Beyond Borders 2005 - Bill Clinton"s conference script
Cristina Preda:
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends.
Welcome to the first Beyond Borders event!
My name is Cristina Preda and I"m here today on behalf of the Brand Academy, the first Romanian institution dedicated to brand education.
It never occurred to us 2 years ago, when we founded the Brand Academy, that someday not very far, we"ll have the honor to welcome you to such a prestigious event.
I believe we have the greatest job on earth: to educate, to open new horizons to people. There cannot be anything better than that.
We started as a pure training company, thinking that people learn in school. They learn from books and they learn from teachers.
But there was something missing: what about leadership? What about vision? What about courage? They can not be taught in school. Nor are they taught in big international companies. They can only be taught by real leaders, by people who have the ability to inspire.
And this is how Beyond Borders concept was born.
But transforming a concept into reality is no easy job.
First we needed a dedicated team and I"d like to thank to my entire team for making this possible.
Then we needed a partner as bold as visionary as we were. And here I"d like to thank to Mr. Marin from Omnilogic who was beyond our expectations.
But most importantly, the launching event of Beyond Borders needed a very special guest, a great leader, a polarizing figure, a charming personality,
a man who champions education, for he believes that education lies at the very heart of a nation"s ability to compete internationally,
a man who understands and values the economic environment, someone with a proven record of building tremendous economic growth to his country.
There was only one choice.
There was only one man who could possibly fit the profile.
I"m confident that meeting him is something we will never forget.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great honor that I ask you to join me in welcoming to Romania the 42nd President of the United States of America:
William Jefferson Clinton.
Bill Clinton: Thank you very much. Thank you, Cristina. Thank you, Gabriel.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm welcome.
I thank the Prime Minister for being here, thank you very much, and the former president Constantinescu, with whom I served, thank you for being here, President of the SDP, Geoana, who was Ambassador in United States when I was President, thank you for coming and former Prime Minister Roman, I thank you for being here.
And I"d also like to thank the president for receiving me in his office before I came over here we had an hour long talk partly of that about the subject tonight, how should Romania be branded. And also I"d like to say that I"m honored to be joined tonight by my daughter, and our former ambassador Al Moses, thank you. And thank you Al Moses for coming.
This issue of branding⦠You know, I come from a place where not so very long ago most of us lived on farms or ranches, so branding was something you did with a half-arrow, with a logo on it to a cow, and you burn the skin of the cow with the symbol of your ranch, so no one could steal your cow.
But if you think about it, it"s not about concept or a country. Or if you could burn into people"s minds the image of a country that you thought captured fairly your country, then no one could steal your image and you could have the benefit of it.
I thought about it a lot, because I used to be a politician, you know, and in every election you want the voters to be able to tell the difference between you and your opponent and you want to have an affirmative, a positive way of saying what you believe in, what you stand for, what you"re going to do, without having to give to each and every voter a 30 minutes speech.
So brands or slogans or logos or symbols can be very powerful things if they are honest and accurate. Normally, when you think about branding a country, you"d say: well, we have to have the right slogan, but it could be a symbol.
I was talking to the President on the way over here when I was in the presidential office and he had the picture of a crystal American eagle on his desk. And he said: you know, that is an eagle from America.
I said: I know, I have one just like it and I collect them, but I said: there was a big debate whether the eagle should be the symbol of our country in the late 1700 when one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, argued very strongly that the turkey should be the symbol of our country.
Now I don"t know how many of you have ever seen a wild turkey, but we would have a very different image today if we had been branded with a turkey instead of an eagle.
So, when you think about this, we can laugh about it, but just because a brand may be a phrase or a few words or a picture or a physical object or an animal doesn"t mean that it"s something to be taking lightly.
You have all these new countries that emerge from communism, all looking for new investment, new training opportunities, people to make partnerships with and everything from information technology to basic manufacturing, education and healthcare.
There would actually be a quite a good thing if Romania had a brand name or a brand symbol, that all the political parties feel comfortable with, that captured the vision of what you are trying to present to the world.
So I want to talk about a little tonight within the context of where the world is, that is for brand to make any sense if it"s applied to a country it must first be consistent with the condition of the world, because we live in a global society, in an interdependent society where we can"t escape each other. In fact we live in serious interlocking societies. Romania is the nation, made up with many communities, made up of many families; Romania is a part of South-Eastern Europe, now a member of NATO, soon will be a member of the EU, a member of the United Nations. You belong to a lot of units, all of them, in different ways say, the world is more interdependent now that it was a few years ago. That"s the first, an enduring fact.
Second thing that"s interesting is you are relatively a new member of some of these organizations, where there are some of the disadvantages of being a new democracy, a new market economy, a new government and some of the enormous advantages in your enthusiasm, your commitment, your passion about building a better future.
But you can"t really sell yourself to others or imagine your future to yourself, your own citizens, unless you see it within the context of a highly interdependent world, which can be good or bad.
It was bad for America on September 11, 2001 that the world was so interdependent.
I mean look what happened: the terrorists used open borders, easy travel, easy access to information and technology to kill almost 3.000 people in New York from 200 countries; I mean 70 countries, including over 200 other Mussulmans.
But it was a triumph of interdependence.
So that brings me to the second point. Interdependence means only that we can"t escape each other; it can be good or bad. For you, since 1989, the fall of Berlin Wall, the new forms of interdependence I would argue you"ve been quite good. You have joined the family of new democracies, you have joined NATO, you are on schedule to join the EU, you have participated in common peacekeeping measures.
Even as a country not a wealthy country, this country gave money to the victims of the tsunami in South East Asia, recognition of your new prominence in an interdependent world.
But what we really want is a more integrated community, a place where we share opportunities; people get opportunities in Romania that other people in your group yet; people get, assume responsibilities as you have assumed in Iraq and in helping the victims of the tsunami.
People celebrate the differences that your country has with your neighbors and with the rest of the world, but you do it in the cause of peace and prosperity, because you believe that our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences.
Otherwise why in the world would you, with all the challenges you have, give money to all the people in Sri Lanka and Asia and Indonesia and the cost of Thailand or India or the small islands of the Maldives where most people from Romania will never go. Because you"ve recognized your common humanity.
Why am I telling you these?
Because if you want a brand, you have to have a brand that sets you apart in an interdependent world, without setting you against the world you believe in.
And the world you believe in, based on your own conduct through several governments now since you became a free country, is a world where you reached out to the West, you reached out to become a part of Europe, you reached out to build a modern economy, your reached out to build on the strengths of your culture and your educational capacity. In other words, you are running into the world and the future rather than running away from that. And whatever the differences you have with each other, you have done this constantly and impatiently.
When I came here with you, Mr. President, in the late "97, and spoke to 100,000 people in the street, the message was clear: we love you, we love America, but we are in a hurry to get in NATO, we are in a hurry to get in EU, we have waited a long time for our freedom, for our prosperity, for our share of responsibilities for the future, we are in a hurry. And if you give us a chance, we will mean to test. It was a loud, clear message.
And when I was driving on the streets today or going to the bookstore and signing the books and looking in the eyes of hundreds of your fellow citizens or shaking hands with the people outside the store who didn"t come in to buy a book, and for all I know they didn"t afford a book. Every one of them had a sense of energy and self-confidence. In fact, the greatest self-confidence than I saw almost a decade ago when I came here the first time because of the progress that you have made. Every time we move ahead a little bit, it builds a collective confidence of the country.
So, if you look ahead, to the major tests of the world, if you want a peaceful, prosperous world, what do you have to do?
First you have to have a security strategy; you have to fight terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the explosion of conventional weapons and countries who would seek to dominate their neighbors.
So, one of the things you ought to say about Romania is: we have done our part to build a more peaceful, secure world, because we are standing against terror, we are standing against abusive conduct and we support reducing the danger of weapons of mass destruction. That"s a very important thing. You can"t be a responsible member of the world community unless you have a security policy that makes sense.
The second thing is you can"t go into the world at large with only a security policy. That"s like saying: we are only going to keep bad things from happening; we can"t make anything good happening. And that"s, number one that"s not true, and number two, if the world is interdependent, you can not kill, occupy or put in prison all of your adversaries. You have to find a way to get along with people who disagree with you and try to move them along to a more peaceful and prosperous future so that it creates space for a country like Romania to build and diversify its economy, to build its education system, to build its information technology network.
So you have to create a world with more friends and fewer terrorists and fewer enemies and I would argue that"s what you do by joining the EU, that"s what you did by making a contribution to tsunami relief.
You are fulfilling the second criterion of membership in the modern world. First is the security policy, second is the policy to make more friends and fewer terrorists and fewer enemies.
Third then we have to do is to build in the institutions of cooperation. So, you"ve done that fence down, right? You"re already in NATO, you are going to be in the EU and you more than fulfilled any requirements anyone has asked you, have you?
Fourth thing you have to do is to keep making Romania a better model of an integrated community. We have to do it in America, too, because the world is not just integrated.
I saw people from all over the world on that book signing line today. If I had written my book 20 years ago and come hear to sign it, never forget about the communists, don"t you think that almost everybody who"d go to the line would have been a government or a high ranking business official who was just from Romania?
Today I"ve signed the book for people with all different income levels and there were people from at least eight different countries in that line. So, within every country, you have to keep trying to put things together, the whole world can be seen really today as a contest between people who are trying to tear things apart and people who are trying to put things together.
And that brings me to the last point. Whatever brand you want, you want people to think that you"re one of the building countries, not want to wrecking countries.
Let me give you a very interesting little fact. You may have seen in the press that after this horrible tsunami in South East Asia, the President of the United States asks his father and I, former president Bush, to raise money from private citizens and then spend it in a good way overseas in the countries that have been affected.
So former President Bush and I went to the region and we toured and we saw both horrible things and heroic things: more damage than I had ever seen from a natural disaster, but extraordinary, personal heroism from all kinds of people, from local officials to little fishermen, to widowed women who lost all their children too. It was astounding! So we come back and the President asks us to come to the White House to make a report on our trip. On the way in to do the report, an official from our United States aid agency that was working with us overseas, gave me a pool done in Indonesia, about the time of our trip. Now keep in mind: Indonesia is the largest Mussulman country in the world, is 98% Mussulmans or almost 200 million Mussulmans in Indonesia. There had been a great deal of support for Osama Bin Laden, and a great deal of criticism to the United States for the conflict in Iraq. When the tsunami occurred, the United States Government civilian workers was there, the President deployed military resources there, only to save people lives, hundreds of organizations founded in America, religious or non-religious, went there, and ordinary people sent money. One third of our households contributed. So this pool was about whether there have been any changes in the attitude towards America before the tsunami and after. And if there was a change, was the tsunami the reason?
