Investments And The Economy

CBS

Transcript

the business world was awaiting the start of another potentially wild week you gross domestic product figures could signal a recession and the Fed may cut interest rates again this is the Dow comes off at three hundred and twelve point drop Friday and thirty percent in the past five weeks here with some perspective is Jim a wad and investment strategist at Zephyr management Jim thanks for coming in tonight my pleasure as we said a lot of stuff going on this week how do you expect the markets to react the line of least resistance at this point is down the economic news is bad the markets closed on a week note so unless there's some sort of central bank action tonight I would accept expect all markets to open down tomorrow as we said the Fed is going to meet this week do you expect another rate cut they have to use every tool in their toolkit I think that they will cut rates I'm hoping it's 50 basis points a half a point the economy needs the help I think the Fed knows it a lot of schools of thought on this but what do you think based on your experience what are things going to get better overall hopefully the summer of 09 the next government will employ massive stimulus you've had a lot of liquidity put in the system that should start to take over the summer so hopefully GNP growth and GDP growth will grow over the summer the markets will sense it before that and I think the markets by the end of this year you'll have gotten through all the selling you need to get through and they'll see a recovery coming and I think the markets can bottom in 08 forecasting and 09 recover for those people who wonder why the government doesn't do more in your mind is there a magic bullet it's time it's a process we spent a lot of times leveraging up in this society we're going to get the fiscal house in order throughout the society it's just a matter of time patients will get through it as a society we always do okay Jimmy watch Zephyr management thank you so much thank you

