In the United States, the Oreo cookie is a classic. Millions of American children have enjoyed dunking the sweet treat -- white cream sandwiched between two round, crisp, chocolate cookies -- in milk as an afternoon snack.

Kraft Foods, makers of the Oreo, introduced the cookie to China in 1996. But the Chinese didn't exactly take to them. So starting in 2005, the Wall Street Journal reports, Kraft engaged in a classic case of adapting a product to suit local tastes. The Chinese found the cookies too sweet, so Kraft reduced the sugar in them. China was developing a thirst for milk -- a product that traditionally hasn't been a Chinese dietary staple -- so Kraft launched a campaign, complete with Oreo ambassadors, to "educate" the Chinese on how to dunk the cookies in milk.

The most radical change was in the shape. Noticing that sales of wafer cookies were increasing faster than those of traditional biscuit-like cookies, a new version of the Oreo was created: a long, narrow, layered stack of crispy wafers and vanilla and chocolate cream, all coated with chocolate. Whoever said Oreos have to be round?

Of course, amid rising food prices and increased demand for chocolate (whose consumption in China has nearly doubled in the past five years), the success of the Chinese Oreo brings to mind the broader question of "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?," a topic recently addressed in FP and one that fans the flames of Chinese frustrations with the West.

(Meanwhile, Oreos have been trying to colonize British biscuit tins, the BBC reports.)

A poem that has been circulating on the Internet lately offers insight into the frustrations that many Chinese -- including those studying in the United States -- feel in reaction to criticisms that have been leveled against their country in recent times. An excerpt is below:

When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it is human rights abuse.

When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts.

When we build our industries, you called us polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.

When we buy oil, you call that exploitation and genocide.
When you fight for oil, you call that liberation and democracy.

The full poem, whose origins are unclear, is here. There's also a video version that uses historical images, magazine covers, and political cartoons to reinforce the point:

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

Ah, globalization at work: Workers at a factory in China's southern Guangdong province were making "Free Tibet" flags, naively unaware of what the colorful flags -- banned in China -- represented.

The owner of the factory said the orders for the flags had been placed from overseas.

Earlier this month, the documentary version of FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím's bestselling book Illicit aired on the TV channel PBS in the United States. The film and book documents how -- as the book's subtitle says -- "smugglers, traffickers, and copycats are hijacking the global economy."

Those copycats who profit off pirated DVDs had better be careful, though. The doggy duo of Lucky and Flo are out to get them. The black Labs are the first canines to have been trained to sniff out the polycarbonates found in DVDs and CDs. Although they can't differentiate between legit and pirated discs, their noses lead human investigators to discs that are hidden in cargo that has been declared as having other items, such as clothing. Lucky and Flo have been so successful that they've even received death threats from crime syndicates.

Check out a video of the furry crime fighters here:

Matt Groening © 20th Century Fox

"The Simpsons" is inappropriate for children, but "Baywatch Hawaii" is alright. At least that's what the government of Venezuela says. The National Telecommunications Commission opened an inquiry last week, saying that viewers had complained about "The Simpsons" and that the network airing it could be held responsible for violating the country's Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television. On Friday, channel Televen said it was yanking the yellow cartoon family from its 11 a.m. slot, and replacing it with the babes in bikinis of Baywatch. 

I guess it doesn't sound totally crazy if you think about it from a cultural perspective. After all, Bart is constantly disrespecting his parents, and I suppose one might not want young kids to get that message.  But beauty on the beach... is that a universal Venezuelan value, no matter the age? At any rate, don't have a cow, man! Televen still might still choose to air "The Simpsons" in a different time slot.

AFP/Getty Images

George Soros, speaking in a conference call hosted by the New America Foundation today, had some interesting remarks about the state of the world economy. Given that the first sentence of his new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means, reads: "We are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s," I was prepared to hear some dire predictions about the road ahead.

Instead, on a number of occasions throughout the call, Soros stated that he believes the "most acute phase of the crisis is now over," and that the markets are breathing a sigh of relief following the Bear Stearns bailout. Of course, that's not to say that the fallout is over just yet, or that the boom-bust cycle that has recurred consistently since markets began to become unregulated will cease.

