REFLECTIONS on our Western World: Tweets + other Gleanings from Davos courtesy of the BBC this morning

MayorOfLondon tweets: Told the financial elite in Davos last night that the masters of the universe must become the servants of society

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QueenRania tweets: Was nice to see P[resident].Clinton. Heard abt his tireless effort & concern 4 people of Haiti. Stories of survival, hope the world must never forget 

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Development economist Jeffrey Sachs tells the Millennium Development Goals forum that business is better at getting things done than government when it comes to carrying out pledges

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The BBC's Tim Weber says: The sun is shining over Davos and the first breakfast briefings are under way. The millionaires were stomping on the dance floor at last night's party hosted by US consultancy McKinsey. On the way, one man said to me: "Seems there's still a bubble economy." Not sure whether he meant the party, or the bubble machine at the entrance.

THE ECONOMY?

John Kenneth Galbraith once said: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
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Here's a telling snippet from Armando Ianucci's lead story in the UK's Independent about the Chilcot panel currently investing the legitimacy of the US and UK going to "war' in Iraq:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/armando-iannucci-its-time-for-chilcots-team-to-flex-their-ageing-muscles-1882560.html

Talk to anyone who worked in Whitehall at the time and you hear far, far worse than anything that's emerged in an official inquiry. Researching my film In The Loop, a comedy about a British prime minister and a US president in the lead-up to an invasion of a Middle Eastern country, I talked to civil servants, advisers and diplomats in London and Washington. They told me tummy-churning stuff. Of Blair being so excited at being in the Oval Office he nearly hyperventilated. I heard of how doubts about the legality of invasion were the closest the British military had come to mutiny. Of how the Pentagon tried to freeze out the State Department by speaking at joint meetings entirely in acronyms that only Pentagon staff would understand. And of how Donald Rumsfeld weeded out from those going to help the reconstruction of Iraq anyone who could speak Arabic, on the grounds they would be pro-Arab. As a result, it took the Americans 18 months to realise that when marines held up the flat of their hand to oncoming cars to signal them to stop, they were actually using the Iraqi hand-signal for "come forward". That's why so many families in cars were shot.

Did someone say masters of the universe?