The Economic Future

CBS

Transcript

and good morning again joining us from New York Robert rubben the former treasury secretary with us here in the studio Douglas Holtz aen of the McCain campaign we want to begin with Mr Ruben thanks for coming this morning and let me just begin with this general question uh the government passed this huge bailout Bill we've seen governments around the world taking actions to ease the financial crisis yet if we look at the stock market uh none of it seems to be working or making much difference is it just too ear to tell Mr Ruben or do other things need to be done Bob I I I think actually there has been some change if you look at the credit markets which is what really is going to determine what happens to our economy not the stock market there was quite a bit of improvement over the last week but most fundamentally there has been very strong action as you say but I think there is a lot more that we need to do first place the special program that was put in place the $700 billion has only been partly used most of that Still Remains to be used secondly I think it is imperative that we have a very large fiscal stimulus though I do think that stimulus needs to be married to a commitment to long-term fiscal disciplin so we don't risk undermining our bond market and our currency market and I think there's a good deal else we can do we have to focus on mortgages and mortgage foreclosures and trying to help families and that's not just a question of families well that's extremely important but it's also a question of our financial System since foreclosures and falling housing prices are Central to the problems in our economy and our financial system so I think there's a lot more to do but an enormous amount has been done and I think it will take a little time for that to work its way through my own view is that we're in a perfect storm really an extraordinary uncharted waters with respect to our financial markets one of these very low probability events with huge consequences but I do think the power of public policy in its entirety that which is been done plus a large fiscal stimulus and the other kinds of measures we can take should be able to stem this within a reasonable period of time well when you talk about a a stimulus package are you talking about some sort of massive Public Works like president roselt put into effect during the Great Depression or you're talking about something like we have seen recently where you just give uh uh people uh a check uh a government check Bob I I I would say it's neither of the two is quite the way that you described it I think what we need to do is to have a very large program and people have been talk some of the numbers around are 150 billion perhaps more than that and it should consist of and and Senator Obama has talked a lot about this in fact he started talking about a few months ago had been strongly advocated I think rightly so and it could consist of help for cities and states that are now running into difficulty so they could continue with their programs it could have infrastructure in it as long as the infrastructure is ready to go right now because these have to be programs that give you a very large return in terms of economic demand relative to the cost and also that go into effect very quickly but you could do all of that and and it needs to be done in a very short period of time in order to stimulate economic demand at a time of weakening economy and as I said a moment ago it's it's a it's a measure that Senator Obama's been calling for for a long time and I think that you can combine that with the other kinds of measures I have just mentioned and then an effective use of the remainder which is the predominant part of that very large program that was put in place a little bit ago $700 billion and I think you have an enormous aggregate of public policy in addition continued cooperation around the world is is imperative are we going to be of it seems clear that we're in a recession now uh or shortly will be in one do you think this is going to continue uh how long do you think it's going to last Mr ribbon I think it goes into two pieces Bob by the way I would in in the stimulus also probably include as Senator Obama has recommended tax rebates he recommends $1,000 per working family and I I think that also is a sound measure because it would get spent quickly in terms of the time this is going to continue to go on first of place nobody can predict but I I do think that when you take the totality of public policy that is now in effect that the crisis part of this remember we're really in something more than just a period of economic difficulty we're in a real crisis of confidence I think that crisis of confidence can be stemmed within a reasonable period of time if we do all not only in light of what we've already done but if we move on the on the fronts that I've just mentioned well are you talking about a matter of months or you talking about years uh when you said a reasonable period of time well who knows exactly what it'll be Bob but I don't I think it could be the crisis of confidence itself I think could be stamed in less than a matter of months I'm not saying it necessarily will be but I think it could be but policy is really really important and I think the one major move one major action we have not taken yet is a major fiscal stimulus and I think that fiscal stimulus as I said a moment ago should be married with a long-term commitment to reestablishing sound fiscal conditions which by the way is what Senator Obama proposed some months ago it's it's a Nuance but it's a very important Nuance well we now have unemployment at 6% some people are saying it might go as far as 10% uh is that your view well once you get past the crisis of confidence Bob you're still back in the kinds of difficulties we've had over the course of the past year and I think that it that'll go on well into next year you've had a lot of damage you've now had very large wealth loss you've had weakened consumers weakened financial institutions problems around the world there was a great deal that needs to be dealt with and I do think in that context public policy will be very very important I would say almost weekly now uh Senator Obama has met with his financial advisers Paul voker War Buffett Larry Summers Laura Tyson myself Bob R and others and he always he puts politics aside and he spends half an hour an hour whatever it may be either telephonically or in person discussing what we need to do and it it is