Soros was keen to note that the "scariest unregulated market" now is the credit default swap market, with outstanding contracts amounting to $45 trillion today. (Credit default swaps are a form of contract insurance that has been widely sold by hedge funds.) Writing in the Financial Times yesterday and repeating the warning today, Soros says, "The [CDS] market is totally unregulated and those who hold the contracts do not know whether their counterparties have adequately protected themselves. If and when defaults occur, some of the counterparties are likely to prove unable to fulfil their obligations. This prospect hangs over the financial markets like a sword of Damocles that is bound to fall." It will cause what will essentially amount to banks running on banks. The solution, Soros argues, is to urgently set up a clearinghouse or exchange where the the deals can be registered and settled. Without this type of step, the "entire banking system [will remain] weighed down with bad assets" and stay paralyzed. Even then, there is still little hope that this fallout can play out without significant effects on the real economy.

Soros's concerns extend well beyond the current financial crisis -- although he did mention that it was this crisis that forced him out of retirement. His argument is philosophical and is explained thoroughly in his fascinating new book. But the crux of it is that the idea that markets fall into equilibrium like events in the natural world is a complete myth; humans can't know "truth" and thus expectations and human actions inevitably change how the system functions, which can -- and does (hence boom-bust cycles) -- lead to non-equilibrium outcomes. The solution is finding a balance between regulation and unfettered markets. Soros is highly critical of market fundamentalism, and condemned regulators for failing to do their jobs. They have the tools, he said, but didn't use them. He believes the two Democratic presidential hopefuls are on the right track with dealing with the financial mess and re-regulation, but was careful to highlight the dangers of going to extremes either way.

One of the most interesting points Soros made was his take on the the coming fuel for the global economy:

We've had the American consumer acting as the motor of the world economy and that is what is coming to an end... [We] need a new motor. And I believe we have a tremenous challenge with global warming, where you need to make tremendous investment to reduce carbon emissions... The investments necessary to avoid global warming could replace the excess consumption by the U.S. consumer as the motor of the world economy.

Although Soros certainly didn't try to downplay the seriousness of the current crisis, I'm still left feeling slightly hopeful that the economy will improve and things could get better soon(ish). And I'm now certainly keen to buy those stocks in renewable energy companies.

CurrentTV has posted a touching short video on Bhutan, the unspoiled, mountainous kingdom that just held the first elections for its 47-seat parliament on March 24. Turnout was heavy and the monarchist party won big, but the opposition has cried foul even though the elections met international standards. As you'll see in the video, the Bhutanese are a little unsure what to make of this whole "democracy" thing, and many are unhappy about the recent arrival of another Western innovation: television. Check it out below or, if your browser can't see it, watch it here:

Tired of reading about U.S. politics? Then pick up a copy of l’Humanite. Want to follow issues in Iraq and Iran? Then Slate is for you. At least according to these cartograms, which show media coverage, by source, of the world's countries.

Nicolas Kayser-Bril and Gilles Bruno have created 11 such maps for media sources ranging from La Croix, to the New York Times (shown above), to the "blogosphere." Not surprisingly, each source allots a disproportionate degree of coverage to its own country – Slate less so than the New York Times and The Economist much less so than, say, the Guardian.

Oddly enough, the blogosphere –- an amorphous source not exactly known for credibility –- does not appear too different in its global coverage from The Economist.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

JAMAL ARURI/AFP/Getty Images

What's one of the latest products to be outsourced to China? The kaffiyeh, the black-and-white checkered scarf popularized as a symbol of Palestinian identity and unity by late leader Yasir Arafat. In the last eight years, two thirds of Hebron's textile factories have shut down, in part due to cheap imports from the Middle Kingdom. Even Arafat's Fatah party now gets some of its kaffiyehs from China.

As Tyler Cowen might say, there's a market for everything. Meet China's "womb brokers":

Liu Jin Feng, 30, was a manager for a joint venture company in his native Zhejiang province with a newly pregnant wife when the concept of womb-broking occurred to him.

He spent six months investigating. Four hundred babies later, he is confident he has picked a sustainable industry. Couples need to budget for at least 300,000 yuan ($A50,000). About 40,000 yuan is for the surrogate, a fee for the agent, and the rest covers extensive medical, travel and living costs.

Of course, China is far behind India, where commercial surrogacy was made legal in 2002 (it's illegal but tolerated in China). And if you turn to the classified section of any elite U.S. university, it's easy to find advertisements from infertile couples looking for an egg donor with an Ivy League pedigree. In fact, California has some of the most liberal surrogacy laws in the world, and parts of Europe have become links in a globalizing commercial surrogacy industry. If anything, the Chinese are just playing catch-up -- though I imagine further digging would show that the phenomenon is not quite as new as the above article would have us believe.

