 Friday afternoon is always difficult. People are like, hey, what am I doing tonight? And where am I going? Sort of seminar. This is spectacular. I've been here 12 years, and as I said today on air, it's a most confused, conflicted Davos. And we've enjoyed the honor of having Professor Spence and Dr. Bremmer join us. And to speak with Arif Nakvy as well, we're caught on the arena with a Latin American view. And I'm absolutely thrilled that Mrs. Beschloss has joined us with the most interesting and eclectic view. So I think it's a timely seminar. We've had any number of ways to go. And I think instead of the normal format, I'm just going to go as rapidly as I can to give you the insight of five very different and esteemed guests. And then we'll go to your questions and short observations too, to squeeze it into one hour. Emerging markets, decelerating growth, rising US interest rates, changing the outlook for emerging markets, global high growth markets. And of course, the idea of a divergence, a separation, and maybe a partition of emerging markets as well. And of course, we have here so many nations represented. Michael Spence in New York and Italy and spending a lot of time in China. Arif with a fabulous knowledge of the Middle East. Afseneh Iran and her work in Washington. Ian Bremmer is from the land of G0. I have no idea what that means, but we'll get to that as well. Mrs. Beschloss, let me start with you with the ultimate emerging market with Secretary Kerry. Speaking today, I guess Iran is the ultimate emerging market. Do you have optimism about an immediate impact from new flows in and a new animal spirit within Iran? Interesting question. We've been talking a lot more about the politics of Iran in the sessions in Davos. And I think much less about the economy and the markets, as you said. There is a vibrant capital market in Iran relative to sort of other, I would say, frontier emerging markets. So there's a real capital market. You could have borrowed on credit in Iran like 30 years ago before the Revolution. In some ways, obviously, limitations now have changed those capital markets. Iran never, before the Revolution, needed to access the bond market, so it's never issued international bond. So looking at the markets, my old friend Barton Biggs used to desperately want to go to Iran to hike and to be the first investor in the equity markets there. And unfortunately, he passed before being able to do both of those things. So I think it provides huge amount of potential. The most interesting part of, I think, Iran's capital right now is that while the education sector has gone back hugely since the Revolution, you have, at the same time, on a relative basis, have very good technical education. So mathematicians will come to work at a firm like Renaissance at the hedge fund. Doctors will come with their doctorate degrees and move right into US top research institutes. That's one side of the economy. The other side of the economy is huge inequality. You have got huge problems with health and AIDS is a big problem in Iran. The health problems in Iran today are both the basic health problems in terms of the fact that vaccination has gone back, so you have basic health that had got better, has become much worse, as well as the modern diseases of diabetes and AIDS and so on and so forth. So you have to deal with those. And people don't realize at the same time what you hear from Iran right now is, for example, there's a big refugee problem. The Afghans and Pakistanis who moved into Iran, believe it or not, that was sort of the first wave. More than a million I hear. It's not making the cover of the Washington Post. And what I heard is that there might be a market so that in the war with ISIL, there's a disproportionate number of these refugees. They will get Iranian nationality potentially if they get $5,000. Arif, I look one day after the agreement or whatever in the Wall Street Journal, right-hand column, is already pushing against the hopes of a new Iran. From a Middle Eastern investment perspective, do you have an optimism of moving forward? And I don't mean long term. Even in the next six months. So look, I mean, since you started by saying, let's talk about the economics in Iran, I have to say that the trade between the Middle East and Iran, we must not forget that there are geopolitical issues that are at play here. And definitely within the Middle East and definitely within the countries on both sides of the Gulf. So I feel that when you talk about the prospects for Middle Eastern business in Iran, I think the politics have to clean themselves out first. And only then will the opportunity present itself. OK, so our first look at Iran is an emerging market. Part of the theme that we have is rising US interest rates. I guess in the last few days, thank you, Mr. Draghi. That's been amended at $197 in the 10-year. Michael Spence, give us an economic lesson on the certitude of rising US interest rates. We've only been wrong for the last six years. No, that's right. So we've had growth forecasts that were overly optimistic and there's a range of views. But I think there's a clear sign of weakening, a growing sense that will come in under the 2% plus forecast. And that leads people, I think, correctly to guess not that the Fed will stop, but maybe slow it down. So that from a kind of global point of view means slower, not whether or not just slower. And I think from the emerging economies point of view, not that much changed. There's nothing that's been telegraphed as carefully as this, plus and minus. So nothing like a taper tamper is going to occur with the volatility that went with it. But on the other hand, a number of emerging economies living in a world where money was rushing around looking for yield got a bit dependent on very low cost external capital. And I think, hopefully, the majority are getting ready for a process of going back to a slightly different world. I do not, Tom, expect a dramatic outrush of capital that produces liquidity crises in most places. Oh, that's been the responsible message we've heard from you. For years, part of it is that phrase taper tantrum. I'm going to blame the media for inventing that. I'm not quite sure who coined it. How do you bring a developed world taper tantrum over to the emerging markets? How do you bring it over? Do you have a shock within the spread market? Do you have a shock within the currency market? Well, you could. I mean, if you get a big enough convulsion in a number of markets, including the equity markets and people panic, then we have a different scenario and story. And I know this is being talked about around here. This is, nobody has a crystal ball and certainly economists have the worst ones, but I just don't see that as the most likely outcome. Let's look at the outcome of living with the reality. Ricardo, with your focus on Latin America, you're enjoying Brazilian Real, 4, 410, 415, all the political story of South America. What is your optimism