 They want to hear your latest joke. I don't see it. It's medium. It's short. It's medium. It starts to be triggered on the radio. The message runs. I see what they have to say. I hope we get the duck. I missed the bag and thought you were talking about him. We did. We did. We did. We did. I hope that was not him. It's ours. We think it is. Are they ours or are they ours? It's ours. The age is. Are they ours? Are they ours? Are they ours? It's ours. It's ours. It's ours. Yeah. Well, it's the age. I'm sure that's a hot air can. I'm sure it's. The intervention was a big issue. The intervention was a big issue at Versailles, as you'll remember, and it's still an issue. And that's our topic this morning. And for Don Regan, the Pearl Sprinkle will give us a report of Don's discussions with his counterparts last week, where the issue of intervention stands at the moment in Pearl. Thank you, Mr. President. The agreement reached last Friday at the Mass Ministers and the Central Bankers from the southern countries. On exchange, market intervention was very satisfactory, from our point of view. Secretary Regan went into that meeting with two objectives. One was to agree to language that conveyed positive property value. And secondly, an attempt to continue our basic policy approach of non-interference in exchange for markets to accept, to correct disorderly conditions. We believe that those objectives were achieved, and we did maintain harmony between the seven in the meeting. I'm not sure that that harmony will persist. This meeting culminated a series of actions, beginning with your recommendation of Versailles, that the data on intervention from 1973 on the Gretelwood system became a part. It should be carefully analyzed. And all some of the countries and the E.C. participated in the analysis, and the paper was completed last January. As instructed, I and my counterparts two and a half days were doing the policy implications of the board. Secretary Regan and his counterparts and the Central Bankers finally reached agreement Friday. What did we agree to? Well, first, we agreed to release the summary of the study plus the quantity of agreement. This quantity of agreement committed us, all of our countries, to work for greater exchange rate stability. And we affirmed that the major requirement for reaching that objective is to have stable underlying economic and financial conditions. We agreed that we should pay more attention to exchange rates as a suggestion for policy change. We think that's especially important for the French. The statement says that intervention can be useful in encountering this sort of exchange markets, introducing short-term volatility. But that normally intervention is useful only as a supplement and a compliment to broader policies like monetary and fiscal policy. And finally, we established what we believe was a cooperative tone by agreeing to closer consultations on policies and market conditions by the participating nations, and we agreed to undertake coordinated intervention with our allies when we can agree, that is, each of us can agree that it would be useful. We believe that the intervention decision therefore remains in our hands, because we must agree that it's useful before it's executed. And the purpose of intervention remains tied to disorderly markets, which has been our argument from the beginning. Secretary Reagan indicated in his Friday press conference that we intend no basic change in our low intervention approach to the exchange market, but we do intend to exchange more information on policies and on the state of the markets. Mr. President, we doubt that this agreement, I would say we know this agreement will not completely confuse the issue of wisdom, but we hope it will help. Most of the countries would like to see us intervene more than we do for various reasons, including smoothing. The Canadians, the Germans, and the British are the least interested. They made some various supported statements publicly as well as in the meetings, suggesting we're on the right track. The French and the EC community may advocate frequent, large-scale intervention. For example, most of the law stated after our agreement that he felt burned again, but we were saying we hadn't done a change in these elections or what. We do not believe we can fully satisfy the demands of the French government. The French and the Italians, of course, want support for the weak currencies. They're doing stationary policies. Their currencies go down, and they would love to help us keep them up. The EC commission argues for more intervention, and I think it's primarily because they would like authorization to operate a broader scheme similar to EMS, which attempts to fix exchange rates in the short run. The Japanese would like intervention because they would like a stronger game, and we along with them believe that this would defuse some of the protectionist interests in our country and in other countries if in fact the young were to go out. Our basic conclusion is that we should retain our present policy. Short-term movements to exchange rates are no problem. They can be as intervention cannot change exchange rate levels or trends, and that was pointed out in the report that we're bucking something we can't win if we try it. Large-scale intervention assumes that government officials know better than the marketplace what the right price is, and I'm dubious about that assumption. Intervention also represents a potential waste of taxpayer money if you're likely to be on the wrong side of the market buying something that's going down and you lose in the process. And furthermore, we believe that large-scale intervention would destabilize the market by scaring the actors and the market not knowing what the ground rules are. In conclusion, we believe we succeeded in convincing our partners that attaining sustainable growth and low inflation is absolutely critical for achieving more stable exchange rates. The President, Bill Miskana is here for Marty Bilstein to talk about the yen-dollar alignment or some referred to as misalignment. Thanks for that fact. I just left a briefing for the structure at some of the meetings so that you'll have a chance for the leaders to, I suppose, everyone to subscribe to that, but to relax and to talk and chat and there's plenty of homework been done on it, so you'll be well prepared on your part. I do too, but then probably the best part of it. Well, that's what they're letting. Trudeau was down here last week and he repeated that out himself and that they would keep it. Of course, Minteron was down there a couple of years ago. You probably remember it for the Yorktown battle in Yorktown. Centennial service. Very good. Very generous of the President. We overheard on the radio this morning that you accepted the pleasure and this is a good example of these friends are fucked. Something like that. I didn't know how the President presumptuous enough to speak to him about it so I said, well, I'm their leader but the main thing is not to have pressure so he and his advisors can make a decision to do what's ever past in terms of him, his reelection and all of that. That was all in it. It comes out. These generous comments that Fernando was mentioning and then it said you could take it or leave it. That's all in it. So I was upset as heck. I'd be pleased to know we conducted a private poll through Lance Tarks at the Jerry School of California that showed the President Plain against Mondale, Graham, and Cranston Diesel at the service stage. There was a partisan commission how we dropped Driftoff in the party. How is the President doing? Yes? Good to see you. Good to see you. Nice to see you. Yes? We're Congresswoman? Yes. Michael Roth. We have a nice evening. Let me see you again. We have a nice evening. Thank you. So may I. Our pleasure. Directly. Please do. I just told the Vice President Lance Tarks and the board of California showed you best and credit I'll give you a copy. President, I'm glad to see you. Chairman, what do you know about President Scott? He's been here for three years. Yes, I see you. No, I don't know. