The End Of Davos Man?

One can only hope.

Davos is the name of the Swiss town where the World Economic Forum is held annually. As you might expect it’s kind of a ‘Burning Man’ of Neo Liberal excess, but with inequality reaching a point where according to Oxfam half the World’s wealth is held by a mere 8 individuals this exclusive club may be imploding of its own weight.

The Davos Disconnect
by Anne Swardson, Zoe Schneeweiss, and Andre Tartar, Bloomberg News
January 15, 2017, 7:00 PM EST

Never before has the gap between Davos Man and the real world yawned so widely.

The top executives, financiers, academics and politicians making their way up the mountain to the World Economic Forum will be talking a lot about such non-establishment leaders as President-elect Donald Trump – whose inauguration in Washington occurs on the event’s last day – France’s National Front chief Marine Le Pen and Italian populist Beppe Grillo of the Five Star Movement.

But they won’t be meeting them. Not one of the leaders bent on overturning the world order as Davos has designed it will be present. (A forum spokesman says an “extraordinary range” of political figures will attend – almost entirely officeholders.)

The upstarts will loom over the proceedings, though. Trump, who won’t have an official representative there, has expressed strong feelings about some of the countries sending delegations, including his own.

Europe’s populist leaders, for their part, have their own view of the annual gathering of the rich, the powerful, the famous and the sycophantic.

Why is it Davos Man?

What’s not new: the share of female attendees. At 20 percent, it’s marginally higher than in previous years, but progress has been slow.