Remarks at the Council of the Americas
                                                         99968

by
James D. Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank Group

Washington D.C., May 3, 1999

Thank you for your introduction and I am very happy to come to address
this group. When the Council of the Americas asks me to do something, I
always have an image of David Rockefeller. And when I have the image of
David Rockefeller I say yes, and then I think how I can do it. And it's
wonderful to see David sitting there, and let me acknowledge my own great
personal debt to him over so many years. He picked me up when I was first
at Harvard, and when I came to New York I didn't have many friends, but I
started with David Rockefeller, and I was told that's a pretty good place
to start.

And so I'm very happy that he is here.

Let me say first of all that we have just finished the spring meetings of
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I was asked to talk
here today about the reassessing of the global financial architecture and
its impact on Latin America. So let me first start with what happened at
the spring meetings and then let me try and tell you what I think the
impact is on Latin America, if there is an impact. I see Marcus de Pavia
here is going to be able to speak later about Brazil. But let me describe
to you the environment which was one of trying to deal with the recent
financial turmoil.

Financial turmoil is something you have been familiar with in Latin
America. You all recall the '94 Mexican crisis. You will recall the
reaction of your governments and of the private sector to try and deal
with the issues of structure, the issues of fiscal and monetary policy,
the issues of trying to ensure, once and for all, that it would not
happen again to Latin America and that you would take the necessary steps
to make sure it did not happen.

Well, there is very little doubt that the steps that were taken in
country after country were extraordinarily helpful. And, in fact, during
periods of turbulence, with, really only one scare in Brazil, broadly,
Latin America avoided the problems of Korea, Thailand and Indonesia. Not
completely, of course, but broadly. Until we had a drop in commodity
prices and then we had the Russian scare, which proved to be too much for
the Brazilian situation.

What was clear was that the markets were linked. I need hardly tell this
group that. That events in Russia could have an impact in Brazil,
notwithstanding the fact that there is precious little trade and precious
little relationship. But the impact on markets and access to markets and
the uncertainty of international investors and of international banks was
immediately translated to an impact on Latin America.

Of course, it varied country by country, and it still varies country by
country. With Mexico, as the Minister was telling me this week, now
feeling resurgent confidence as oil prices move forward, with the
Brazilian situation looking much better today than it did two or three
months ago, with the Argentine situation looking better, Ecuador being a
little sick. And varying, I won't go country by country, but there are
varying levels of either optimism or lack of optimism in other countries.

Overall, the potential for this coming year is, as you know, far less
attractive than it was in 1997. The 5 percent plus growth rates are now
on average in the one percent area. In the case of Brazil, negative
growth this year but with hopes for a turnaround. But the feeling is
generally that if things keep all right, if commodity prices return, then
there is a chance that the crisis can be averted and we can move forward.

What I found interesting as I looked at the statistics was the size of
the countries relative to the Asian situation. I am used to thinking of
the Korea/Thailand/Indonesia framework, but it is important to put Latin
America in the context of the global scene as well.

When I talk of Asia, I talk of those countries, but I am quick to point
out that Japan is a five trillion dollar economy. Five thousand billion
dollars. And Indonesia is around 200 billion dollars. That Korea is
around 480 billion dollars and that Thailand is around 165 billion dollar
economy. So when you speak of Thailand and Indonesia, you're talking of
economies that are 1/25th the size of Japan. So a three or four percent
move in Japan is the totality of the economies in Asia. And when you look
at Latin America, you find Brazil at nearly 800 million, Mexico at 3500
million, Argentina at 320 million. And then Colombia's 87, Ecuador's 20,
Peru's 60, and Venezuela's 79.

The first thing you have to understand is that these economies are very
vulnerable to world pressures, because they are quite small. And the
impact of commodity prices and movements internationally has a very, very
significant impact, which I need hardly tell you is true of many of the
countries in the region.

So the first thing we acknowledge is that taken after '94 strengthened
the structure. And it looks as though today we're through the worst. That
the access to markets, albeit at high spreads, has returned. We seem to
be a bit further back from the edge of the precipice and things seem to
be more calm. And there is some hope in Asia that Korea and Thailand at
least have restored their growth, and that Indonesia is awaiting an
election. That China, with a 7 or 8 percent growth, seems to be
reasonably stable at a trillion dollar economy. That India is okay at 6
to 7 percent growth. And that a sense of calm has returned.