60% of the Indonesians had a positive opinion of America after the tsunami, up from 36% before, deciding only the tsunami. Bin Laden positive approval was 58% before the tsunami and 28% after. And he didn"t do anything bad, but he didn"t do anything good either.
So people were contrasting the builders with the wreckers. I say that not to brag on my country, but to say, you know, after that tsunami, in the US there was no right, no left wing in politics; there were no republicans, no democrats. We all did what we could for the people in South East Asia, on a pure human basis, and you know, it turned up to be brilliant politically for America, because we had no political design. Why? Because in a world of instantaneous communication, we are all of us constantly making decisions when we see things on television about what we should do and whether we are being manipulated.
You do and I do. You see people half a world away, an Asian politician, a Latin American politician and there"re just the people at home. You look at these people, you are seeing an event, you say: is this real or not? Can I relate to this as a human being? Is this authentic? And for a magic moment, the people of the most Mussulman country on earth thought that the people of the United States, with whom they may deeply disagree about the war in Iraq were still good people who cared about them as people and wanted to build their future instead of tear it down.
And what it"s all got to do with your branding? A lot! I asked the President on the way over, I said: of the top of your head, no think, if you had to give a phrase for a brand for Romania, what would you say? And he said: âthe new tiger of Europe" and then I was thinking of what would I say. I might say: fine, you are here, but the point is everyone here interested in this?
I think the most important thing is that... why don"t you have a national process involving all the political parties, all sectors of the economy and society and have meetings about this and discuss it?
How you would like every Romanian to think about your country in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol? You can"t go beyond that, if you"re going to brand.
And how you would like every person beyond your borders to think of your country in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol? All I know is I"ve only been here twice and I"ve had a lot of contact with your representatives in the eight years I was President.
And I"ve had contact with three presidents, including President Iliescu, who is in hospital tonight - we wish him well - and different prime ministers and different political leaders. Every Romanian I"ve ever met loved freedom, believed in the future of his or her country, wanted to be tied to the United States, to Europe and to the future free of domination by anybody ever again.
Every Romanian I"ve ever met believed that you can build a modern and successful economy here if people would give you a little help and nobody would interfere with your future ever again. You only have arguments about how to get that done.
Look, if you all agree in your country would make no progress; if you all agree it means someone wasn"t thinking. So this is good, that you have more than one party, is good that you have political debate, but you think about what you have in common and then figure out how to throw it into the future in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol.
And don"t forget that it is as important that the Romanian people believe the brand as that people beyond your borders do!
Suppose you basically said that Romania was the country of Europe future. I"m just making this up. But suppose 98% of the people in Romania believe that. And when you"ve started, only 2% of the people in the rest of Europe believe in. If 98% of the people in Romania believe it, that"s more important than having any people in Europe believe because if it is your self image you will project it and over time will persuade other people that you"re right. And you will get more investment from other countries, not just from Europe, but from America, from Asia, from anywhere else.
So the most important thing in the branding is that it reflects what you believe to be true and important and good. Don"t worry if nobody else believes you yet, that"s what we have brands for! That"s why you brand new products, so you can sell people something they don"t even know about yet.
So the most important thing in this whole enterprise why you want to brand Romania is to say something that the people of Romania would instantly believe is true and good, and a source of pride and is future oriented. So when the President said âthe tiger of Europe", that everybody knows, everybody in a business world knows what the tigers are, there are small countries in South East Asia who⦠in East Asia who grew so fast - the Asian tigers. So that"s like saying: we"re an economic engine, we"re determined, we represent Europe"s future, as an economic context.
If you say you are the country of Europe"s future, then that means that it could be economics and other things and that you are on the edge of Europe"s future. But there are probably ten others even better than the ones than the ones ten politicians came out to of the top of their head. That"s why I say I think in order to be an exhilarating thing for the country to involve thousands of them, thousands of people in the process of trying to see through what the best brand would be.
âCause if you don"t believe in, if you don"t have confidence in, if you are comfortable talking about it, it doesn"t really matter how good and flavor it is.
The most important thing is that you believe it and that you think it"s true and good and oriented toward the future. Then you can get lots, lots and lots of other people believe it. So, I would just say this in closing: I had to worry about this myself, because Romania and I represent two dramatically important trends in that occurred in the â90. You may think this is strange, I"ll explain.
You represent the fact that, for the first time in history in the â90s, more people lived under democracies, governments they voted in, than lived under dictatorships that it never happened before in all the human history. I now have the foundation that works on eliminating poverty in Africa and in Asia and in U.S., that works on education, in citizen service projects, in different continents, it works on religious and racial and ethnic reconciliation every place from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, to Africa, to the Middle East and it is working on trying to help countries eradicate this virus that causes AIDS.
I am a non-governmental organization and the non-governmental organizations exploded in number and impact in the â90s.
So that, for the first time in history, citizens can change the future of their own communities and countries and reach cross-national lands in a way never before conceivable. When I was asked, just for example, to be the coordinator for the United Nations for tsunami related in South East Asia, the secretary general of the UN told my first job would be to go get the rich governments to give the money they promised.
It turned up to be very different, because the non-governmental organizations have collected and have in the bank well over 3 billion dollars from private individuals, from all income groups, from all over the world for the benefit of those people. So my most important job is to make sure that the countries have a good planning process and don"t waist the money and then that we get the non-governmental organizations hooked into the future and spending the money in time to help all those poor people in South East Asia.
If the job had been undertaken ten years ago, it would be what the Secretary General assumed. If I"ve been doing these ten years ago, my job would be: come around here and rescue all, you just at least you might can tell about all my good contributions and then go to Europe to the rich countries, in the Western Europe and say: you"ve promised this amount of money, don"t you renege on me.
I don"t have to do some of that, now it"s over. But the point is my number one job now is to get these countries organized so that it can own the confidence of non-governmental organizations and to convince the non-governmental organizations to release the money and start it out so people live again.
So I have to brand myself. You see how long it took me to tell you everything that I do, so I have a brand if people associate something good and true with my name.
Then I can get people to invest in my non-governmental organization and I can do my humanitarian work around the world. I take no money from governments, so I could get investors, to invest and to help me do the work of saving. We now have 110,000 people getting AIDS medicine, who weren"t getting it before in poor countries in the world. There are lives that will be saved because of that. All because people believed that I represented a brand that was true and good in the area of they"re caring about something. But we have all this endless debates about whether... This is what some people say: well, people just know who you are, they neither like you or they hate you and you don"t need a slogan that describes what your NGO"s about. And other people say: oh, yes, you do, because of people who invest in politics in the world are not the same people as the people who invest in charitable endeavors, so we need a phrase to be able to tell people what is different about you and your NGO and others that they might invest in. And we"ve come down; we"ve got two or three interesting ideas.
The point I want to make is I think this branding operation is legitimate and important, because you are going into a new world, in which we are deluged with different organizations, we have all these new democracies and we have all these new organizations like mine, the non-governmental organizations.
So it"s worth doing this to attract new investment in the future. But the primary benefit, I would say this again, the primary benefit you"ll get out of this, if you"ll make a serious effort, to involve the whole society in it, is that you"ll have a large number of Romanians who will be able to say in a phrase something that is true and good and oriented to the future about your country.
I"ve already told you what conclusions are for the first time I came here and long before I came here, in the struggle of many ways against an awful tyranny. So the world is falling for you, everybody wants you to succeed; every American I know is grateful for your friendship, your support, your thirst for freedom and your commitment to opportunity. You need to figure out how to say that in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol. And than the most important thing is that it is not just to pursue me or some investor, most important thing is that the people from this great country say immediately: that"s who we are and that"s where we are going.
I think the future is pretty bright and I would very much like to be a fly on the wall, listening to all the discussions that might occur now about how to tell who you are and where you are going to the rest of the world.
Thank you and good luck!
Cristina Preda: Thank you, Mr. President! As you all know, the agenda says, we"ll have a Q&A session, moderated by Mr. Gabriel Marin. We would like to invite Mr. Gabriel Marin - where is he? - from Omnilogic, so Mr. Marin!
Gabriel Marin: So first of all, thank you for your speech.
I think was very inspiring for all of us here and, to be honest, I have a list of questions. But speaking of the way, I always gave up, just I got some ideas.
But before starting the questions and answers session, since we got here, more or less, most of the business community in Romania, you are very famous in Romania for the unequal prosperity you gave America during your two presidencies. We actually wake up as a country with you more or less, so we witness by the time the growth and the unequal growth - I don"t remember when America got such a huge economic prosperity as in your two presidencies. So first of all we want to thank you, not only on behalf of the local business community, but I think on behalf of the worldwide business community. You did a great job; actually we are missing the good times during your presidencies. Thank you again!
So, let"s go to the few questions. For a country like Romania, after 50 years of communism, what many historians said could be a prevalent to the world - 50 years of communism - the local traditions, the local communities you have mentioned during your speech have been pretty much destroyed. Sometimes it"s even hard to imagine how the regime, how the tyranny has been doing all those 50 years. It"s hard to speak about the country image, but talking about priorities, what do you think it will be probably the first priority to rebuild the moral values or try to put in front of everything the economic priorities.
Bill Clinton: First of all, I think that economic priorities are profoundly important and people diminish them only if they have them.
That is: your people saw you"ve already put too much emphasis on the economy and someone says that you"re talking to someone who has a good job and runs a good business, or has a secure, government job. If people have no jobs, have no access to capital, can"t start a business, they are very concerned about the economy. It doesn"t mean they had no values.
I think the trick is, for every country, to figure out how to build a free market economy that is still committed to social justice. First and most important, the equal opportunity to participate in a free market economy and secondly, to at least condition that outcomes of that economy, so that you don"t have two extremes and inequality and you don"t leave people behind who can"t participate or live of their own.
And every country is got to find a different way to do this, but if you look at the successful and rich countries from Europe, they are having trouble with this.
And the United States is having trouble with it.
So if you look at some other of the developing countries, they are generating a lot of jobs, but they also still have a lot of social misery, a lot of poverty that could be eliminate.
So I think if you can have the best economic policy, you, first of all, have a good economic concept - it would be easy to start a business, it will be easy to integrate technology and the government and would have policies which will support a continue availability in modernization of the information technology and other technologies. And still there will be efforts made to make sure that you"re creating jobs and reducing poverty in the same time and helping people to build a sense of social security.
But first the economy has to work and I think is very hard to have an ethical government if you have a failed economic policy, because people get up in the morning and they want first to have something to look forward to, to provide for their families and give their children a future.
So I think it"s a big mistake to say: should we go from all ways for good economics. That implies that good economics is immoral and it implies that you could have a immoral society, with people who are not rewarded for their labor. I think that one of the key things of a moral society is that people are rewarded for their labor and have a decent chance to do better.
