green bean” (to use Karl Rove’s term). She says, “I am pleased to hear that the United States is more open than it used to be” to dramatic action versus climate change. I wonder what she and her partners believe Obama, Pelosi, et al. will do. She further says that First World countries must set an example for Third World countries, although, of course, she does not use exactly this language.

And here is a bit of a headline: Merkel proposes some sort of Global Economic Council, to go with the U.N. Security Council.

And I will give you something of a sidenote: She has occasion to talk about “the terrible crimes committed by the National Socialists in my country.” Whenever I use “National Socialists,” instead of “Nazis,” I get lefty mailing saying—sneering—snarling—“What are you trying to imply, Nordlinger?” (Nothing—just calling something by its right, self-given name.)

Merkel ends her speech with a little uplift—she mentions her upbringing in Communist Germany, as she often does: “I grew up in the GDR, and I am now chancellor of a united, federal Germany. This shows me that nothing is impossible. Even this worldwide financial crisis can be mastered,” and “we can master it in such a way” as to take humanity well forward.