The Spectator’s Notes | 26 January 2008

Charles Moore’s reflections on the week

President Sarkozy has made the right decision by avoiding the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. The global titans of banking and politics are not looking good: to be photographed having fun with them would be a provocation. Not since the oil crises of the 1970s has there been less confidence in the people in charge. In normal times, one may not think very much about the astronomical sums made by money men, but one’s acceptance of their rewards depends on the idea that they run risks. Now it turns out that they don’t. There is a well-known saying that if you owe the bank £100, that is your problem, but if you owe it £1 million, that is its problem. What happens when the banks themselves owe several billion pounds? The answer appears to be that it is everyone’s problem except theirs. The US authorities are now helping out the big American banks on an enormous scale while the banks continue to pay their dividends, their bonuses, their huge pay-offs and, in the case of J.P.