It’s been a year since I first circulated this article to my list, and in retrospect, I think it’s one of the most accurate as pertains to the question of who really runs the world. This excerpt says it best:

The world isn’t run by a clever cabal. It’s run by about 5,000 bickering,
sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed
to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. A few have
both.

……straight from Davos

From:
Laurie.Garrett_L@newsday.com
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 21:00:57
-0500
Subject: So I just got home from Davos, and boy are the rich …well,
RICH

Hi Guys.

OK, hard to believe, but true. Yours truely has been
hobnobbing with the
ruling class.

I spent a week in Davos, Switzerland
at the World Economic Forum. I was
awarded a special pass which allowed me
full access to not only the entire
official meeting, but also private dinners
with the likes the head of the
Saudi Secret Police, presidents of various
insundry countries, your Fortune
500 CEOS and the leaders of the most
important NGOs in the world. This was
not typical press access. It was
full-on, unfettered, class A hobnobbing.

Davos, I discovered, is a
breathtakingly beautiful spot, unlike anything
I’d ever experienced. Nestled
high in the Swiss Alps, it’s a three hours
train ride from Zurich that finds
you climbing steadily through snow-laden
mountains that bring to mind Heidi
and Audrey Hepburn (as in the opening
scenes of “Charade”). The EXTREMELY
powerful arrive by helicopter. The
moderately powerful take the first class
train. The NGOs and we mere
mortals reach heaven via coach train or a
conference bus. Once in Europe’s
bit of heaven conferees are scattered in
hotels that range from B&B to
ultra luxury 5-stars, all of which are
located along one of only three
streets that bisect the idyllic village of
some 13,000 permanent residents.

Local Davos folks are fanatic about
skiing, and the slopes are literally a
5-15 minute bus ride away, depending
on which astounding downhill you care
to try. I don’t know how, so rather
than come home in a full body cast I
merely watched.

This sweet little
chalet village was during the WEF packed with about 3000
delegates and press,
some 1000 Swiss police, another 400 Swiss soldiers,
numerous tanks and
armored personnel carriers, gigantic rolls of coiled
barbed wire that
gracefully cascaded down snow-covered hillsides, missile
launchers and
assorted other tools of the national security trade. The
security precautions
did not, of course, stop there. Every single person
who planned to enter the
conference site had special electronic badges
which, upon being swiped across
a reading pad, produced a computer screen
filled color portrait of the
attendee, along with his/her vital statistics.
These were swiped and
scrutinized by soldiers and police every few minutes
– any time one passed
through a door, basically. The whole system was
connected to handheld
wireless communication devices made by HP, which were
issued to all VIPs. I
got one. Very cool, except when they crashed. Which,
of course, they did
frequently. These devices supplied every imagineable
piece of information one
could want about the conference, your fellow
delegates, Davos, the world
news, etc. And they were emailing devices —
all emails being monitored, of
course, by Swiss cops.

Antiglobalization folks didn’t stand a chance. Nor
did Al Qaeda. After all,
if someone managed to take out Davos during WEF week
the world would
basically lose a fair chunk of its ruling and governing class
POOF, just
like that. So security was the name of the game. Metal detectors,
X-ray
machines, shivering soldiers standing in blizzards,
etc.

Overall, here is what I learned about the state of our
world:

- I was in a dinner with heads of Saudi and German FBI, plus the
foreign
minister of Afghanistan. They all said that at its peak Al Qaeda had
70,000
members. Only 10% of them were trained in terrorism — the rest
were
military recruits. Of that 7000, they say all but about 200 are dead or
in
jail.

- But Al Qaeda, they say, is like a brand which has been
heavily
franchised. And nobody knows how many unofficial franchises have
been
spawned since 9/11.

- The global economy is in very very very
very bad shape. Last year when
WEF met here in New York all I heard was,
“Yeah, it’s bad, but recovery is
right around the corner”. This year
“recovery” was a word never uttered.
Fear was palpable — fear of enormous
fiscal hysteria. The watchwords were
“deflation”, “long term stagnation” and
“collapse of the dollar”. All of
this is without war.

