POSTED AT 11:29 PM ON Jan. 27, 2009 | PRINT | Email | SHARE | COMMENTS (0)

It was a small headline tucked away within last Sunday’s edition of The New York Times, and it immediately caught my eye.

“At Davos, Crisis Culls the Guest List,” the story began before launching into the effects the financial meltdown was having on the World Economic Forum.

For the uninitiated, Davos, a tiny ski resort in Switzerland, plays host to the annual Forum, a gathering of business leaders, politicians, non-governmental agencies and the occasional celebrity. Historically, the five-day conference provides an opportunity for the rich, elite and overwhelmingly white audience to bask in its own greatness, all while lauding the benefits of globalization and the power of free markets.

This year was to be no different – until the gloom and turmoil besetting the global economy cast a pall over the celebrations. It became apparent that praising unfettered capitalism as the key to solving global poverty, or whatever it is that you’re taught in economics classes these days, would surely have been in poor taste.

In anticipation, the guest list for the Forum is missing its usual stars, from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Angelina Jolie.

Instead, the Forum will play host to 41 heads of state, almost double the previous record, in a tacit acknowledgement that the government can (shockingly) play an instrumental role in advancing economic and social well-being.

In addition, activists are gearing up for protests that highlight the complicity of organizers and participants of the Forum in causing the current financial crisis, an idea not entirely without merit.

To be sure, certain challenges we face require cooperation and action on a global scale, most notably climate change and terrorism. However, this one-size-fits-all philosophy espoused by the economic elite is less easy to translate into actionable progress on matters relating to development.

Moreover, the trouble with Davos is a microcosm of what ails the American economy today: a cozy relationship between the economic elite and those who are supposed to regulate it.

In an endorsement of this view, Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the Forum, recently stated that Davos organizers let the “partying” creep in, ensuring that “attention was taken away from the speed and complexity of how the world’s challenges built up.”

Ultimately, Davos represented a celebration of wealth, not the creation of it.
All is not gloomy, however. In a nice rejoinder to the economic hegemony perpetrated by the Forum, activists will gather around the same time in Brazil for the World Social Forum. In a rather powerful symbol, attendees will meet in the Amazon jungle region in order to highlight the danger that free markets pose for the environment.

No special appearances by Jolie are expected.

Conventional wisdom long dictated that free markets and globalization held the potential for uplifting the masses. However, we are only beginning to understand the role that international entities like the Forum play in furthering the divide between the rich and the poor.

In continuing such a vapid forum, organizers demonstrate that Davos remains nothing but an embarrassment of riches.