talk to Andrew kakabazzo he's the author of the book Bilderberg people he teaches at the International Management development at the Cranfield School of Management he is also a fellow of the British Academy of management thank you so much for coming in a lot of people actually see a lot of these gatherings with a lot of skepticism possibly because they're not invited but how much is this a secret society and how much is it just the the world politicians and decision makers Gathering to exchange ideas it's a private meeting it's not a secret society the interest
is who gets invited and in many ways if you think any government the cabinet meets in private but what we have is a series of journalists who understand what's happening so what you really have is a gathering of people who come together to discuss issues we were probably one of the very first to go and interview some of the bilderbergers it was very difficult to get access to them but what they said was the meeting is really more chaotic than people think but what we noticed is that themes do emerge so one of the accusations
against the bilderbergers is that in fact they are pulling strings behind the scenes as far as we can gather they're the ones who identify the strings who other people pull and what's the ideology among these people what's good for banking what's good for big business is good for the rest of us sort of is not that clear to be honest with you what you have is a meeting of politicians a meeting of finance a meeting of business and occasionally a meeting a third sector organizations but by and large the thing that's emerging is the anglo-american
view of capitalism and view of Finance but this is not I mean when you say it's just a meeting who exactly chooses who gets invited this is not like the Masons or it's not is it always the same people showing up here and here again at this meeting that's the most interesting thing when we ask people who invited you well listen I got a call or I got a letter or some very nice person called me and told me very flat uh very flattering things about me and what we seem to get is on the
one hand it's a great honor to be invited whoever invited me uh you might have been to Davos a couple of times and then in that Network you were found or you wrote something or you were a person who made a statement and equally we find other people who said that it's the biggest waste of time when you go there it's basically the the rich and the famous who go there to uh it's a social club it's a bit of a social club but we concluded it was not there is a social club feel to
it and there is a meeting where people talk in private it's not secret it's in private where they express their views but views do emerge over a period of Time how important is it that actually our politicians talk together in the last three years what the crisis has taught us is that you really have to have coordinated action around the world if you want to deal with a global problem is this kind of meeting useful just because you get face time with your counterpart over you know on the other side of the pond with that
you need to somehow know what he's thinking to realize what you're thinking certainly in policy terms the meeting seem to be very useful I'm not sure they can actually prevent crisis but they can set a way forward so I'm sure with the bilderbergers over the years one thing that's been averted has been crisis War conflict the fact that these people get together and begin to talk does smooth things out the issue however is that they smooth things out in whose favor and in what direction please no if you say I mean if he says that
you know you've avoided crisis you can just imagine what it would have been like had these guys not met yes exactly so there's a lot of good coming out of the Bilderberg meetings it's not all bad and it's not all negative and it's not all conspirated but the fact that it is so secretive so opaque means there are so many conspiracy theories around this group and I mean there's so many here absolutely there are many conspiracy theories and the conspiracy conspiratorial people tend to get overexcited but they have a point and the point is what
is the thing that's emerging which direction is thinking being shaped and if you want to have a purpose for the Builder Burgers is that they shape the way we think they don't tell us well because like any meeting if you're going there and you're going to talk openly would you talk openly about your own ideas that could uh damage your share price of your company if you didn't at least have some guarantee of privacy it's privacy not secret secrecy Andrew kakabazzo thank you so much for joining us