Gabriel Marin: I"m happy to hear that, because I think we, all, business community here, we like this world âbusiness first", which means economy first, which I also think that it should be the first priority beyond any other value. It doesn"t mean that we don"t consider the moral values, as you said, so we have to create wealth and after that to split it just.
Bill Clinton: You know, when I became President for example, some members of my party in U.S thought I put too much emphasis getting rid of the budget deficit. And they said: we have to spend more money on education, we have to spend more on health care, we have to spend more money on the environment because the concern of the conservative members of my party thought the Republicans could spend more money on that.
And I said to them: It"s fine, but if we can"t get the economy going, no one will pay taxes and we"ll have no money to spend on education or have no money to spend on the environment or have no money to spend on these things.
So we took the deficit down, we"ve got the infrastructure down, we"ve got investments, people like you, that created a bunch of jobs, and we got more taxpayers and we knew what to do with. And we had lots of money; we"ve doubled the investment in education. On the other hand, I now found myself in an opposite position, where the Republicans said they got to cut taxes or run America on deficit, so we should just cut taxes and we should keep cutting them even we were in a war in Iraq and we were running big deficits. So now we were right back where we were and we have very low taxes, but we are not generating high weight jobs, we are not generating a great number of jobs and poverty is growing up in middle classes, income is going down, because we, the Left cannot spend money rather than investing wisely and the Right cannot cut taxes too much in America rather than keep a disciplined, balanced budget.
So the key to all these is a sensible balance in the budget or at least a good economic management, not having the deficit too big, investment in people and the ability of businesses to start up fairly easily and to constantly modernize at affordable rates, adding the new technologies, adding new equipment, adding new training to workers, big new revolutionary products and services.
I think finding flexibility that balance the flexibility in social justice is not easy, but it tends to give it the best economic outcome. Finding the balance between fiscal responsibility even physical conservatism and investment in people is not easy, but it tends to give it the best economic outcome and I would argue the most moral outcome, because everybody has a fair chance and you shade the worst edges of inequality.
Gabriel Marin: I have reads of that famous book of Mr. Stiglitz, you"ve heard about him obviously, globalization and its content was about... Stiglitz was Vice-President of the World Bank and he wrote the book after he left the World Bank. And one of the chapters was dedicated to Romania, which somehow is facing the same restrictions with the IMF which we faced 6-7 years ago. I hope I"m not wrong, I"m not a politician, but from I know the IMF is getting the budget deficit less then 1% which if we come to your previous statement, somehow can stop development, because going in a very, very low deficit, how are you able to find, to solve the social projects or theseâ¦
Bill Clinton: First of all, there should be different rules for Romania at the stage you were at 1997, coming out after communism than for America, a mature country, with a well capital market. And there you might need the deficit you spend, because you can get enough foreign capital in your countryâ¦
Gabriel Marin: Right!
Bill Clinton: â¦and you have to invest in your people. But if we have the deficits to spend the way you might have to and we don"t need them, as we can get all the capital we need it"s just pure self-indulgence.
There is a big difference between spending deficits and spending to invest in the future that ultimate will grow the economy and deficits spending because you"re ratherâ¦
In America we have the deficits spent because we prefer to have the tax cuts and for expanding profits and it has nothing to do with growing the economy and maturing the industry, so we are different.
I think when you just say, John Stiglitz worked for me for a while at the White House and I agree with the general thrust of his argument that in the beginning of the truly global economy, when you have all these new democracies and when we are growing in a world fare, the international financial institutions, especially the IMF, needed to adopt an one size, fits all plan and say everybody is go to have low budgets deficits, everybody has to have cut-back on spending, everybody has to do these things. And that they did so with either support of the United States including times when I was President.
I think is fairly to say that by the end of my service, during my second term, both we and the IMF had become considerably more flexible. We knew that we have to look underneath these statistics to see how these countries get in trouble. Realistically, what did they have to spend in order to hold their societies together? And at their time they will have to reduce their deficits, because of they don"t, they will never get interests rights down, they will never have foreign investment or we are just doing it because we think that"s the best way to do it, it"s part of the fact it"s causing a total political turmoil in the country.
So I agree, I feel that if I might, on the defense myself and the World Bank and IMF is that we are all going in an uncharted territory and we didn"t want to look like we are taking money from one country and giving them to another while the country we are going to was letting out the money to go on the backdoor and deficits spending.
I think that we are much more sophisticated now than we were about trying to balance fiscal responsibility, the political realities in the given country and the legitimate investments the governments need to make to build a modern economy. Those three things will give you slightly different answers in Romania than in Bolivia and we should not impose a land of uniformity in our countries. Stiglitz was writing about that.
Gabriel Marin: Actually I"ve enjoyed a lot the book I think it was very realistic and very correct and I think that somehow 1% or below, 1% which was imposed is probably really imposed a lot of restriction of the economy development. So, if we understood correctly here, probably a more flexible policy regarding deficit would be really welcome for a developing country like Romania?
Bill Clinton: I agree with that. Let me say one thing! Let"s assume that IMF has a more flexible attitude and gives you loans with the deficit that"s higher, you could be flexible, but you have to also be realistic, because if IMF says: Ok, we"ll loan you money, no matter what your budget policy is, not matter whether we think you are being responsible or not, number one is that this actually won"t pay off because no one will ... you have to be responsible enough to have the credibility among investors and most new democracies and particularly those that were communist countries, but most other new democracies need foreign investment.
And in the end what you want is private investment, as well as money from the international financial institutions. Romania has potential for growth and prosperity, far else rips, with general inner need for capital that will far out strip anything you"ve could ever get from the World Bank and the IMF. Well I really believe you are go to build a very modern and a very sophisticated, very diversified economy. So the trick is for the IMF not to be so stiff that you have social misery at home and you lose all political support inside Romania for building a modern economy.
But not to be so loose that people looking at the outside and have no confidence in your economic policy and therefore won"t put any capital in your country. And if we cannot get out of this so-called âone-size fits all", then you have to understand the economic judgments are always a combination of optimism and pessimism, of investment and discipline. And just is what we did in the early "90s I think it was too severe, if you have no discipline at all, no discomfort at all, you are running the risk of creating the circumstances which you"ve just launched in the IMF if you can"t repay and no fund will want to put any money in your country.
And I personally believe that Romania can become a veritable treasure to all foreign investors. You are already having a lot of companies so I have seen. I met your company representatives from Oracle and IBM and lots of others, but I think, you know, this is a very interesting country.
That"s only point I want to make: Yes, we went too far in the early â90s, but you can go too far for the other way too. Anybody that tells you that gets foreign investments and invests money in a country whether it has a sensible budget policy or not or if they can be taking money back or not is not telling the truth. So the question is if you have the right balance.
Gabriel Marin: Ok, so I think that we learn something on this subject, it"sâ¦
Bill Clinton: There were very specific causes for the global economic slowdown, that were different from continent to continent, and it basically started with the governments in the United States, some of which began when I was in office.
That is, from 1996 to 1998 or 1999, global demand for telecommunication services increased astounding 500 to 700 percent a year. No one had ever seen anything like this. So, the people and telecom in my country went out and built an enormous amount of infrastructure anticipating continuous growth. Nothing grows at 500 to 700 percent a year indefinitely. So, there was a collapse in the telecommunication stocks in the America when telecom, listen to this, when the utilization of telecommunication services dropped to an increase of 50 to 75 percent a year. Sounds hilarious, doesn"t it? But there was all this infrastructure that couldn"t be sustained. So, that happened and that caused the stop. Then there was a drop in the value of a lot of the so-called dotcom stocks on the NASDAQ.
And that happened, I believe, and most of my friends in the IT industry agreed, I believe that happened primarily because a lot of those stocks were overpriced, because hundreds of those companies never made money, but were bough out by other companies who believed that the particular thing they did in information technology when added to the purchasing company would increase its profitability.
So, you really have the hundreds of companies that never really made any money, getting their stock going up and up and up because they knew they"ll be bought out by somebody else because of what they did. Well, you can"t continue that forever, so that"ll happen. Then, you have 9.11 that caused the big crisis in confidence. It also shrunk tourism in the United States and other places and all these things brought down the American economy. Europe already had slow growth and Japan was still drilling under 10 or 11 years of a dysfunctional finance system, that was laid bare when the real estate problem was in the early 1990s. So when you put all of that together, there was no real place for the world to go to get the growth.
Then, within the United States, we"ve got growth now coming back, but not as rapidly as it would have, because the President offered a tax cut plan, which I opposed. I would"ve supported the tax cut plan if it"s been big, big tax cuts for two years, directed essentially in small businesses and individuals, to spark a consumption recovery of our economy. And even if you know businesses to make investments and then gone off so we can return to balanced pressures.
Keep in mind we"re not a poor country. We have no right to borrow money from other countries to finance our deficits. Especially to pay tax cuts to people like me who make plenty of money. But instead of doing that, we"ve adopted foul tax cuts and now we have big deficits again and everyday we borrow money from the Chinese government to cover my tax cut. I don"t think that"s very good economy policy, but that"s what we do. Nonetheless, the growth is coming back in America, as Japan"s having pretty good year this year and they"re finally working through 11 or 12 years of horrible financial problems. And I think that it is possible depending on the outcome of summer European elections, that if we get enough freeform in the labor markets here, without giving up social security, that Europe could present some significant growth. I mean I was very impressed. I just came back from Denmark and I was very impressed with their sense of what they call flat security, where the government is taking some of the requirements off of employers while they kept taxes as so the government can pay for more job wage insurance and health insurance or retirement. The employers have fewer direct obligations and are free to create more jobs under more flexible circumstances. But the balance kept in Norwegian and the Swedish and the sense of, the Scandinavian sense of social justice, by not having a government immoral. It"s very interesting, but for them it worked and they"ve got quite a low unemployment and a high growth. So I, I think the future looks good. We went through a bad period were a lot of bad things happened at once. I think on the whole, it will be good. And you need that in Romania because what you need is a growing regional and global economy in order to get more investments, more jobs here.
Gabriel Marin: You"ve been talking about technology. One of the hot debates in the States these days is about outsourcing. My question is quite precise, because some people in Romania think that Romania could be a really outsourcing power, such as India and China, the most of South Eastern Asia. On the other hand, in the States many people said that transferring R&D (research and development) to outsource sector in research and development, it"s essentially using intellectual property and it"s a brain drain from the States to those outsourcing countries. You think outsourcing is a good thing in technology?
Bill Clinton: Well, first of all, I think that it"s a fact of life. And it"s going to happen. And the United States and Europe, rich countries in Eastern Europe or Japan, we don"t have a right to ask other countries to stay poor.