Michel Camdessus [IMF Managing Director] and I were constantly asked at
the spring meetings, is the crisis over? And we were able to say that
it's a hell of a lot better than it was, and that maybe we're through the
worst. And that if that happens, then you'd have to say that the outlook
for Latin America as part of the global economy is probably better. And
that access is likely to return.

We have seen a big change in the flow of funds. Until '98, you had some
reduction in private sector investing. In the first half of '99, there
has been a very significant drop. And you have shared in the problem of
bank financing and all private sector financing, which in '97 was $300
billion and it dropped a hundred billion in the following year, meaning
that availability of bank financing, access to bond markets was much
reduced. And now we're seeing the first signs of return.

I can always tell at the Bank, because when people come to the Bank and
the IFC, it's in tough times. And they forget us when everything is
great. And we've had a huge amount of business coming in, and now people
are starting to get mildly arrogant again, which shows me that things are
changing. But they're not yet certain enough to be rude.

So I guess on that test, we are somewhere in the middle.

And what people are now talking about is the need for greater
transparency, the need for more common practices in terms of disclosure,
of banks and the private sector, the need for a common set of accounting
principles in the private sector and a better common set of principles
for banks and financial institutions, on the basis that adequate
disclosure of those facts plus the disclosure of short-term flows. Too
many countries had been overly dependent on short-term flows, and I would
speak here not just of Asia but of some countries also in the your
hemisphere. This over-dependence on short-term flows and the desire to
protect uncompetitive exchange rates was at the center of the debate. And
the theory was you can't force people to do these things, but with
disclosure of what's going on you have a much better chance of the forces
working so that governments can make rational decisions. And if you have
this over-dependence on short-term flows, you don't try and protect the
rate beyond what is sensible because that leads to a transfer of official
funds that have been put in simply to protect the market. And if you do
it too long, it's throwing money out the window. Again, pretty basic
stuff. But that was the nature of the discussion.

And I think that on the issue of transparency, on the issue of common
practices for banks and for financial institutions and for corporations,
that clearly this is moving forward.

But in the Asian environment, there was something deeper than that that
we were looking at. And it was not just the Asian environment. It was
also Russia. It was the fundamentals of what is it that causes the
instability in the system. And here the debate went from the financial to
the non-financial. It went to the issue of structure. It went to the
issue of the social fabric of the countries.

And one after another as we looked at these countries, in light of a
framework which we have developed at the Bank particularly, we decided
that you could have your debate on the finances, you could have the
debate on fiscal and monetary policy. You could have the debate on the
macroeconomic framework. But if you did not look at fundamentals, you
could not be assured of stability.

And the sort of things we thought about in Asia, before I come to this
hemisphere, were the following. You have to have decent government. And
you have to have trained government. You need to build capacity in
government at all levels. Because if you do not and you give them a
check, you get very different performance depending on the level of
government.

Then you needed to look at corruption. You might have very able
government officials, but if they are corrupt, you distort completely the
possibility of having equitable growth. And country after country is
joining in the issue of confronting corruption. In fact, the last time I
spoke in this room was two months ago with Al Gore, just on the issue of
corruption. We had 99 countries represented here.

So the first issue was governance and corruption. The second was to have
a legal system that works. In many of the countries in which we have been
dealing, and I daresay it's true in some countries in Latin America, you
do not have a complete and coherent legal system. In Korea and Thailand
and Indonesia, you did not have adequate bankruptcy laws. Without
adequate bankruptcy laws, it's very difficult to reconstruct companies.
Without protection of property rights, it's very difficult to construct
companies. Without proper provision for land ownership, which is
something again that is relevant in this region, it's very hard to have
equitable distribution or indeed protection of property rights.

So the second question that we addressed was the issue of legal systems
but if the judges are crooked it doesn't help. So the question of the
judicial system being honest becomes central to the question not just of
the social structure but also of the economic structure. These are not
dollars and cents issues, but they are fundamental issues.

And we recently had a wonderful meeting run by the World Bank bringing
together the judges of Latin America in terms of trying to address the
question of the organization of the legal system and an effective justice
system. And we addressed the very difficult subject of an honest justice
system, which regrettably is not always the case.