absolutely imperative that we have a highly active public policy approach and I think he laid out and not I think he has laid out a very sensible set of measures to take in this respect but it's going to take question here one final question uh do you think it's also going to be necessary to bail out the Auto industry Bob I don't know exactly what the term bailout means in the context of any of this I do think the Auto industry is the auto indust clearly is extremely important in the economy and now has enormous difficulties I think we do need to face those difficulties and see if there are ways the public policy can be helpful that Mak sense and it's like all of these issues they're very complex and it's very important to recognize their complexities and then find a way through them that gets us where we want to go without having whole raft of unintended consequences all right well Mr ribben we want to thank you for joining us this morning we're going to turn now to Doug Holtz Aken the McCain campaign senior policy adviser let me just start where Mr Ruben left off do you think it's going to be necessary to bail out to give more money to the Auto industry well I think the top priority the one that Senator McCain has endorsed is to take the $25 billion that the Congress has already put out there for loans to build facilities for Next Generation automobiles the kinds of Autos that will not only keep Detroit running but which will keep us from having to import so much oil expose us to the dangers of international oil markets uh that money needs to get out the door and the top priority should be to get it out quickly not take 18 months which seems to be the current plan and what about uh Mr Ruben's idea that what we need is a a big stimulus package $150 billion dollar uh where would McCain come down on that I think if you step back the real big difference in this crisis situation is sort of where do you place your faith uh do you place it in the the institutions that have failed us which quite frankly are in Washington and Wall Street uh or do you put the money in the places where we know we can get effective results and and John McCain has not advocated sticking the money into Wall Street Banks and the like let's put the money into the housing market that's where this problem started let's get people in mortgages they can afford let's get the Bad Mortgages off the books so there's cash in those books and Banks can make loans and let's take care of the small businesses a remarkable fact is that in this bad economy and let us stipulate it's a very bad situation uh small businesses have created 331,000 jobs this year don't raise taxes on them don't make their lives harder and uh you know that's take care of the institutions the small businesses the homeowners that have been successful in America and that's the McCain strategy what about this idea though of a stimulus of giving people a government check some sort of a rebate or some sort of a public works project well obviously c m would never take off the table anything that would be helpful but the idea that somehow tough Economic Times are licensed to spend money on anything you can think of is something you want to look at very carefully you know if you go back to what he talked about in getting mortgages off uh people's backs that allows you to pay your grocery bills that allows you to pay your gasoline Bill uh you can keep uh pay making your college tuition payments there's no greater stimulus than keeping American household spending they're they're 70% of the economy and so focusing on them keeping them in jobs creating new jobs that's the greatest stimulus of all you know the institution that says hey all our problems uh can be solved in Washington that's a mistake we have to solve our problems out in the field with the American people the American homeowner U you talked about jobs uh unemployment now 6% is that just said some people talking about going to 10% uh do you think that's uh likely uh there's no question we see unemployment go higher uh Senator McCain you know as as all these candidates who travels the country and we know that we're seeing real contraction out there and we'll see a lot more tough times and so the question will will be who can most quickly generate jobs in this economy to keep the unemployment rate from spiking uh so high uh at the heart of that is having comprehensive policies not just uh a tax policy that promises uh great things but actual policies that don't spend a trillion dollars we've seen the mistake in the Bush Administration that don't burden businesses with health mandates that don't cut off trade one in five jobs in this uh economy or trade related uh and that have a real energy policy that allow us to grow I mean you know Senator Obama has promised that day one he would enforce the Clean Air Act uh treating carbon dioxide as a pluen that runs the economy from the Environmental Protection Agency it's a Draconian regulatory approach that's not a recipe for jobs we have to do the things comprehensively that'll help jobs for America do you think what the government has done thus far has helped um you know if you look at the market you'd say it looks like it's still very unsettling Mr Rubin just said he thinks it is helped in ways we haven't seen yet basically that's what I understood him to say well he he did mention that credit markets appear to have loosened up a little bit and there's evidence of that that would be uh entirely beneficial we're we're seeing you know the the dry cleaner and the car dealer unable to get the loans they need to do normal business but uh in any of these circumstances you need two things uh you need both the money and the resources and a strategy and I think what's been missing is comprehensively enunciation of a strategy who gets money and when how much and for what purpose uh we cannot simply open up the taxpayer to be the lender of Last Resort to every company in America that's seeing tough times how long do you think this is going on I mean clearly it seems to me that we're in a recession now how long before this sorts itself out uh this is going to take uh months and months uh hopefully by this time next sure uh you and I are having a conversation that talks about the recovery it can be done effective public policies will help it happen quickly uh but those policies have to be really focused on what's good for America in the long run the families and the small businesses that are the source of the jobs Mr H ains thank you so much for being with us