On the other hand, I think sometimes we outsource in a thoughtless way. I think sometimes the rich countries give up on its own workers in the prospect of becoming more productive and doing the work close to the home. And if I were you, I mean for example in terms of Romanian"s future, why should you make a choice between doing more R&D and trying to get more technology work that outsourced from Europe, for example? Why should you make a choice between those things? Why shouldn"t you think that they"re both compatible with your future? You don"t have enough money to invest as much as the great German companies and, well, and the German universities and the German research centers, because they got more people than you do and more money, right? So, if you want to become an R&D center, you have to start somewhere. You have to ask yourself: âWhere might we have a competitive advantage?", âWhat are the two, three areas that we can spend enough money to really make a difference?" And we go after those. In the meantime..., I"m making this up because I don"t know the facts, but let"s assume that there is a significant move to outsource information technology related jobs from Germany and France to South Asia.
Let"s just assume that. You should do a serious analysis to see whether you can offer a competitive service here. Even if the wages are a little higher, you have lower freight cost, lower transportation cost, let"s lay an easier physical access and you ought to make the best case you can in the areas where you think you can make a difference. If I were you, I would do both, if the economics make sense. I don"t think you should make false choices. You wantâ¦, the one thing you want here is you want to diversify your economy. You want to continue to have a more and more textured layered diverse economy. And you don"t want to make big winners and losers, you don"t want to have a five year plan, you don"t want to act like anybody in the business community was any smarter than the people in the communist government world the old days - they knew what they go to do for the next five years. You want to set up a system to unleash the entrepreneurial energies and creativity of the people here. So, if it were me, I"d be trying to seek some research and development and I"d be looking very hard at all kinds of outsourcing going on in Europe, and whether I can get some of it much closer to home in Romania. I"d do both.
Gabriel Marin: Ok. So it"s a good idea as well. So I think at this point, maybe if you want to take some questions from the audience. I"m sure that some people got some questions or something like that at this point.
Bill Clinton: Anybody wants to ask a question?
Gabriel Marin: Go ahead!
sPerson 1t: Good evening, Mr. President. I"m very interested to know if you intent to write another book to explain the future governments in the world, in the States and also in Europe and all around the world how to receive a country who has big deficits and to leave the country with the huge growth? Because you will remain famous for this ink.
Bill Clinton: Yes, I might write another book, but it would be much shorter. Let me say this: I try not to get too political when I go to other countries. I have a good personal relationship with the President Bush and he has many qualities I admire but I just disagree with the economic policy. I think is wrong for a wealthy country to run a permanent deficit, especially when we were at war. And the necessity for us to go into the capital market everyday and borrow money from the Chinese and from the Japanese and the Koreans and the Saudis and all these people essentially to cover my tax cut, I thinks it"s bad economics and I think it makes less capital available for countries like Romania to invest in the future. So I don"t agree with that and I may write an article about that. I think that if you have a mature economy that is highly diversified and you have good capital markets and good entry into the private sector, then I think countries, in order to be socially liberal, as I consider myself, should be physically concerned. But last year they aggregate amount of America"s borrowing for both our budget deficit and our trade deficit, equaled about 18% of the world"s net increased savings. And I don"t think that United States of America should be taking 18% of these savings of the world to finance a trade deficit and a budget deficit. You can say that it"s ok the trade deficit, because the people that are loaning us the money they"re selling us their goods and we have to work that out. But it"s not the same with the budget deficit. It is not right. The Chinese should be able to keep their money and raise the value of their currency or educate their kids or whatever they go to do. And the same for other countries. I just think that it"s not right. I"ll put the money in Romania for it grows more businesses here. So that is my view about deficits. I think that rich countries like America should run deficits during the recessions for the same reason the General Mayor said, that you can help to consume your way out of the deficit, once the recessions are over and countries like America should have a balanced budget or more of a surplus. In our case, we should be running a surplus, because we are about to have a generation, of the baby-boomers, of people retirement and there would be only two people working for every one person growing or on a retirement program or on a health care program for all the people. But, you know, it"s funny. On this issue, I"m very, very concerned about. I think that it"s wrong for rich countries to take money from other new developing countries. We don"t need to do that. And I think people like me should admit to pay more taxes as a privilege of living in America, in order to insure we educate our children and we give armor, vehicles to our soldiers in Iraq and we do our power in the world. That is what I believe. In my used old fashion in America, but this doesn"t matter since I believe.
Gabriel Marin: We have another question, Mr. President.
sBogdan Chireact: Thank you. Mr. President, you just met the Romanian President, Mr. Traian Basescu. Let"s presume that Mr. Basescu is tired and he is asking you to step in the office. And you are the President of Romania now. We have inter-room here, the Prime Minister of Romania, Mr. Calin Popescu Tariceanu. What would be the first measures you would suggest to the Prime Minister to enhance the Romanian economical growth and to fulfill the criteria for the European integration of January 1, 2007? Thank you.
Bill Clinton: You know, one of the nice things about me, not being in big offices, is I don"t have to answer those questions. I don"t want to cause any problems to the Prime Minister of the Government. And I have to say, before I can give you a clear answer to that question, I would have to know much more about the facts on the ground here then I do. I"m too ignorant of facts to answer that. But let me tell you about the way I would think about it if I were President. And I"ll tell how I"d think about it. I would say: ok, we got into NATO and we now have a secure relationship with the United States and the West. What we want to do is to get all the benefits from the European Union and not look like we are like the America stepchild when we get in. Some after-thought: somebody will get in because it was politically important rather than economically justified. So I will be sitting and thinking about everything that could be done to make Romania more economically competitive immediately. Easier for Romania is to get product and start new businesses, and start new jobs, easier to get foreign investment in the country, easier to get more information technology, easier to look for that outsourcing thing like I said... I"ll be asking myself: what can I do, that will make a difference in the Romanian economy in the next 3 years? And then I will say: what can I do, that will make a difference in the Romanian economy over the next 10 years? And I"ll bet you that the answers are very different. But you can not build a modern and complex economy in a day. You can do it much more quickly than it is used to be done, but it can"t be done in a day. So I will be trying to have a 3 years-strategy and about a 10 years strategy. And I would try to focus on things that will empower people like the people in this room, where to create the conditions and incentives in the end to make the right decisions. Because it is like I said, if the Government can not be held responsible for the performance of the economy or for making all these judgments in a free enterprise economy... Well the Government role is to give people the tools to succeed and to create the conditions and then pick at least some directions in the research budget, research priorities. Beyond that, you can"t do much; you got to relay on the energy and ingenuity of the people in this room. But this is how I would be thinking about it.
Gabriel Marin: Now we have another question. We have two questions.
Phil Stephenson, Deputy CEO, Rompetrolt: Thank you. Mr. President, like you, I"m also an American visiting the country and noticing some of the things about the Romanian spirit. It"s kept me here for 4 years. I want to go back to what you are discussing about branding Romania and how you describe an effective brand would be on that is true and good and oriented towards the future. And I"m wondering if it"s not also possible an European to make a goal also aspirational that answers the struggle and the hurry-ness you"ve described about the Romanian people. My suggestion, my example will be why not something like 25 by 25? Make this one of the top 25 countries in the world in a parameter different measures by the year 2025 and give people a future oriented goal, but one that they will also have to work for. As a suggestion, thank you.
Bill Clinton: I like that. I mean I like the idea, but I don"t know about the details, you know, you get to see it. I didn"t hold at this meeting here..., we are not at the end of this exercise. Just think about it: I suppose you"ve decided... The most important thing is what you said, that I thought that it should be true, good and oriented toward the future. What it has to be the ......, what aspirational... I wish I knew Romanian to figure out or translate it. But it means it"s not just... something to be oriented toward the future, but you don"t have to do anything. If it"s aspirational, it"s oriented toward the future, but it"s your future and it says: What you are going to do? What you are going to do with the country, what you will go to do with the businesses, what you will go to do as individuals? And I completely agree with that. But again I would say I wish you will be keep working on this, because it will also give all these businesses different slogans, may give all the politicians and their parties different slogans. But the country will come out ahead with slogans, even if you didn"t agree on one that was true, good, oriented towards the future and urge people to do something. Just thing about: every person in this country woke up every day, went to work, was in the school or in a Government office, every single day, and if they are thinking about something about Romania, that was good and true, oriented towards the future and called out their best selves so as to act. You know, it will make a big difference. And this idea about they want to talk about 25 countries, but, you know, 20 years from now, 2025... that"s one way of looking at it. I think on the other hand that this is not an unrealistic hope and that"s for, you know, you might be able to do that. But it would be an accident unless you really want to and you have to think about it, more together.
Gabriel Marin: Ok, one more question.
Mircea Geoana: First of all, thank you for the speech. It was not only inspirational, but also aspirational. We"ve been trying to do this in Romania for a few years time relatively unsuccessfully. At least for me, after my experience in America. And I have a mentor in America, besides you, and I say this, it"s Petre Georgescu, who was a Romanian born and who was CEO at the Young & Rubicam, one of the big advertising companies. And he came to Romania a few years ago and he told us how the Indians from India came to him in the late â80s and basically the business community of India⦠with the reputation of the country we have, which is poor, which is untidy, which is basically 3rd world. We just can not compete them, we don"t have the talent. The India business said, the Indian Government of the day... And they started a public private enterprise and they went to the best companies in America, Young & Rubicam, and Petre Georgescu, Romanian born, left Romania in communism about the being in the ⦠put to work as a kid by communists and then he managed to escape. And we tried to do the same thing in Romania for the last 3 yearsâ¦.., we were in office. We tried, it didn"t work out. Let me say one thing which is a good initiative for the current Government. They are putting together, as we tried not very successfully, an effort which is public private. People in power and people of the opposition and they just ask the leader of the opposition to be part of the effort and I accepted to be part. So that"s a general thing. We are thinking of this, but we are not very successful. Is that in your visit here, and I think is â¦, and I think this is something that will really crystallize our energy to move on.
Now the question: before moving to a new brand and before having this process, when you really have to identify something you really believe in and you really feel you are motivated by it, you also have to deal with the reality, which does exist as a part of Romania and around Romania. One of the friends working in the PR business here, I"ll not mention his name, was doing an informal survey, it"s an American global advertising agency and 2 years ago, just like playing, he asked all the country managers around the world of this global agency, saying: What do you think about Romania? From the top of your head, when you hear the name of Romania? And something like 100 country managers of this global company answered by email not knowing Romania from South Africa, from Columbia, from China, from Taiwan andâ¦. and basically the answer was something like this: country which is poor, which is coming up out of communism, which is true, beautiful people, handicraft, not very technological, even one guy said the sex without condoms. Probably he visited Romania. The same thing in France, the same thing in other places.
So my questions: how do you first de-brand before branding or re-branding, because unfortunately we only have really acquired so to speak from Ceausescu, fr
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends.