The third thing we looked at was the issue of supervision and control.
Regulation of financial and corporate sectors. Not in the sense of
putting on a straitjacket, but in the sense of having a straightforward
set of rules and regulations and supervisors who can ensure that the
playing field was level. This was surely not true in Korea, where
President Kim won an election on the basis of his opposition to the
interrelationships between politics, the regulatory authorities, and
private sector. The issue of non-regulation and the issue of familial
control, and in that country chaebol control, became the central issue
which got him elected; that brought about a change in government in
Indonesia through the reaction of the people to that issue. What is
distressing in Asia at the moment is that as the economics get better,
the willingness to change some of the fundamental structures is
diminishing.
And then the fourth thing to think about was the social sector. Social
safety nets. We saw that in Russia, where the Russians went ahead with
privatization, it was one thing to have people with a social safety net
that was built by the family, built by the company - and in Russia,
particularly, the company - but when you put 200 thousand people out of
work and you do not have a social system, you have people in the streets
and you have coal miners lying on the railway tracks disrupting the
country.

So you could say these four issues of governance corruption, legal system
and justice, the question of supervision of the banking and the private
sector and the social safety net were issues that became central to the
debate on the structure of the architecture. These are not issues of
whether you protect the exchange rate or whether you have an inflationary
or deflationary policy or what is the stimulus. But if you do not have
this right, you are going to have an architecture that is built on sand.

And we went beyond that. We talked about what are the things that are
going to bring about equity in a society. First is education and
knowledge. There is a real chance of bringing about some greater sense of
stability with increased education and knowledge transfer, made much more
possible now with technology. Although it was not in this hemisphere, let
me tell you about my recent trip to the Ivory Coast, where they produce
products that are competitive to some in this hemisphere, cocoa and
coffee. And the farmers, two and a half million of them in the Ivory
Coast, had been talking been dealing with monopolistic intermediaries and
getting ripped off as they sold, and we tried to break that up. And I
went into the jungles and into a village where I was made a chief, which
Bob Mosbacher did not mention in his introduction, unfortunately. But I
am now a chief. And there I was in my robes with my gold chains sitting
in the village, no pavements, dirt roads. And I went into an office with
my brother chiefs and there were two Ivorians sitting at two computers,
one weighing in the coffee and the cocoa and the other on the Internet,
miles from anywhere, getting the prices from Chicago, London and Paris
and sending them out to the farmers.

And then I went back to talk to my brother chiefs and we discussed
hedging and forward exchange and the Chicago futures market and Paris and
London, all with people that were illiterate. But the drama of the
communications and the possibility of knowledge transfer and distance
learning and all the things that go with it, provide a huge opportunity
to bring about a change in that gap. But also a huge danger, that if we
do not bring the developing countries along, they will fall back yet
another generation. But the potential is there.

And going back to what we have been talking about at the Bank, to
development. We talked about health care. We talked about water. We
talked of a world that in the next 25 years will add 2 billion people to
its numbers. A world that has 3 billion people now living under 2 dollars
a day, and a billion four hundred million living under one dollar a day.
And we talked about power. And we talked about rural roads. And we talked
about rural sector policies and urban policies. Sixty percent of the
world will live in cities by the year 2025. This is a huge difference in
terms of dynamics.

And why am I talking about this at a time I am talking about financial
architecture? Because if you do not deal with these issues, no financial
architecture is going to work. Growth is essential, but it is not enough.
Which leads me to this hemisphere. Because although I've been talking
about Asia and I've been taking about Russia, there is a resonance in
your countries. The level of poverty is 37 percent in Latin America. The
difference between rich and poor is greater in this hemisphere than in
any other hemisphere. The lowest 20 percent have 4.5 percent of the
income. The upper 20 percent have nearly 50 percent. That is not a recipe
for stability.

Education has been improved, but the uneducated are increasing. Some of
the social statistics are working in favor of stability. But for me what
was fascinating was to be at the Santiago Summit, where instead of the
Washington consensus being played out, or the so-called Washington
consensus, all the leaders of Latin America reiterated the work towards a
hemispheric goal of free trade and integration. And they committed
themselves to an ambitious and enlightened program of social and
institutional development in the region.

And what did they talk about? Education and health systems. Strengthening
financial systems and capital markets. Fighting corruption. The
administration of justice. Improving the income earning potential of the
poor. The Santiago consensus was a social consensus. It was not a
financial consensus.

And the one message I wanted to leave you with is that at least in my
judgment, in terms of your deliberations about financial and economic
policy, I would simply urge you that for your kids, the issue is social.
You must address the structural and social issues. It is not a question
of whether your companies will make money next year or five years or ten
years from now, in our lifetimes. I am sure they will. But the legacy is
the legacy of stability and social justice.

