Quote:For when Davos isn’t exclusive enough, there is Bilderberg. The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual gathering of world leaders, executives, and assorted grandees, established in 1954 and named for the Dutch hotel where the secretive group first gathered.

Amid heavy security, around 130 people—including three prime ministers and 30 CEOs—will hold talks on the world’s most pressing issues this week. The four-day retreat starts on Thursday (June 9) at an undisclosed location in Dresden, Germany.
This year’s agenda includes predictable topics like “China,” “migration,” and “cyber security.” But one talking point is particularly intriguing, addressing the “precariat and middle class.”
The what? The “precariat” is a term popularized by British economist Guy Standing, describing a growing class of people who feel insecure in their jobs, communities, and life in general. They are…

Quote:…the perpetual part-timers, the minimum-wagers, the temporary foreign workers, the grey-market domestics paid in cash… the techno-impoverished whose piecemeal work has no office and no end, the seniors who struggle with dwindling benefits, the indigenous people who are kept outside, the single mothers without support, the cash labourers who have no savings, the generation for whom a pension and a retirement is neither available nor desired.

This marginalized group—“alienated, anomic, anxious, and angry,” according to Standing—is fueling the rise of populist politicians like Donald Trump in the US and similar rabble rousers in Europe and beyond. (Discussing this group alongside the middle class, which isn’t doing great either, is telling.) The resulting turmoil in politics, markets, and economics is a factor in nearly all of the Bilderberg meeting’s other agenda items.

Quote:So what will the bigwigs do about it? Conspiracy theorists may think that Bilderberg members are in league with the Illuminati, Freemasons, and Lizard People, hatching the New World Order from their secret hideouts. More likely is that the politicians and power brokers meeting in Germany this week are as taken aback by the travails of the increasingly marginalized masses as anybody else.

But what the Bilderbergers really think will remain a mystery. According to the group’s code, “There is no desired outcome, no minutes are taken and no report is written. Furthermore, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued.”

Quote:The what? The “precariat” is a term popularized by British economist Guy Standing, describing a growing class of people who feel insecure in their jobs, communities, and life in general.

They are…

…the perpetual part-timers, the minimum-wagers, the temporary foreign workers, the grey-market domestics paid in cash… the techno-impoverished whose piecemeal work has no office and no end, the seniors who struggle with dwindling benefits, the indigenous people who are kept outside, the single mothers without support, the cash labourers who have no savings, the generation for whom a pension and a retirement is neither available nor desired

Quote:No minutes will be taken. No reporters will be allowed in. There will be no opening press conference, no closing statement, and participants will be asked not to quote each other.

Welcome to the 64th Bilderberg Conference. 
Rich and powerful bankers, prime ministers and former heads of the CIA and MI6 are about to join other members of the global elite for arguably the world’s most high-powered but secretive annual meeting which this year is being held in Dresden.

Quote:The Bilderberg organisers have, though, just released a list those who will be present from June 9-12 for a three-day meeting chaired by a French count (and chairman of the global insurance giant AXA), who likes to spend his weekends at his castle in Anjou.    

Among 126 participants discussing an agenda that – we are also told – will include China, Europe, migration, the Middle East, Russia and the “geo-politics of energy and commodity prices”, will be Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Jose Manuel Barroso, the former president of the European Commission.
Unlike last year, British Chancellor George Osborne will not be present.  Although Michael O’Leary, the controversial CEO of Ryanair will.

Quote:It might also be worth paying attention to the future fortunes of attendees who  seem obscure.  Bill Clinton was a conference attendee in 1991, as a mere governor of Arkansas, a year before he was elected US President.  Tony Blair was only a shadow minister when he got his invitation – (you can’t apply to attend, you must be invited) – in 1993.  Conference organisers have previously insisted there is no conspiracy to crowbar their chosen people into top jobs, they just have excellent talent spotters.

But for now, the more eye-catching Bilderberg attendees due to be rubbing shoulders with senior representatives of Deutsche Bank, the European Central Bank and Lazard – as well as oil giants Shell and BP - will be:Henri de Castries.

The Bilderberg Conference chairman, however, chose a civilian career, attending the École Nationale d'Administration, (ENA) the ‘Grande École’ often regarded as a factory for producing future French prime ministers and presidents including Jacques Chirac, Francois Hollande and Alain Juppé – (who was listed as an attendee at last year’s Bilderberg Conference.)

After ENA, Mr de Castries audited on behalf of the Minister of Finances of France and became a member of the French Treasury in 1984, where he participated in the privatisations initiated by the Chirac government.
He joined AXA in 1989 and in May 2000 he became chairman and chief executive of the Paris-based global insurance group, which is thought to have assets of 552 billion euros (£430 billion.)

Sir John is listed by the Bilderberg organisers as “Chairman and Partner, Macro Advisory Partners”, a consultancy that according to its website provides corporations and governments with “strategic insights to navigate the intersection of global markets, geopolitics and government policy.”

Sir John is also a former head of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6. Prior to heading MI6 between 2009 and 2014, Sir John was Foreign Policy Advisor to Tony Blair from 1999 to 2001 and Political Director of the Foreign Office (2003-7).  
He also spent three months in Baghdad in 2003 as Britain’s Special Representative to Iraq, helping to establish the country’s transitional government after the invasion.