Global Policy Forum

GENEVA--The managing director of the upcoming World Economic Forum at the Swiss ski resort of Davos accused the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of fostering a "human disaster" in Asia.

"I am outraged by the errors of analysis and the action of the IMF which transformed a manageable crisis into a human disaster," Claude Smadja told the Swiss weekly magazine L'Illustre.

The Washington-based Fund wanted to imprint the US model of financial capitalism on a global scale and this arrogance had consequences whose damage still had to be measured, said the key administrator of the Davos forum, which opens Thursday for six days. The jamboree, into its 29th year, will gather together world leaders in business, finance, science and politics in an agenda of seminars, roundtables and private meetings.

Smadja admitted that he himself had been enthused by what he called the US model. "Many of us were caught up in the euphoria" of the 1990s when the United States economy was expanding and job creation was buoyant while Europe staggered along," he said.

Solutions to the Asian crisis lay in a blueprint, neither European or American, based on the long-term and not centered purely on the stockmarket performance of companies, he said.

"Even if the next two or three years are extremely hard, Asia's fabulous development will continue," he said.

Smadja, along with other World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, ridicules the idea sometimes put forward of Davos being a place where world leaders conspire to impose a brand of reckless capitalism. "With time and success, a myth has been born," he said. That explains why the turnout for the annual talk fest in the eastern Swiss station is so huge.

Companies represented at Davos this year represent a turnover of five trillion dollars (four trillion euros), or five times the gross domestic product of France, Smadja said.

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