(Hat tip: China Digital Times)

MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images

Antoine van Agtmael, who literally wrote the book on emerging markets, noted the following last year in a piece for FP:

Today, emerging-market countries account for 85 percent of the world's population but generate just 20 percent of global gross national product. By 2035, however, the combined economies of emerging markets will be larger than (and by the middle of this century, nearly double) the economies of the United States, Western Europe, or Japan. The reality of globalization—which is only slowly and reluctantly sinking in—is that outsourcing means more than having "cheap labor" toil away in mines, factories, and call centers on behalf of Western corporations. Yet in the West, business leaders and government officials cling to the notion that their companies lead the world in technology, design, and marketing prowess.

Increasingly, that just isn't so.

When we think of these emerging markets, we tend to think of places like India and China. But the world's biggest emerging market is actually Brazil, according to a new index from Morgan Stanley. So, when will Lou Dobbs start railing against "the great Brazilian menace"?

The world's best-selling board game is finally going global. Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly, are creating a version wherein instead of snatching up the deeds to Atlantic Avenue or Park Place, players can build up property in global cities such as Moscow or Tokyo.

The company is letting people vote online through Feb. 28 on what cities to include. Originally, the cities listed on the game's Web site included the countries where they are located -- "Dublin, Ireland," for example.

An early version of the site listed "Jerusalem, Israel" as a potential place on the board. But then pro-Palestinians wrote in to complain, because Jerusalem, they hope, will be the capital of a future Palestinian state. So, a mid-level employee dropped the word "Israel" from Jerusalem's place name. Then pro-Israelis complained because of the inconsistency, since other country names were still there.

In a truly Solomonic feat, Hasbro decided to drop all country names (though the company claims they were only there in the first place "as a geographic reference to help with city selection"). And now capitalism is free to run amok without any borders. At least in Monopoly.

As more people all over the world -- mostly notably in China and India -- enter the ranks of the middle class and are able to afford the calorie-rich diets of the Western world, their increased appetites have helped drive up prices of foods such as bread, milk, and chocolate, notes FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím in his latest column, "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?"

Chocolate companies such as Nestlé, Mars, Ferrero, and Hershey are eager to satisfy the cravings of budding chocoholics in Asia, where consumption of the sweet stuff lags far behind that of Europe, as shown in the following table, based on numbers from a recent BusinessWeek article. To boost sales, these companies have sometimes had to adapt flavors to Asian tastes, such as with green-tea Hershey Kisses and azuki-bean Kit Kats, which the slide show here details.

Chocolate consumption, per capita annually	24 lbs. (11 kg), in Britain and Switzerland	3.5 oz. (99 g)	5.8 oz. (165 g)
Annual sales	$35 billion	$813 million	$394 million
Sales growth	1-2% annually	nearly doubled in past 5 years	64% in past 5 years

Photos: SEBASTIAN WILLNOW/AFP/Getty Images; MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images; SEBASTIAN D'SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/Getty Images

Flowers are so delicate, so perishable, so pretty. It's hard to believe they often travel thousands of miles and across multiple continents to get to your local store in colorful, unwilted, shape.

Each day, though, as described in last year's FP article "Flower Power," about 20 million beautiful blooms are auctioned each day in the Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, the world's largest commercial building, near Amsterdam. The flowers are flown in from places such as Ecuador, Israel, and Kenya, and after being auctioned, are shipped as far away as Tokyo.

One fourth of Europe's cut flower imports come from Kenya (whose flower exports are mostly roses), which has been wracked by chaos since its disputed election on Dec. 31. Flower farmers there have been resorting to extreme measures to ensure that the complicated supply chain that brings roses to Valentine's Day lovers in Europe isn't disrupted by violence.

To get roses from farms to the Nairobi Airport, growers are enlisting armed escorts to protect convoys of trucks filled with flowers. Where roadblocks are a concern, some farms have used emergency airlifts to get blossoms to the capital. And because of decreased flights out of the country, more cargo planes are being chartered to get those precious petals to Amsterdam.

These efforts seem to be a success. No shortages of Kenyan roses have been reported in Europe. For Kenyan flower growers at least, everything seems to be coming up roses.