Welcome to the first Beyond Borders event!
My name is Cristina Preda and I"m here today on behalf of the Brand Academy, the first Romanian institution dedicated to brand education.
It never occurred to us 2 years ago, when we founded the Brand Academy, that someday not very far, we"ll have the honor to welcome you to such a prestigious event.
I believe we have the greatest job on earth: to educate, to open new horizons to people. There cannot be anything better than that.
We started as a pure training company, thinking that people learn in school. They learn from books and they learn from teachers.
But there was something missing: what about leadership? What about vision? What about courage? They can not be taught in school. Nor are they taught in big international companies. They can only be taught by real leaders, by people who have the ability to inspire.
And this is how Beyond Borders concept was born.
But transforming a concept into reality is no easy job.
First we needed a dedicated team and I"d like to thank to my entire team for making this possible.
Then we needed a partner as bold as visionary as we were. And here I"d like to thank to Mr. Marin from Omnilogic who was beyond our expectations.
But most importantly, the launching event of Beyond Borders needed a very special guest, a great leader, a polarizing figure, a charming personality,
a man who champions education, for he believes that education lies at the very heart of a nation"s ability to compete internationally,
a man who understands and values the economic environment, someone with a proven record of building tremendous economic growth to his country.
There was only one choice.
There was only one man who could possibly fit the profile.
I"m confident that meeting him is something we will never forget.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great honor that I ask you to join me in welcoming to Romania the 42nd President of the United States of America:
William Jefferson Clinton.
Bill Clinton: Thank you very much. Thank you, Cristina. Thank you, Gabriel.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm welcome.
I thank the Prime Minister for being here, thank you very much, and the former president Constantinescu, with whom I served, thank you for being here, President of the SDP, Geoana, who was Ambassador in United States when I was President, thank you for coming and former Prime Minister Roman, I thank you for being here.
And I"d also like to thank the president for receiving me in his office before I came over here we had an hour long talk partly of that about the subject tonight, how should Romania be branded. And also I"d like to say that I"m honored to be joined tonight by my daughter, and our former ambassador Al Moses, thank you. And thank you Al Moses for coming.
This issue of branding⦠You know, I come from a place where not so very long ago most of us lived on farms or ranches, so branding was something you did with a half-arrow, with a logo on it to a cow, and you burn the skin of the cow with the symbol of your ranch, so no one could steal your cow.
But if you think about it, it"s not about concept or a country. Or if you could burn into people"s minds the image of a country that you thought captured fairly your country, then no one could steal your image and you could have the benefit of it.
I thought about it a lot, because I used to be a politician, you know, and in every election you want the voters to be able to tell the difference between you and your opponent and you want to have an affirmative, a positive way of saying what you believe in, what you stand for, what you"re going to do, without having to give to each and every voter a 30 minutes speech.
So brands or slogans or logos or symbols can be very powerful things if they are honest and accurate. Normally, when you think about branding a country, you"d say: well, we have to have the right slogan, but it could be a symbol.
I was talking to the President on the way over here when I was in the presidential office and he had the picture of a crystal American eagle on his desk. And he said: you know, that is an eagle from America.
I said: I know, I have one just like it and I collect them, but I said: there was a big debate whether the eagle should be the symbol of our country in the late 1700 when one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, argued very strongly that the turkey should be the symbol of our country.
Now I don"t know how many of you have ever seen a wild turkey, but we would have a very different image today if we had been branded with a turkey instead of an eagle.
So, when you think about this, we can laugh about it, but just because a brand may be a phrase or a few words or a picture or a physical object or an animal doesn"t mean that it"s something to be taking lightly.
You have all these new countries that emerge from communism, all looking for new investment, new training opportunities, people to make partnerships with and everything from information technology to basic manufacturing, education and healthcare.
There would actually be a quite a good thing if Romania had a brand name or a brand symbol, that all the political parties feel comfortable with, that captured the vision of what you are trying to present to the world.
So I want to talk about a little tonight within the context of where the world is, that is for brand to make any sense if it"s applied to a country it must first be consistent with the condition of the world, because we live in a global society, in an interdependent society where we can"t escape each other. In fact we live in serious interlocking societies. Romania is the nation, made up with many communities, made up of many families; Romania is a part of South-Eastern Europe, now a member of NATO, soon will be a member of the EU, a member of the United Nations. You belong to a lot of units, all of them, in different ways say, the world is more interdependent now that it was a few years ago. That"s the first, an enduring fact.
Second thing that"s interesting is you are relatively a new member of some of these organizations, where there are some of the disadvantages of being a new democracy, a new market economy, a new government and some of the enormous advantages in your enthusiasm, your commitment, your passion about building a better future.
But you can"t really sell yourself to others or imagine your future to yourself, your own citizens, unless you see it within the context of a highly interdependent world, which can be good or bad.
It was bad for America on September 11, 2001 that the world was so interdependent.
I mean look what happened: the terrorists used open borders, easy travel, easy access to information and technology to kill almost 3.000 people in New York from 200 countries; I mean 70 countries, including over 200 other Mussulmans.
But it was a triumph of interdependence.
So that brings me to the second point. Interdependence means only that we can"t escape each other; it can be good or bad. For you, since 1989, the fall of Berlin Wall, the new forms of interdependence I would argue you"ve been quite good. You have joined the family of new democracies, you have joined NATO, you are on schedule to join the EU, you have participated in common peacekeeping measures.
Even as a country not a wealthy country, this country gave money to the victims of the tsunami in South East Asia, recognition of your new prominence in an interdependent world.
But what we really want is a more integrated community, a place where we share opportunities; people get opportunities in Romania that other people in your group yet; people get, assume responsibilities as you have assumed in Iraq and in helping the victims of the tsunami.
People celebrate the differences that your country has with your neighbors and with the rest of the world, but you do it in the cause of peace and prosperity, because you believe that our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences.
Otherwise why in the world would you, with all the challenges you have, give money to all the people in Sri Lanka and Asia and Indonesia and the cost of Thailand or India or the small islands of the Maldives where most people from Romania will never go. Because you"ve recognized your common humanity.
Why am I telling you these?
Because if you want a brand, you have to have a brand that sets you apart in an interdependent world, without setting you against the world you believe in.
And the world you believe in, based on your own conduct through several governments now since you became a free country, is a world where you reached out to the West, you reached out to become a part of Europe, you reached out to build a modern economy, your reached out to build on the strengths of your culture and your educational capacity. In other words, you are running into the world and the future rather than running away from that. And whatever the differences you have with each other, you have done this constantly and impatiently.
When I came here with you, Mr. President, in the late "97, and spoke to 100,000 people in the street, the message was clear: we love you, we love America, but we are in a hurry to get in NATO, we are in a hurry to get in EU, we have waited a long time for our freedom, for our prosperity, for our share of responsibilities for the future, we are in a hurry. And if you give us a chance, we will mean to test. It was a loud, clear message.
And when I was driving on the streets today or going to the bookstore and signing the books and looking in the eyes of hundreds of your fellow citizens or shaking hands with the people outside the store who didn"t come in to buy a book, and for all I know they didn"t afford a book. Every one of them had a sense of energy and self-confidence. In fact, the greatest self-confidence than I saw almost a decade ago when I came here the first time because of the progress that you have made. Every time we move ahead a little bit, it builds a collective confidence of the country.
So, if you look ahead, to the major tests of the world, if you want a peaceful, prosperous world, what do you have to do?
First you have to have a security strategy; you have to fight terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the explosion of conventional weapons and countries who would seek to dominate their neighbors.
So, one of the things you ought to say about Romania is: we have done our part to build a more peaceful, secure world, because we are standing against terror, we are standing against abusive conduct and we support reducing the danger of weapons of mass destruction. That"s a very important thing. You can"t be a responsible member of the world community unless you have a security policy that makes sense.
The second thing is you can"t go into the world at large with only a security policy. That"s like saying: we are only going to keep bad things from happening; we can"t make anything good happening. And that"s, number one that"s not true, and number two, if the world is interdependent, you can not kill, occupy or put in prison all of your adversaries. You have to find a way to get along with people who disagree with you and try to move them along to a more peaceful and prosperous future so that it creates space for a country like Romania to build and diversify its economy, to build its education system, to build its information technology network.
So you have to create a world with more friends and fewer terrorists and fewer enemies and I would argue that"s what you do by joining the EU, that"s what you did by making a contribution to tsunami relief.
You are fulfilling the second criterion of membership in the modern world. First is the security policy, second is the policy to make more friends and fewer terrorists and fewer enemies.
Third then we have to do is to build in the institutions of cooperation. So, you"ve done that fence down, right? You"re already in NATO, you are going to be in the EU and you more than fulfilled any requirements anyone has asked you, have you?
Fourth thing you have to do is to keep making Romania a better model of an integrated community. We have to do it in America, too, because the world is not just integrated.
I saw people from all over the world on that book signing line today. If I had written my book 20 years ago and come hear to sign it, never forget about the communists, don"t you think that almost everybody who"d go to the line would have been a government or a high ranking business official who was just from Romania?
Today I"ve signed the book for people with all different income levels and there were people from at least eight different countries in that line. So, within every country, you have to keep trying to put things together, the whole world can be seen really today as a contest between people who are trying to tear things apart and people who are trying to put things together.
And that brings me to the last point. Whatever brand you want, you want people to think that you"re one of the building countries, not want to wrecking countries.
Let me give you a very interesting little fact. You may have seen in the press that after this horrible tsunami in South East Asia, the President of the United States asks his father and I, former president Bush, to raise money from private citizens and then spend it in a good way overseas in the countries that have been affected.
So former President Bush and I went to the region and we toured and we saw both horrible things and heroic things: more damage than I had ever seen from a natural disaster, but extraordinary, personal heroism from all kinds of people, from local officials to little fishermen, to widowed women who lost all their children too. It was astounding! So we come back and the President asks us to come to the White House to make a report on our trip. On the way in to do the report, an official from our United States aid agency that was working with us overseas, gave me a pool done in Indonesia, about the time of our trip. Now keep in mind: Indonesia is the largest Mussulman country in the world, is 98% Mussulmans or almost 200 million Mussulmans in Indonesia. There had been a great deal of support for Osama Bin Laden, and a great deal of criticism to the United States for the conflict in Iraq. When the tsunami occurred, the United States Government civilian workers was there, the President deployed military resources there, only to save people lives, hundreds of organizations founded in America, religious or non-religious, went there, and ordinary people sent money. One third of our households contributed. So this pool was about whether there have been any changes in the attitude towards America before the tsunami and after. And if there was a change, was the tsunami the reason?