that on a political economic basis, the emerging markets of South America will clear in 2016 and move on to a better economy and a better politics? Well, first of all, we need to understand the context of those emerging markets, especially Latin America is living at right now. And you pointed out the panorama of this new reality that basically we have the end of a super cycle in emerging markets and Latin America is very correlated with the price of commodities. And as you said, as once the tightening cycle of the Fed starts and China shows the slowdown and oil prices are below 30 will surely impact Latin America. And we see this trend of commodity prices going down. If you look adjusted to CPI since the 1920s, it's down trend. That will affect because copper prices, the chill is very dependent down 50% this year, iron ore 80%, soybean 50, oil more than 70%. So what does it mean to emerging markets? Now, all of these forces definitely means a more challenging and more risky environment ahead. And as US interest rates goes up, emerging markets bond, Latin American bonds will be less attractive, liquidity will be more expensive and developing countries in this region will face tighter economical financial conditions. So all those crisis, as the Chinese say, create opportunities and what we've been seeing once the government has to adjust budget, just the fiscal side of the economy, we see opportunities for the change of power as well as you saw in Argentina and we saw the second elections in Venezuela as well. When you look at South America, part of the question here is financial stability. I don't need you to make an earnings forecast on your own bank, if you'd like to, you could. But the basic idea of financial stability, Villain Bouter of Citigroup and LSE, would suggest we have good financial stability within all our turmoil. Would you suggest we have good financial stability within your South America? I will suggest so and better than in the past. If you look at emerging markets, had sudden capital outflows, especially last year and we're gonna leave with lower and much more volatile commodity prices going ahead. We, in general, we see that most of these countries, they're more resilient. They have prepared their economies for this downturn of the cycle. You see the buffers of international reserves, pretty much adequate levels in most of the country. Even Brazil has 20% of GDP on reserve. External positions also have become more resilient. If you look to what sort of that, it's just a fraction of the liabilities and mostly a local currency denominator without any mismatches. And also public debt is pretty much under control. Exception is Brazil, which is spiraling a little bit up somebody's 70%. And the currency devaluation, which will become and make those countries even more competitive on the export side and the balance of payments. That's good to get started. I saved Ian Bremmer for last. I urge you to look at his article in Norm Perlstein's Time Magazine. A really wonderful issue. On this gloom about recession, I know if you push against that gloom with some real optimism. Ian, you speak within your wonderful Eurasia Group piece on the Hollow Alliance. So we see that with Chancellor Merkel. Now coming here this year, how does the Hollow Alliance across the Atlantic among the haves affect the emerging markets? Well, yeah, okay. I see why you wanted to go last on that. It's not a small question. I think around all of these individual issues, in many ways, I think the political risk environment is not quite as dire as the mood in Davos this year. Certainly in terms of China and the ability of the Chinese government. Do you think Mr. Soros is off the mark? I think a lot of people are off the mark. I mean, not economically, they have a better sense of that than I do, but the ability of the Chinese government to actually say not just they're gonna spend reserves, but that any Chinese market, national market participant will jump, will say how high if you tell them to jump. I think state capitalism gets you that. And the fact that they haven't asked for that means they haven't had to, but they will. I'm less worried about that. I'm not worried as much about Brexit as some people are right here, but I do think that the weakness of what has been the most important alliance in the world, and certainly for this organization, for the last 75 years, the one that has upheld security norms such as they've existed, and has upheld the free market and rule of law and democracy and all of these, that is now at its weakest point. And I think that that does a lot to unnerve us. It undermines the way we think about the future of a global free market. Clearly, emerging markets will hedge much more in that environment. They'll be much more interested in going separate ways. I just made up, this is a terrible mistake on my part. Whatever you do here at Davos this year, look at John Carney and the Wall Street Journal's wonderful article on hand movements at Davos. I'm very paranoid now about my hand movements, Ian, because he just did a wonderful spoof. You go like this, you go like this. I'm worried about my hand. You have larger hand movements than most people do. Yeah, that's true. My hand movements. You are optimistic with some of the gloom. It's here. When you look at Ian Bremmer's Hollow Alliance, does do emerging markets, and for that matter the Middle East, but let's take it broader. Do they need to go alone finally and begin to ignore economically and politically the developed world? The first thing I think we should do is take a deep breath and not panic and not get concerned. And yes, there is a negative mood in Davos, but I think it is more a question of people coming into this force by geopolitics to think negatively and try and see if this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's step back from that for a second, and let's just look at what you mean when you talk about emerging markets. And there is a reason I call them global growth markets, and that is not just my optimism. It is the sheer dynamism and the sheer force of numbers. So Tom, if you look at the long-term trend lines that these markets represent, two-thirds of global GDP growth to 2030 is going to come from these markets. Two-thirds of consumption growth to 2030 is going to come from these markets, not from the US, not from Europe, not from anywhere else, from these markets. They already make up more than half of global GDP on a PPP basis, and they're going to go to two-thirds. 