Stephen C. Freidheim Symposium on Global Economics

FROMAN: Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations. I’m Mike Froman, president of the Council, and it’s great to see all of you here and the—I gather we have two hundred or so online listening as well. There will be an opportunity to ask questions both from here in the room and from people who are virtual as well.

It’s a great honor and real personal pleasure to have Kristalina Georgieva here, managing director of the IMF. I have enjoyed working with her in various capacities. And we’re honored, really, to have you here. And we’re honored to have you here for the Stephen C. Freidheim Symposium on Global Economics. And Stephen Freidheim is here, so thank you for being here. This—(applause)—Stephen’s a longtime member of the Council, a member of the board, chairman of our Investment Committee, and generous supporter of this—of this symposium, which is presented together with the Maurice Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies. So thank you very much for all your—all your support.

Let me start with a just general question around the state of the global economy. Certainly there’s some good news, there’s some less-good news as some countries—U.S., Japan—seem...

SEIB: Hi, everybody. Welcome to round two. I’m Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal and CSIS, and I’m presiding over this half of today’s conversation. The first hour was a great setup for what we’re going to talk about here.

I just wanted to remind people this symposium is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and is made possible through the generous support of Council board member Steve Freidheim, who’s right there. So thank you very much for doing that, and thank you all for being here.

We’re joined today by not just all of you in the room, but also a virtual audience.

And my job as moderator has been made much easier by the Council because they’ve provided me with an all-star team: Caroline Atkinson, senior global strategist of Rock Creek Group and former deputy national security advisor for international economics; Robert Zoellick, former U.S. trade representative, former president of the World Bank Group, and former U.S. deputy and undersecretary of state; and in larger-than-life form over there is Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Thank you all for being here.

I wanted to start with a point that...