Credit Default Swaps

CBS

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the world's Financial system teetered on the edge again last week and anyone with more than a passing interest in their shrinking 401K knows it's because of a Global Credit crisis it began with a collapse of the US housing market and it's been magnified worldwide by what Warren Buffett once called Financial weapons of mass destruction they're known as credit derivatives or credit default swaps and we did a story on the multi-trillion dollar market 3 weeks ago go but there's a lot more to tell essentially they are side bets on the performance of the US mortgage markets and the solvency of some of the biggest financial institutions in the world a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and the bonds and the mortgages it would have been illegal during most of the 20th century but eight years ago Congress gave Wall Street an exemption and it's turned out to have been a very bad idea the term derivative is almost becoming a household word the cat's kind of out of the bag here this is not the American dream it's an American Nightmare while Congress and the rest of the country scratched their heads trying to figure out how we got into this mess we decided to go to Frank partnoy a law professor at the University of San Diego who's written a couple of books on the subject can you explain to me what a derivative is yes a derivative is a financial instrument whose value is based on on something else it's basically a side bet think of it for a moment as a football game every week the New York Giants take the field with hopes of getting back to the Super Bowl if they do they'll get more money and glory for the team and its owners they have a direct investment in the game but the people in the stands may also have a financial stake in the outcome in the form of a bet with a friend or a bookie we could call that a derivative it's a side bet we don't own the teams but we have a bet based on the outcome and that a lot of derivatives are bets based on the outcome of games of A Sort not football games but games in the markets whether interest rates are going to go up or down yes and the new bet that arose over the last several years is a bet based on whether people will default on their mortgages and that was the bet that blew up Wall Street the TNT was the collapse of the housing market and the failure of complicated mortgage Securities that the big investment houses created and sold around the world but the rocket fuel was the trillions of dollars in side bets on those mortgage Securities called credit default swaps they were essentially private insurance contracts that paid off if the investment went bad but you didn't have to actually own the investment to collect on the insurance if I thought certain mortgage Securities were going to fail yes I could go out and buy insurance on them without actually owning yeah the irony is though you're not really buying insurance at that point you're just placing a bat Eric Deno is the insurance superintended for the state of New York he says that credit default swaps were totally unregulated and that the big Banks and investment houses that sold them didn't have to set aside any money to cover their potential losses and pay off their bets as the market began to seize up and as the market for the underlying obligations began to perform poorly everybody wanted to get paid had a right to get paid on those credit default swaps and there was no there there there was no money behind the commitments and people came up short and so that's to a large extent what happened to Bear Sterns Leman brothers and the holding company of AIG in other words three of the nation's largest financial institutions had made more bad bets than they could afford to pay off Bear Sterns was sold to JP Morgan for pennies on the dollar Leman Brothers was allowed to go Belly Up and a IG considered too big to let fail is on life support thanks to a $123 billion investment by us taxpayers it's legalized gambling it's legalized gambling it was illegal gambling and we made it legal gambling and with no regulatory controls with absolutely no regulatory controls zero as far as I can tell I mean it sounds a little like a bookie operation yes and it used to be illegal it was very illegal 100 years ago in the early part of the 20th century the street streets of New York and other large cities were lined with gaming establishments called bucket shops where people could place Wagers on whether the price of stocks would go up or down without actually buying them this unfettered speculation contributed to the panic and stock market crash of 1907 and state laws all over the country were enacted to ban them big headlines huge type the front page of the New York Times no bucket shops for new law to hit so they had already closed up because the law was coming here's a picture of one of them and uh they were like uh they were like parlor see betting parlor Bing parlor yeah it was a felony uh well it was a felony when the law came into effect because it had brought down the market in 1907 and they said we're not going to let this happen again and then a hundred years later in 2000 we rolled them all back a bill to reauthorize amend the commodity exchange act the vehicle for doing this was an obscure but critical piece of federal legislation called the commodity Futures modernization Act of 2000 and the bill was a big favorite of the financial industry it would eventually help destroy it not only removed derivatives and credit default swaps from the purview of federal oversight on page 262 of the legislation Congress preempted the States from enforcing existing gambling and bucket shop laws against Wall Street it makes it sound like they knew it was illegal I would agree they did know it was illegal or they knew it was prosecutable in retrospect giving Wall Street immunity from State gambling laws and legalizing activity that had been banned for most of the 20th century should have given lawmakers pause but on the last day and the last vote of the lame duck 106th Congress Wall Street got what it wanted the Senate passed the bill unanimously the Senate stands adjourned signy die there was awful lot of trust us leave it alone we can do it better than government without any realistic understanding of the dangers involved Columbia University law professor Harvey goldshmid is a former commissioner and general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission he says the bill was passed at the height of Wall Street and Washington's love affair with deregulation an infatuation that was endorsed by President Clinton at the White House and encouraged by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan that was the wildest and silliest period in many ways of now again that's with hindsight because the argument at the time was these are grown-ups they're institutions with a great deal of money government will only get in the way fears it will be taken overseas leave it alone but it was a wrongheaded argument and turned out to be of course extraordinarily unwise what role did alen greenpan playing all of this well he made clear in his public speeches book that a Libertarian Drive was part of the way he looked at the world he's a very talented man but that didn't take us where we had to be he was uh another former uh commissioner told us hard to argue with at that point Allen was the most powerful man in Washington in a real sense uh certainly a rival to the president and had enormous influence on Capital Hill and he was a the height of his power he with at the height of his power within eight years unregulated derivatives and swaps helped produce the largest financial services economy the United States has ever had estimates of the market for credit default swaps Grew From a hundred billion to more than 50 trillion and you could bet on anything from the solvency of local communities to the fate of General Motors they also help produce a huge transfer of private wealth to Wall Street Traders and investment bankers who collected billions of dollars in bonuses a lot of the money was made financing what seemed to be a never-ending housing boom selling mortgage Securities they thought were safe and credit default swaps they believed would never have to be paid off the credit default swaps was the key to what went wrong and and what's created these enormous losses is it your impression that people at the Big Wall Street investment houses knew what was going on and knew the kind of risk that that they were exposed to no my impression is the contrary that even at senior levels they only vaguely understood the risks they only vaguely followed what was going on and when it tumbled there was some genuine surprise not only at the board level where there wasn't enough oversight but a senior management level they didn't know what was going on in part because credit no one knew how many there were or who owned them and there was no Central exchang or Clearing House to keep track of all the bets and to hold the money to make sure they got paid off eventually Savvy investors figured out that the cheapest most effective way to bet against the entire housing market was to buy credit default swaps in effect taking out inexpensive insurance policies that would pay off big when other people's mortgage Investments went South I know people personally who have taken away more than a billion dollars uh from haven't been on the right side of these transactions Jim Grant is the publisher of Grant's interest rate Observer and one of the country's foremost experts on credit markets if you can and you could lay down cents on the dollar to place a bet on the solvency of Wall Street for example as some did when Wall Street became evidently insolvent that cents on the dollar bet uh went up 30 40 and 50 fold uh not everyone who did that wants to get his name in the paper uh but there are some spectacularly rich people who came out of this and and got richer who got well who got who got richer who got became fantastically richer a lot of them were hedge fund managers John Paulson's credit opportunities fund returned almost 600% last year with Paulson pocketing a reported $3.7 billion Bill Amman of persing square Capital Management said he plans to make hundreds of millions both declined our request for an interview it is a betting game folks it's a betting game Congress now seems shocked and outraged by the consequences of its decision 8 years ago to effectively deregulate swaps and derivatives this is Casino capitalism that's what it is it's Casino capitalism and various members of the House and Senate have hauled in The Usual Suspects to accept or share the blame were you wrong predator swaps I think have serious problems associated with them it appears to be the first step in a long process of restoring at least some of the regulations and safeguards that might have prevented or at least mitigated This Disaster after the damage has already been done Where Do We Go From Here we need the most dramatic rethinking of the regulatory scheme for financial markets since the new deal if anything has demonstrated that imperative it's the the economy right now and the tragic circumstances we're in how much danger still out there do you think we don't know part of the problem of the lack of transparency in these in these markets has been we don't really know