90% of the world's urban population growth is happening here, and 90% of the world's population under 30 live here. So let's stop for a second and think, how is Coca-Cola, Nike, Nestle, Kimberley-Clarke, and the list will keep going on? How do you think they're going to make their money, Tom? They're going to be selling there. More importantly, they're going to be investing their capex there. So when you look at my optimism framed in that light, and now, hang on, and sorry, and because there's no point completing half a sentence, and when you look at the fact that these opportunities that we see in these markets translate themselves into a higher consumption capacity by the people in these markets, you'll see why optimism is present. Within that, Mike, can I go back to your wonderful book on global growth of a few years ago on Convergence? It's a spectacular, thoughtful book that's not dated at all. Part of this optimism is a new transnational company that's going to invest for growth within emerging markets. You're in China a lot. Do you see a new corporate action that leads to a better growth pattern and a better optimism as a reef talks about? Well, I do. I mean, I think that on a medium to long-term basis, all of that is exactly true unless there's a cataclysmic destruction of the convergence process. All these economies have higher potential growth and so on. In the short run, Tom, there are questions of volatility. There's a slowdown in these markets because the other half of the global economy isn't growing very much. And those are big markets, Europe. I did a calculation. The advanced countries, the so-called developed countries since the start of 2008 have grown a total of 6%, computed communitively. In that period, China grew 60 or 70%. Now, I don't know how they did that exactly, but it produced some imbalances on the way through. But I think the opportunity is enormous. And then if you're talking specifically about China, the remaining questions is the Chinese government's management of the economy with respect to access to foreign competitors. And I have to say that's an open question. And don't you think that the fact that the commodity supercycle is now over, that's a recognized fact. And we can put that behind us. But despite that, these emerging markets, as we refer to them, are going to be delivering us four to four and a half percent growth this year. And also, the thing that you speak of, which moves away from the commodity supercycle, is the commodity supercycle, of this to begin with health. We were talking before this panel, oh, I'm thinking of things I learned in grade school or college or whatever on microbiology and virology. Forget about that. The health opportunity within emerging markets can participate with growth. Discuss that, please. Huge health opportunity because basically, as the economy grows in various populations, you eat better, you start sending your children to better schools, you need better health. And if you go to a place like China, there is very little access. So there is huge amounts of investments going in China, but also in Africa, in Latin America. While other sectors are getting hit, a lot of money's going into health and private education, the reason being people need it. And if you look, we all looked at the numbers for MSCI and how much the market has got beaten up, 14% last year, a lot the previous year, already more than 10% this year. If you look actually at the health side, much less. And if you invest well in these countries and we invest across all of them, there is huge opportunities. The insurance sector is growing in these countries, providing insurance for health, as well as health delivery, as well as hospital systems, as well as generate docs. And you have unfortunately, sadly, got the big problem of diabetes. For example, we're talking in India. Normally you would think, when I was working at the World Bank, there were all kinds of other diseases we were working on and they still are there in many of these countries. But some of our diseases in the developed world have now transferred in a huge way to the developing country, creating one potentially future fiscal drain, but the other side of it, the flip side in the market is opportunities for investments. Comment on what's in our textbooks we all learned about the emerging world. I mean, you can take it by me. We're honored that Professor Spencer, thus studying with John Hicks at Oxford a few years ago, moved from Michael Spencer's undergraduate era and graduate era forward to the youngest person in the room, the emerging market textbook, totally different. And you've captured this in your G-Zero outlook. Are the institutions there to help with the optimism we hear at the end of the row here? Well, clearly the institutions are weaker. It's a reason why we should be ultimately more optimistic about a country like Brazil. I mean, does anyone looking at Mexico really think there's less corruption in Mexico than there's in Brazil? Or we just haven't looked into it closely, right? I don't think you should necessarily be penalized long-term when we're thinking about where the trajectories are going when the fact that you actually have a judicial process. I mean, of the BRICS, right? I mean, in Russia and China, there'd be show trials and in India it would take 10 to 15 years to actually get to a court that could actually see it, right? Brazil is in the middle, but ultimately, I think they work through it. Look, one thing that I think is very interesting about emerging markets, if you want to talk about this really big theme of the fourth industrial revolution, right? When it hits, if it hits, it's hitting here. And it's hitting here in two very different ways. The first way it's hitting is to the extent that you're going to be unemploying lots of people, you're talking about the global middle class. That's not the United States and Europe. We're all rich people. That's what happens when China no longer has the ability to have relevant manufacturing and service labor, and they don't have the institutions to handle that, and their politics are going to react very badly. So that's an enormous risk, and that's going to be true across the EM space. The other side of this, and you mentioned, you kind of got me thinking about it when you talked about health care, is that the fourth industrial revolution means that every sector is becoming kind of strategic from an IT perspective, right? Like, health care is not just about providing health. It's a lot of really powerful data. Well, do we think, as that hits, that a state like China or Russia is not going to want to play a much more interventionist role in terms of understanding that data, controlling that data, manipulating that data, profiting from that data? I think there's a lot to play for here. ExxonMobil has known that their sector has been strategic for decades. I don't think that the health care providers necessarily think that way, especially when they go into China. If the fourth industrial revolution hits the way people have been talking about, just before the robot takeover, I think that this is going to be a core question for these markets. Michael Spence, to take it back to Adam Smith, is there a constructive, invisible hand in emerging markets that's different than in the developed world, which again leads to an optimism about future growth? Yeah, it's the dynamics. It's the trend. So if you took an early stage