60% of the Indonesians had a positive opinion of America after the tsunami, up from 36% before, deciding only the tsunami. Bin Laden positive approval was 58% before the tsunami and 28% after. And he didn"t do anything bad, but he didn"t do anything good either.
So people were contrasting the builders with the wreckers. I say that not to brag on my country, but to say, you know, after that tsunami, in the US there was no right, no left wing in politics; there were no republicans, no democrats. We all did what we could for the people in South East Asia, on a pure human basis, and you know, it turned up to be brilliant politically for America, because we had no political design. Why? Because in a world of instantaneous communication, we are all of us constantly making decisions when we see things on television about what we should do and whether we are being manipulated.
You do and I do. You see people half a world away, an Asian politician, a Latin American politician and there"re just the people at home. You look at these people, you are seeing an event, you say: is this real or not? Can I relate to this as a human being? Is this authentic? And for a magic moment, the people of the most Mussulman country on earth thought that the people of the United States, with whom they may deeply disagree about the war in Iraq were still good people who cared about them as people and wanted to build their future instead of tear it down.
And what it"s all got to do with your branding? A lot! I asked the President on the way over, I said: of the top of your head, no think, if you had to give a phrase for a brand for Romania, what would you say? And he said: âthe new tiger of Europe" and then I was thinking of what would I say. I might say: fine, you are here, but the point is everyone here interested in this?
I think the most important thing is that... why don"t you have a national process involving all the political parties, all sectors of the economy and society and have meetings about this and discuss it?
How you would like every Romanian to think about your country in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol? You can"t go beyond that, if you"re going to brand.
And how you would like every person beyond your borders to think of your country in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol? All I know is I"ve only been here twice and I"ve had a lot of contact with your representatives in the eight years I was President.
And I"ve had contact with three presidents, including President Iliescu, who is in hospital tonight - we wish him well - and different prime ministers and different political leaders. Every Romanian I"ve ever met loved freedom, believed in the future of his or her country, wanted to be tied to the United States, to Europe and to the future free of domination by anybody ever again.
Every Romanian I"ve ever met believed that you can build a modern and successful economy here if people would give you a little help and nobody would interfere with your future ever again. You only have arguments about how to get that done.
Look, if you all agree in your country would make no progress; if you all agree it means someone wasn"t thinking. So this is good, that you have more than one party, is good that you have political debate, but you think about what you have in common and then figure out how to throw it into the future in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol.
And don"t forget that it is as important that the Romanian people believe the brand as that people beyond your borders do!
Suppose you basically said that Romania was the country of Europe future. I"m just making this up. But suppose 98% of the people in Romania believe that. And when you"ve started, only 2% of the people in the rest of Europe believe in. If 98% of the people in Romania believe it, that"s more important than having any people in Europe believe because if it is your self image you will project it and over time will persuade other people that you"re right. And you will get more investment from other countries, not just from Europe, but from America, from Asia, from anywhere else.
So the most important thing in the branding is that it reflects what you believe to be true and important and good. Don"t worry if nobody else believes you yet, that"s what we have brands for! That"s why you brand new products, so you can sell people something they don"t even know about yet.
So the most important thing in this whole enterprise why you want to brand Romania is to say something that the people of Romania would instantly believe is true and good, and a source of pride and is future oriented. So when the President said âthe tiger of Europe", that everybody knows, everybody in a business world knows what the tigers are, there are small countries in South East Asia who⦠in East Asia who grew so fast - the Asian tigers. So that"s like saying: we"re an economic engine, we"re determined, we represent Europe"s future, as an economic context.
If you say you are the country of Europe"s future, then that means that it could be economics and other things and that you are on the edge of Europe"s future. But there are probably ten others even better than the ones than the ones ten politicians came out to of the top of their head. That"s why I say I think in order to be an exhilarating thing for the country to involve thousands of them, thousands of people in the process of trying to see through what the best brand would be.
âCause if you don"t believe in, if you don"t have confidence in, if you are comfortable talking about it, it doesn"t really matter how good and flavor it is.
The most important thing is that you believe it and that you think it"s true and good and oriented toward the future. Then you can get lots, lots and lots of other people believe it. So, I would just say this in closing: I had to worry about this myself, because Romania and I represent two dramatically important trends in that occurred in the â90. You may think this is strange, I"ll explain.
You represent the fact that, for the first time in history in the â90s, more people lived under democracies, governments they voted in, than lived under dictatorships that it never happened before in all the human history. I now have the foundation that works on eliminating poverty in Africa and in Asia and in U.S., that works on education, in citizen service projects, in different continents, it works on religious and racial and ethnic reconciliation every place from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, to Africa, to the Middle East and it is working on trying to help countries eradicate this virus that causes AIDS.
I am a non-governmental organization and the non-governmental organizations exploded in number and impact in the â90s.
So that, for the first time in history, citizens can change the future of their own communities and countries and reach cross-national lands in a way never before conceivable. When I was asked, just for example, to be the coordinator for the United Nations for tsunami related in South East Asia, the secretary general of the UN told my first job would be to go get the rich governments to give the money they promised.
It turned up to be very different, because the non-governmental organizations have collected and have in the bank well over 3 billion dollars from private individuals, from all income groups, from all over the world for the benefit of those people. So my most important job is to make sure that the countries have a good planning process and don"t waist the money and then that we get the non-governmental organizations hooked into the future and spending the money in time to help all those poor people in South East Asia.
If the job had been undertaken ten years ago, it would be what the Secretary General assumed. If I"ve been doing these ten years ago, my job would be: come around here and rescue all, you just at least you might can tell about all my good contributions and then go to Europe to the rich countries, in the Western Europe and say: you"ve promised this amount of money, don"t you renege on me.
I don"t have to do some of that, now it"s over. But the point is my number one job now is to get these countries organized so that it can own the confidence of non-governmental organizations and to convince the non-governmental organizations to release the money and start it out so people live again.
So I have to brand myself. You see how long it took me to tell you everything that I do, so I have a brand if people associate something good and true with my name.
Then I can get people to invest in my non-governmental organization and I can do my humanitarian work around the world. I take no money from governments, so I could get investors, to invest and to help me do the work of saving. We now have 110,000 people getting AIDS medicine, who weren"t getting it before in poor countries in the world. There are lives that will be saved because of that. All because people believed that I represented a brand that was true and good in the area of they"re caring about something. But we have all this endless debates about whether... This is what some people say: well, people just know who you are, they neither like you or they hate you and you don"t need a slogan that describes what your NGO"s about. And other people say: oh, yes, you do, because of people who invest in politics in the world are not the same people as the people who invest in charitable endeavors, so we need a phrase to be able to tell people what is different about you and your NGO and others that they might invest in. And we"ve come down; we"ve got two or three interesting ideas.
The point I want to make is I think this branding operation is legitimate and important, because you are going into a new world, in which we are deluged with different organizations, we have all these new democracies and we have all these new organizations like mine, the non-governmental organizations.
So it"s worth doing this to attract new investment in the future. But the primary benefit, I would say this again, the primary benefit you"ll get out of this, if you"ll make a serious effort, to involve the whole society in it, is that you"ll have a large number of Romanians who will be able to say in a phrase something that is true and good and oriented to the future about your country.
I"ve already told you what conclusions are for the first time I came here and long before I came here, in the struggle of many ways against an awful tyranny. So the world is falling for you, everybody wants you to succeed; every American I know is grateful for your friendship, your support, your thirst for freedom and your commitment to opportunity. You need to figure out how to say that in a phrase, a sentence or a symbol. And than the most important thing is that it is not just to pursue me or some investor, most important thing is that the people from this great country say immediately: that"s who we are and that"s where we are going.
I think the future is pretty bright and I would very much like to be a fly on the wall, listening to all the discussions that might occur now about how to tell who you are and where you are going to the rest of the world.
Thank you and good luck!
Cristina Preda: Thank you, Mr. President! As you all know, the agenda says, we"ll have a Q&A session, moderated by Mr. Gabriel Marin. We would like to invite Mr. Gabriel Marin - where is he? - from Omnilogic, so Mr. Marin!
Gabriel Marin: So first of all, thank you for your speech.
I think was very inspiring for all of us here and, to be honest, I have a list of questions. But speaking of the way, I always gave up, just I got some ideas.
But before starting the questions and answers session, since we got here, more or less, most of the business community in Romania, you are very famous in Romania for the unequal prosperity you gave America during your two presidencies. We actually wake up as a country with you more or less, so we witness by the time the growth and the unequal growth - I don"t remember when America got such a huge economic prosperity as in your two presidencies. So first of all we want to thank you, not only on behalf of the local business community, but I think on behalf of the worldwide business community. You did a great job; actually we are missing the good times during your presidencies. Thank you again!
So, let"s go to the few questions. For a country like Romania, after 50 years of communism, what many historians said could be a prevalent to the world - 50 years of communism - the local traditions, the local communities you have mentioned during your speech have been pretty much destroyed. Sometimes it"s even hard to imagine how the regime, how the tyranny has been doing all those 50 years. It"s hard to speak about the country image, but talking about priorities, what do you think it will be probably the first priority to rebuild the moral values or try to put in front of everything the economic priorities.
Bill Clinton: First of all, I think that economic priorities are profoundly important and people diminish them only if they have them.
That is: your people saw you"ve already put too much emphasis on the economy and someone says that you"re talking to someone who has a good job and runs a good business, or has a secure, government job. If people have no jobs, have no access to capital, can"t start a business, they are very concerned about the economy. It doesn"t mean they had no values.
I think the trick is, for every country, to figure out how to build a free market economy that is still committed to social justice. First and most important, the equal opportunity to participate in a free market economy and secondly, to at least condition that outcomes of that economy, so that you don"t have two extremes and inequality and you don"t leave people behind who can"t participate or live of their own.
And every country is got to find a different way to do this, but if you look at the successful and rich countries from Europe, they are having trouble with this.
And the United States is having trouble with it.
So if you look at some other of the developing countries, they are generating a lot of jobs, but they also still have a lot of social misery, a lot of poverty that could be eliminate.
So I think if you can have the best economic policy, you, first of all, have a good economic concept - it would be easy to start a business, it will be easy to integrate technology and the government and would have policies which will support a continue availability in modernization of the information technology and other technologies. And still there will be efforts made to make sure that you"re creating jobs and reducing poverty in the same time and helping people to build a sense of social security.
But first the economy has to work and I think is very hard to have an ethical government if you have a failed economic policy, because people get up in the morning and they want first to have something to look forward to, to provide for their families and give their children a future.
So I think it"s a big mistake to say: should we go from all ways for good economics. That implies that good economics is immoral and it implies that you could have a immoral society, with people who are not rewarded for their labor. I think that one of the key things of a moral society is that people are rewarded for their labor and have a decent chance to do better.
