THE masters of the universe who paraded at the annual World Economic Forum, telling governments to get out of the way, have been replaced for the event's 40th year in the luxury Swiss resort of Davos.
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Now the pendulum has swung rapidly back the other way and it is politicians who will hold court, trying to solve the global recession that threatens to worsen into a depression. The wealth creators of recent years have suddenly become the wealth destroyers.
The Institute of International Finance, an organisation of banks that met in Davos on Tuesday, a day before the opening of the global forum, predicted an almost unprecedented collapse in world economic growth and capital flows.
It became the first global institution to forecast a global contraction in 2009, predicting that the economy would shrink by 1.1 per cent.
The IIF's chief economist, Philip Suttle, said: "This is the worst period since the interwar years. The global growth backdrop is very difficult."
He also expected rich economies to contract by 2.1 per cent - the worst peacetime output since the 1930s.
The message from the forum's founder, Klaus Schwab, is that some of the people responsible for the global mess should say sorry. Mr Schwab, who defined the WEF's mission as being "committed to improving the state of the world", wants the meeting to focus on business morality, questioning whether business needs an equivalent of doctors' Hippocratic oath.
"People should feel remorse," said a Davos insider. "Some people should be apologising."
In the new mood of austerity, banks said they were cutting back on entertaining costs.
There has also been a shift from business to government - there are 40 heads of state this year, more than twice the usual number. Australia is represented by the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
The WEF organisers said there would be 2600 people in attendance, slightly above the 2500 they thought was optimal.
Celebrities will be much less in evidence than in previous years - Bono is finishing a new U2 album and there will be no Hollywood stars such as Sharon Stone.
Mr Schwab said this was more than a cyclical downturn in the global economy of the sort seen with the Asian crisis or the dotcom collapse. It exposed structural problems that had to be addressed, he said.
Guardian News & Media; Telegraph, London