Saving A Global Treasure

CBS

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How much can one man do to save a desperate country? American entrepreneur Greg Carr is finding out, throwing himself and much of his fortune into one of the poorest places on Earth. Mozambique in East Africa is a country of spectacular beauty, but it's been laid waste by decades of war, by malaria, and by HIV. It takes a lot of vision to see opportunity there, but Greg Carr thinks he's found it in a wildlife park called Gorongosa, which he believes could be the salvation of a nation, and maybe a model for the world. Greg Carr wanted our first experience of Gorongosa to be just like his was 4 years ago. A helicopter ride to see the park's vast size and breathtaking diversity. When we flew over this, I said, "This is it." You know, because I I mean, it's beautiful. It's magnificent. It's almost 1,500 square miles of African wilderness, lakes, plains, even a rainforest. Gorongosa spreads across the heart of Mozambique, a country that lies along the east coast of southern Africa on the Indian Ocean. Oh, wow. Carr can't fly over it without sounding like a kid. Okay, look at this. This is great. There it goes. We saw hippo, antelope, and elephant, but not many. Gorongosa is a tragedy in two parts, with the loss of its animals and the suffering of its people, whose lives haven't improved much in a few hundred years. I wonder why you chose this place, of all the places in the world, why here? Gorongosa was most people considered the most popular national park in all of Africa. And uh the most density of animals, the most beauty, the most diversity of ecosystems. So, you have one of the most beautiful places in the world, and you also have, perhaps, the worst poverty of anywhere in the world, side by side. To Carr, that's an opportunity, and it's the same kind of business sense that made him a fortune. Right out of Harvard in the mid-80s, he and a partner developed a hot new product called voicemail. In 1998, he cashed out with $200 million and devoted himself to bringing entrepreneurship to charity. So, the idea is take the beauty of the park and use that to do human development. Attract the tourists who spend the money, who create the jobs, and lift everybody out of poverty. So, an entrepreneur, it's kind of a compelling opportunity to, you know, 1 + 1 = 10. Carr's nonprofit foundation has an agreement with the Mozambican government to develop Gorongosa Park over the next 20 years. He's putting in $40 million of his own money to try to bring Gorongosa back to what it used to be. This was Gorongosa in a film from the 1960s before it was engulfed by war. Royalty and Hollywood stars came on safari. There were hundreds of lion here. In fact, so many that a pride even took over this building. But, that was then. The lion aren't coming up these steps anymore. Back when the film was made, there were 500 lion in Gorongosa, 2,000 elephants, 14,000 Cape buffalo, and 3,000 hippos. It took years of war and poaching to get it done, but by the end, almost all of those animals were gone. In one of the world's greatest wildlife habitats, the animals were forced from house and home. First, it was Mozambique's war for independence from Portugal, then a civil war that lasted 16 years. It turned Gorongosa into a battlefield and a slaughterhouse. When we came back the animals were gone. Baldeu Chande was a ranger at the park before the civil war ravaged Gorongosa. Tell me about the difference between what you saw before the war and the day that you came back. I couldn't believe. Because uh I went out, you know, inside the park, you know, to look for the animals. I was excited and I wanted to see the animals like I used to see before. And uh unfortunately for the for the first two or three weeks, I couldn't see a single animal. It was just bush, bush, bush and no animals. The people fared little better. When the war ended in 1992, Mozambique was the poorest country on Earth. 900,000 had been killed. Millions were run from their homes. Then the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit. Today, most people live in villages like this one, farming mostly hand-to-mouth. As you can see, it's one of the poorest Mateus Mutemba works with Greg Carr. You know, I noticed Hey, my man. a lot of the children have their bellies are are distended. Yes. Um they're obviously not well. Yes, in most cases they are not even aware they are sick. When you come to a village like this, you really begin to understand one of the most shocking things about Mozambique and that is that the average life expectancy in this country is about 40 years old. And in the next few years, they are expecting that to drop to about 35 years old. A lot of that's because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and because of malaria, but part of it's also because folks like these can't get anywhere close to a nurse or a doctor. The clinics are very far away. The nearest is 19 km from here. So, when they are sick, they stay at home, pray, and hope that they'll get better. Now, compare that village we just saw with the future that Greg Carr sees. These are people from