‘It’s a proof of our smart, though hard economic decisions that Poles undertook nearly 20 years ago’ – these words of Bronislaw Komorowski, the President of Poland, referred to the Warsaw Stock Exchange. He spoke about the WSE at the opening of a solemn banquet that gathered the most renown politicians, businessmen and journalists who came to Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum.
Their interest in the Polish stock market is fully understandable: in 2010 33 large companies (such as the insurance giant PZU, energetic Tauron or Warsaw Stock Exchange itself) entered WSE and if you add small and medium ones listed at NewConnect, the number of Initial Public Offerings reached 120! During this term Warsaw overtook even the most renowned European financial centers such as London or Frankfurt. Warsaw has become an important direction for Ukrainian, Czech and even Russian companies seeking capital. And this year investors await further debuts from banking sector and mining industry.
One of the most fierce discussions, that took place in freezing Davos, revolved around the recent leak of 250000 American diplomatic cables. Participants, including Richard Haass from the US Council on Foreign Relations and Arthur Sulyberger Jr, chairman and publisher of The New York Times, focused on how digital media affect contemporary diplomacy. Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs recalled a well-known cold-war advice:
Don’t think. If you must, don’t speak. If you must speak, don’t write it down. If you must speak, and write it down, don’t sign it.
And if you go ahead and do all of that anyway, don’t get surprised.
The sad conclusion was that the recent leaks may result in self-censorship of sources, as people now fear speaking up or putting their thoughts down on paper. Although States’ authorities abide diplomatic rules (confidentiality of correspondence, among others), hackers don’t and they target governments, military agencies as well as private corporations.
Diplomats need to accept, that there are hackers who want to steal data and digital media is their ally in achieving this goal as well as proliferating its consequences. Some institutions intend to reclassify the access to top secret clearance so that the number of people does not reach 500000. There definitely are secrets worth keeping – otherwise policy formation couldn’t take place in the atmosphere of trust. In order to protect the most sensitive data, governments should strain it from those non-essential in order to manage the resources efficiently. It seems the telephone was coming back en vogue because of its immediacy, intimacy and lack of a following printed record that would remain exposed to the world one day or another.
(nh)