developing economy without the institutional infrastructure and all the other things, you'd say, gee, this isn't going to work. But that's not how the process works. They build the economy. They build the resources to invest. They build the capabilities. Look at macroeconomic management in world banks 25 years ago in emerging economies and now. They're superbly talented and competent. And that's just one example, Tom. So I think these barriers and challenges are real, some internal, some external. But there's a fairly long and improving track record of managing through them quite well. Ricardo, I'll come to you in a moment. Ricardo, how does Brazil find stability besides holding an Olympics? I mean, I don't need you to comment on the immense political challenges within Brazil right now. Is Brazil, maybe it is an emerging market, but boy, is it its own political economic experiment. What is your optimism that they will get back on a growth trajectory? Well, I'm always an optimist by nature. I mean, more cautious, optimistic in this case. And I agree with Ian, what he said, that although we're going to the strong oil, very challenging crisis, an economic side on the fiscal side, more than we've been seeing the last 70 years, I'm a cautious optimist on Brazil. It's still the seven biggest economy in the world. We have some difficulty managing the state, but we're still a great nation full of entrepreneurs, full of people with good values, people who believe in building the country. They keep the money into the country. We have good institutions that are being tested in this trust test that we are suffering. The three powers are quite working well and independent. The judiciary is doing a great work in cleaning up the political sphere and the business level in order to prepare Brazil for this new cycle. We have a very democratic country. It's a mature democracy. People's on the streets protesting, revidicating, empower citizens so they can demand their rights and the quality of the public service they deserve. But if you look at Brazil, for sure, we're going to have a low growth environment going forward the next few years, and also an current account adjustment going forward. And that depreciation of the currency will help in that way. Our John Mikkelswright spoke with the newly minted leader of Argentina today. What did you learn from the Argentinian election for all of Latin America? Well, it's a funny story. I was here with Mike in a panel like this two years ago, and he presented to the public that he would be a candidate for the presidency of the Argentinian government. They had a strategy to do so, and he'll win. I saw the faces of the people, a lot of doubt. But he said, if I go to the second round, things can change. Politics is not linear. And I really believe in him because knowing him from the past and all his career is very business-friendly. Politician, a leader, he's doing a great job in taking the reforms and opening up the country to the real world, debt capital markets, finishing the sepulcambiario, the controls, the import and export barriers that Argentina had, and having an inflation targeting regime to fight the high inflation levels that Argentina had. So if you talk to Argentinians, they have confidence now. Although the economy is still in recession, they have confidence that the country will get better. They will invest. They're starting bringing even the money back to the country. So I'm optimist of Argentina and the relationship that Argentina has with Brazil on trade. Within the business dealings you have and particularly within private transactions, fold in the government changes within the Middle East. If we look at the immense challenges that Saudi Arabia has right now and been witnessed even in the last few weeks, how do you perceive governments to support a rebound in economic growth within the Middle East? I think, look, the Middle East is a complex, both geopolitical, exercise to try and unravel, especially in the context of the outcome of the Arab Spring and the more recent developments in Syria, et cetera. You can't disaggregate them. But it's equally not right, in my opinion, to sort of put everything into one bundle. Saudi Arabia, at the end of the day, yes, is going through a structural reform issue simply caused by the fact that the oil price is low. But Saudi Arabia also made a very strong policy statement a couple of years ago or 18 months ago, where it stated very clearly that it was going to maintain market share. So it knows what it's doing. And it knows how to go about doing it as well. At the same time, countries like the UAE and Qatar have been preparing for a reduction in the price for a long time, so they're not that affected either. Now, this is not just my natural optimism talking. This is just facts on the ground. This is how businesses are growing. We're making investment decisions all the time. But if I can use that example and just say that for a second, let's take a step back in this discussion across markets and say we need to stop thinking of investing in this part of the world in this acronym-based approach. So we had BRICS, and then we had emerging markets, and we have all of these things. Let's disaggregate it for a second, Tom, and say there are actually three buckets. One is China, very clearly. The second is the commodity-driven countries, if I can be simplistic. And the third is private consumption-driven economies. Now, China is a facet all by itself. A slow China at 4 and 1 half percent is still double a fast West. And we shouldn't really be too surprised about what China is doing, because endless, for a long time, we've been arguing that these rates have to come down for long-term stability. And then you have the commodity-driven countries. Of course, they're going to get affected. And then you have countries that are exporting to China that are going to get affected, like Angola and Zimbabwe. And then you have these private consumption-driven economies that are actually booming. Give us some names there. So, for example, that's where I invested. That's what I call global growth market. So I will talk to you about countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile in South America. I will talk to you about countries in North Africa and Ghana and Nigeria, Kenya, doing quite well. In Asia, we're talking about Vietnam and Indonesia that are doing extremely well from a growth perspective. And where we put our money is in private companies. Why? Because they're more reflective of the economy and they're much more dry. They are the causes of driving the employment cycle in those economies. They are the causes of driving value creation in those economies. We're too often driven by this public market hysteria, right? Public markets, unfortunately. Did you shot at Bloomberg? No, of course not. God bless you. I don't think it's sponsored by... No, but have you done important observations? Ian, you wanted to jump in here with an observation on the groupings