I say this not as a wide-eyed, green activist. I have actually played
your game, and rather well. I say it because I truly believe that when
you think about the architecture of the financial system, we can have
short-term fixes. But what is necessary is for us to look at long term
solutions. And the long-term solutions are structural and social. They
simply are. And the debate which you hear is on the former, not the
latter. I just urge you to think of that. It is what we are thinking
about in Asia, and I think it applies equally in this hemisphere. Thank
you very much.

[applause]

MODERATOR: President Wolfensohn has kindly agreed to answer some
questions. So I am sure there are those of you who have many questions.

QUESTION: We've been talking a great deal this morning about Ecuador. And
you just mentioned structural and social. And was recently in Miami I had
a talk with one of your executives at a Business Week conference, we
spoke. And the issue came out about giving aid to Ecuador at a time when
the country had frozen deposits. Now, we all know that the deposits that
get frozen are not the deposits of the wealthy because those are already
gone out, but of the lower and middle classes.

This week you just passed an aid package for Ecuador. Was there any
condition in that package that the deposits had to be unfrozen as early
as possible to qualify for the aid package?

MR. WOLFENSOHN: Well, we discussed it. I was at meetings with the Finance
Minister on Friday. There are a number of things which need to be done in
Ecuador. I do not know how you discussed it this morning. The first thing
is to do some audits to try and find out what's going on in the banks.
And that is underway now. In fact, it starts today with an international
team. Because I believe in that country, the first thing we have to find
out is what is there, who has the claims. And that's not altogether
clear.

The second thing is that the banks clearly need restructuring. When we
find out what's wrong with them, they'll certainly need restructuring.
And fundamental to that is a desire to ensure that the depositors below a
certain level have protection. I don't now recall whether that's a
condition or whether it's implicit, but everybody believes that.

The third thing that you have to do at the moment is to return some sense
of confidence to the country so you don't have anarchy. And I believe
that this package will go some way to doing that.

So the financial issues we tried to deal with on Friday, Michel
(Camdessus) and I and Enrique Iglesias all lined up with the finance
minister - we came up with a pretty significant package on the financial
side. But there again, I'd say to you that the issue goes beyond that.
The issue goes to a question of restoration of confidence in government,
restoration of confidence in supervision, pursuit of people that have
been corrupt, and establishment of a basis on which you can then move
forward.

But when you have a shock like you've had in Ecuador, it takes a little
time. So what you have to do in the meantime is make sure that the human
impact in terms of the very poor is dealt with. So some of our programs
are, in fact, designed as emergency programs to try and deal with the
issue of poverty and those that are badly off.

I think you all know that in the recent crisis, the impact has been most
felt by the poor. The rich and the middle class can be a little less rich
and a little less middle class, but if you're making a dollar a day it's
the difference between survival and not surviving. And that has been the
explicit result in Asia. And because of the extent of poverty in Latin
America, 172 million people, that is the vulnerability.

So the thing that we have to do, and the same with Enrique [Iglesias] at
the Inter-American Development Bank is to try and come in and do two
things at once. One is to restore the functioning of the system. And the
other thing is to come in and deal with the extreme issues of poverty.

And what you need to do is not just give something to someone to eat.
What you don't want to do is to lose a generation. The kids that are in
school and the kids that are getting some health treatment and so on, if
you withdraw it they'll either be physically damaged or mentally unable
to carry forward.

So the need at that level is crucial. And we're dealing - we're trying to
deal with a difficult situation in Ecuador. I'm really quite impressed by
the Minister of Finance. I think she's a very strong lady. Very, very
strong lady.

QUESTION: I want to congratulate you on your focus. And in the context of
social issues, I think everybody agrees on the importance of education. I
wonder if the Bank has some observation on the role of politicians in
contributing to the disinformation and ignorance of the people in the
world, and not just the Third World, by using populist and demagogic
arguments constantly over the years, and how much they contribute to
deepening the crisis, and whether the Bank has what I would call a
demagogue detector to preclude supporting regimes that justify their
existence on demagoguery and populism, and therefore deepening the crisis
by disinforming the people even more.

MR. WOLFENSOHN: Well, I work for politicians. I don't have my own
business any more. I'm an international civil servant. I'm not allowed to
comment on politics. Having said that, I will.

