CGI Live Blog: From Crisis to Opportunity With Maria Bartiromo | Tonic

Moving From Crisis to Opportunity (Fazel Abed)

(09/25/2009)

5:59	Katherine Gustafson: Hi everyone. Welcome back for the final day of CGI and our sprint-through-the-finish-line coverage of today’s plenaries.

6:00	Katherine Gustafson: In just a few minutes, we’ll be starting the plenary session called Moving From Crisis to Opportunity — Financing an Equitable Future.

6:00

Caroline:

Panelists include Fale Abed, Founder and Chairman of BRAC (we love BRAC)

6:00

Caroline: Sheila Bair, Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

6:01

Caroline: Maria Bartiromo, Anchor for CNBC

6:01

Caroline: James Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co

6:01

Caroline: and Peter Sands, CEO of Standered Chartered PLC

6:05

Caroline: So a video is playing now

6:05

Caroline: It’s a good one.

6:07

Caroline:

It’s talking about entrepreneurial endeavors in developing countries and initiatives to finance and support their efforts.

6:08

Caroline: Clinton’s out!

6:08

Caroline: He says “everyone who is here deserves stamina awards”

6:08

Caroline: does that mean he’s going to present you with a certificate soon, Erin?

6:09

Caroline: Oh I’ll make a stink if he doesn’t.

6:10

Caroline: Erin, you’re stealing my name.

6:11

Caroline: Caroline, I promise it’s not on purpose. I blame the stinky internet connection.

6:11

Caroline: we just want to be each other this week

6:11

Caroline: OK — so the topic at hand

6:12

Caroline: Financing businesses and entrepreneurial efforts in the developing world — in countries that need “equitable capital”

6:13

Erin: Everything in Africa takes a long time, but our speaker says $40 million is ready for East Africa.

6:14

Erin: The ask: We need 5 million dollars to complete the fund.

6:15

Erin: Ketchup! The Heinz company is taking the stage with Kraft, UN food, Unilever…

6:17

Caroline:

Clinton is giving some staggering statistics about malnutrition abroad — enormous rates of anemia thanks to iron deficiencies abroad

6:18

Caroline: Clinton also has the coughs. A frog in his throat. Perhaps the result of being on point and vocal all week? Perhaps a late night? One can only guess …

6:18

Caroline: He’s introducing some new commitment-makers

6:19

Caroline: it’s about a joint commitment to build infrastructure and programs for “impact investing”

6:19

Erin: Next commitment: Impact investing. I hope Bill explains what that means.

6:19

Caroline: for networks that will essentially perform metric research

6:19

Caroline: “This is one of those deals where no one can know if it works but if it does it will change the future” — Bill c

6:20

Erin: Billism: This is ont of those ones where you don’t know if it works until you try it, but if it does it will change the world.

6:20

Caroline: and also: “I really like it.”

6:20

Caroline: oooh, change the world, not the future. thank you erin for the better ears

6:20

Caroline: Here comes another group of commitment-makers

6:20

Erin: Jeffrey Wright! (spelling?) He’s an actor, yeah?

6:21

Erin: Goal: build roads for farmers and bring teachers back in Sierra Leone

6:23

Caroline: I believe Geoffrey Wright is the actor. A la Quills, which i heart. This seems to be a different Jeffrey Wright. We’ll call him Jeff.

6:23

Erin: No, this is the same guy unless they are twins: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0942482/

6:24

Erin: Bill just explained the importance which is: no roads, no goods. Can’t rebuild things unless you can get the trucks in.

6:26

Erin: Maria B. from CNBC is introducing a mega group who all are doing something amazing in their work. Everything from training nurses to providing women with midwives for safe births. They filled the stage.

6:27

Caroline: They’re starting the discussion, as Maria is asking for “status checks on the economy”

6:29

Caroline: She’s asking Abed what to make of the people around the world living under $1 a day

6:30

Caroline: He’s saying that he’s worked in poverty alleviation for 37 years

6:30

Caroline: and that involves policy, health care, education, financial services

6:30

Caroline: the latter including ways to get into business (financial access), tools for saving,

6:31

Caroline: wow, he just said that in Bangladesh he’s been able to get nearly 8 million borrowers in microfinance

6:32

Caroline: He said the dispersed 1.2 billion last year to these 8 million borrowers

6:32

Caroline: LAST YEAR. that’s big

6:34

Caroline: he just used the words “empowering girls”

6:35

Caroline: Maria is asking if he indeed has already seen major commitment by major banks and if there are gov’t programs and policies that should also be put into place.

6:35

Caroline: She’s asking the same question to Sheila Bair

6:35

Caroline: She’s saying that it can help a lot. That providing credit (a source being deposits) is important

6:36

Caroline: 1. providing credit to produce the income and 2. providing a safe place to put the income

6:38

Caroline: Peter is talking about a past commitment about making $500 million available to microfinance institutions and how they’re on track to meet the commitment

6:38

Caroline: his reflection on microfinance is that it’s so clear that it’s a poewrful tool

6:39

Caroline: that typically women take it up

6:39

Caroline: and that empowering women is an incredibly powerful

6:39	[Comment From Rebecca] Looking forward to the last day of Live Blogging!