another village called Vinyo. It's rush hour on the Pangue River, which runs along Gorongosa Park. A couple of hundred of these villagers work for the park as rangers, cooks, and the like. You know, this is Venice with crocodiles, isn't it? We made the reverse commute. Carr wanted us to see the difference in Vinyo Village. You know, I have to think that there was a temptation for a big deal IT guy from America to come in and say, "Okay, we're going to put the school here, we're going to put the clinic there, we're going to put a road here, this is where the wells are going to go, right?" That's what you wanted to do, wasn't it? you come here with a, you know, American CEO mentality, we're going to make a plan, we're going to do it, let's go and give out orders, that is the wrong way to do development in a real place like this. Uh because this is their village, and they need to make those choices. When Carr first visited 4 years ago, school met underneath that magnificent baobab tree. That was the school, and they had a blackboard under it. After the villagers told him they wanted a new school, Carr spent $100,000 helping them to build it. And just across the road, there was a line waiting at the new clinic they asked for, built for $200,000. Mozambique needs 750 of these rural clinics to serve the people who now don't have any health care at all. And how many of these have you built? This is our first one. This is number one. This is it, and we we want to build 25. Among the villagers, Carr is treated like a rock star. This woman told him she could never go to school before, but now thanks to an adult education class, she can WRITE HER NAME. OKAY. BUT EVEN WITH all the wealth that the 200 jobs, a clinic, and a school have brought to Vinya, Carr has still got to convince the villagers to help Gorongosa succeed. We need to decrease the amount of poaching of animals in the park because tourists want to see animals. Tourists are returning to Gorongosa in small numbers, but to attract more, Carr knows that he needs animals, a lot more There's some baboons right over there. Oh, yeah, big guy. He does have one thing in abundance. Watch the crocodiles as we skimmed over the lake. The problem is big game are scarce, so Carr is trucking in new animals from all over Africa. What have you released so far? Last year we did wildebeest, uh and they've already started having calves, so that's exciting. Um we're doing uh hyena this year. We're doing some more hippo this year. Um I really want zebra, but I can't get them right now because I need to get zebra from uh Zimbabwe, and and the political problems in that country, you just you you can't get something out of there. Carr has brought in scientists to make sure he's importing the right species and to better understand the animals he already has. They've been tracking this Gorongosa elephant herd with radio collars and we went on a mission to replace a collar that had a dead battery. Dr. Corbus Raab has come from South Africa to help in the operation. First, he prepares the tranquilizer. And how long will the elephant be out? We'll have 40 minutes at least before she starts to wake up. Is that all you need? Uh yeah, in a normal operation that's more than enough to change a collar. Raab flies in and fires the dart. Then it's a matter of waiting until the dose knocks her out. While they wait, they drive off her calf so they won't have to knock it out, too. The ground crew moves in. Taking off the old collar, getting blood samples. Understanding the health of these elephants will help ensure the success of a herd that Carr is bringing in from South Africa. By doing this, we'll be able to make thousands of other elephants safe. They put a blindfold over her eyes to help keep her calm and they're pouring water on her to keep her cool. The new radio collar is going on around her neck. You can tell that she's doing reasonably well because you can feel her breath coming out of her trunk. Very strong, very hot, breathing very well. In just a moment, they'll inject her with an antidote and if everything goes as planned, she should wake right up. And when I tell you to go, you just go. Run to the car. We go. It takes her just a little more than 2 minutes to stagger back to her feet. Wow. Oh boy. Once the animals are back in abundance, Carr expects big tour operators and hotels to invest in Gorongosa, throwing off enough cash to bring in more schools, clinics, roads, and electricity. You know, one of the most interesting animals in the park, for my money, is you. And I wonder what it was about being in the technology business and making $200 million out of it that you found ultimately so unfulfilling. Actually, it was fun and exciting, but I wanted to give back. Um but, you know, this project has done a lot more for me than I'll ever do for it. coming to Africa, spending time here, learning from their culture, which is rich and beautiful, is is a blessing. He intends to double the size of the park and leave it completely self-sustaining, no longer a charity, but an economic engine, attracting investments, creating jobs, and in the end, standing on its own without GREG CARR. MHM.

