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Mr. Rosso has been Chairman of World Economic Forum USA Inc. since April 2006. Mr. Rosso served as Chairman of CNH Global N.V. from November 1999 until his retirement in[…]
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Government should stay out of the way.

Question: Is there enough regulation of global capital?

Jean Pierre Rosso: Yeah, I am against regulations so now yeah, I think that as long as we find a way to control  the flow of money that goes that  would go to a ill conceived initiatives and obviously you are dealing with  terrorism at  this point , that is legitimate that we have mechanisms to make sure that we have a way to attract illicit  movements our suspicious movements of money so just a delicate   balance here but,  right and this is being done as we speak, I mean  probably more than we know,  care  to know,  but other than that I think to regulate in this  business sense  of the world I think that again I would be a mistake because I obviously a convinced capitalists not because it is the [inaudible] ,  not because it is, it  doesn’t have any draw backs but frankly we have in [inaudible] in using  better so to rise, to raise   the level of very one, so the world to progress up to now is through a capitalistic system, and if you could find something better on what we are open to it open to it,  but we have not. So and the essecnce of the capitalist system is that  , you do not want to regulate [inaudible] you want it certainly  you want to do minimum to make sure that this order is preserved and that again  no illegal or illicit things have been done.

Question: How is globalization altering the state/market relationship?

Jean Pierre Rosso: Huge change,you know,  globalization has in some well known, I would say [inaudible]  but well known statements on this you know world is flattend, so just draw I mean to some extent, some extent is to that the globalization has we have move from a  national markets to a global market so in all people think to comply any where, every where in the world and they are and this has created a situation where large global company have  certainly acquired  the power that is very, very significant some of them have the citizenship to deal  with this the corporate values  used to do with this, some of them may not yet, but they are getting their quickly,  because they have  realized their responsibility in  the world because of their presence and to some extent that has raised the awareness amongst CEOs of large Global  companies that  global corporate citizen ship is very important and they have to deal with that and they are which is also one of the reasons the forum is successful attracting   this interest because that is we talk about that. So that is one thing, the second thing is that countries have sort of lost a fair amount of power in this globalization evolution and because obviously this grows across   nations. So this is a change that is interesting to witness and some countries react smartly to this and some not so smartly so but progressively inevitably this is going to  go in  the right direction because business is getting conscious of their responsibilities and governments are starting to  understanding how they can deal  with this phenomenon  more, more effectively as an opportunity  who are in the threat, here is the big difference of course the countries have gone to protection these measures I have tried to contain  their industry by  artificial means and that is not the solution, the solution is to not to look at this aa a  threat but to look at this as an opportunity   and those who  do are successful.

Question: What does a U.S. recession mean for markets around the world?

Jean Pierre Rosso: At this point I think that we can argue whether we will, or will not and to what extent we have a recession putting a name on the economic slow down is always sort of artificial.  here we saw recession is two quarters of negative growth  okay so that is arbitrary  decision but so be it, if that is the decision I don’t know whether we will have that may be we do, may be we  don’t I think it is a immaterial to a large extent we will come out of this and go again. So it is only a temporary situation, now having said this even if we have this the engines of growth in the rest of the world are powerful enough that I don’t think this will trigger world recession at all because the those growing economies are just unbelievable and if take me China  grows at 10%, a year or , 9% a year , if  they  start growing at 6% a  year  I mean this is still a lot of growth. So I don’t see, I don’t see that as a problem at all.

Question: Is the growing income gap a threat to global markets?

Jean Pierre Rosso: Well, I think the purchasing power of Americans is decreasing and will continue to decrease. I think this is inevitable as a result of this global trend. So the, some of the other countries are raising to that level, coming to that level I think as I said earlier the bigger problem is the income disparity between Africa and the rest of the world I think this is probably the most serious issue on that particular question that in my view we have.

Date Recorded: 03/19/2008


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