that we had. Groupings are great, first of all. I mean, I think everyone here can agree. I mean, Goldman Sachs got rid of the bricks, sort of fund only 88% from the top. And I don't think anyone could put Russia in the same category as Brazil. I mean, the markets have literally nothing in common in the way that they're proceeding. But I do think the geopolitics of this are becoming an interesting overlay, right? Because this year, we're trying to figure out, we understand Europe has macro implications. We understand China has macro implications. We're trying to figure out if the Middle East has macro implications. And we don't really know yet, right? Because right now, the United States is acting like it's Rwanda. We're spending a lot of money trying to fix it, right? A lot of humanitarian aid. But aside from that, there's really not a lot of interest in intervention. I've had at least 10 people ask me, how are we gonna fix refugees? We don't have any solution. And I'm like, of course we have a solution. Not our problem. But the country... That's our solution. The country through which those refugees are flowing, which is Turkey, happens to be going through a much smaller deficit than it's ever had, thanks to the fact that the oil prices are low, and its economy is growing at a fairly decent whack as well. Absolutely true. But my point, and Turkey's also got governance issues and they've got security issues and all the rest. But I think about the Middle East itself, to what extent over the next three, five years, as this persists, because anyone that looks at oil, Iran versus Saudi Arabia, US, Europe, basic geopolitics understands that the Middle East crises are going to get worse. Whether it's Yemen or Syria or Iraq, we know this. But the question is, is that gonna actually cause suddenly geopolitics to make oil prices whiplash when Saudi Arabia becomes unstable? Or does it become another Islamic State in a part of the territory that nobody else wants and has no cash that basically gets contained? And you have a whole bunch of these, lots of little failed states. The one other thing that I think we need to pay attention to is, why is it that these incredibly capable in terms of recruiting and social media, in terms of creating explosive devices, no cyber, right? I mean, the North Koreans could take down Sony Pictures and make everyone aware of it, but so far Boko Haram, ISIS, not at all. We need to figure that out because that's gonna give you another good answers to what extent this is ultimately Rwanda or it's gonna become much more macro. Very quickly you're off topic, Ian, did you see a change or a tone or a difference from Secretary Kerry today in his comments here? Tone? Not real. I mean, he's become more somber, I think. I mean, no, clearly, despite, I mean, Iran was triumphalist. He worked on it, you know, Shaul Ali for two years. I think now he's back in the, oh my God, look at all these other things now that I'm not doing Iran anymore and realizing that it's problematic. Dr. Beshaw, he was more somber because of Redskins football. All right. Help me here, Dr. Beshaw, in tying so much of this together is, and what I love about your idea is it's a way from what the media covers, which is the grind, as Michael has written about, of a modern economy. You have a longer, an immense optimism away from the headlines, away from the gloom. I think what we're not discussing is that in emerging markets, you have to look over long periods of time. The volatility in emerging markets is higher, as Michael said. The volatility of volatility in August, last August, was higher than in 2008, not just in emerging markets, but in global markets, which people have not really particularly looked at. So in a world that is more volatile, within that, an emerging world which is even more volatile, you don't want to invest in short-term in emerging markets. You have to have a view, whether you invest in liquid markets, I think you can invest in liquid markets, you can invest in equity markets, bond markets, private markets, real estate markets, across credit markets in these countries, and there are lots of opportunities. But if you don't have a 10-year perspective, you should not be going into these countries. And the interesting thing is these markets are so volatile that if we look in three months, potentially, the numbers could be terrible or wonderful. It's that volatile, depending on your start and ending date. So I think the thing that I would remind us to think about is think long-term. Remember, volatility is your friend in emerging markets if you use it right. Geopolitics has always been there. Macro has always been there. And in order to make money or lose money in emerging markets, you have to be aware of what's going on with the politics of where you're investing. What you're saying is the real opportunity, 100% right, the real opportunity is investing in the micro, investing in the specific companies and the specific sectors that give rise to enormous value creation over that period. And I would add one more thing. Find the best local teams. Because the best people to invest are the local teams in these countries. Can you look at that, Ricardo, every day across South America? I totally agree with my colleague's comment. Although we have this scenario, when growth deceleration is the new normal, fundamentals still matter. And if you look at how we're investing, there are blocks of countries. There is no homogeneous emerging markets. As well, there are no homogeneous Latin America. So if you look, one block countries are doing well. And I've mentioned Chile, Colombia and Peru, they're growing more than the average of the other countries. And the other side, Brazil, Argentina in harsh recessions, although you have Argentina brighter future with a more market-friendly government, you have Venezuela on the other side on the verge of collapse with hyperinflation and desperate need for humanitarian aid. And Mexico was just listening to the president and the other room is a different case because Mexico is not exporter of commodities, exporter of manufactured goods, totally correlated, very correlated with the US. So we are in the business here as a bank of managing risk, managing volatility, not the managing or the business of avoiding risk. So we know that because we have survived through many different economic, credit cycle, and volatile turbulent periods. And we've been stronger and more resilient in each one of those occasions. One of the observations I've seen recently, I think of Robert Sinchit, Amherst Pierpont, for years at Bank of America. And before that, Bear Stearns, is the advantage Mexico has from the new labor arbitrage currency depreciation through 18 on peso. And all of a sudden, some of these emerging markets with the adjacency of the United States, some of these emerging markets become extremely competitive with China. Steve Roach's labor arbitrage moves back across the Pacific. Would you see that? Do you