Former President William J. Clinton discusses the current economic crisis and what he feels are the biggest problems of 2009 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Bio
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. At 46 he was the third-youngest president. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and was the first baby boomer president. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is currently the United States Secretary of State. Each received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Yale Law School.
Klaus Schwab
Dr. Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman and Founder of the World Economic Forum, has been dedicated for more than thirty years to improving the state of the world. He is the recipient of numerous international and national honors for initiatives undertaken in the spirit of entrepreneurship in the global public interest and for peace and reconciliation efforts in several regions.
His work at the World Economic Forum has been providing a collaborative framework for leaders of the world to address global issues, engaging particularly its corporate members in global citizenship.
Dr. Schwab holds numerous positions of civic, academic and editorial leadership. He currently serves as Trustee for the Peres Center for Peace, Israel and the Ibrahim Hussein Museum and Cultural Foundation, Malaysia. His academic activities include: Professor for Business Policy, University of Geneva, Member, Overseers’ Visiting Committee, JFK School of Government, Advisory Board Member, Center for International Development, Harvard University, Member of the Corporate Visiting Committee, MIT and Member of the Royal Academy of Morocco. He is a Member of the Editorial Board for Foreign Policy, Chairman of the Editorial Board for World Link Magazine and author of the annual Global Competitiveness Report, in addition to numerous articles and several books.
Previously, Dr. Schwab was a member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Sustainable Development, Vice-Chairman of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning and member of the Earth Council when it was located in Costa Rica.
Dr. Schwab holds a Doctorate in Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of Fribourg, a Doctorate in Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a Master’s of Public Administration from the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Additionally, he has been the recipient of six honorary doctorates, the most recent granted by the London School of Economics.
Born 1938 in Ravensburg, Germany, he is marred to Hilde Schwab, with whom he co-founded the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which supports social innovation projects around the world. He has two children, a son, Oliver and a daughter, Nicole.
(born Aug. 19, 1946, Hope, Ark., U.S.) 42nd president of the U.S. (1993–2001). Born shortly after his father's death in a car crash, he later took the last name of his mother's second husband, Roger Clinton. He attended Georgetown University, the University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and Yale Law School, then taught law at the University of Arkansas. He served as state attorney general (1977–79) and served several terms as governor (1979–81, 1983–92), during which he reformed Arkansas's educational system and encouraged the growth of industry through favourable tax policies. In 1992 he won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination despite charges of personal impropriety; in the subsequent election he defeated the incumbent, Republican George Bush, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot. As president, Clinton obtained Senate ratification of the NAFTA accord in 1993. Along with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, he devised a plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system, but it was rejected by Congress. He committed U.S. forces to a peacekeeping initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1994 the Democrats lost control of Congress for the first time since 1954. Clinton responded by offering a deficit-reduction plan while opposing efforts to slow government spending on social programs. He defeated Robert Dole to win reelection in 1996. In 1997 he helped broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland. He faced renewed charges of personal impropriety, this time involving his relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky; he denied the charges before a grand jury but ultimately acknowledged “improper relations” in a televised address. In 1998 Clinton became only the second president in history to be impeached. Charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, he was acquitted by the Senate in 1999. His two terms saw sustained economic growth and successive budget surpluses, the first in three decades.
Wells Fargo my homeowner.
Bank of America is my girlfriend's homeowner
CitiBank, my parents homeowner.
The problem was not caused by security instruments. It was caused by a federal reserve deciding to manage the economy rather than inflation. The government dumped trillions of dollars into the economy through low interest rates and reduced taxes which inflated everything from the dollar to oil to gold to food to, yes, home values. Third world economies were being valued as if they had the infrastructure of the first world as these trillions of dollars squeezed into every available investment with a hope of return. Speculation ran wild as more money chased bad money. I understand why it was done - Y2K followed by 9/11 and a long interminable war, but using those tools that made the great depression worse and longer to fix, are NOT the tools needed now. We don't need 900 billion more dollars flooding the market. We don't need governments betting on the next "sure" thing with more trillions of dollars.
Pres Clinton's optimism is encouraging but I'm not buying it. There are too many "leaders" that fight progress. I would love to be proven wrong but obviously the House vote in the US backs up my view.
To lyonsban: it wasn't homeowners that ruined the banking system it was securitized mortgages and their spinoffs that were valued too high. In otherwords, financial instruments were recklessly created and a few people made a lot of money. Now those that got nothing out of it are paying for their carelessness.
First off I have great respect for Mr. Clinton's tenure as President. He was more fiscally responsible than any President in recent history. However.
1) The government underwrites homeownership, now he wants it to underwrite the banking system because homeowners ruined the banking system? What's next, insurance companies? Forget I asked.
2) I understand he's talking to the world economic forum, but the USA needs exports to balance those imports he's so worried about.
3) Rather than monitoring and testing the barely started stimulus plan, he wants to throw most of the GDP at a winner? Casino owners have a name for that. Sucker.
An interesting take on a way to approach this troubling problem our nation is dealing with. I guess that's the beauty of these forums ... present new ideas and discuss methods of implementing them.
member. 