6:39	[Comment From Katherine Gustafson] He said JP Morgan is a “banker’s bank.” Is that like a man’s man?

6:40

Caroline:

He’s saying that it’s so important that the banks are ABLE to support this, though

6:40

Erin: Jamie Dimon is a hoot; it would be cool if he had a chance to talk.

6:40

Caroline: Which is a hugely important point. We can’t let this economic crisis happen all over again in the sphere of microfinance

6:41

Erin: (Forgive the seemingly random comments from me — Internet is screwy. Posts will publish at will… often very late.)

6:42

Caroline: (Erin, re: that aside — Katie thought it was interesting that I appeared to say it is a “hugely important point” that jamie dimon is a hoot)

6:42

Caroline: Maria just asked for confirmation for the stat that it is over a billion people living under a dollar a day

6:44

Erin: BRAC leaders says 3.5 billion people leave under a dollar a day. WOW.

6:44

Caroline: oh my god, erin. what would i do without your ears

6:44

Erin: Er, make that “LIVE” not leave. Ugh.

6:45

Caroline: ok — the “biggest cause,” Dimon says, is bad lending

6:46

Caroline: something we know all too well

6:47

Caroline: Abed is talking about the importance of insurance — crop insurance, for example — and how difficult it is to secure for many parts of the world

6:48

Caroline:

Maria is asking Sheila if there are opportunities right now to expand and include a broader set of people in the reform efforts. Sheila says there is a “reservation mechanism”

6:51

Caroline: james dimon: If you don’t facilitate failure, you subsidize weak firms.

6:51

Caroline: Erin: If our legal department didn’t do a good job, we’d fix our legal department. If it were the government, they’d just create another legal department. — got laughs at that

6:52

Caroline: (note: the above was from Erin, whose internet is kaput in the ballroom. the actual quotation was from jamie)

6:53

Caroline: Erin notes: “Peter Sands makes a good point: there has to be risk in the system or the banks can’t do their job.”

6:54

Caroline: Maria is saying that though panelists believe “too big to fail” is not an option, isn’t it actually a real possibility?

6:54

Caroline: Sheila: “There’s only so much regulation can accomplish”

6:55

Caroline: Erin: “What they’re saying is that during the rebuild of the economy, they should remake the system so that “too big to fail” doesn’t exist. It’s what they are hoping for.”

6:58

Katherine Gustafson: Hi all!

6:58

Caroline: a good question from the audience: a person walking four hours a for water doesn’t have time to go get a loan and start a business. abed is saying that the importance of building community infrastructure is huge

6:58

Katherine Gustafson: See this article about the loans-for-water issue: http://www.tonic.com/article/matt-damons-commitment-to-bill-clinton/

6:59

Katherine Gustafson: (the idea is if you give people loans to run pipe to their house so they don’t have to walk four hours, they have more time to bring in more income and they can pay back the loan.)

7:00

Caroline: Erin caught a good one — “Peter Sands: If banks do what they do well, they can have a positive effect on a country. If they give too much credit or get too excited, it’s like too much fuel. The engine blows up.”

7:01

Katherine Gustafson: Maria said “people are looking at Africa as an investment opportunity”

7:01

Katherine Gustafson: That’s a thorny topic

7:02

Katherine Gustafson: China has trade of over $50 billion in Africa (according ot Council for Foreign Relations), and we all know how concerning that has been.

7:03

Katherine Gustafson: But if, as a panelist just said, money flows to where it’s well taken care of, maybe investing in AFrica really can be a great growth oppourtunty, as Maria just suggest.

7:04

Katherine Gustafson: Fale Abed say “ultimately we will come to stable population in th world.”

7:04

Katherine Gustafson: Could that be true?

7:04

Caroline: Erin’s passing some good thoughts along. She says: “Re: Katie’s point, I think that was one of the key quotes from this week. I think the CEO of Coke said it. (I think.): When you go to Africa, the street signs are in Chinese.”

7:04

Katherine Gustafson: Isn’t population growth the elephant in the global-poverty and climate-change room?

7:06

Caroline: Erin: “Population growth is the room. Forget the elephant”

7:08

Katherine Gustafson: BTW here’s an online debate: “Is Chinese Investment Good for Africa?” http://www.cfr.org/publication/12622/is_chinese_investment_good_for_africa.html

7:10

Caroline: and that’s a wrap, folks!

7:11

Caroline: BUT … we’ll have a feisty and fun closing session at 1pm with a special address by Hilary Rodham Clinton. Do NOT miss it. You would be sorry.

7:11

Caroline: ta-ta for now

7:11

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