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. Thank you very much. President, watch out. Watch out for Mike. He's a good friend of ours. A friend of Senator Sanders. Oh, Mike? I think he kind of works out somewhere. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you. Please sit down. First of all, I want to thank you for being here. And thank you for what you're doing. I, uh, spoke to the group that was assembled at Cancun, Mexico a long time ago and said that when they were discussing the whole problem of the rest of the developed nations and I said my belief was in turning to free enterprise and helping them to become able to help themselves. Some there weren't that excused about the idea but you know if you look at the evidence around those emerging countries that had done that and turned to private enterprise. They went down to Singapore to South Korea compared to North Korea to wherever you go and even in Africa the same thing and those that turn and go to Stateism seem to be in trouble and their their standard of living doesn't rise at all and this is what's back to the Caribbean initiative, the idea of here's government but also I asked a committee at that time to go and see what they could do privately in the islands down there and I know there are some people in the country that think when you talk about that that you're going to be exporting jobs or something but I also remember Winston Churchill once he never said this publicly but I know that he said privately in a conversation expressed his belief that while the world's intention of wanting everybody to rise up and be able to live on the standard of the rest of us but that it was impossible because the world could not there weren't a means in the world to bring that about but I disagree with him on that I think that the more effective you make a country and the more you improve its own economy the more you increase the number of customers that can buy the things which countries like ours want to sell and looked at all the rest of the world and imagined if every one of them was in the market for an honor we'll be alright now it could do I know we may not get to that but this is why and what I believe that you can do and I think a good place to start to write here in our own hemisphere with our neighbors up and down I'm grateful to you for it I believe in the magic of the marketplace and I think governments have been able to do quite well we certainly appreciate you taking a few moments to see us Mr. President as you went around the table I introduced Duane and Parker as the chairman and co-chairman respectfully to get this group Duane perhaps you have come we've got a pretty good morning with a bunch of briefings and this afternoon we break into subgroups we came here to go to work for you Mr. President and we're starting out by discovering the problems and we hope we can wind up by giving you some solutions but I believe from what I've heard from most of the people all of the people on this commission agree with the points of view that you have expressed and that you expressed again which were familiar I have read carefully I want to point out to you that we will undertake the entire global economy foreign aid has evolved over a period of 20 years in the experience of most of our business lifetimes here and I would like to point out for example in the early say about 20 years ago when Ludwig Earhart was in charge of West Germany creating the economic miracle working in a socialist state for being a great advocate for the price and thus cast the die for the policies of our friends and allies of our life I remember having a conversation with you which I've never forgotten we were discussing the possibility of the United States and Germany having a coordinated aid program he said I don't see how we can do that because he said my idea of good foreign aid is trade trade is aid and he said we are willing to spend probably 1% of our GMP on a hard concept of aid but it's a little different than your concept and I remember he said that they could make many many things in Germany that were badly needed in the third world like bottles, tractors irrigation pumps many hundreds of things to create jobs in Germany and since they depended on exports as we now do create jobs in the third world countries as well and establish a link to business community instead of government to government but he said we could spend our aid money to assist those exports this finally became the policies that he was a strong man in Western Europe was accepted pretty much as the policy of the French and their old colonies the policy of British and ultimately the resilience in the Japanese but they concentrated their foreign aid and export subsidies of one kind around special credits mixed credits all kinds of ways I know that even recently at the building of the conference Helmut Kohl the economic minister there now spoke of it again as foreign aid it's like we said our export import bank is a foreign aid institution it's a different political concept and they have charged and supercharged with these myriad of export subsidies which is spread to almost every industry until in agriculture alone 10 billion dollars exporting now the result is that our workers are competing not with other workers and our farmers not with other farmers and our corporations not with other corporations we are all competing with the treasuries of these mercantile states you have five mercantile states that have grown out of this concept of need the birth of this concept was foreign aid and we've gotten a long ways from it we don't think of it that way anymore but nevertheless that's the kind of world we live in and we have to take that into consideration and it may be that we'll find it's necessary to enlarge our concept of foreign aid to include more export programs in order to make jobs here and jobs over there I don't know what recommendations you would come up with but certainly your new trading organization certainly foreign aid is an integral part of trade in the world economy today and undoubtedly we'll have to look for some