As Blake pointed out earlier, Barack Obama has taken aim at free trade in the run-up to the upcoming blue-collar-dominated primaries in Ohio and Wisconsin. The attack that began in earnest last night in Obama's Potomac Primary victory speech will continue at noon today in Janesville, Wisconsin, where Obama is promising to deliver a detailed speech on economic policy. The Illinois senator, who is big on hopes and dreams but not so big on details, apparently plans to tell suffering Americans that globalization is to blame for their plight. Here's a sneak preview:

The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was... the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it's produced...

[D]ecades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear...

I also won't stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements...

I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for... American workers."

This is the same guy who keeps promising to heal America's relationship with the world, right? Maybe it's just me, but forcing protectionist agreements down our trading partners' throats doesn't sound like such a good start. Neither does blaming them for America's subprime fiasco, a home-grown crisis fueled by Alan Greenspan and the Fed, which now threatens to wreak havoc on many of the globe's biggest economies. Good luck with that line, Barack.

In another sign that the U.S. dollar has weakened, some New York City stores are now accepting euros as payment from European tourists who have been flocking to the Big Apple to go on shopping sprees. Check out the story here:

Can't see the video? Click here to view it on Reuters.com.

According to a new BBC poll, people around the world think economic globalization is moving far too fast for them:

Interestingly, more people in China think the pace of globalization is too fast than do those in the United States. Not what I would have guessed.

(Hat tip: Dani Rodrik)

JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

Further proof that blogging is injurious to your plans to enjoy Davos: Having sent off my previous post after 3 a.m., I awoke too late to show up at a UNICEF panel with the former child soldier Ismail Beah, whose bestselling memoir has just come under attack from a section of the Australian media. Last night, with my blogging duties in mind, I managed to forget the Google After-Hours Party, a much sought-after event where the likes of Bono, Bill Gates, and Tony Blair hobnob with the regular pass-holders. So this will definitely be my last post: In future years, if I return, it will be to enjoy myself fully rather than enlighten the cognoscenti.

The last full day of the Forum, Saturday, began to show a slight slackening of the pace, as many attendees started bidding farewell to Davos. (The official closing is on Sunday, with a final session expected to attract so few that it has been shifted from the plenary Congress Hall to a smaller room, and a lunch in the mountains, both of which are likely to be feel-good events and neither of which I intend to blog about.) There was a strong session on the global economic outlook, which nonetheless only confirmed that the outlook is mixed and that economic forecasting is usually slightly less reliable than meteorology.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty

I attended one of the prestige private events, a lunch with the Japanese prime minister (who had flown down to Davos in the midst of a regular session of his country's parliament, the Diet, something that in the previous 37 years had only been done once by any of his predecessors). But the number of empty seats at the half-dozen tables around the PM testified to the declining salience of Japan, a country that two decades ago was seen as the world's economic powerhouse and, bluntly, no longer is.

Otherwise, it was a day of conversations—some accidental, some planned—with a host of friends from the multilateral world: Juan Somavia, the head of the International Labor Organization, EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo of the Yale Center on Globalization, and my old U.N. colleagues Zohreh Tabatabai and Nick Van Praag. Talking to these dedicated servants of the international system was itself a reminder of how little Davos had focused this year on multilateral institutions, once seen at the Forum as the foundation of global cooperation and now largely treated as somewhere between an irrelevance and an afterthought.

So, how would I wrap up this week's experience of Davos? A few observations, not meant to be comprehensive:

• The Forum remains, above all, a networking event. People come to meet and be met, and officials as well as executives expressed satisfaction with the large number of private and "bilateral" meetings they were able to hold in Davos. By this yardstick, the Forum was a success—as it always is.
• The panels were, as usual, of varying quality, with world-class speakers and a few slightly off their game. The scheduling—a huge challenge—meant that no one could really attend everything they'd have liked to, because each interesting panel clashed with another interesting panel.
• Some of the topics chosen were of limited interest, and some of the omissions surprising ones. There was surprisingly little discussion of U.S. politics in a presidential election year—and few American political figures were present. The first few days, thanks to the gyrations in the financial markets, prompted an excessive degree of short-termism in the conversation, which was unfortunate for an event that likes to think of itself as taking the grand and long view of the really important trends in the world.
• In my opening post, I mentioned I'd pay attention to India. There was an extraordinary number of Indians present. The movers and shakers from the worlds of business and politics ranged from the finance minister to the CEOs of all the top information technology companies. But what struck me was the extent to which India is now taken for granted at Davos, in a good way. There's scarcely a panel without an Indian on it, and most discussions of world affairs—economic or geopolitical—witnessed several mentions of India. This Forum afforded confirmation, if any were needed, that my homeland has truly arrived at Davos. It no longer needs any special effort to promote itself to this audience.
• I also promised to look at the attention paid to poverty and development. Some years ago, a World Social Forum was created as a challenge the World Economic Forum. This was the first year in nearly a decade that there wasn't a rival gathering proclaiming that "another world is possible." This is at least partly because Davos has quietly taken on board the same slogan, as this year's Forum demonstrated. The discussions of development and corporate social responsibility have reached a level of seriousness that can only be applauded by an old U.N. hand like me. Of course, action must follow and results have to be visible, but both are beginning to be seen, and the companies and political leaders at the Forum are in many cases responsible for that positive trend.

