Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, there were moments that were not at all scripted. The first time we met everybody went around the…”

“Well, first of all, there were moments that were not at all scripted. The first time we met everybody went around the table and sort of described the condition of the economy in each country and what the government was attempting to do about it. And that was somewhat scripted in the sense that everyone was told in advance we'd be asked to do that. After that, only the topics were basically scripted. Very few of us carried a lot of notes around. Very few people referred to them. We really talked about these issues. I think the thing that impressed me the most--maybe it's just because what I'm most concerned about--was the high level of rather sophisticated knowledge that all these people had about the stagnation of their own economies when it comes to creating jobs. For example, it was pointed out that the French economy was actually, by every other measure, very, very strong in most years of the eighties and several years had a higher growth rate than the German economy. And they still never got their unemployment rate below 9.5 percent, even when they were just really chugging along. The Japanese economy which still enjoys quite a low unemployment rate, in part because of the structure of this economy, still is having quite a lot of difficulty creating jobs. Most of these countries have very low population growth rates, rapidly aging population, and they're very worried that unless they can turn this situation around that 10 years from now they're going to have two people working for every person that's retired. And they're really quite concerned about it. I think the fact that they're all thinking about it and they all had a little bit different take on it, gave me some hope that we might be able to find some solutions.”