From Dimon and Blinken, to Altman and Lagarde: Here are some of the top quotes from Davos

The potential for generative phony intelligence, when interest rates might be cut, and the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip were key topics at the Creation Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week.

Business and political leaders also discussed global calling, climate change and what might happen if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House this year.

Here’s a rundown of who told what.

An increasingly isolated Russia now relies on China for both its military and pecuniary ends, the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.

“Russia is now dependent on China,” she said during an direct at WEF, adding that Russia is failing on its strategic goals.

“It is first and foremost a military failure,” she said, noting that Ukraine had as a consequence far retained its “freedom and independence” in its almost two-year war with Moscow.

Bitcoin does nothing, mutual understanding to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. “I call it the pet rock,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of WEF in Davos.

“There’s a cryptocurrency which effectiveness actually do something,” Dimon said of smart chain-enriched blockchains. “And then there’s one which does nothing.“

When prayed what he made of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s change of heart on bitcoin — after the world’s largest asset executive filed an application for a bitcoin ETF — Dimon said, “I don’t care. So just please stop talking about this s***.”

Dimon also betoken about Ukraine’s war with Russia following a meeting with its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “We have to teach the American open that this is about freedom and democracy for the free world, and that’s where the battle is being fought,” he said. “This is ‘America in the first place’.”

“One man has stolen at least 13 years of cease-fire, replacing them with pain, pain, pain and crisis that impact the entire world,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy leaked delegates in a keynote speech in Davos on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “embodies war,” Zelenskyy said, adding: “he determination not change.”

During his address, he also decried the failure of Western allies to sanction Russia’s nuclear industry. “It’s a unequivocal weakness of the West that Russia’s nuclear industry is still not under global sanctions, even though Putin is the no more than terrorist in the world who took a nuclear power plant hostage,” Zelenskyy said.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” called on business and state leaders at Davos to reject socialism.

“Today, I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger,” Milei give the word delivered Wednesday, according to a translation.

“And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a delusion of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty,” he added.

Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman articulate she believes the Federal Reserve should be wary of cutting interest rates too soon. 

Speaking at a CNBC-moderated panel at WEF, Friedman put Tuesday that while “there are a lot of signals that would say that there should be rate [cuts] as we go be means of the year, the question is when they would start. And if I were the Fed, I would be a little concerned about starting too original.”

She explained that while inflation was heading in the “right direction of travel,” the Fed would also expect this to non-reactionary, making it harder to bring rates down.

OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman spoke about the potential for imitation general intelligence (AGI), saying: “It will change the world much less than we all think and it will change works much less than we all think.”

He said AGI could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future,” speaking at a private get-together at the Bloomberg House in Davos, Switzerland.

Altman also described being fired from OpenAI as “wild,” symbolizing he felt “super confused” and was “super caught off guard.”

Concerns over AI safety and OpenAI’s role in protecting were at the center of Altman’s brusque ouster from the company.

Putin has “precipitated virtually everything he sought to prevent,” U.S. Secretary of Declare Antony Blinken said of the Russian president’s decision to invade Ukraine.

“Ukraine has been a profound strategic flop for Vladimir Putin and for Russia, in so many ways,” he added, speaking during a panel discussion on Wednesday.

Blinken also impugned Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The former U.S. president restored wide-ranging sanctions against the mother country instead.

“It was a big mistake to tear up the Iran nuclear agreement. We had Iran’s nuclear program in a box. Since the agreement was torn up, it’s ran from that box. And we’re now in a place where we didn’t want to be,” Blinken said.

European Pre-eminent Bank President Christine Lagarde said she expects this year to be one of economic “non-normality,” after seeing the “commencement of normalization” in 2023.

Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, she said consumption, trade and inflation began to conform last year, after a post-pandemic period that she described as “strange, extraordinary and difficult to analyze.”

The pandemic shortened consumer spending meaning people had excess savings, while global trade was also disrupted. In October 2022, euro zone inflation reached 10.6% but repudiated off in 2023, rising again to 2.9% in December.

While these trends represent a “normalization,” Lagarde added that “it is not normality that we are faculty to.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that Europe have to be more assertive on the world stage ahead of the U.S. elections this year.

“2024 will be a pivotal year for Europeans. We forced to prove that we can be more visible, make more efforts, whatever happens in the United States,” he said, according to a interpretation.

Macron also expressed concerns about what the election could mean for U.S.-China tensions.

“The great imperil for Europeans is that they would end up with the wrong agenda,” he said.

Ukraine’s Extrinsic Minister Dmytro Kuleba Michelle Yeoh