- If the U.S.
unilaterally goes to war, and it is anything short of a quick
surgical strike
(lasting less than 30 days), the economists were all
predicting extreme
economic gloom: falling dollar value, rising spot market
oil prices, the Fed
pushing interest rates down towards zero with resulting
increase in national
debt, severe trouble in all countries whose currency
is guaranteed agains the
dollar (which is just about everybody except the
EU), a near cessation of all
development and humanitarian programs for poor
countries. Very few economists
or ministers of finance predicted the world
getting out of that economic funk
for minimally five-10 years, once the
downward spiral ensues.

- Not
surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about a
war in
Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit Tories and
some
Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry anti-American mood.
Last year
the WEF was a lovefest for America. This year the mood was so
ugly that it
reminded me of what it felt like to be an American overseas in
the Reagan
years. The rich — whether they are French or Chinese or just
about anybody
– are livid about the Iraq crisis primarily because they
believe it will
sink their financial fortunes.

- Plenty are also infuriated because they
disagree on policy grounds. I
learned a great deal. It goes FAR beyond the
sorts of questions one hears
raised by demonstrators and in UN debates. For
example:
- If Al Qaeda is down to merely 200 terrorists cadres and a handful
of
wannabe franchises, what’s all the fuss?
- The Middle East situation
has never been worse. All hope for a
settlement between Israel and Palestine
seems to have evaporated. The
energy should be focused on placing painful
financial pressure on all sides
in that fight, forcing them to the
negotiating table. Otherwise, the ME may
well explode. The war in Iraq is at
best a distraction from that core
issue, at worst may aggravate it. Jordan’s
Queen Rania spoke of the
“desperate search for hope”.
- Serious Islamic
leaders (e.g. the King of Jordan, the Prime Minster
of Malaysia, the Grand
Mufti of Bosnia) believe that the Islamic world must
recapture the glory days
of 12-13th C Islam. That means finding tolerance
and building great education
institutions and places of learning. The King
was passionate on the subject.
It also means freedom of movement and speech
within and among the Islamic
nations. And, most importantly to the WEF, it
means flourishing free trade
and support for entrepeneurs with minimal
state regulation. (However, there
were also several Middle East
respresentatives who argued precisely the
opposite. They believe bringing
down Saddam Hussein and then pushing the
Israel/Palestine issue could
actually result in a Golden Age for Arab
Islam.)
- US unilateralism is seen as arrogant, bullyish. If the U.S.
cannot
behave in partnership with its allies — especially the Europeans —
it
risks not only political alliance but BUSINESS, as well. Company
leaders
argued that they would rather not have to deal with US government
attitudes
about all sorts of multilateral treaties (climate change,
intellectual
property, rights of children, etc.) — it’s easier to just do
business in
countries whose governments agree with yours. And it’s cheaper,
in the long
run, because the regulatory envornments match. War against Iraq
is seen as
just another example of the unilateralism.
- For a minority of
the participants there was another layer of
AntiAmericanism that focused on
moralisms and religion. I often heard
delegates complain that the US “opposes
the rights of children”, because we
block all treaties and UN efforts that
would support sex education and
condom access for children and teens. They
spoke of sex education as a
“right”. Similarly, there was a decidedly mixed
feeling about Ashcroft, who
addressed the conference. I attended a small
lunch with Ashcroft, and
observed Ralph Reed and other prominent Christian
fundamentalists working
the room and bowing their heads before eating. The
rest of the world’s
elite finds this American Christian behavior at least as
uncomfortable as
it does Moslem or Hindu fundamentalist behavior. They find
it awkward every
time a US representative refers to “faith-based” programs.
It’s different
from how it makes non-Christian Americans feel — these folks
experience it
as downright embarrassing.
- When Colin Powell gave the
speech of his life, trying to win over
the nonAmerican delegates, the
sharpest attack on his comments came not
from Amnesty International or some
Islamic representative — it came from
the head of the largest bank in the
Netherlands!

