Monday, January 27, 2014

The global elite are sleeping inside a golden egg in the Swiss alps...

The newest venue at Davos—the Swiss ski resort where hundreds of heads of state and CEOs are spending the week to discuss business and the state of the global economy—is an architectural bauble with an unusually loud symbolism for the high-level conference: it's a giant fortress chalet in the shape of a golden egg.

Enveloped by 790 gold-colored undulating bands of steel and overlooking Lake Davos, the new Intercontinental Davos is an architectural stunner. "It's like a luxury space ship has landed in this tony town," John Newton of Conde Nast Traveler raved in November, a month ahead of its opening. Designed by the Munich-based firm Oikios and engineer Seele to reflect the feel of a chalet, the 216-room hotel features all the amenities found at Davos's other luxury hotels, but will be the first hotel in town with its own helipad.

It also comes surrounded by barbed wire, security cameras, and motion sensors: during the World Economic Forum, a spokesman told Bloomberg that the hotel will play host to 7 world leaders and dozens of CEOs. Rooms, which are fully booked and normally go for around $720 per night, are likely to command prices multiples higher during the WEF. In a video, a Bloomberg reporter asks the general manager how much the rooms are likely to be. He snaps back, "I can't tell you."

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But the opulence and security at this year's Davos meeting looks especially conspicuous in light of the world's economic woes, highlighted specifically in a new report by Oxfam that details just how unequally distributed is the world's wealth. The richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of $110 trillion, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population, according to the new report. Full story...

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