[laughter]

I think, obviously, that there are demagogues among politicians and I
think there are bad politicians, I think there are good politicians. And
what we're trying to do at the Bank, to the extent that you can, is to
try and deal with our own social assessments. I mean, I have teams -- in
the case of Thailand, for example, we were the first team to go out into
the farms to see what was really going on with the return of urban
laborers to the country. We're working extensively throughout Latin
America in terms of social assessments.

And there the best thing that you can do is, essentially, to try and get
the facts. Because we at the Bank have an opportunity and a platform to
be able to put the facts out there. And transparency can help you a lot
in markets in this country and Brazil. We had a wonderful example. They
were charging five dollars a head for luncheons in Buenos Aires. And in
the country, we discovered that it was less than half that. In fact, it
was 80 cents. And we put it in the newspapers, and within a week it was
down to about 2 dollars in BA.

We did nothing except make the facts known. And I think that the thing
that we can do most in these countries is to try and get the facts out
there.
We can't ordain change in a country. Change has to come from inside.
We're not the government of countries. And that is true in terms of
corruption or education programs or anything else. In ten years, we've
gone from a billion people living in market economies to 5 billion. And
if you take a look at your hemisphere, the move towards a form of
democratic government in 25 years has been dramatic.

With openness, you get a chance of affecting politicians. So our play is
not to interfere in politics, but to try and get the facts out there.

The other thing that we're doing, for example, in Bolivia, we have a
thing which we're trying which is called a comprehensive development
framework, where the Bolivians have put down a list of not only the
financial parameters but the structural and social parameters dealing
with education, health and all these other things.

They've essentially had a national series of conferences with the
government, opposition, private sector, civil society in all its forms,
from religions to trade unions, to establish a set of national
objectives, which you then can access on the Internet. And then you deal
with those objectives, which include legal, justice and everything else.
And in the case of Bolivia, they have their own special additional
objective, which is to get independent of drugs in terms of production
and economic dependence. Very key in terms of Bolivia. Whatever the
objectives are, our belief is that if you could get them out there and
visible, then you have a real chance of circumventing the rhetoric
because it's there for everybody to see.

If you have the facts there, it diminishes the opportunity for improper
leadership.

But there is one other element in this which I again would wish to say
here, is that we have maintained consistency in the role of the private
sector. And what you need is a socially responsible private sector. I
have been thinking of a meeting here where I'd invite you all to bring
your son or your daughter to come to the Bank, because it's they that
should be thinking about this. And I was cautioned against doing it
because they said it would be elitism, but I don't think it is elitism.

I think the thing that you have to bring across to the next generation is
that you do need transparency. And in their business interests, not in
their social interests. In their business interests. Stability and
growth, broad-based growth, is the best thing you can have. And if the
coefficients, the so-called Gini coefficient of inequity, is getting
greater in Latin America, if I had a kid I'd be worried.

I think that the transparency and the focus on that is not maybe for
tomorrow, but if you talk about 2010 or 2015, it's the issue. And I think
that's where we have to head. And that'll get rid of demagogues. Yes,
sir?

QUESTION: First, thank you for bringing attention to what I think is the
principal issue keeping us from having free trade in the Americas.
On the other hand, I would like to perhaps challenge you to think about
making the Bank more open in terms of looking at business associations
who want to be socially responsible and have specific projects like in
the area of education, or how the Bank might be able to work with them
and not exclusively with governments.

MR. WOLFENSOHN: Well, we are. I mean, if you have a project, we'd love to
see you. We're working with private sector in education, health care,
water, power, everywhere we can we are doing it for a very simple reason.
Ten years ago, official development assistance globally was 40 billion
dollars a year. And private sector investing in developing countries was
25 billion.

Today, official assistance is 40 billion and private sector flows the
year before last were 300 billion and even this year over 200 billion. So
from being just over half the size, they're now six to seven times the
size. And for every dollar going in from the outside, it's estimated 2 or
3 dollars is invested inside.

That makes for a totally different perspective in terms of linkages with
the private sector. And I've now, in fact, appointed somebody who is a
managing director of the Bank and head of IFC to take charge of our
private sector activities. And if you've got ideas, you have a very warm
welcome and you can call me directly and I'll be very glad to make sure
you get put in the right place.

