Free Republic

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said Thursday that the powerful investment bank will only finance initial public offerings (IPOs) for companies that have at least one nonwhite male board member. Solomon said during a Thursday interview with CNBC that as of July 1 in the U.S. and Europe, Goldman “is not going to take a company public unless there is at least one diverse board candidate, with a focus on women.” “Diversity on boards is a very very important issue, and we've been very very focused on it and so we're trying to find ways to encourage that,” Solomon told...

The attendees' acceptance of Trump is all the more surprising given the theme of this year's annual WEF meeting: "Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World." Trump, after all, is a climate-change denier, although he seems to have kept his denial under wraps in his prepared address. He limited his barbs at environmentalists (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-world-economic-forum-davos-switzerland/) to urging a rejection of "the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse," including "an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the '70s and an end of oil in the 1990s." The change of heart toward Trump may have something to...

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen said that if Republican nominee Donald Trump becomes president and follows through on some of the things he’s said on the campaign trail, the U.S. could face a “civil military crisis, the like of which we’ve not seen in this country.” "When we swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, which is a document and a set of principles and it supports the rule of law, one of those is to ensure that we do not obey illegal orders," Allen told told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."

President Donald Trump has expressed his faith in the reconstruction effort now underway in Paris to revive the Notre Dame cathedral, stating its completion would give “glory to God” and fill millions of people “with wonder and awe”. The comments came during President Trump’s keynote speech at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland Tuesday. Following wide-ranging remarks on the strengths of the U.S. economy under his leadership, rising employment, and spreading global trade, the President moved to how the world should work to strengthen civilisation itself. Referring to Notre Dame in Paris, which lost much of its...

DAVOS, Switzerland - Youth climate delegates from around the world are taking part in a "collaborative protest" against the rich and powerful by camping in subzero temperatures at the World Economic Forum. The annual January get-together - which is often criticized for being out of touch with the real world - is set to welcome more than 3,000 participants this week, with those in attendance poised to focus on the intensifying climate crisis. **SNIP** "We are just trying to show them that we are doing the right thing despite the fact that we are not sleeping or staying in the...

President Trump’s visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week was a bigger triumph than anyone could possibly have imagined a year ago. First, the counter-staging of President Trump landing at Davos while the Senate began the trial over his phony impeachment was a Reagan-quality move. Television is 80 percent visual. People standing around in the Senate make for boring television. Even people paid to watch the proceedings have complained about how boring they are. On the other hand, Air Force One landing in Switzerland – and then Marine One flying into Davos – makes for great...

Well-known CNN personality Jim Acosta tried to intercept Ivanka Trump this week, but was expertly boxed out as her security detail left the reporter in the dust. The network’s chief White House correspondent confronted the first daughter Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland. Ivanka Trump and her father, President Donald Trump, were in the European nation for the World Economic Forum. But instead of asking about the state of the world’s finances, it seems Acosta had a different agenda. The CNN reporter hounded the first daughter and senior White House adviser as she descended a set of stairs, asking her about her...

In an interview with CNBC’s host Joe Kernen, Trump said he had a “great talk” with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I said, look, if we don’t get something, I’m going to have to take action, and the action will be very high tariffs on their cars and other things that come into our country,” Trump said. “Now, saying that, I don’t want your audience to get nervous. They’re going to make a deal, because they have to. They have to. They have no choice.” At Davos this year,...

President Donald Trump told CNBC on Wednesday that Elon Musk is one of the world’s “great geniuses,” he likened the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX to Thomas Edison. Musk is “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump said in an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the light bulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very...

The US Central Command announcing on the first day of the impeachment trial opened in Washington that more US troops serving at the Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq when Iranian missile struck the base earlier this month have been taken to Germany for treatment of concussion related injuries.... A former inspector with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told the UN Security Council that the group's report about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018 ran contrary to the findings of its own fact finding mission....... Speaking to the UN Conference on Disarmament...