Gabriel Marin: I"m happy to hear that, because I think we, all, business community here, we like this world âbusiness first", which means economy first, which I also think that it should be the first priority beyond any other value. It doesn"t mean that we don"t consider the moral values, as you said, so we have to create wealth and after that to split it just.
Bill Clinton: You know, when I became President for example, some members of my party in U.S thought I put too much emphasis getting rid of the budget deficit. And they said: we have to spend more money on education, we have to spend more on health care, we have to spend more money on the environment because the concern of the conservative members of my party thought the Republicans could spend more money on that.
And I said to them: It"s fine, but if we can"t get the economy going, no one will pay taxes and we"ll have no money to spend on education or have no money to spend on the environment or have no money to spend on these things.
So we took the deficit down, we"ve got the infrastructure down, we"ve got investments, people like you, that created a bunch of jobs, and we got more taxpayers and we knew what to do with. And we had lots of money; we"ve doubled the investment in education. On the other hand, I now found myself in an opposite position, where the Republicans said they got to cut taxes or run America on deficit, so we should just cut taxes and we should keep cutting them even we were in a war in Iraq and we were running big deficits. So now we were right back where we were and we have very low taxes, but we are not generating high weight jobs, we are not generating a great number of jobs and poverty is growing up in middle classes, income is going down, because we, the Left cannot spend money rather than investing wisely and the Right cannot cut taxes too much in America rather than keep a disciplined, balanced budget.
So the key to all these is a sensible balance in the budget or at least a good economic management, not having the deficit too big, investment in people and the ability of businesses to start up fairly easily and to constantly modernize at affordable rates, adding the new technologies, adding new equipment, adding new training to workers, big new revolutionary products and services.
I think finding flexibility that balance the flexibility in social justice is not easy, but it tends to give it the best economic outcome. Finding the balance between fiscal responsibility even physical conservatism and investment in people is not easy, but it tends to give it the best economic outcome and I would argue the most moral outcome, because everybody has a fair chance and you shade the worst edges of inequality.
Gabriel Marin: I have reads of that famous book of Mr. Stiglitz, you"ve heard about him obviously, globalization and its content was about... Stiglitz was Vice-President of the World Bank and he wrote the book after he left the World Bank. And one of the chapters was dedicated to Romania, which somehow is facing the same restrictions with the IMF which we faced 6-7 years ago. I hope I"m not wrong, I"m not a politician, but from I know the IMF is getting the budget deficit less then 1% which if we come to your previous statement, somehow can stop development, because going in a very, very low deficit, how are you able to find, to solve the social projects or theseâ¦
Bill Clinton: First of all, there should be different rules for Romania at the stage you were at 1997, coming out after communism than for America, a mature country, with a well capital market. And there you might need the deficit you spend, because you can get enough foreign capital in your countryâ¦
Gabriel Marin: Right!
Bill Clinton: â¦and you have to invest in your people. But if we have the deficits to spend the way you might have to and we don"t need them, as we can get all the capital we need it"s just pure self-indulgence.
There is a big difference between spending deficits and spending to invest in the future that ultimate will grow the economy and deficits spending because you"re ratherâ¦
In America we have the deficits spent because we prefer to have the tax cuts and for expanding profits and it has nothing to do with growing the economy and maturing the industry, so we are different.
I think when you just say, John Stiglitz worked for me for a while at the White House and I agree with the general thrust of his argument that in the beginning of the truly global economy, when you have all these new democracies and when we are growing in a world fare, the international financial institutions, especially the IMF, needed to adopt an one size, fits all plan and say everybody is go to have low budgets deficits, everybody has to have cut-back on spending, everybody has to do these things. And that they did so with either support of the United States including times when I was President.
I think is fairly to say that by the end of my service, during my second term, both we and the IMF had become considerably more flexible. We knew that we have to look underneath these statistics to see how these countries get in trouble. Realistically, what did they have to spend in order to hold their societies together? And at their time they will have to reduce their deficits, because of they don"t, they will never get interests rights down, they will never have foreign investment or we are just doing it because we think that"s the best way to do it, it"s part of the fact it"s causing a total political turmoil in the country.
So I agree, I feel that if I might, on the defense myself and the World Bank and IMF is that we are all going in an uncharted territory and we didn"t want to look like we are taking money from one country and giving them to another while the country we are going to was letting out the money to go on the backdoor and deficits spending.
I think that we are much more sophisticated now than we were about trying to balance fiscal responsibility, the political realities in the given country and the legitimate investments the governments need to make to build a modern economy. Those three things will give you slightly different answers in Romania than in Bolivia and we should not impose a land of uniformity in our countries. Stiglitz was writing about that.
Gabriel Marin: Actually I"ve enjoyed a lot the book I think it was very realistic and very correct and I think that somehow 1% or below, 1% which was imposed is probably really imposed a lot of restriction of the economy development. So, if we understood correctly here, probably a more flexible policy regarding deficit would be really welcome for a developing country like Romania?
Bill Clinton: I agree with that. Let me say one thing! Let"s assume that IMF has a more flexible attitude and gives you loans with the deficit that"s higher, you could be flexible, but you have to also be realistic, because if IMF says: Ok, we"ll loan you money, no matter what your budget policy is, not matter whether we think you are being responsible or not, number one is that this actually won"t pay off because no one will ... you have to be responsible enough to have the credibility among investors and most new democracies and particularly those that were communist countries, but most other new democracies need foreign investment.
And in the end what you want is private investment, as well as money from the international financial institutions. Romania has potential for growth and prosperity, far else rips, with general inner need for capital that will far out strip anything you"ve could ever get from the World Bank and the IMF. Well I really believe you are go to build a very modern and a very sophisticated, very diversified economy. So the trick is for the IMF not to be so stiff that you have social misery at home and you lose all political support inside Romania for building a modern economy.
But not to be so loose that people looking at the outside and have no confidence in your economic policy and therefore won"t put any capital in your country. And if we cannot get out of this so-called âone-size fits all", then you have to understand the economic judgments are always a combination of optimism and pessimism, of investment and discipline. And just is what we did in the early "90s I think it was too severe, if you have no discipline at all, no discomfort at all, you are running the risk of creating the circumstances which you"ve just launched in the IMF if you can"t repay and no fund will want to put any money in your country.
And I personally believe that Romania can become a veritable treasure to all foreign investors. You are already having a lot of companies so I have seen. I met your company representatives from Oracle and IBM and lots of others, but I think, you know, this is a very interesting country.
That"s only point I want to make: Yes, we went too far in the early â90s, but you can go too far for the other way too. Anybody that tells you that gets foreign investments and invests money in a country whether it has a sensible budget policy or not or if they can be taking money back or not is not telling the truth. So the question is if you have the right balance.
Gabriel Marin: Ok, so I think that we learn something on this subject, it"sâ¦
Bill Clinton: There were very specific causes for the global economic slowdown, that were different from continent to continent, and it basically started with the governments in the United States, some of which began when I was in office.
That is, from 1996 to 1998 or 1999, global demand for telecommunication services increased astounding 500 to 700 percent a year. No one had ever seen anything like this. So, the people and telecom in my country went out and built an enormous amount of infrastructure anticipating continuous growth. Nothing grows at 500 to 700 percent a year indefinitely. So, there was a collapse in the telecommunication stocks in the America when telecom, listen to this, when the utilization of telecommunication services dropped to an increase of 50 to 75 percent a year. Sounds hilarious, doesn"t it? But there was all this infrastructure that couldn"t be sustained. So, that happened and that caused the stop. Then there was a drop in the value of a lot of the so-called dotcom stocks on the NASDAQ.
And that happened, I believe, and most of my friends in the IT industry agreed, I believe that happened primarily because a lot of those stocks were overpriced, because hundreds of those companies never made money, but were bough out by other companies who believed that the particular thing they did in information technology when added to the purchasing company would increase its profitability.
So, you really have the hundreds of companies that never really made any money, getting their stock going up and up and up because they knew they"ll be bought out by somebody else because of what they did. Well, you can"t continue that forever, so that"ll happen. Then, you have 9.11 that caused the big crisis in confidence. It also shrunk tourism in the United States and other places and all these things brought down the American economy. Europe already had slow growth and Japan was still drilling under 10 or 11 years of a dysfunctional finance system, that was laid bare when the real estate problem was in the early 1990s. So when you put all of that together, there was no real place for the world to go to get the growth.
Then, within the United States, we"ve got growth now coming back, but not as rapidly as it would have, because the President offered a tax cut plan, which I opposed. I would"ve supported the tax cut plan if it"s been big, big tax cuts for two years, directed essentially in small businesses and individuals, to spark a consumption recovery of our economy. And even if you know businesses to make investments and then gone off so we can return to balanced pressures.
Keep in mind we"re not a poor country. We have no right to borrow money from other countries to finance our deficits. Especially to pay tax cuts to people like me who make plenty of money. But instead of doing that, we"ve adopted foul tax cuts and now we have big deficits again and everyday we borrow money from the Chinese government to cover my tax cut. I don"t think that"s very good economy policy, but that"s what we do. Nonetheless, the growth is coming back in America, as Japan"s having pretty good year this year and they"re finally working through 11 or 12 years of horrible financial problems. And I think that it is possible depending on the outcome of summer European elections, that if we get enough freeform in the labor markets here, without giving up social security, that Europe could present some significant growth. I mean I was very impressed. I just came back from Denmark and I was very impressed with their sense of what they call flat security, where the government is taking some of the requirements off of employers while they kept taxes as so the government can pay for more job wage insurance and health insurance or retirement. The employers have fewer direct obligations and are free to create more jobs under more flexible circumstances. But the balance kept in Norwegian and the Swedish and the sense of, the Scandinavian sense of social justice, by not having a government immoral. It"s very interesting, but for them it worked and they"ve got quite a low unemployment and a high growth. So I, I think the future looks good. We went through a bad period were a lot of bad things happened at once. I think on the whole, it will be good. And you need that in Romania because what you need is a growing regional and global economy in order to get more investments, more jobs here.
Gabriel Marin: You"ve been talking about technology. One of the hot debates in the States these days is about outsourcing. My question is quite precise, because some people in Romania think that Romania could be a really outsourcing power, such as India and China, the most of South Eastern Asia. On the other hand, in the States many people said that transferring R&D (research and development) to outsource sector in research and development, it"s essentially using intellectual property and it"s a brain drain from the States to those outsourcing countries. You think outsourcing is a good thing in technology?
Bill Clinton: Well, first of all, I think that it"s a fact of life. And it"s going to happen. And the United States and Europe, rich countries in Eastern Europe or Japan, we don"t have a right to ask other countries to stay poor.