I learned that the only economy about which there is much
enthusiasm is
China, which was responsible for 77% of the global GDP growth
in 2002. But
the honcho of the Bank of China, Zhu Min, said that fantastic
growth could
slow to a crawl if China cannot solve its rural/urban problem.
Currently
400 million Chinese are urbanites, and their average income is 16
times
that of the 900 million rural residents. Zhu argued China must
urbanize
nearly a billion people in ten years!

I learned that the US
economy is the primary drag on the global economy,
and only a handful of
nations have sufficient internal growth to thrive
when the US is
stagnating.

The WEF was overwhelmed by talk of security, with fears of
terrorism,
computer and copyright theft, assassination and global
instability
dominating almost every discussion.

I learned from
American security and military speakers that, “We need to
attack Iraq not to
punish it for what it might have, but preemptively, as
part of a global war.
Iraq is just one piece of a campaign that will last
years, taking out states,
cleansing the planet.”

The mood was very grim. Almost no parties, little
fun. If it hadn’t been
for the South Africans — party animals every one of
them — I’d never have
danced. Thankfully, the South Africans staged a
helluva party, with Jimmy
Dludlu’s band rocking until 3am and Stellenbosch
wines pouring freely,
glass after glass after glass….

These WEF
folks are freaked out. They see very bad economics ahead, war,
and more
terrorism. About 10%
of the sessions were about terrorism, and it’s heavy
stuff. One session
costed out what another 9/11-type attack would do to
global markets,
predicting a far, far worse impact due to the “second hit”
effect — a
second hit that would prove all the world’s post-9/11 security
efforts had
failed. Another costed out in detail what this, or that, war
scenario would
do to spot oil prices. Russian speakers argued that “failed
nations” were
spawning terrorists — code for saying, “we hate Chechnya”.
Entire
sessions were devoted to arguing which poses the greater asymmetric
threat:
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Finally, who are
these guys? I actually enjoyed a lot of my conversations,
and found many of
the leaders and rich quite charming and remarkably
candid. Some dressed
elegantly, no matter how bitter cold and snowy it was,
but most seemed quite
happy in ski clothes or casual attire. Women wearing
pants was perfectly
acceptable, and the elite is sufficiently multicultural
that even the suit
and tie lacks a sense of dominance. Watching Bill
Clinton address the
conference while sitting in the hotel room of the
President of Mozambique —
we were viewing it on closed circuit TV — I got
juicy blow-by=blow analysis
of US foreign policy from a remarkably candid
head of state. A day spent with
Bill Gates turned out to be fascinating and
fun. I found the CEO of Heinekin
hilarious, and George Soros proved quite
earnest about confronting AIDS.
Vicente Fox — who I had breakfast with –
proved sexy and smart like a —
well, a fox. David Stern (Chair of the
NBA) ran up and gave me a
hug.

The world isn’t run by a clever cabal. It’s run by about 5,000
bickering,
sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are
accustomed
to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. A
few have
both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive — especially
about
science and technology. All of them are financially wise, though
their
ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock investing. They pay close
heed
to politics, though most would be happy if the global political
system
behaved far more rationally — better for the bottom line. They work
very
hard, attending sessions from dawn to nearly midnight, but expect
the
standards of intelligence and analysis to be the best available in
the
entire world. They are impatient. They have a hard time reconciling
long
term issues (global wearming, AIDS pandemic, resource scarcity) with
their
daily bottomline foci. They are comfortable working across
languages,
cultures and gender, though white caucasian males still outnumber
all other
categories. They adore hi-tech gadgets and are glued to their cell
phones.

Welcome to Earth: meet the
leaders.

Ciao,
Laurie

—— End of Forwarded
Message