Behold, Davos Man!

Breaking markets, forcing fragmentation and causing price tsunamis wherever he goes!

(Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Normandy, France...

‘Davos Man’ is on display this week. With the Alps in the background, he offers his opinions on lazy TV channels.  

Our guess: he does more harm than good.

But there they are...almost non-stop – the great and the good, the Establishment, the elite of the elite; they are today’s ‘global leaders.’ They get together in their fortress retreat at Davos, Switzerland – guarded by 5,000 Swiss troops – to gum about what’s wrong with the world and how to improve it.  

“We’re going to need to fix our broken supply chains,” says one earnest corporate honcho.

“We’re doing all we can to develop a sustainable system of energy inputs,’ says another.

“Witing Off”

Klaus Schwab, founder of the sponsor, World Economic Forum, with his heavy Teutonic accent, cannot say the ‘r’ sound. So, he says we will have to “wite off the huge costs” of what he thinks will be difficult year of ‘transformation.’

Of course, the world is always witing off its past...its old technologies...its hula-hoops and failed cryptos. It is always transforming itself. As we discussed yesterday, things become their opposites...bull markets turn into bear markets...young, dynamic countries become old and degenerate... white shoes yearn for mud.

Mr. Klaus, mind you, is not just an observer of ‘transformation.’ He is an activist. His goal is not to follow, but to lead. And therein lies a tale. For how does he know where the world should go? The baker in Berlin...the hod carrier in Karaloon...the lumpenproletariat of Las Vegas – each has his own destination.

No matter. Davos Man knows best.

Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, meanwhile, has a delightful Bulgarian accent. She came from the World Bank and replaced Christine Lagarde at the IMF, who replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was disgraced after he allegedly exposed himself to a cleaning woman in a New York hotel. (The affair looked like a set-up...the charges were dismissed, but not before Strauss-Kahn, who had been a leading candidate to become president of France, was ruined.) Ms. Lagarde went on to head up the European Central bank.

At Davos, Ms. Georgieva picked up the ‘transformation’ theme:

2023 will be a difficult year for the world. The silver lining is we can use it to transform economies & accelerate change that’s good for our climate, good for growth. At the IMF, we recognize our responsibility to be a force for good.

We’re not going to sit back and see what direction the world takes, she says; we’re going to give it a shove!

Un-Free World Order

The major challenge facing the planet, says she, is ‘fragmentation.’ By that she means that the global order – which Davos Men (and women) helped create – is cracking up. She did not mention the main culprit – the US government; it has abandoned free trade in favor of un-free trade. Its sanctions, restrictions, and tariffs are now fragmenting markets and reducing the prosperity of the whole world.  

And so, Ms. Georgieva came to Davos to deliver a report, prepared by the diligent number crunchers at the IMF, showing that if they ‘manage’ the world economy carefully the cost of this ‘fragmentation’ would be only 0.2% of global output. Not 0.3%. Not 0.1%.

Those researchers must have been punching the numbers so hard, it’s surprising the ref didn’t stop the fight. But they just kept delivering the rabbit punches, putting the growth of the world economy at 2.7% in the year ahead.

Their calculation are ridiculous. Imagine trying to determine the effect of unknown events on an uncertain future in a largely-unmapped $90 trillion world economy? To a 10th of a percent!  

But what do you expect? The biggest financial event of 2022 was the dramatic rise in inflation – to the highest levels in 40 years. It is what forced the Fed to reverse its monetary policy...and cost the world asset markets an estimated $20 to $30 trillion in losses. (Estimates vary!)

Price Tsunami

By spring of 2021, the tsunami of price increases was visible on the horizon. Anyone who bothered to look could see it coming. The feds had cut off supplies of goods and services (with their Covid Hysteria lockdowns)...and they had greatly increased the supply of money (with their stimmie checks, unemployment toppers, and PPP loans). Consult any Dummies’ Guide to Inflation; you will see that the result is bound to be higher prices. But the economists at the IMF are neither dummies, nor realists; they are fantasists. Here is a CNNBusiness summary of their view, as of April 2021:

The IMF credited continued government stimulus and vaccine rollouts for stronger growth projections. It said that consumer prices could be volatile, but it does not expect high levels of inflation to take root because of weak wage growth and unemployment. 

