Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much, Pete. Hillary and I are delighted to be here with you and Joan, and I'm glad to be joined by…”

“Thank you very much, Pete. Hillary and I are delighted to be here with you and Joan, and I'm glad to be joined by Secretary Rubin and Jim Harmon, Gene Sperling, other members of our team. I'm glad to see Dick Holbrooke over here; I hope, if we can overcome the inertia of Congress, he will soon be a member of the team again. And I thank David Rockefeller and Les Gelb and others who welcomed us here today. The subject that I want to discuss--let me just say one thing in advance--I'm going to give you my best thoughts. We have been working on this for 3 years at some level of intensity or another, going back to the Naples G-7 meeting in the aftermath of the Mexican financial crisis. I have done everything I could do personally to reach out across the country, and indeed across the world, for any new ideas from any source. I'm going to give you my best thinking today about what we can do, but I want you to know that I'm here, and if I had my druthers, this would be about a 3-hour session where I'd give this talk and then I would listen for the rest of the time. So I want to encourage you, if you think we're right, to support us. But if you have any ideas, for goodness sake, share them, because I agree with what Pete said. This is the biggest financial challenge facing the world in a half century.…”