We're doing private schools everywhere from Pakistan to Uganda. But I'm
trying to make sure that in the private schools, there is an outreach to
public schools. Because what we don't want to do is to get it to a point
where we just continue a private school environment when it could be used
as a setting of standards for the whole of the system. But subject to
that caveat, we're extremely interested. Yes? I guess that's one last
question. Bob thinks I'm boring you.

[laughter]

QUESTION: We suffered in Latin America from a dramatic decline in
accessibility to the capital markets really beginning in mid-1998 but
really hit in August, of course. And most of that really wasn't because
Latin American countries didn't have the structural factors in place.
What really happened was the investors, the lenders and the institutional
investors, really were so badly burned, say, on Russian bonds and things
like that, they just pulled their horns in. They just stopped. And I'm
wondering whether the World Bank has given some thought to how to
maintain the flow from the private sector and the international capital
markets during these times so that perhaps the institutional investors
and the banks, and not all of them but most of the banks, really pulled
their horns in and stopped just dramatically, and now we see them
beginning to start again. But this kind of cyclicality of access is
really difficult for all of the Latin America countries.

MR. WOLFENSOHN: Well, it is. And you've described exactly, of course,
what happened. We were starting in one of the larger economies to come up
with a fund that would give a guarantee for borrowings through the
government, essentially to put a credit endorsement on access to market
by private sector. And we're all ready to go with that. And now the
private sector's come up with its own solution. A leading international
investment bank will shortly be doing a 2 billion dollar offering. And
that's much better if it can be done through private sector.

We've seen a rapid turnaround in terms of access, not yet a reduction in
yield.

The access is opening very quickly. And I would agree with you that there
is cyclicality. I very much doubt it will do away with it. I've been in
this business 35 years, and I've seen lots of crises. And a year or two
later, they're gone. It's another crisis.

I think we have to learn to live with it. I don't think anybody knows a
way around it. What we do at the Bank is immediately come in counter-
cyclically at IFC and provide funding to the extent that we can. But in
terms of accessing markets at 6, 7, 8 hundred, a thousand basis points,
very often it's not -- it's not the yield. It's just there's no money
there at all.

And so as we have tried to come in and give an endorsement which we would
have been doing for the first time since the Bank lends to governments,
not to private sector as the World Bank, we have now discovered that in
this recent round it's changed so quickly that the solution which we've
been designing for four months is now replaced by a private sector
solution, which is the best way. And it's further evidence, I think, of
the speed of this turnaround. I think 6 months from now you're going to
find that there is already much greater access. You're going to have the
banks running back in just as they've run back in in other places at
other times. And it may look bleak now, but I think we're through the
worst of it. And my guess is it'll work itself out. There's one last
question Bob said I should take from the lady at the back. Yes.

QUESTION: Back to the issue of basic development, which I think we all
applaud you as taking on that mission that is so necessary. I have a
question about microcredit. Microcredit which provide very small loans to
poor people have been proliferating in the world and in Latin America.
But I wonder whether you see these as a good tool for development -- some
of the programs integrate training and social and health care into the
programs -- are these a tool that the bank endorses? Is there any way of
expounding on that? Thank you.

MR. WOLFENSOHN: Yes. We have established a thing called a consultative
group to assist the poor. We raised a very large amount of money. There
is a lot of money available in Latin America. The limiting factor at the
moment is management rather than money. It is training of people. It is
the methodology of distribution of microcredit schemes and the training
of the people.

And there's also a very strong desire on our part to make it become part
of the private sector. And some banks in Latin America are already
starting to do microcredit schemes and small business schemes. Everyone
knows this is a tough area of lending. But the interesting thing is that
microcredit has shown a tremendous capacity for repayment. When you get
groups of people together and they're small loans, there have been 97, 98
percent repayment.

I would also like to say that the private sector has a great potential
role in expanding access, not just to credit but to knowledge. And since
private sector has a lot of young people and a lot of computers and a lot
of knowledge, participation by the private sector in setting up private
programs for training, giving people access to computers at night,
reaching out into the community with social programs, however small,
would be a very intelligent movement to see established globally.

We have established a link ourselves with a group that is dealing with
business and social responsibility. We have about 150 companies that are
working with us now. And if this society was ever interested in pursuing
that, it's something that we could look at together in terms of the
hemisphere. I would be most anxious to do that, and I know I could bring
Enrique [Iglesias] along as well. I think the issue of social
responsibility of business is a central issue. Maybe that'll give you
something to think about for your next annual meeting. Thank you very
much.