Davos’s Not-So-Great Self-Reset

Key Points

• Klaus Schwab resigned from the board of the World Economic Forum (WEF) amid allegations that he used the organization’s property for personal benefit.
• The “Great Reset” and “Great Narrative” Schwab and the WEF promoted to advance environmental, social, and governance activism in the post-COVID era are in retreat.

Not too long ago with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, the lockdown regime entrenching, liberal Democrat Joe Biden having evicted populist Republican Donald Trump from the White House, and social-media chiefs agreeing to circumscribe debate at the urging of government officials, World Economic Forum (WEF) Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab could dream of a progressive environmental-social-governance (ESG) Great Reset sweeping the world.

But COVID-19 receded, the lockdown regime was thrown down, President Trump returned, and Trump ally Elon Musk bought Twitter (now rebranded as “X”). And as if to cap the end of his dream of the Great Reset in service of the Great Narrative, Schwab has exited as head of the WEF, best known for putting on the annual Davos meeting of international businesspeople and government officials (who sometimes appear super-villainous).

Nonprofit Malgovernance

The cause of Schwab’s departure from the organization he founded is not a late-in-life acknowledgement that he was wrong about everything, according to press reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that the WEF placed Schwab under investigation “after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.”

If the allegations (which the Schwabs deny) are substantiated, Schwab’s misconduct would be a classical case of a nonprofit executive at a highly prominent organization deciding to stick his hand in his donors’ cookie jar. According to the Journal, the whistleblower letter alleged that Schwab’s wife Hilde “maintains tight control over use of [Villa Mundi, a WEF-owned luxury property in Switzerland] and that portions of the property are understood to be reserved for private family access.”

The Guardian reported that the whistleblower letter further alleged that Schwab “used WEF funds to pay for private, in-room massages at hotels, asked staff to promote him for a Nobel peace prize, and instructed junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf.” To those who scrutinize nonprofit organizations as we do at Capital Research Center, these sorts of allegations are depressingly familiar, and nonprofit malgovernance does not discriminate by ideology.

Where Stands the Reset?

Schwab’s exit is unlikely to reorient the World Economic Forum in a more sovereignty-and-shareholder-friendly direction. But those like Glenn Beck who feared a dark future brought on by Schwab’s Great Reset are likely to see the true believers in WEF-style globalist environmentalism disappointed all the same.

ESG activism in corporate boardrooms is in retreat, facing regulatory threats from the second Trump administration, public backlash to ESG policies, and interest rate hikes that have made paying for ESG-appeasing policies more expensive for corporate leaders. The realities of environmentalist energy transition are not living up to the promises of infinite zero-emission energy too cheap to meter in a world where people will own nothing and be happy. And global governance is as non-existent as it always was, with a protracted war in Eastern Europe, ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East, and tensions heating up in Kashmir, the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and other global hotspots.

With his vision in retreat, Klaus Schwab is gone. The World Economic Forum and its vision of global governance in the service of champagne-and-caviar environmentalism remain. But they cannot command the world, and for that, we can be thankful.