On the other hand, I think sometimes we outsource in a thoughtless way. I think sometimes the rich countries give up on its own workers in the prospect of becoming more productive and doing the work close to the home. And if I were you, I mean for example in terms of Romanian"s future, why should you make a choice between doing more R&D and trying to get more technology work that outsourced from Europe, for example? Why should you make a choice between those things? Why shouldn"t you think that they"re both compatible with your future? You don"t have enough money to invest as much as the great German companies and, well, and the German universities and the German research centers, because they got more people than you do and more money, right? So, if you want to become an R&D center, you have to start somewhere. You have to ask yourself: âWhere might we have a competitive advantage?", âWhat are the two, three areas that we can spend enough money to really make a difference?" And we go after those. In the meantime..., I"m making this up because I don"t know the facts, but let"s assume that there is a significant move to outsource information technology related jobs from Germany and France to South Asia.
Let"s just assume that. You should do a serious analysis to see whether you can offer a competitive service here. Even if the wages are a little higher, you have lower freight cost, lower transportation cost, let"s lay an easier physical access and you ought to make the best case you can in the areas where you think you can make a difference. If I were you, I would do both, if the economics make sense. I don"t think you should make false choices. You wantâ¦, the one thing you want here is you want to diversify your economy. You want to continue to have a more and more textured layered diverse economy. And you don"t want to make big winners and losers, you don"t want to have a five year plan, you don"t want to act like anybody in the business community was any smarter than the people in the communist government world the old days - they knew what they go to do for the next five years. You want to set up a system to unleash the entrepreneurial energies and creativity of the people here. So, if it were me, I"d be trying to seek some research and development and I"d be looking very hard at all kinds of outsourcing going on in Europe, and whether I can get some of it much closer to home in Romania. I"d do both.
Gabriel Marin: Ok. So it"s a good idea as well. So I think at this point, maybe if you want to take some questions from the audience. I"m sure that some people got some questions or something like that at this point.
Bill Clinton: Anybody wants to ask a question?
Gabriel Marin: Go ahead!
sPerson 1t: Good evening, Mr. President. I"m very interested to know if you intent to write another book to explain the future governments in the world, in the States and also in Europe and all around the world how to receive a country who has big deficits and to leave the country with the huge growth? Because you will remain famous for this ink.
Bill Clinton: Yes, I might write another book, but it would be much shorter. Let me say this: I try not to get too political when I go to other countries. I have a good personal relationship with the President Bush and he has many qualities I admire but I just disagree with the economic policy. I think is wrong for a wealthy country to run a permanent deficit, especially when we were at war. And the necessity for us to go into the capital market everyday and borrow money from the Chinese and from the Japanese and the Koreans and the Saudis and all these people essentially to cover my tax cut, I thinks it"s bad economics and I think it makes less capital available for countries like Romania to invest in the future. So I don"t agree with that and I may write an article about that. I think that if you have a mature economy that is highly diversified and you have good capital markets and good entry into the private sector, then I think countries, in order to be socially liberal, as I consider myself, should be physically concerned. But last year they aggregate amount of America"s borrowing for both our budget deficit and our trade deficit, equaled about 18% of the world"s net increased savings. And I don"t think that United States of America should be taking 18% of these savings of the world to finance a trade deficit and a budget deficit. You can say that it"s ok the trade deficit, because the people that are loaning us the money they"re selling us their goods and we have to work that out. But it"s not the same with the budget deficit. It is not right. The Chinese should be able to keep their money and raise the value of their currency or educate their kids or whatever they go to do. And the same for other countries. I just think that it"s not right. I"ll put the money in Romania for it grows more businesses here. So that is my view about deficits. I think that rich countries like America should run deficits during the recessions for the same reason the General Mayor said, that you can help to consume your way out of the deficit, once the recessions are over and countries like America should have a balanced budget or more of a surplus. In our case, we should be running a surplus, because we are about to have a generation, of the baby-boomers, of people retirement and there would be only two people working for every one person growing or on a retirement program or on a health care program for all the people. But, you know, it"s funny. On this issue, I"m very, very concerned about. I think that it"s wrong for rich countries to take money from other new developing countries. We don"t need to do that. And I think people like me should admit to pay more taxes as a privilege of living in America, in order to insure we educate our children and we give armor, vehicles to our soldiers in Iraq and we do our power in the world. That is what I believe. In my used old fashion in America, but this doesn"t matter since I believe.
Gabriel Marin: We have another question, Mr. President.
sBogdan Chireact: Thank you. Mr. President, you just met the Romanian President, Mr. Traian Basescu. Let"s presume that Mr. Basescu is tired and he is asking you to step in the office. And you are the President of Romania now. We have inter-room here, the Prime Minister of Romania, Mr. Calin Popescu Tariceanu. What would be the first measures you would suggest to the Prime Minister to enhance the Romanian economical growth and to fulfill the criteria for the European integration of January 1, 2007? Thank you.
Bill Clinton: You know, one of the nice things about me, not being in big offices, is I don"t have to answer those questions. I don"t want to cause any problems to the Prime Minister of the Government. And I have to say, before I can give you a clear answer to that question, I would have to know much more about the facts on the ground here then I do. I"m too ignorant of facts to answer that. But let me tell you about the way I would think about it if I were President. And I"ll tell how I"d think about it. I would say: ok, we got into NATO and we now have a secure relationship with the United States and the West. What we want to do is to get all the benefits from the European Union and not look like we are like the America stepchild when we get in. Some after-thought: somebody will get in because it was politically important rather than economically justified. So I will be sitting and thinking about everything that could be done to make Romania more economically competitive immediately. Easier for Romania is to get product and start new businesses, and start new jobs, easier to get foreign investment in the country, easier to get more information technology, easier to look for that outsourcing thing like I said... I"ll be asking myself: what can I do, that will make a difference in the Romanian economy in the next 3 years? And then I will say: what can I do, that will make a difference in the Romanian economy over the next 10 years? And I"ll bet you that the answers are very different. But you can not build a modern and complex economy in a day. You can do it much more quickly than it is used to be done, but it can"t be done in a day. So I will be trying to have a 3 years-strategy and about a 10 years strategy. And I would try to focus on things that will empower people like the people in this room, where to create the conditions and incentives in the end to make the right decisions. Because it is like I said, if the Government can not be held responsible for the performance of the economy or for making all these judgments in a free enterprise economy... Well the Government role is to give people the tools to succeed and to create the conditions and then pick at least some directions in the research budget, research priorities. Beyond that, you can"t do much; you got to relay on the energy and ingenuity of the people in this room. But this is how I would be thinking about it.
Gabriel Marin: Now we have another question. We have two questions.
Phil Stephenson, Deputy CEO, Rompetrolt: Thank you. Mr. President, like you, I"m also an American visiting the country and noticing some of the things about the Romanian spirit. It"s kept me here for 4 years. I want to go back to what you are discussing about branding Romania and how you describe an effective brand would be on that is true and good and oriented towards the future. And I"m wondering if it"s not also possible an European to make a goal also aspirational that answers the struggle and the hurry-ness you"ve described about the Romanian people. My suggestion, my example will be why not something like 25 by 25? Make this one of the top 25 countries in the world in a parameter different measures by the year 2025 and give people a future oriented goal, but one that they will also have to work for. As a suggestion, thank you.
Bill Clinton: I like that. I mean I like the idea, but I don"t know about the details, you know, you get to see it. I didn"t hold at this meeting here..., we are not at the end of this exercise. Just think about it: I suppose you"ve decided... The most important thing is what you said, that I thought that it should be true, good and oriented toward the future. What it has to be the ......, what aspirational... I wish I knew Romanian to figure out or translate it. But it means it"s not just... something to be oriented toward the future, but you don"t have to do anything. If it"s aspirational, it"s oriented toward the future, but it"s your future and it says: What you are going to do? What you are going to do with the country, what you will go to do with the businesses, what you will go to do as individuals? And I completely agree with that. But again I would say I wish you will be keep working on this, because it will also give all these businesses different slogans, may give all the politicians and their parties different slogans. But the country will come out ahead with slogans, even if you didn"t agree on one that was true, good, oriented towards the future and urge people to do something. Just thing about: every person in this country woke up every day, went to work, was in the school or in a Government office, every single day, and if they are thinking about something about Romania, that was good and true, oriented towards the future and called out their best selves so as to act. You know, it will make a big difference. And this idea about they want to talk about 25 countries, but, you know, 20 years from now, 2025... that"s one way of looking at it. I think on the other hand that this is not an unrealistic hope and that"s for, you know, you might be able to do that. But it would be an accident unless you really want to and you have to think about it, more together.
Gabriel Marin: Ok, one more question.
Mircea Geoana: First of all, thank you for the speech. It was not only inspirational, but also aspirational. We"ve been trying to do this in Romania for a few years time relatively unsuccessfully. At least for me, after my experience in America. And I have a mentor in America, besides you, and I say this, it"s Petre Georgescu, who was a Romanian born and who was CEO at the Young & Rubicam, one of the big advertising companies. And he came to Romania a few years ago and he told us how the Indians from India came to him in the late â80s and basically the business community of India⦠with the reputation of the country we have, which is poor, which is untidy, which is basically 3rd world. We just can not compete them, we don"t have the talent. The India business said, the Indian Government of the day... And they started a public private enterprise and they went to the best companies in America, Young & Rubicam, and Petre Georgescu, Romanian born, left Romania in communism about the being in the ⦠put to work as a kid by communists and then he managed to escape. And we tried to do the same thing in Romania for the last 3 yearsâ¦.., we were in office. We tried, it didn"t work out. Let me say one thing which is a good initiative for the current Government. They are putting together, as we tried not very successfully, an effort which is public private. People in power and people of the opposition and they just ask the leader of the opposition to be part of the effort and I accepted to be part. So that"s a general thing. We are thinking of this, but we are not very successful. Is that in your visit here, and I think is â¦, and I think this is something that will really crystallize our energy to move on.
Now the question: before moving to a new brand and before having this process, when you really have to identify something you really believe in and you really feel you are motivated by it, you also have to deal with the reality, which does exist as a part of Romania and around Romania. One of the friends working in the PR business here, I"ll not mention his name, was doing an informal survey, it"s an American global advertising agency and 2 years ago, just like playing, he asked all the country managers around the world of this global agency, saying: What do you think about Romania? From the top of your head, when you hear the name of Romania? And something like 100 country managers of this global company answered by email not knowing Romania from South Africa, from Columbia, from China, from Taiwan andâ¦. and basically the answer was something like this: country which is poor, which is coming up out of communism, which is true, beautiful people, handicraft, not very technological, even one guy said the sex without condoms. Probably he visited Romania. The same thing in France, the same thing in other places.
So my questions: how do you first de-brand before branding or re-branding, because unfortunately we only have really acquired so to speak from Ceausescu, fr