BY MICHAEL SOLTYS AND PETER JOHNSON
Herald Staff

Back in Argentina for the first time in 12 years, former United States president Bill Clinton addressed an entirely different set of problems in a very different world. But despite the scale of the problems which his Clinton Global Initiative foundation is tackling, there was a strong note of the name of his birthplace (Hope, Arkansas) in his message.

Speaking to 1,500 people at the Hilton Hotel last night, Clinton looked at crises past and present but also beyond. Concerning Argentina’s meltdown of 2001-2, he said that he had urged then US President George W. Bush to help Argentina in 2002 — Bush had not listened but in the end it did not matter since Argentina thereafter grew at an annual nine percent for the next five years.

Equally, he looked at the current global crisis, tracing it from its origins in the United States (in 2007, when there was an alarming increase in foreclosures — the crisis could have been nipped in the bud there and then, in his opinion) to its rapid spread to first countries like Ireland and “heavily leveraged” Iceland through Japan and Germany to Eastern Europe with Latin America one of the last regions in the world to be affected. Thanks to US President Barack Obama’s 860-billion-dollar package and assistance to nine million homes, he hoped the worst was over but it was impossible to say when the crisis would end with so many countries and variables involved. One of the paradoxes of the post-crisis scenario was that far more traditional methods of finance, investment and risk assessment would be needed to serve an increasingly modern economy and take full advantage of the globalization of the 21st century.

And yet both the US and the world at large were in a mess before the crisis broke. In the US two-thirds of incomes were lower in September, 2008 than when Clinton ended his two economically and fiscally successful terms in office in early 2001 while health care costs had doubled — among the remaining third, the top one percent of the population picked up 43 percent of the gains and the top 10 percent 90. And in the world half the planet lived on less than two dollars a day and 130 million children have never been to school even for a day.

The dangers of climate change occupied a considerable part of a speech lasting over an hour (and starting 105 minutes late). Clinton described the panorama as even worse than previously feared — the planet’s average temperature is now expected to increase nine degrees this century, not four, which would wash away the homes of 100 million people by mid-century.

Yet while the world must definitely cut back on its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, Clinton does not feel anybody has to stop making money — simply make it in different ways. Thus a New York City project to improve the efficiency of the Empire State Building by 40 percent would both create jobs and save 7.5 million dollars in utility bills. Another example is his foundation’s work in keeping two million AIDS patients around the world alive at the cost of 120 dollars a year via generic medicines — not by asking pharmaceutical companies to lose money but to persuade them to sell giant volumes at small margins. His foundation reaches some 200 million people around the world.

Earlier in the day Clinton held a luncheon meeting with local business executives and departing US Ambassador E. Anthony Wayne at which he also highlighted Argentina’s potential and gave his view of the world and the crisis affecting many nations.

Among the select few at the luncheon were the hosts of the event Gerardo and Julio Werthein, the head of the Petersen Group, Enrique Eskenazi, Eduardo Elsztain (IRSA), Gustavo Cinosi (Exposium) and Jorge Brito (Banco Macro), among others.

After his address in the Hilton, Clinton dined with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at La Cabaña restaurant, the same grill where he dined with Hillary when visiting Argentina in 1997.