A new January, and another Davos gathering brought to you by that most unlikely of NGOs, the World Economic Forum (WEF). Every year they choose a theme, and it’s instructive to take a look back at these as a sort of palimpsest of how business (of which politics is a subset in this case) has constantly attempted to impose meaning on the vagaries of socioeconomic turmoil.

In 2003, it was “Building Trust”, a theme they returned to in 2021 with “Crucial Year to Rebuild Trust”. Which, unfortunately, was cancelled because of the pandemic. So maybe not that crucial then. But they got around to it last year, with “Rebuilding Trust”. As we can all too clearly see, in this new beautiful reign of King Trump (he’ll be dialling into Davos 2025 to mock delegates), that one hasn’t really taken either...

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