Images of smoke-filled rooms secretly steering our lives may speak to the imagination, but it all sounds a bit too much like silly conspiracy theories to me.
There are simpler models if you want to explain the current economic malaise. Just look at the fundamentals: we've run out of cheap energy!
The article does show a graph of the concentration of wealth according to a power law. It also mentions that "All it will take is is one extremely bad decision and the cascade of failure that follows will catch everyone off guard."
So the article is suggesting that the decisions of a small group of a powerful elite have a large influence on our lives. Unless you are saying that these people don't talk to each other, that's what the "smoke-filled rooms" expression is all about.
There are simpler models if you want to explain the current economic malaise. Just look at the fundamentals: we've run out of cheap energy!