Giving up your bonus is one thing. Giving up your annual trip to Davos is quite another. For top investment bankers such as Bob Diamond, the days spent putting the world to rights on the Magic Mountain every January gave them membership of the global “thought leaders” club. It was also the ultimate networking opportunity with more corporate and government clients congregated in one place than they could hope to find anywhere else.

So it must be a bitter blow to Mr Diamond that he can’t make it. His absence highlights the change in the standing of bankers at this year’s Davos gathering. They are still here in force, even if some of the big names are missing and banks such as Goldman Sachs have trimmed their delegation. But it is likely to be the weight of influence rather than the weight of numbers that will be really different. Shaping the PostCrisis World is the title for this year’s event. Many will think that bankers had rather too much influence shaping the precrisis world and should now sit quietly at the back.

With Barack Obama also a bit too busy at home to make it, the star turn at this year’s Davos must surely be the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao.

Last week, Tim Geithner, Mr Obama’s Treasury Secretary, raised the temperature ahead of Mr Wen’s address today by accusing China of manipulating its currency by refusing to allow it to appreciate against the dollar. Mr Geithner is under pressure to get tough with the Chinese and allies see his comments as an attempt to head off more protectionist moves in the US. But the Chinese are seething and claim it is more likely to have the opposite effect. Beijing is also under intense pressure to boost flagging economic growth and the last thing it wants is to depress exports further by allowing the currency to strengthen.

This tension illustrates why protectionism will be a dominant theme at Davos, which for years has acted as a cheerleader for globalisation.

While many of the chief executives here are full of gloom, there is one business that appears in rude health – the World Economic Forum itself. Delegate numbers are up and the town is planning a SwFr36 million extension of the conference centre, partly funded by the Forum. But Heinrich Degelo, the scheme’s architect, who I bumped into on the train to Davos yesterday, is not celebrating yet. He points out that the town gets to vote on what amounts to a mini fiscal stimulus package next weekend. But he is fairly confident. After all, everyone’s a Keynesian these days. Even in Davos.

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