In Davos, talk of Massachusetts

The shock waves from the special Senate election in Massachusetts resonated not only in the halls of Congress but in the halls of the Congress Center in Davos, where many of the world's business and government elites are gathered.

Several sessions on the first full day of the World Economic Forum turned on the Obama's administration's push to tighten regulations on big banks. The move is widely seen here as a reaction to the surprise election of Republican Scott Brown to the seat that had been held by the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Obama's push for closer regulation of the financial sector won endorsement from a wide range of speakers, from billionaire financier George Soros to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"President Obama is right when he says that banks must be dissuaded from engaging in proprietary speculation or financing speculative funds," Sarkozy said. "But this debate cannot be confined to a single country, whatever its weight in global finance."

Soros agreed financial-market regulation would need to be global, something that would be much harder than spreading the ethos of market deregulation was. "Deregulation was contagious," he said, noting that a market that didn't lower barriers would see itself bypassed by investors looking for the fewest restrictions on their business. "To forge a consensus (on global regulation) will be extremely difficult," he said.

The Massachusetts election resonated in other spheres, too. At a dinner on energy policy, Duke Energy's CEO Jim Rogers said he believed the impact of Brown's election would be to strengthen the moderate center of American politics.

"The election in Massachusetts was so stunning," he said, "that [many] Democrats will become muscular moderates." He argued that a shift of power to the center in both parties would increase the probability of legislative compromise and action.

"Every great leader has led from the center," Rogers said. "I think it's going to move our country to the middle."