President Trump on Tuesday said he didn’t know anything about Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg but called her “very angry” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t really know anything about her,” Trump said of Thunberg when asked about her on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The president then called her “very angry.” Trump accused Thunberg, a 17-year-old activist who also spoke at Davos, of having an “anger management problem” after she was honored with Time’s “Person of the Year” award in December. **SNIP** Earlier Tuesday, Thunberg told the gathering of business...

It's a new decade,* so it's time for a new round of panic about the weather killing us all. Swedish child-priestess and chronic truant Greta Thunberg is at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, because that's where the spotlight is. And she's scolding all the grown-ups for not doing what she wants when she wants it, because Veruca Salt wasn't fictional.I was scared of the Boogeyman when I was little too. I just didn't have crowds of adults applauding my cries of fear: Watch Greta Thunberg admonish world leaders for doing "basically nothing" to reduce...

The World Economic Forum said on Monday, one day before the event kicks off in Davos, Switzerland, that: "The climate crisis is going to be one of the dominant themes this week." **SNIP** But as the world's financial elite, political leaders, and celebrities descend on the small town, the question is whether their transport choices can at all work with what the event - and many of those leaders - say they want to achieve for the planet. The World Economic Forum recorded more than 600 plane journeys that can be attributed to Davos in 2019 - a figure that...

Buoyed by two significant trade accomplishments, President Trump is heading this week to the World Economic Forum’s annual high-level gathering in Davos, where the organizers have made climate a major focus. Trump is scheduled to deliver an address to the meeting in the Swiss Alps on Tuesday morning, the same day as the teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg appears on two panels – one on “Forging a sustainable path towards a common future,” the other entitled, “Averting a climate apocalypse.” “How to save the planet” is one of the chosen themes for Davos 2020, and WEF founder and executive...

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Climate issues are set to be one of the main talking points at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos this week, but a survey of CEOs released Monday shows that they are not even ranked among the top ten threats to business growth. In its annual report ahead of the gathering in Davos, financial services group PwC said climate change and environmental issues are ranked as the 11th biggest threat to their companies’ growth prospects. Though up one spot from the same survey a year ago, climate-related issues lag way behind other...

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Rising income inequality is undermining confidence in capitalism around the world, according to a survey conducted by public relations firm Edelman ahead of the gathering of the elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Among those surveyed in the report published Monday, 56% thought that capitalism was doing more harm than good despite another year of solid economic growth and near-full employment in many developed countries. “We are living in a trust paradox,” said Richard Edelman, the CEO of Edelman, which has been conducting its survey of trust for 20 years. “Since we began measuring trust,...

The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the planet’s population, a new report from the charity group Oxfam says.Oxfam’s report, ‘Time to Care’, was released Sunday just ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where about 1,500 of the world leaders in politics, business and finance come together each year.“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these,” Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar, who is in Davos to represent the Oxfam confederation this year said.

President Donald Trump's top Russia expert on the National Security Counsel is reportedly on leave pending a security investigation. Andrew Peek, the NSC’s senior director for European and Russian affairs, was escorted from the White House grounds on Friday, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Peek had been in the NSC role for just two months, after most recently working as a deputy assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Iran and Iraq. Peek had been expected to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week with Trump and other top aides. However, he is currently...

Policymakers and business leaders from around the world are due to arrive in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Monday...Over half of the world’s GDP (gross domestic product) is exposed to risks from nature loss, according to a new report. It comes following a 12-month period which reportedly saw the hottest year on record for the world’s oceans, the second-hottest year for global average temperatures, and wildfires from the U.S., to the Amazon, to Australia.

President Trump is expected to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week, as his impeachment trial in the Senate begins, several senior administration officials told CBS News. And he is expected to have a handful of one-on-one meetings with world leaders while he's there. On Thursday, Mr. Trump had indicated he was likely to go, telling reporters, "I will probably be going to Davos. I've been invited. We have tremendous world leaders, and we also have the great business leaders. And we want those business leaders all to come to the United States." The administration is currently...