Finally—as the debris of the extensive Bahrain-sponsored lunch is cleared away and preparations begin for tonight's concert and the black-tie Gala Soirée—it is time to reflect on those peculiar habits of Davos Man (and Woman) that they will have to struggle to shed when they fly away from this snow-capped wonderland. These include, but are not limited to:

• The Davos bend-and-bob: the peculiar movement required to stretch your smart-card badge to one of the ubiquitous scanners that determine whether you can be granted entry, whether you can read your e-mail, and whether you can attend a session for which you may have forgotten to register.

• The furtive chest glance: The quick darting movement of the eye toward the dangling badge that sports a participant's name, which usually precedes a familiar exclamation of pleasure at meeting its wearer, whose identity you had completely forgotten until you saw his or her badge. (Davos is the only place where it is completely socially acceptable, when you meet a woman, to look quickly at her chest first. The operative adverb is "quickly.")

Enough amateur anthropology. Now for the real thing—time to don my glad rags and get ready for the Gala Soirée, which begins at 9 p.m. and goes into the wee hours—a veritable smorgasbord of food, drink, music and last-minute networking. Your faithful blogger relinquishes his keyboard at last. Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure.

Shashi Tharoor, a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, was India's candidate in the 2006 race to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General and came second out of seven contenders. He is the award-winning author of 10 books, most recently The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century. Visit him at www.shashitharoor.com.

You can find Tharoor's previous Diary entries here or at the following links:

• Davos Diary, Day 5: Never tempt Providence
• Day 4: Fatigue can't stop this blogger
• Day 3: Panels galore
• Day 2: Snowy arrival
• Day 1: Setting the scene

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

It's well past midnight in the Bidwell-Azarm apartment in Klosters as I sit down to review another long day at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Last night, I got to bed at 2:45 a.m. after giving you all a blow-by-blow(hard) account of all the panels I went to. Since I woke up three hours later and have staggered through the day, I'm going to be a lot more telegraphic about Thursday. In fact, I'm going to summarize the day in a different style altogether, just for a change. (If there are enough protests, I'll return to prose reporting on Friday). Herewith, my day in 10 easy points:

1. Misfires:

• Didn't register in time for the Tom Friedman-Al Gore double bill on climate change, which was sold out within minutes of being available for sign-up.

• Arrived at a scheduled lunch panel featuring George Soros and Walter Isaacson on philanthropy after a 15-minute journey and discovered they'd moved the venue to another hotel and neglected to inform the attendees. Unexpected bonus: Joined a lunch discussion on the water crisis around the world instead. Cloud attached to silver lining: Had to pay 90 Swiss francs, almost $75 now, for my salad.

2. Morning panel highlights: Fascinating discussion on peace and stability featuring four beleaguered Muslim leaders: President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Musharraf of Pakistan, "Chief Adviser" (de facto Prime Minister) of Bangladesh Fakhruddin Ahmed, and Deputy Prime Minister Bahram Salih of Iraq. All inveighed against terrorism and extremism, defended the ways in which their countries were run and sought the world's help in promoting economic growth and political stability in their lands. Musharraf proved the ablest at swatting back tough questions; Karzai at ducking them. Asked (by me) what exactly he meant when he said that in his region extremism had been a "tool of policy," and whether this related to his previously expressed view that terrorism was being exported his way from across his border with Pakistan, Karzai replied, "Mr. Tharoor, I have just had a good visit with President Musharraf. I'm not going to say any more."

