The appeal of Davos for financiers and businesspeople is to get away from the world of SEC filings, subprime write-downs, and EBITDA, and a chance to indulge the inner wonk/public intellectual. It takes some doing. There’s the eight-hour flight to Zurich followed by another couple of hours in a car, bus or train, chugging slowly up a narrow snowscape, through stands of 200-foot pines. But it’s worth the trip. Instead of sitting through sales meetings, placating investors, or scanning bar charts, they can ponder the implications of the human genome project for cancer research, or listen to Tony Blair, or sit in on a panel discussion with food pioneer Alice Waters.

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