As the weather in Davos gets slightly warmer through the week, the snow on the roads is starting to melt in the bright sunshine of mid-day. However, in the night the damp roads freeze again and when I venture out in the early morning the pavements have become very slippery.
Some enterprising TV journalists have solved the problem of how to move their heavy equipment around on the icy roads by hiring children's sledges, and towing the cameras and tripods behind them. This bizarre sight created a lot of envy from others who had not yet found the shop which rents out the small wooden sledges.
Shimon Peres slips
The ice caught another victim in Shimon Peres, President of Israel. He moves around with a large security detail of 10 agents from both Israel and Switzerland, but he seems to want a normal life and manages to act as though the ten men in suits with earpieces around him do not exist.
After his breakfast on Saturday he was due to go to the Congress Hall but suddenly changed his mind and went for a stroll through Davos' main street. This took him out of the security perimeter, and astonished tourists trying to have a normal week skiing found themselves swept up in the drama.
However, they were wearing ski boots and were well set up for the icy pavements, unlike the president who was wearing his normal shoes. Inevitably the ice caught Peres, and down he went on to the ground. His security detail helped him up and he dropped in on a Swiss bakery to recover before returning to the Congress Hall and the task of debating the future of the Middle East.
Monitoring risks
The turbulence in the world markets has been a major focus of many of the business leaders at the Forum. The general feeling is that the Americans had it coming, thanks to their inadequate regulation and monitoring of their financial institutions' more outrageous instruments.
However, there is also substantial confidence that the global economy has never been better placed to handle such shocks, with the power of India and China leading the Asian economy looking well able to feed confidence back into the wider world.
"Many more countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are more able to look after themselves than at any other time in history," Muhtar Kent, COO of CocaCola told me. He was summing up what many people here are saying as a consensus is emerging that the world's financial authorities need to take more care of monitoring risks, but they do not need to impose any new regulations. "The key is to set up a system to exchange better information earlier", said Tony Blair.
The Norwegian Finance Minster summed up the situation with admirable clarity. "They are in a real mess, and right now they really need our money", said Kristin Halvorsen. She linked her comment to her point that threat to regulate investment by sovereign funds is way out of place, and she has no interest in getting Norway into some sort of sovereign fund club.