Good thinking!

What a wonderful bunch of mental defectives and pompous poseurs. We speak of the whole Davos crowd...as well as their pet economists. It must be delightful – in a childish way, of course – to think you can not only foretell the future...but actually improve it before it happens.  

Not content to run their own businesses, governments and non-profit organizations, they think they can ‘transform’ the entirety of human life on planet earth...and wite off anything that gets in the way.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Joel’s Note: For dear readers who remain unconvinced about the sheer determination of Davos Man to “save the planet,” consider the modest words of US Climate Envoy Czar John Kerry, speaking to a roomful of fellow extraterrestrials(?) at this year’s globalist gabfest...

“If you stop and think, about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we, a select group of human beings, because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives, are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet. I mean, it’s so, almost extraterrestrial to think about quote ‘saving the planet.’ If you said that to most people, most people they think you’re just a crazy, tree-hugging, leftie, liberal... you know, do-gooder, whatever...and there’s no relationship. But really, that’s where we are.”

Now, far be it from us mere “most people,” down here on the flatlands of ignorance, to know the mind of a man as brave and humble as Mr. Kerry, but hearing his words we were reminded of the findings from a Washington Free Beacon analysis, released last year...

The Free Beacon reviewed 75 of Kerry's official travel announcements from March 2021 to July 2022, which show Kerry has flown roughly 180,100 miles—the equivalent of traveling around the world more than seven times—to discuss climate change with various world leaders. Planes on average produce 53.3 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile traveled, according to carbon emissions modeling website BlueSkyModel, meaning Kerry's flights have produced 9.54 million pounds, or 4,772 tons, of carbon—roughly 300 times the average American's carbon footprint for an entire year. From May 13, 2021, to May 19, 2021, for example, Kerry traveled to Rome, London, and Berlin before returning stateside. Those flights total roughly 10,100 miles and 538,000 pounds of carbon.

And that‘s just official travel. From the time Czar Kerry, who has referred to climate change as an “existential crisis,” was appointed by president Biden and the publication of the Free Beacon analysis (July 2022), our dedicated climate activist had also taken the family Gulfstream GIV-SP private jet (est $4.5 million) for a few spins, too. Make that 48 spins, “emitting more than 715,000 pounds of carbon in the process.” 

To be fair, Czar Kerry is a very busy man...committed to tackling climate change one carbon-spewing flight at a time. And as we all know, being busy is something average people just couldn’t comprehend. But don’t worry, Czar Kerry has enough dirty dough to buy himself a clean conscience.

Much like the Catholic Church’s system of “indulgences” in the Middle Ages, whereby a sinner could hope to have his peccadilloes mitigated or even absolved in the afterlife by making a “fixed monetary payment” to the church, Czar Kerry offsets his carbon-based transgressions with dollar-based credits.

“If you offset your carbon, it's the only choice for somebody like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle."

Nor is Extraterrestrial Czar Kerry alone. The WEF itself even encourages “plane pooling” as a way to combat the deleterious effects of its own meeting (simply not having the meeting, or having it by Zoom being, of course, unthinkable).

“We also ask that they share planes if they have to use them,” the organization said in a statement back in 2019, “something that has been gaining popularity in recent years.”

And yet, according to a Greenpeace report released last Friday, the emissions generated from the luxury jets flying in and out of airports serving Davos last year were equivalent to those produced by about 350,000 average cars for a week. Another 1,000+ private jets shuttled this year’s saviors to the mountaintop...and still, we are scolded, the emergency is worse than ever, and there’s plenty more for you to do.

“I’m convinced we will get to a low-carbon, no-carbon economy — we’re going to get there because we have to,” Kerry lectured at this year’s event. “I am not convinced we’re going to get there in time to do what the scientists said, which is avoid the worst consequences of the crisis. So how do we get there? ... Money, money, money, money, money, money, money.”