France looks for coordination

CNN

Transcript

I think there's a lot of confusion about this sovereign investment fund that France is talking about and now more European countries are talking about. What is the intention of that fund exactly? To cut a long story short, the strategic investment fund is intended to strengthen and reinforce the small and medium-sized enterprises, number one, because they're the first victims, and number two, to invest in strategic sectors that France regards as critical for its industry. Sure, but isn't there a risk of taking a step back on globalization, putting one nation-state against another? I shouldn't think so. And frankly, the French president has advocated a European industrial policy because we often see that there are clusters here and there in various member states that are really focusing on the same projects. So it would be actually extremely beneficial to all member states to have better coordination. We've seen massive coordination on the financial markets to deal with the financial crisis. He's advocating massive coordination. On the economic side and particularly with respect to industry. What exactly are you expecting out of this worldwide financial summit coming up on the 15th of November? Even more coordination. Coordination on a much broader basis with an overall plan in relation to players, markets, territories, securities, derivatives, all sorts of instruments. And certainly a longer-term view. But what we want from our financial sector in relation to the economy in the market economy that we all share. Looking back over the last few weeks, what would you say was the most fragile, the most dangerous point? Well, I have clear recollections of a few nights, but one in particular where Belgium, Luxembourg and France decided to rescue Dexia, which is not a very well-known bank. But one that has systemic value in nature because it funds multiple cities and provinces and regions as well as is a retail bank. And I think that night when we sort of worked against the clock because we had to find a solution before 8 o'clock and market opened. It was tense, very tense. And you had to be very focused. And very calm at the same time.