MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Davos and Porto Alegre

While the leading world businessmen, bankers and some political figures met in Davos Switzerland for the annual economic forum to praise globalization and capitalism, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, thousands gathered rather chaotically to blast the rich leading nations, the wealthy in rich countries and the current economic structure that allows such a system to subsist.

In Davos economists could not agree if the United States was heading for a full recession, but political leaders, international financial institutions and CEO from leading multinationals asked for clear leadership from the new Bush administration and lower interest rates from the US Federal Reserve. Other recommendations included building a new world financial structure, open markets and full support for education.

Doubts were cast about the strength of current European recovery and concern about the continuous depressive mood in Japan.

There were also surprises: UN Secretary General Koffi Anan suggested intellectual property rights could not be above human rights and the World Bank admitted that addressing distribution is one of the rich world's main challenges. However overall the message was: wealth comes before distribution.In Porto Alegre, former Socialists, environmentalists, social workers, Catholic organizations and left leaning political leaders claimed that the world already has enough resources to combat poverty, ensure public health, education and improve distribution.

"Solidarity and responsibility are clue words for a more fair system, and not promoting unrepentant consumers, where only money can circulate freely", was the Porto Alegre reply making theirs Economy Nobel prize winner Tobin's proposal to tax all money transactions in the world to combat poverty. In other words it's time for distribution to become the priority.

An attempt to establish a long distance video debate between Davos and Porto Alegre failed dismally ending with mutual recriminations and even insults.

Porto Alegre and its spirit, anathema of Davos, promised to hold future meetings simultaneously to the "capitalists" gatherings with the purpose of counterbalancing media coverage and in line with recent street protests, (and riots) such as happened in Seattle, Prague, Thailand, Washington.

It seems that Wall Street, main street and globalization skid row are having trouble getting their act together.