Most of us are worried about job security, stagnant incomes, loss of pensions and benefits, lack of health insurance, home foreclosures. But the banksters are not most of us, and their worries are, well, on a different level. The big annual Versailles confab in Davos, Switzerland began this week, and some top banksters have told Bloomberg, "they think the biggest challenge for the industry is overcoming public anger about bonuses and compensation." Read more.
Leaders of some of the world’s biggest banks met today on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to plot ways to reassert their influence with regulators and governments.
Ordinarily, Davos is a Great Men kind of place, as the motto of this year's gathering implies: "Shaping the post-crisis world." The people who show up here—political leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, musicians, and, above all, businesspeople—have all shown an ability to impose themselves on history. Otherwise, they wouldn't be invited. And yet in the many discussions held here about the recent global financial debacle, the question of human agency is shunted to the side.
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