observe that with your bank in Mexico and within Latin America? And in Mexico is a particular condition. At some point, the unit labor cost in Mexico was more competitive than in China. So with the maquiadora, they could leverage a lot of exports, car, and other aggregate, value aggregation to the world. And the reforms that the President and the Minister of the United States did also helped boost to differentiate the economic of Mexico, although growth has not been materialized in that economy. So what we see in Mexico is different with Latin America, but has NAFTA, trade agreement with North America, which also benefit Mexico. It curious enough when you think about oil prices, on the other hand, Mexico has been affected given the dependency on the oil prices. Interestingly enough, in the past, 80% of exports of Mexico was oil dependent, not only 6%. So they diversified the economy in such a way that they're more able to go through those turbulent times. Michael Spetz, you spent an inordinate amount of time recently thinking about China. How will they respond to these different actions by a reef's three emerging markets? They've got the labor currency adjustment and maybe a labor arbitrage of Mexico, et cetera. They've got capital flows and resources they can acquire everywhere. What do you presume China will do within challenged economic growth of the next five years? Well, I think they're gonna do several things. First of all, they anticipated this. They knew, as their predecessors who went through the middle income transition knew that they could not stay in the labor-intensive process-oriented manufacturing sectors and they decided that long ago when they're busy trying to produce the structural transformation that drives the economy in a different way. With innovation, higher value added on the tradeable side, more services, more reliance on the demand side on domestic consumption. In my view, it is a personal view. The fact that the president of China has an external agenda that includes a currency that's internationalizing and an AIIB and a bunch of other things has caused them to open the capital account prematurely relative to the maturity of the markets. And having watched for a long time, I have to say in a highly competent set of organizations and people with respect to economic management, the financial market management recently has been unaccustomedly clumsy to put it mildly. I don't expect this to persist, but the last thing I'd say, Thomas, China is now, there are tensions in this system because they're caught between several things. So they want a dynamic, innovative economy, but they haven't completely given up the idea of control. They want market-driven outcomes, but they haven't really settled the issue of SOEs and that affects foreign direct investors. They want to control the internet. They want to make sure the academics don't say too many subversive things. That's a good idea. And similar things on the financial side. So I think the remaining uncertainty about China's success in completing this journey has to do with resolving those tensions the right way. Arif, can you invest in China? No, we don't, but that's not to say that we won't, and there are reasons why we don't. There's a reason why earlier on I was telling you about the economies that we do invest in because they're the ones that exhibit the greatest level of growth and that is why we stick to them. And the one thing we've always run away from is this acronym-based investing approach. So we will invest into the countries that fulfill the criteria that we think is driving growth in these emerging markets, which are urbanization, a young population, which is increasingly middle-classed and consumption-based. So while everybody was jumping up and down about sub-Saharan Africa being a commodity story, the reality is there's 300 million Africans in sub-Saharan Africa that are in the middle classes and coming into them. And even within that, if you are smart and you differentiate between lower middle-class and upper middle-class, you have the opportunity to invest into businesses that cater to the local requirements. So I think at the end of the day, it is not about one big landscape that we're painting, it is about extremely smart, focused investing, and I loved your point earlier about local teams because those of us that have put local teams down are seeing the benefits of it, okay? What's the worst practice or way for multinationals and tri-nationals? They've learned through mistakes over the years. What's the worst practice right now? Why is it that you're consistently asking me the questions that get me in trouble with my friends? That's why I'm doing it, thank you. I wouldn't. Ian, yeah, why? So I'm gonna, where are we in time? I'm going seven more minutes, and I must admit, I have to give the first question to Professor Tyson of Berkeley who's sitting over here quietly. I'll go to you here in a moment, just to prepare, to warn you. Seven-minute warning. I look Ian at the emotion and you are acclaimed for your books on the J-Curve and the G-Zero Nation. Fold this optimism on emerging markets and the micro-level analysis back to the collapse of G-20, G-8 to G-7 to your acclaimed book, G-Zero. Where do we go from, can we go G-negative? Two quick points. One is to understand where we're going, we need to understand to what extent the Westphalian system holds. Our state's going to be as strong actors in determining governance and power in the next five and 10 years as they are now. And that you see erosions, and some of it's good erosion, like Paris, and you get more in agreement because mayors are more involved, and CEOs are more involved, industrialists are more involved, that's great. On the other hand, you see bad because no one's fighting ISIS effectively, and so Anonymous says, we're Batman, you don't want that, right? So it depends on which direction that goes. But the other big question, of course, is this one country that's its own category, which is China, and China wants it, Professor Spence said it, they want it both ways, but there's a reason they want it both ways, it's because their population actually reflects both countries, right? You can't, China's, in a sense, China's in two baskets. When I think about what Gorbachev tried to do with the Soviet Union, everyone looks at the two things, the political openness, glass noses where the Chinese don't want, and then they look at the economic transformation, perestroika, which the Chinese do want, can they do it? There was a third thing. The third thing was decentralization, a recognition that not everything could be decided in Moscow, which in the Soviet Union was a disaster because when you decentralize, you've got 15 new countries. But in China, when you look at the demands, the composition of the population in Shanghai or in Beijing, and what they want from the government, the kind of openness increasingly rule of law, the ability to protect themselves versus local