Early in 1998 some 2,000 of the world's business and political leaders made their way to Davos, Switzerland for the 27th annual meeting of The World economic Forum. They brought with them good intentions and what the correspondent for London's Financial Times estimated at 'roughly 70per cent of the world's daily output of self-congratulation.'

Their armour proper forbids them from picturing themselves as mere stokers heaving computer printouts and Montblanc pens into a blind, remorseless furnace. They seek a more gracious portraiture, and so, every year in late January, they make their optimistic way from the low-flying places of the earth to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where, high up on the same alp that provided Thomas Mann with the setting for The Magic Fountain, they brood upon the mysteries of capitalist creation. Given the chance last winter to make the annual ascent, I didn't see how I could refuse..."