Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Summit Agenda

The Concordia Summit Agenda has finally been updated. The cool thing about the Summit is that nobody really has any idea what is going to happen during the event until all of the guests have confirmed whether or not they will attend, and then the agenda is structured based on attendees and what they are willing to speak about. Strategically placed this Thursday, it is always set during the week of the UN General Assembly, with hopes that a good amount of foreign officials can attend while  they are in NYC already.

It looks like this year, the Summit is going to overlap quite a bit with specific aspects of our International Political Economy class- more so than just the Public Private Partnerships discussion. The first plenary session will be a Q&A with Senator John McCain, entitled "America's Role in the World of Globalization". I will have to post again on what he will say, but I imagine that there will be quite an emphasis on free trade and our role in foreign investment, not unlike funding the setup of telecommunications in India back in the nineties. Perhaps education will also be a big part of this conversation.

There will also be a panel on Mitigating Risks of The Global Economy via Public Private Partnerships. The introduction will be given by George Logothetis, an incredibly well-spoken CEO and Chairman of the Libra Group (see here for highlights of his take on the overcoming the Financial Crisis in Greece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lVEnBej5q4). The panel will be comprised of representatives from Poland, the Inter-American Development Bank, Latvia, the Eurasia Group, and Greece.

Finally, one more thing I'm really bummed that I will be missing relevant to our class is a segment on Reconstruction and Economic Growth in Haiti. The current Prime Minister of Haiti, Laurent Lamothe, will be giving the address himself, and I think it will be interesting to see what kind of suggestions he has. Lamothe was educated in the United States and went on to found a telecommunications company, quite unlike many uneducated and struggling Haitians.  I wonder if he will bring a more technological perspective in investment in Haiti, or perhaps it could be focused on infrastructure or labor, maybe tourism. I'm very interested what his specific ideas are to make Haiti attractive to foreign investment.


Here is an updated copy of the agenda for tomorrow's Summit, in case anyone is interested in what kind of issues it covers. I hope I can find a way to access video clips or perhaps even online streaming later, these were two options we had discussed during the summer.
http://theconcordiasummit.org/2012-summit/agenda.html

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