Raphael John-Lall

The Amer­i­can State De­part­ment-fund­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Vis­i­tor Lead­er­ship pro­gramme pro­vid­ed in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­mists from the west­ern hemi­sphere with an overview of the state of the Amer­i­can econ­o­my and how it is try­ing to get out of the re­ces­sion. The pro­gramme State De­part­ment hosts every year usu­al­ly cov­ers dif­fer­ent ar­eas and top­ics. This spe­cif­ic pro­gramme was held from Ju­ly 27 to Au­gust 15 and was en­ti­tled, "The Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery and the Evolv­ing Glob­al Fi­nan­cial Sys­tem." Par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme were macro and mi­cro econ­o­mists and busi­ness and eco­nom­ics jour­nal­ists.

They were ex­posed to a wide range of views in meet­ings with of­fi­cials, from econ­o­mists to bankers to trade union­ists to small busi­ness own­ers. They trav­elled across sev­er­al cities, in­clud­ing Wash­ing­ton and New York, and met with of­fi­cials from fed­er­al agen­cies and pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions. The aim of the pro­gramme was to pro­vide an un­der­stand­ing of how the Unit­ed States econ­o­my works at the fed­er­al lev­el, the state lev­el, at the lev­el of the pri­vate sec­tor and what is be­ing done now to climb out of the worst re­ces­sion the US has found it­self in since the Great De­pres­sion of 1930s. The pro­gramme be­gan in Wash­ing­ton DC with a macro-eco­nom­ic view of the US econ­o­my.

Think tanks

Par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme had wide-rang­ing meet­ings with a cross-sec­tion of groups that im­pact on the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, in­clud­ing fed­er­al agen­cies, think tanks and mul­ti­lat­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions. In Wash­ing­ton DC, par­tic­i­pants vis­it­ed the Paul Pe­ter­son In­sti­tute for In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics, US Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, the US De­part­ment of the Trea­sury, US Fed­er­al Re­serve, Over­seas Pri­vate In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (OPIC) and the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee from the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Meet­ings were al­so held with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the World Bank and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

In­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors were able to get a gen­er­al un­der­stand­ing of US eco­nom­ic sys­tem and how it is in­ter-re­lat­ed with the out­side world, es­pe­cial­ly the oth­er coun­tries in the west­ern hemi­sphere. Af­ter spend­ing a week in Wash­ing­ton DC, par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme moved to New York.

Se­nior ex­ecs share their ex­pe­ri­ences

In New York, ap­point­ments in­volved meet­ings with Busi­ness Week, the Mu­se­um of Amer­i­can Fi­nance and the Con­fer­ence Board.

The Con­fer­ence Board, which has been in ex­is­tence for 90 years, makes pro­vi­sions for se­nior busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives world­wide to share prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences with their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.

There was al­so a meet­ing at the New York Uni­ver­si­ty Stern School of Busi­ness, where a group of pro­fes­sors from the de­part­ment of eco­nom­ics met with the par­tic­i­pants and dis­cussed the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the caus­es of the eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion in the US. They al­so pro­mot­ed a new book, Restor­ing Fi­nan­cial Sta­bil­i­ty: How to Re­pair a Failed Sys­tem. This is an ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of white pa­pers writ­ten by aca­d­e­mics at the New York Uni­ver­si­ty Stern Busi­ness School.

Af­ter a cou­ple days in New York, in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors head­ed to the Amer­i­can Mid­west to the State of Mis­souri where they spent a week. In Kansas City, Mis­souri, the group took an in­depth view of that state's econ­o­my. There was a vis­it and tour of the Gen­er­al Mo­tors plant in the Kansas City area. Par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme learned that there are hopes for a strong re­cov­ery by New Gen­er­al Mo­tors. The par­tic­i­pants al­so vis­it­ed the Fed­er­al Re­serve of­fice in Kansas City. A meet­ing with the Small Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion in Kansas City was al­so sched­uled and the par­tic­i­pants were able to hear about the chal­lenges fac­ing small Amer­i­can busi­ness­es dur­ing the cur­rent re­ces­sion.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so went to the neigh­bour­ing Kansas State–not to be con­fused with Kansas City in Mis­souri–where they met with small busi­ness own­ers and vis­it­ed a ranch there, where they met with cat­tle ranch own­ers and had dis­cus­sions of the agri­cul­tur­al and rur­al econ­o­my. In Mi­a­mi, the sched­ule was a bit lighter as many of the meet­ings the State De­part­ment had orig­i­nal­ly or­gan­ised had to be mod­i­fied be­cause many of­fi­cials were on sum­mer hol­i­days or out of state. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant meet­ings in Mi­a­mi in­volved a trip to the Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty, where in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors had an ap­point­ment that in­volved the im­pact of hur­ri­canes on the in­sur­ance in­dus­try in the US.

Get­ting past the re­ces­sion

Up­per­most in the minds of all Amer­i­cans–be they in­vest­ment bankers, trade union­ists, gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy mak­ers or just or­di­nary Amer­i­cans–is get­ting out of the re­ces­sion. Most Amer­i­cans we spoke to are op­ti­mistic that they have what it takes to sur­vive these dif­fi­cult times and to get out of the re­ces­sion. Af­ter all, it will not be the first time that Amer­i­cans have beat­en the odds of a cri­sis fi­nan­cial or oth­er­wise. Amer­i­can his­to­ry is full of ex­am­ples of re­silience and de­ter­mi­na­tion in the face of ad­ver­si­ty. The pro­gramme at the end of the day showed par­tic­i­pants, the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that are Amer­i­cans are fac­ing at all lev­els and, just as im­por­tant­ly, that the en­tire world econ­o­my is in­ter-locked and what hap­pens in the US af­fects the rest of the world.