competition, better standards, sending their kids to American institutions, you know, that kind of thing, getting their money out if they need to, compare that to what you want in the interior of the country, when you just want another 10% growth, you don't care if it's coal heavy, you just want it, you're not worried as much about product safety, but you want your kids to have a better lifestyle than you do. And if the Chinese government doesn't understand that they need to be able to decentralize and govern these two different parts of the country effectively, they're gonna be in a train wreck. And the thing that I worry about most is that the country that is set to become the largest economy in the world relatively soon, fundamentally will not take what they perceive to be an unacceptable risk. That worries me. Thank you very much, please. Basically, I think what nobody is talking about is why was China's growth as high as it was? Why was it? I think the reason it came on to, if we look at sort of growth rates in China and Professor Spence will talk much better than myself, but basically you went through a period where they entered the world economy. I remember the first missions I had from the World Bank going into China and there were no cars. Do you remember all those days? There was really no stores, no cars, no real differentiation in clothing. And basically as money came in, they were like sponge. So they learned on the technical side, they brought in the best technical experts to learn from, then moving forward as post-2008, as money was flowing in, they did the opposite to what everybody else did. They really built up their infrastructure, they built up their liquidity, they built up the big reserves in currency and so on and so forth. And what you got is this period of unprecedented growth. No country has had that kind of growth. When was it that they didn't have cars? When was it they didn't? It was like the first time I went, like you would see one car on the road every 15, 20 minutes and that was probably 25 years ago. So imagine in 25 years, they've had to do what it took America 100 years to do. So they've done everything exactly on such fast speed. So the question in China, I think, is very much what you said, but as Professor Spence said, the very important thing is they have joined the SDR. They don't really like to be called an emerging market anymore. They are in a different category as we said. It's not a brick, it's not an EM. And I think that's kind of really important. They are now leading the G20 this year. They will make every effort to not have currency collapse kind of anything unruly if they can't control it. They may not be able to communicate it. Can I just make one very small point? China actually has some very, very smart economists as well. Just wanted to put that on the table. Michael Spence, comment on that and I'd like you to write the next chapter of Jonathan Spence's classic book to making a modern China. Where is that chapter? What is it? Well, I think that's what we've been talking about. So there's an awful lot. I mean, in all of these countries, there's tremendously smart people. There's great entrepreneurs. I mean, that really is the core source of the optimism. And then when you get a little worried, it's because of the governance problems that we're now talking about. They really, you know, you may be able to go another 10 years with a kind of single party system, but it sure has to change its attitudes toward management. I think Ian was right also in saying this something that's complicated has to be decentralized. And right now the power appears to have gravitated very, very concentratedly into the President's office. So. I could go on for hours, but because of time with 14 minutes left, Professor Tyson, Laura Tyson of the Haas School, Berkeley, please unobservate. No? Trific panel. I think a terrific panel. And I would say the themes of micro and focus on place and focus on investors and focus on sectors and focus on consumers and focus on the long term. That's really the issue. I will say I take a little exception with the notion of the two China's Ian. I think we need to keep in mind that right now from the point of view of the Chinese population, this is actually one of the most trusted governments that delivered from the majority of its population in the world. They are in a very difficult transition period. That's absolutely true. There's been a fair amount of decentralization actually. Certainly in terms of say local governance complaints against is the society working for you are registered a lot at the local level. It's true that the central government has been bringing some power back, but that's partly because there was a lot of this sort of credit and debt boom was really out of control sort of use of leverage by local governments. So I actually think that what I would say is China's involved in a very, very difficult transition that we've heard, but I'm a little more optimistic that it's not something that has to do right now with the legitimacy of the Chinese government in the eyes of the Chinese population. I agree completely that the Chinese government is legitimate in the eyes of the Chinese population. In fact, I would argue that most Chinese view their government today is more legitimate than most Americans view their government without any question, but that doesn't mean that they view them as legitimate for the same reasons. And I think that if you're poor, you view the government as legitimate because they provide a growth. And if you're wealthier, you have a lot of patriotism about what they've done, but you now have very different demands. Product safety and it's accountability and responsibility of local officials. It's very different. And I do think that this centralization trend brings up one other thing that we need to pay a lot of attention to that even in places where you have really strong, really impressive leaders. Xi Jinping's an incredibly impressive guy. He's attracted enormously meritocratic talent around him. So has Modi, but in an emerging market, what do you do when that leader has kind of gutted a lot of the institutional mechanisms because so much is around them. We're not even talking about Putin here. We're talking about like good leaders. And yet, how do you make that transition? I think there's a long term, you're creating some really big risk and uncertainty in precisely those sorts of situations. Nevermind what you see in Saudi Arabia, Russia. I think you're taking a photograph where you should be looking at a video. And what I mean by that is that yesterday you may have certain issues in relation to China, per se, today. But we have to also remember that all of this in the backdrop of history, what they have done in 25 years is unprecedented in the history of humanity. Equally where they're going in terms of the structural adjustment to the economy, moving to a consumption-led growth pattern, et cetera, these are all issues