Here's comforting news for investors in Dan Loeb's hedge fund, especially those who may have been under the assumption the hedgie's been hard at work to make up for his disastrous performance in 2008: Loeb spent time at the World Economic Forum in Davos hanging out with fameseekers Julia Allison and Meghan Asha, and kindly flew the duo back to New York aboard his (rentable!) Gulfstream jet. We're sure his pleasant-sounding wife is positively delighted. [Gawker]

Oh, World Economic Forum. You were even more of a grotesque than we'd imagined. We don't know whether to laugh or cry. Especially when we hear stories like these:

"One of the unofficial Davos events is the 'Refugee Run,' a simulation of life as a refugee, complete with hostile, armed rebels, power outages, and barbed wire." [Slate]

Gloomy economic party-haver and enthusiastic Facebook user Nouriel Roubini is in Davos, working hard to bring our own fameball Photoshop works to life. [His panel was aptly named "What Went Wrong"]

Time Inc. just laid off 600 people, but that didn't keep the flagship magazine from sending, we're told, four editors to the plutocratic playground of Davos. They're acting as obnoxiously as possible, naturally.

Jamie Dimon is falling apart! Okay, not really, but the Wall Street Journal's Heidi Moore was rightfully concerned by the sight of the JPMorgan CEO when he sat down with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo in Davos today. Dimon turned up "unshaven, with mussed hair and clad in a spare black pullover sweater," and sported a "slightly sleepy, groggy demeanor that indicated he may have just rolled out of bed." Keep in mind, though, that this is Maria Bartiromo he was talking to. Given her illustrious past, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that the two were still recovering from a late night out. [WSJ, CNBC]

Corporations, Tending to a Tattered Image, Clip Wings of Private Jets [NYT]

Peter Thiel, so-called visionary, is working CNBC hard at Davos. Why would that be the case? His hedge fund is $5 billion smaller than it was six months ago.

Dude, Russia's not getting a Dell. That's a polite version of what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russia's testy KGB agent turned autocrat, told Michael Dell in Davos. Dell's sin? After Putin delivered a fiery 40-minute sermon about the doom of the West, Dell asked if there was any way his company could help Russia with its computers. Yes, he gave a tacky sales pitch at the high-minded World Economic Forum. But he didn't deserve the tongue-lashing Putin gave him next, as reported by Fortune: "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity."

Michael Dell conferring with Nestlé board chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe at the World Economic Forum in Davos today. [Photo: Swiss Image]

Fame has always had its downsides. But Internet fame, like the kind TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has accumulated, provides all the downsides and very few advantages. Now he wants to go into hiding.

How a conference dies: The savvy crowd stays away, while eager second-raters fill their seats. Google cofounder Sergey Brin is skipping Davos. Meanwhile, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe fought with a colleague to go amid layoffs.

Related: Gloomy Days in Davos [Cityfile]

Add Gov. David Paterson to the list of people skipping the World Economic Forum in Davos. Paterson, who said he planned to attend the mogulfest to drum up business for the state, and who reiterated just yesterday that he planned to go ahead with the trip, changed course today: "Perhaps it would be a better idea to go at another time, send a couple of assistants and stay right here with the leaders of the Legislature and work on the budget," he told reporters. Good call. Frankly, the idea of the New York's famously indecisive, blind governor zooming down the slopes had us a bit concerned anyway. [NYP]

No Bono, no Angelina. Fancy banker parties cancelled. Davos is set to be a sober, star-lite affair. But Nouriel Roubini and Julia Allison will attend. Is there a better indicator of the Great Recession?

The World Economic Forum kicks off tomorrow in Davos, Switzerland, but it won't be nearly as exciting as in years past: The financial crisis has led many CEOs and politicians to abandon plans to attend the conference of heavy-hitters. Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein won't be there, although he's reportedly sending "his deputy." Former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld won't be there, of course. Nor will John Thain, who, rather ironically, was scheduled to participate on a panel entitled "The Bank of the Future." And while Citigroup is still sending five executives, the bank's chief, Vikram Pandit, isn't one of them. (Citi isn't sending a "support staff" this year either, which means the execs who do make the trip may be forced to carry their own briefcases and fill up their own glasses of water.) Worst of all? There won't be too many celebs on hand to divert attention away from the depressing, gloomy discussions of economic doom.

Davos, baby! The partying at the World Economic Forum, the annual conference held in a Swiss resort town that has become synonymous with the event, was "out of control," organizer Klaus Schwab now admits. The Wall Street bosses and Beltway bandits were too busy having a ball to keep their eye on it, even as the economy lurched towards the abyss. This strikes me as revisionist history; the Times reported on the nervous mood at this year's Davos So who kept the event festive?Why, Google did, according to Davos party correspondent Meghan Asha, the sometimes girlfriend of TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, who got her in. Google's affair included Norman Jay, a British house-music DJ. There you have it: Larry and Sergey are at fault for distracting the world's best and brightest from preventing the meltdown we now face. If Schwab is serious about keeping thing's serious at the next WEF, we recommend disinviting Page and Brin. And Arrington and Asha.

Jimmy Wales, the so-called founder of Wikipedia, is in Egypt's Red Sea resort hobnobbing with heads of state as chairman of the World Economic Forum's Middle East summit, popularly known as "Davos in the Desert." The message he delivered in a press event: "Too often when people around the world reflect on the situation in the Middle East they focus on extremism and the different problems." With Internet adoption exploding in the region, "we're going to start hearing from ordinary people," Wales added. What Wales did not get into: How those "ordinary" people will react when they encounter his online encylopedia for the first time, and find that articles on child sexuality are edited by ardent defenders of pedophilia. Perhaps sharia will prove more effective than current management at enforcing Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" standard.

The global media and business elites were in Davos, Switzerland, last week for the World Economic Forum. Which raises a practical question: how do all these machers go to the restroom? It's too cold, distant and mountainous for the chief executives and presidents to trudge back from the Congress Center to their hotel suites for relief. But nor can one easily imagine Google's Larry Page wiping down the toilet seat after Al Gore. For the quintessentially Swiss solution, watch the video. [Buzz Machine]