NAFTA is said to have been conceived here.
.. Davos is, fundamentally, an exercise in corporate speed-dating. “Everyone comes because everyone else comes,” Larry Summers told me. A hedge-fund manager or a C.E.O. can pack into a few days the dozens of meetings—with other executives, with heads of state or their deputies, with non-governmental organizations whose phone calls might otherwise have been ignored—that it would normally take months to arrange and tens of thousands of Gulfstream miles to attend.
.. A basic W.E.F. membership is fifty-five thousand dollars, and for a member to come to Davos costs an extra twenty-seven thousand.
.. They also subsidize the scores of academics, scientists, artists, journalists, and N.G.O. chiefs who attend for free. Everyone, whether he pays or not, has to be invited. “You cannot buy your way in,” Schwab said.
.. “You don’t understand your own interests until you encounter others with other interests. This is the foundation of enlightened self-interest.
.. The coveted pass is the white one, granting delegates free rein. There are variations: A Strategic Partner gets a blue dot and access to an exclusive lounge. A special hologram used to signal membership in an élite faction called the Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders, or IGWEL, but now “serves boring logistical purposes,” according to Monck. I was given a white badge, which meant I’d been knighted a Media Leader. Media Leaders may trump Reporting Press (ha!), but they bow before the Media Governors (curses!), who get invited to the off-the-record sit-downs with Geithner and Merkel.
.. Most of the sessions and private events are governed by the so-called Chatham House rule. The bargain is generally acceptable to the insidious extent that the thrill of access outweighs the urge to reveal. Anyway, as the journalists all say, nothing newsworthy ever happens at Davos, even if the journalists must occasionally pretend that it does, in order to justify their presence there. For most of them, it’s an occasion for cultivating sources, ideas, and the short-lived delusion that they belong among the white badges of the world.