Bill Clinton at NBK

Yesterday the National Bank of Kuwait hosted an evening with former President of the United States Bill Clinton, which yours truly had a chance to attend.. 

The night revolved around an address by the 42nd President of the US, and founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation and was followed by dinner.. 

The audience was very selective and consisted of the Kuwaiti Business Community Elites, Founders and Stakeholders of NBK, as well as NBK customers.. 

Things I learnt about Bill Clinton were that he was allegedly one of the best Presidents the US had ever seen.. He transformed the US economy around and took it's deficit and turned it into a surplus for the first time in years.. 

In his Presidential term he also helped create millions of jobs as well as help give the US, its best economy ever.. 

But the best thing was his speech, he sure was charismatic! 

He did not falter, slow down, or get lost once during his 45-60 minute speech; note he wasn't even reading or seemed to even possess a paper on hand.. I was amazed by his oratory skills to tell you the truth and the confidence/posture/overall demeanor that he kept throughout.. We need a couple of Bill Clintons here, and not that endless yapping in the Parliament, which seems like child-play when compared to his speech yesterday.. 

He stressed about the following points (which i felt were noteworthy of penning down):

-"The Central Character of the 21st Century world is its interdependence"  (**key-word "globalization") 

-He advised that we keep pumping more liquidity into the system until confidence comes back to the economy, thereby emphasizing that one of the key players in this crisis are the investors/people who have lost confidence in the overall system, and by getting that back, we can get back on track.. (**makes sense, especially after the big drop in the Kuwaiti Stock Market today, "الله يستر", people are afraid of the risk) 

-He suggested that we stop rescheduling/putting back investments and business plans, etc. till after the economy comes back, on the contrary we should invest in things that have independent value (**something along the lines of strengthening our base), so that we can get out of this crisis in a better solid shape (**in other words, follow this crisis with economic development).. In a nutshell, he feels like the more "economic stimulus" we create, the better at this point.. 

-He said we should worry about "Global deflation" and boost economic activity such as interbank lending, confidence, investment, and all round productivity).. 

-He gave a lengthy explanation of the negative externalities the US would go through if they lost General Motors (**for non-financial folk out there, GM is bankrupt and might go out of business, its one of the biggest manufacturing companies in the US).. Economic activity across the US, according to Bill, will be disastrous since GM engages suppliers, employees, etc across the US and the globe; thus the people, be they suppliers of parts, employees, salespeople, etc. involved in the GM productions curve will all suffer.. 

The speech was followed by Q&A, in which a lot of questions were politically inclined even though he was speaking mostly about finance and the economy; odd i know.. 

They asked him about whether Hillary Clinton was going to serve as a Secretary of State, and whether Obama asked her; he dismissed the question by saying he didn't know since when they started those rumors or whatever, he was here (**in Kuwait), but its noteworthy to mention that he took a couple of minutes to praise Hillary and her work/brilliant grasp of economics, etc. which i thought was so cute. (**the fact that he was sincere showed)

They also asked him what he had wished to have done before leaving office in which he answered three things:

1)Persuade Yasser Arafat to keep his work and sign Clinton's peace plan; if he did, Palestine would have had its independent state, and that would have stopped most of the blood shed and "War on Terror", since that would allegedly stabilize the region a bit. 

2)Gotten a universal health care plan initiated in the US, which they are working towards now apparently.. 

3)Stopped the Rwandan Genocide..

Overall, it was an amazing evening, and as my best friend put it "a once-in-a-life-time" chance to see such an amazing public speaker and one of the most influential people of our time in action.. 

For a more thorough and in-depth read about yesterday's event, refer to this article by the Arab Times: "Negative Psychology Fuels Economic Downturn."

PS. One day....