Sometimes the headline is all you need to read.

Case in point, the recent The Wall Street Journal headline: “The Humiliation of Davos Man: He Isn’t Taking Over the World. He’s Pleading With the World to Trust Him.”

Davos is, of course, the town in Switzerland that hosts the World Economic Forum, a talking shop for elites in business and government to tell the rest of us what to do. 

It’s not going well.

The Journal points out that the World Economic Forum is a boogeyman for conspiracy theorists on both the left and the right, an “all-powerful network successfully imposing a nefarious agenda on the rest of the world.”

Not so much. As the Journal continues,

The real scandal of Davos isn’t that it’s taking over the world. It’s that it’s failing. The Davos agenda — a global security order, an integrated world economy, and progress toward objectives including decarbonization, gender equality, and the abolition of dire poverty — is controversial in some quarters and on some points but is neither secret nor particularly nefarious. But far from imposing this agenda on a captive world, the Davos elites are wringing their hands as the dream slowly dies.

The problem with Davos isn’t so much its agenda. Like any set of policies, there are some good, some bad, and some ugly.

The problem is the messenger.

No one trusts the governing class.

And can you blame them?

These are the folks who have saddled the United States with $34 trillion in debt and the highest inflation in 40 years. 

But don’t worry, they have it figured out this time!

My good friend Rodney Johnson of HS Dent Publishing, recently penned a good take on the Davos cabal. With his kind permission, I’m sharing this with you today.

Over to you, Rodney.

– Charles

P.S. We have published our January edition of The Freeport Investor, in which I discuss the “genius” move California Governor, Gavin Newsom, just made and how it’s going to negatively impact all of us. I also included details of the newest addition to our model portfolio… an investment that will help members grow their wealth despite Newsom and the ruling class in general. Watch here to learn how to gain access to this first issue of 2024.

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Davos Could Fight Global Warming

Recognizing Davos is easy. It’s a small town in the Swiss Alps that is famous for skiing. It’s also famous for hosting a conference each year that is well-attended by rich people and government luminaries. 

But most people don’t even know the name of the conference or what they do there. 

Besides, we’d be better off if the conference either recentered to its mission or the whole thing was just canceled.

German economist Klaus Schwab started the World Economic Forum in 1971, in hopes of increasing collaboration between private and public entities. In 1971, we had the hot “cold” war, and then President Nixon closed the gold window and ushered in years of inflation as the world settled into relative currency valuations. The Middle East remained a hot spot, taxes and regulation crippled growth, and the Europeans watched as Germany once again rebuilt its manufacturing empire.

I don’t know if Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan went to the annual WEF, but Carter deregulated the airlines and trucking, while Reagan cut taxes. 

I would imagine that Steve Jobs didn’t go to the WEF before or even long after he created a personal computer in his garage, and it’s likely Bill Gates didn’t have a passport before he created Microsoft and BASIC. 

None of my economy or finance courses in the 1980s mentioned the WEF, nor did my MBA classes in the early 1990s. 

It’s as if the WEF showed up on our radar in the late 1990s when the internet was young and people were trying to figure out the disaggregated USSR. 

It wasn’t about public and private sectors working together more efficiently, it was about money. 

As the years have passed, more politicians have shown up, likely because more cameras have shown up. It’s like TED talks and the WEF gained popularity at the same time. But TED talks at least have a point. Other than talking down to the people who aren’t there (i.e., the other eight billion people on the planet), the WEF has a miserable track record and has set up itself for an even worse future.

The WEF did not move to end extreme poverty, capitalism did that. 

The WEF did not improve public/private sector ties. 

As for the future, the WEF decided to aim for stakeholder capitalism, a sort of communism (not socialism) lite. 

As long as you’re at the top of the heap — and those who speak at Davos definitely are — these things are awesome. They outline diktats that will make things “better” and then point out how people in certain countries must fund them. 

Notice that they don’t pass the hat at the WEF, requiring billionaires to cough up a large chunk of their personal fortunes to make good on these imperative issues. 

But even if the Davos attendees aren’t sending in all of their wealth, except a minimal stipend of, say, $20 million, they could improve the planet, from their perspective. If they believe that fossil fuels are harmful, then they likely know that the biggest villain is air travel. Within that sector, private air travel is at the top. 

Davos attendees could save the planet from tons of emissions by flying commercial instead of taking 2,000 (yes, that’s right, 2,000) private jets to a small village in the Swiss Alps so that they can take the rest of us to task for driving to work. 

Better yet, Davos attendees could do something that many workers are doing right now: meeting remotely. Instead of using any fossil fuels, the WEF crowd could use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or any app to “phone it in” …although that’s unlikely to happen. The WEF doesn’t solve issues, but it does give people a chance to be seen. If they aren’t effective, at least they can be thought of as authoritative. 

Which brings me back to the best way for the WEF to make a difference in climate change: Just shut down the entire thing. I won’t miss it, and I don’t think anyone I know will miss it. The only groups who will miss the WEF are hotel proprietors in that little town, restaurateurs, and reporters who pretend that they are doing something important.

– Rodney

P.P.S.  Rodney has spent two decades researching how people spend money in predictable patterns, and then using that knowledge to estimate how our economy and financial markets will change in the years ahead. He began his career in financial services on Wall Street in the 1980s. He started working on projects with Harry Dent in the mid-1990s. He’s regularly appeared on radio shows across the country and has also been featured on CNBC, Fox News, and Fox Business, where he discusses economic trends ranging from the price of oil to the direction of the U.S. economy. He holds degrees from Georgetown University & Southern Methodist University.

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