The co-chairs of the Annual Meeting 2010 reflect on the theme of Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild.
Speakers
Josef Ackermann, Azim H. Premji, Peter Sands, Patricia A. Woertz
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Opening from President of France N. Sarkozy
SPEECH BY M. NICOLAS SARKOZY
PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
40th World Economic Forum
Davos – Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Ladies and Gentlemen, Heads of State and Government,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
May I begin by thanking Professor Schwab and all the organisational staff for inviting me to give the
opening address to this 40th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Ladies and Gentlemen, let me make things perfectly clear: as a political leader, I have not come here
to teach, but to learn together from the lessons the of the crisis. We are all responsible for the crisis.
And we are all responsible for the world we are going to leave to our children.
We all know what would have occurred, without State intervention to maintain confidence and support
industry: total collapse. Not to draw the conclusion that we must, therefore, change our ways would
be, quite simply, irresponsible.
This crisis is not just a global crisis.
It is not a crisis in globalisation.
This crisis is a crisis of globalisation.
It is our vision of the world which, at a given moment, revealed its failings.
That is what we must correct.
There can be no prosperity without an efficient financial system, without the free circulation of goods
and services, without situational revenues being called into question by competition.
But finance, free trade and competition are only means, not ends.
From the moment we accepted the idea that the market was always right and that no other opposing
factors need be taken into account, globalisation skidded out of control.
Let us look at the root of the problem: it was the imbalances in the world economy which fed the
growth of global finance. Financial deregulation was introduced in order to be able to service the
deficit of those who were consuming too much with the surplus of those who were not consuming
enough. The perpetuation and accrual of these imbalances was both the driving force and the
consequence of financial globalisation. In just the same way, the instability of financial markets was both the driving force and the consequence of the growth in financial trading.