3. Panel disappointments: A bland performance by Musharraf in a hugely attended double-bill with Henry Kissinger, who was supposed to ask him three questions but tossed him two softballs instead. Musharraf repeated the points he'd just made at the previous panel.

4. Afternoon panel highlights: A first-rate discussion on the perils of Internet terrorism, featuring such heavy hitters as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Britain's Leader of the Opposition David Cameron, head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth, and feisty Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. Lots of pithy insight about the use of cyberspace to recruit terrorists and to wage war, plus a side argument about the definition of terrorism and whether Israel was shooting itself in the foot by denouncing even attacks on its soldiers, not just civilians, as terrorist attacks.

5. Afternoon panel disappointments: A wasted hour-long Middle East panel chaired by Tony Blair and oddly featuring three Israelis (President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Livni and Defense Minister Barak) and only one Palestinian (Prime Minister Salam Fayyad). Not one person from this impressive galaxy said a single thing we hadn't heard before, and the audience wasn't allowed to ask questions.

6. Dinner panel: I found myself speaking on whether "globalization = cultural homogenization," along with the likes of Québec Premier Jean Charest, London Mayor Ken Livingstone, genius cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the CEO of Burger King. We all agreed that it doesn't, but had fun coming up with ideas and anecdotes about cultural diversity.

7. Uneven discussions: First, the water panel, an interesting but complicated topic that had been discussed earlier in the Forum and which left me feeling I'd walked in halfway through a suspense movie and couldn't quite figure out the plot. Second, a discussion on "Brand America" with impressive panelists (starting with Rupert Murdoch) and chaired by FP's own Moisés Naím, which nonetheless went all over the place—including a bizarre attack on the United Nations by Murdoch, supported by a Bahraini royal—rather than focusing on its declared purpose of devising recommendations to the next U.S. President on how to improve America's global image.

8. Memorable informal encounters: An animated conversation on the margins with the top leaders of Bangladesh's interim government, and another at the Tata reception with two of India's more impressive cabinet ministers. Also a chat with Bombay society maven Parmeshwar Godrej, currently under pressure from Muslim fundamentalists to apologize for having hosted Salman Rushdie at her home, who is refusing to buckle under despite threats of a boycott of her company's products.

9. One-liners of the day:

• "I don't agree with the notion of Brand America. A country is not a brand and cannot be sold." – French ad tycoon Maurice Lévy

• "Foreign Minister Livni has just told me her parents were arrested by the British. Being prime minister of Britain means having to go around the world apologizing to everybody." – Tony Blair, looking remarkably unapologetic

• "As a business journalist, I feel like I've gone hunting with Dick Cheney and some sidekick has just released all the pheasants in front of me so I can't miss them." – reporter marveling at the availability of quoteworthy CEOs in every hallway

10. Change of plan: Thanks to the lateness of the hour and President Musharraf's repeating himself in the two sessions I've heard him on already, I'll skip a breakfast with him organized by a Pakistani businessman Friday morning. Midway through the Forum, and particularly at the end of a Davos day featuring six panels, three breakfasts, two lunches, four receptions, and a blog diary to maintain, my borrowed bed looks a lot more inviting than a 7 a.m. bus from Klosters. Good night...

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

In his first Diary entry, Shashi Tharoor noted about Davos, "Invitations are prized and much sought after, even though they have to be paid for in real money." So, how much does it cost to go to Davos? Andrew Ross Sorkin reports for the New York Times:

Merely to be eligible for an invitation, a corporate leader must pay an annual fee of 42,500 Swiss francs, or nearly $39,000. On top of that, he or she has to pay an additional $20,000 or so to attend the conference. (That's just the cost of admission — private planes, limousines and fancy ski outfits are, of course, extra.)

And what if business executives want to get invited to some private sessions for industry leaders? The annual cost for that is close to $230,000.

The tab rises to about $412,000 (450,000 Swiss francs) if you want to be counted among the conference's strategic sponsors and bring a delegation of up to five along for the fun.

Yikes. The funny thing about business leaders is that they could probably get the same information and meet the same intellectual and government contacts elsewhere for free, but they pay the exorbitant fees anyway. After all, such individuals are famous and sought after because they're always sharing their ideas in the public arena. Of course, any such encounters probably wouldn't be as convenient, and they certainly wouldn't be as fun. As Tharoor put it, there is "something heady and exhilarating about being able to have them all in one spot in such a short span of time."