There has been much hand wringing here about the specter of protectionism, and in particular about the "Buy American" plan in Barack Obama's $819 billion stimulus package, which passed the House of Representatives this week. The fear is that it will trigger a round of protectionist policies in countries throughout the world, and it only added to the sense of economic gloom that has pervaded this year's forum. But there is one bright spot amid the despair: executives here from the renewable energy sector are confident that business will be just fine. After all, built into the stimulus package are billions of dollars worth of tax credits and incentives for solar, wind and other alternative energy companies.

There were two views on Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's speech at the World Economic Forum Wednesday evening. The first, expressed in this morning's International Herald Tribune, was that Putin "struck a conciliatory tone" with the West, talking about "mutual interests" and "mutual dependencies" rather than pounding the drum against the West. The second is that the speech was essentially a pack of lies coming from a man who has proved time and again that any talk of mutual dependence and foreign investment masked the vast human rights abuses in his own country, a history of pushing foreigners out and his aggression toward neighbors and other world leaders. According to the Financial Times, he "mocked the American delegates" in attendance.

Both views are wrong. If anything, Putin's speech yesterday was surprising because he had an audience of some of the most important people in the world, yet managed to say virtually nothing that hadn't been heard before. He sounded familiar themes about energy security, the need for regional reserve currencies and his desire to build new international structures that are better equipped to deal with the crises like the one now at hand. Indeed, his only tough remark was aimed at Michael Dell, in response to a question from Dell about how his company (and the technology sector more broadly) could help Russia. "We don't need help. We are not invalids," Putin said.

But those who walked away with the view that Putin's tone was either conciliatory or mocking missed the point of the Russian prime minister's speech altogether. What he was stating in bold, sometimes blunt terms, is his view that Russia is a big, confident player in the world and therefore ought to receive respect from other sovereign nations. In this view, what's needed to solve Russia and the world's problems is more cooperation among all the big countries -- Russia included. In other words, as Putin told Dell, Russia does not want "help"; it wants its interests to be understood and taken into account. A simple message, and those who try to read more deeply into it do so at their peril.

See text of Putin's remarks after the jump:

At a large mid-day session hosted by CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo – think of a combination of the old Phil Donahue show and a hanging party – groups of Davosers (Davosites?) sat around tables and tried to affix blame for the debacle. The group was asked to assess questions such as: What was the greatest market failure? And what was the greatest regulatory failure. There was a lot of talk about failed models and regulatory regimes with poor incentives. But there was little talk of who was to blame.

At one point, somebody stood up and said, “It’s intriguing nobody is to blame. In other industries, there are consequences if you make toxic products that hurt people. Policy makers need to make it clear that there are serious consequences for that type of behavior.”

Big applause!

And yet aside from the odd mention of Alan Greenspan and an oblique reference to Robert Rubin, the former Treasury Secretary who became a senior executive at Citigroup, there was little talk of individual players who bore responsibility. Of course, you can make the case that the people who caused the damage have been punished: they didn’t’ get to go to Davos this year. Last year, Davos was thick with investment bankers and hedge fund managers. This year, the only true Wall Street bigshot I’ve seen is Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group.