Warning From the World Economic Forum in Davos

The  theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland this year is “Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild.” It starts today.

As you know, this annual meeting is where governments and businesses meet to “exchange ideas” and issue puffy statements about the world, pledge international cooperation and solidarity, and then go home after a week of skiing and great food. I’m sure that some business gets done there.

From the WEF press release:

During five days filled with hundreds of working sessions, over 2,500 leaders from more than 90 countries representing business, government, civil society, academia and culture will work together to address pressing challenges and future risks.

This is a plum assignment for the media, so they’ll be crawling all over the place and issue serious reports on how these leaders view the world. I have to admit that I’m envious, but no one is paying my way … yet.

Like most of these kinds of events nothing will really happen. The real work will be done in private meetings in presidential suites between foreign leaders and their treasury and central banking heads.

The purpose of this article is not to remind you of my cynicism, but to give you a heads up on certain supranational trends that have been taking place since the Great Panic of 2008. Here’s what the WEF says:

“Global multistakeholder cooperation lies at the heart of the Forum’s mission to improve the state of the world,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Speaking at a press conference at the World Economic Forum’s headquarters in Geneva, Professor Schwab said: “We have to rethink our values – we are living together in a global society with many different cultures. We have to redesign our processes – how do we deal with the issues and challenges on the global agenda. And finally, we have to rebuild our institutions.

I first want to say how much I detest words like “stakeholder.” It’s the usual babble you hear from nonprofit types. You know, “We’ll just need to sit down and exchange views and come to a consensus.” It’s like a choir of Church Ladies (of SNL fame) yakking mindlessly in the background.

Here’s what they are talking about:

“We have to look at the Meeting in the context of what’s happening in the world … and we see that, clearly, the present system of global cooperation is not working sufficiently. So we want to look at all issues on the global agenda in a systemic, integrated and strategic way, and we want to address in particular the issue of global cooperation. This is the reason why our Annual Meeting this year is tailored around the need to rethink, redesign and rebuild.”

Let me interpret:

The capitalists of the world really screwed things up, and we responsible adults have to clean things up. We’ve got to stop these bastards from forum shopping so they can’t avoid our controls over them. We’re gonna stick it to them this time.

Got it? Supranational controls over business. This is beyond the Basel kinds of banking regulations. I think what they mean is kind of a World Securities and Exchange Commission + Basel.

Here’s what Tim Geithner said in his “Principles for Reforming the U.S. and International Regulatory Capital Framework for Banking Firms” issued last year:

8. Ensuring that tougher capital requirements don’t allow firms to migrate to places where such capital requirements don’t exist. In other words, keep the playing field balanced and don’t allow huge risks to buildup in the system outside of regulation

This is just the start. I’m not paranoid about one-world government, but in the not too distant future we’ll look back fondly at places like the Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Nauru, and Liechtenstein where you could avoid (and evade) the rules of your mother land.

You can run, but you can’t hide.