Davos leaders look to emerging markets, despite Moscow bombing (VIDEO)

GlobalPost
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President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, fresh from dealing with the Moscow bombing, will tell some of the world's most important business executives that his country is a place where they should invest.

Medvedev is arriving later than planned at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos because of the Moscow Domodedovo airport bombing.

The four-day Forum in the Swiss Alps — being held under the theme of "Shared Norms for the New Reality" — will bring together at least 35 national leaders and over 1,400 business chiefs, along with spiritual leaders and tech celebrities like Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, to discuss the outlook for the world economy.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media are being utilized by organizers to include the general public in the discussions.

A social media guide to Davos

The number of participants from India and China is bigger than ever, with many global chief executives pinning their hopes on growth in emerging markets, although still others warning against rising inflation and political risks.

"I'm optimistic because the world is growing … Now we are seeing a much more self-assured developing world going more its own way," Nestle chief executive Paul Bulcke told the organizers' opening news conference, according to Reuters.

Bankers are also keen to show their industry emerging successfully from the global financial crisis, and European politicians want to dispel the gloom hanging over the euro zone.

But Nouriel Roubini, chairman and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics, told the forum Wednesday that the  U.S. would suffer a “train wreck” at the hands of bond investors if it failed to solve its budget problems, said Roubini, the economist who predicted the financial crisis.

"The fiscal problem is very serious,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview Wednesday with Tom Keene at Davos. “The bond vigilantes have not yet woken up in the U.S. in the way they have in the euro zone. Unless the U.S. addresses this fiscal problem, we’re going to see a train wreck.”

President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged a freeze on non- defense discretionary government spending to rein in a deficit he described as “not sustainable.” U.S. Treasuries fell today before an auction of $35 billion of five-year bonds. Roubini suggested that the U.S.’ commitment on the deficit may still not be enough to placate investors.

“We’re not doing much about the budget deficit,” Roubini said. “The public debt in the U.S. next year may go from 60 percent to 90 percent” of gross domestic product.

Roubini also said that Britain and the weaker nations of the eurozone remained vulnerable to the risk of a double-dip recession, even though the rest of the world economy is recovering from the global economic crisis.

Four main topics for discussion at Davos this year are: Responding to the New Reality; The Economic Outlook and Defining Policies for Inclusive Growth; Supporting the G20 Agenda; and Building a Risk Response Network sustainable.

The global economy has seen upturn in 2011, even though Europe is still under a cloud of sovereign-debt worries.

As restructuring of the world economy has been speeded up, this year's Davos meeting will be of great significance on many levels, according to the Chinese state agency, Xinhua.

"The shifts of political and economic power from West to East and from North to South, as well as the speed of technological innovation, have created a completely new reality," Forum founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab said, Xinhua reported.

"In Davos this year, instead of looking only at the aftershocks of the recent crisis, we will concentrate on defining the new reality and discuss which shared norms are required for making global cooperation possible in this new age," he said.

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