He is a strange animal indeed..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7871994.stm
------------------------------------------snip
Rules and pecking orders at Davos
By Stephanie Flanders
BBC Economics editor, in Davos
The World Economic Forum in Davos is supposed to be a gathering of the
elite. A time when the world's movers and shakers go to the Swiss
mountains to talk about being on top of the world.
It is a club. And with any club, the rule is that you want it to be as
small as possible while still including you.
The knack of the organisers for exploiting this weakness of human
nature fits with everything you have ever heard about the Swiss.
I am told that the private companies that bankroll the event find it
ruinously expensive to bring anyone other than the boss. He or she
gets in fairly cheap because it helps Davos to be full of number ones.
You pay a lot more to bring your number twos and threes. They are
worth less to the gathering, but the organisers know they are the ones
who will really, really want to come.
The result? A lot of money for the World Economic Forum, but also a
lot of people in the club.
This year the "select few" going to Davos ran to more than 2,500.
Yet Davos has an answer to that too.
It is all in the colour of your badge. That tells you where you are in
the pecking order, in the Forum's favoured phrase, your level of
"guestdom".
And trust me, the powers that be have a very shrewd idea of who is up
and who is down.
White badges mean you are a full participant.
If you are a journalist that means the holy grail of being able to
wander the conference centre, collecting bigwigs - and their mobile
phone numbers - from the hallways, like so many hanging fruit.
Reporters with orange badges can only lurk in the background, like the
second-class citizens they are.
There was no escaping the feeling that all these titans of global
capitalism were in the same boat, and that boat was going down
A purple badge with a red stripe means you are "with" someone -
someone like Tony Blair or George Soros.
Plain purple or green spells even higher levels of the elite elite.
But I think you have to be a former president to even know what they
mean.
The upshot is that thousands of self-important people can spend four
days living cheek by jowl in a tiny ski resort and still come away
with their egos intact - assuming no-one asked the president of Mexico
to talk on a panel with fewer than two other heads of state.
Anthropologists would have a field day, if they had a chance of getting in.
Changing priorities
But at this year's gathering of the tribe, even cursory observation
would have revealed a change of mood.
For all the careful gradations of colour and access, there was no
escaping the feeling that all these titans of global capitalism were
in the same boat, and that boat was going down.
The gift bags said it all.
A few years ago they were giving away state-of-the-art electronic
organisers. This year there was a bargain basement pedometer and a
request that you walk around the village instead of taking the limo.
There were sideshows to distract the condemned.
A neuro-biologist turned Buddhist monk told the participants that it
was time "to take a more altruistic world view".
The Forum's own group of Young Global Leaders held an event declaring
it was time to "De-Worm the World".
The financiers were top dogs here even two years ago. Now even Davos
man considers them the lowest of the low
Five minutes from the conference centre there was even a concrete
basement where the likes of Richard Branson and the CEO of Nike turned
off their mobile phones, wrapped their heads in a bandage, and spent
an hour "living the life of a refugee".
The UN sponsors of the "refugee run", as it was called, said it was
based on the idea that you only understand a man if you walk a mile in
his shoes.
It was probably less than a mile, but for many at Davos this year I
suspect that pretending to wear a refugee's shoes was a pleasant break
from actually wearing their own.
Reversal of fortunes
Back inside the conference hall, there was no badge to escape the
gloom about the global economy.
And in the end, perhaps for the first time in its 40-year history, the
starry list of participants told you less about the state of the world
than the list of those who stayed at home.
Most of the world's leading bankers did not show. Those that did come
only came out at night.
The financiers were top dogs here even two years ago. Now even Davos
man considers them the lowest of the low.
Governments and their old-fashioned rescue packages are back on top.
The American government most of all.
None of the key players in the new Obama administration made the trip.
They were too busy saving the world.
The grandees at Davos want them to succeed. But they know that in the
world economy that comes out of this, they may no longer have the plum
spot.
-raghu.
--
"It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money."
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
