For the next two days ... the Bilderberg illuminati hold their private conclave in [a] five-star Greek hotel. Every year since 1954 a club of about 130 senior or up-and-coming politicians gather at the fireside of a secluded hotel with top bankers and a sprinkling of royalty to discuss burning issues. No lists of participants are disclosed, no press conferences are held; spill the beans and you're out of the magic circle. This year the club is going to talk about depression. According to the pre-meeting booklet sent out to attendees, Bilderberg is looking at two options," says the Bilderberg-watcher Daniel Estulin - "either a prolonged, agonising depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty - or an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency." Since Bilderberg does not officially exist, it cannot deny anything and is therefore manna from heaven for the conspiracy theorist. The meetings were started in the Netherlands, in the Hotel de Bilderberg, near Arnhem, by the Polish exile Joseph Retinger. He was worried about growing anti-Americanism and the advance of Communism in Western Europe. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands agreed to sponsor the idea. The head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Walter Bedell Smith, threw his weight behind it and so did the White House. The Bilderberg consensus is that national problems are best solved by an internationally oriented elite ... and that the boundaries are fluid between the monied and the political classes. And so there has been a natural bias towards inviting conservatives and market liberals. The only socialists invited are those who "understand money".