that most people have not dealt with before. Let's not forget how many people China has taken out of the poverty trap. And then when we talk about China, we spend the whole hour and we haven't touched upon what is arguably probably the best investment opportunity in the world in the coming decade, which is India, okay? India is a fantastic opportunity, but guess what? It has serious issues too. Oil is down, yes, and everybody is immediately jumping onto the bandwagon that says Saudi Arabia is about to get gutted and destroyed. Guys, it's not about to do any of those because when that price is down, it has the opportunity to do structural reform. Tanjanjal here, what's your business experience in India, Arif? Strong, very good. And to me... What's the stereotype we most get wrong in that emerging market? So the bureaucracy is a force to be dealt with, and it is a force that India has to deal with. The second element, of course, is that it is difficult for foreign investment to get control of businesses and make changes the way that it intends to. And I think India itself is beginning to realize that. Entrepreneurs are beginning to realize that. And I think to attract more foreign capital, more and more businesses are realizing that the need for tomorrow is to actually work in partnership. Actually, India, you can't... If you wanted to buy Indian stocks, it's very hard. You can buy Chinese stocks, you can buy Brazilian stocks, but to buy Chinese stocks, they haven't even cracked that much, so... Another question over here, sir. Thank you. Eugenio Madero from Mexico. Congratulations, great panel to all of you. This is a question to Ian. I think the US consumer has the most disposable income over the past five years, so that oil tax cut. And on the other hand, America produces now 10 million barrels of oil, he's oil-independent, if you will, no? You can discuss that with fracking and price of oil. How do you... Strong, do you see the United States the next three to four years vis-a-vis emerging markets? Look, from my perspective, this is a question, I think, for the whole panel, not just for me. The United States benefits immensely from having this geopolitical buffer, great neighbors of Mexico, Canada, and two oceans. The Europeans don't have that. The Asians have some of it now, but it's gonna get more problematic over time, so that's one point. But I don't think you can look at the United States and pretend everything is rosy given the election situation you have right now. I don't believe that Trump can win, and even if he does, I don't think the impact on the markets are immense, but I do think that there is a serious issue that's partially economic, flat wages for decades, and partially about an America that is changing radically. We're talking about emerging markets changing radically. The United States, if you think about how women's role in society has changed, how much less religious it's becoming, how much more multicultural it's becoming, drug legalization, all of these issues that make a lot of people in the middle class, a lot of white people in the middle class feel kind of really unnerved, that the country's moving away from them, even if they're doing economically okay. And I think that that's behind this, and I expect there's nothing that makes me believe that's going to get addressed by the next president of the United States or by the next Congress. If that persists for another eight years, I think my answer to your question is gonna be different. It's gonna be less confident than it is today. My observation, as we mentioned, Mr. Trump at 51 minutes, 12 seconds, which is pretty good, good job. I would like to talk to you about the adjacency to the United States. If we look at Latin America, if we look at all the horrific stereotypes of my study through the years of the United States as we look south, give me the pushback from the Latin America of how so much of Latin America will go alone and doesn't need the United States. Actually, we need the United States. It's welcome to have the help of the United States. It's a big market. We have to learn a successful capitalist society and in terms of policy, because in my humble view, the real true emerging markets was the United States. After the crisis, it rebounded really, really strong with resilience, with entrepreneurship, innovation, this industrial force, industrial revolution, and it's growing and creating jobs. And we see this tougher economic situation that was mentioned here with the case of China, slower growth of China, and also the worsening in terms of trade, looking at the headwinds for our region of the world and slowing growth. And when we look to our region of the world, if we don't have big markets to export, my view is that we are just seeing the beginning of a era of austerity and the end of the decade of prosperity that we had in our part of the world. Is Cuba in your Latin America, where will they be in five years? I don't want to get you in trouble. Never say never. Now that never say never, it's a small market anyway. The US now have some agreements, but we have other priorities in the region, rather than consider Cuba. I see some prospects, but in Central America, rather focusing Panama, for example. Ian, a quick update on Cuba that you've written for Eurasia Group. What do you see there in the news? Everybody wants to go, right? I mean, the Cuban Americans all have a plan for something they want to do when they're over there. The politics have really shifted. I mean, Marco Rubio, sure, is opposed because it's kind of cheap vote and he has to be, but ultimately there's really not much opposition to opening up Cuba. The question will be how vulnerable, how insecure the Cuban government feels, kind of like the Supreme Leader in Iran. Go back to right at the beginning. We said, is Iran going to be an attractive market? Well, if the Supreme Leader thinks that by making an attractive market that they've written the end of the theocracy in Iran, it's going to be a much less attractive market. That's a kind of core question for Cuba. I have some final thoughts here, but Professor Spence, I want to start with you in that part of our seminar in the U.S. and we're at Joe's, ask me to really stay on. The script here is Rising U.S. Interest Rates, which tells me Janet Yellen is the central banker to emerging markets. Is that a correct statement? Is Chair Yellen a central banker to emerging markets? No, it's not really correct. I mean, look at, you know, the old theory was that if your exchange rate fluctuated and you were autonomous with respect to monetary policy, I don't think anybody believes that in its pure form anymore. So all of these countries have had to do the best they can, defending themselves from what you might call post-crisis recovery distortions in the international monetary system. And, you know, that's a hard thing to do. You can accumulate reserves, create buffers, you can put up capital controls or frictions, a lot of things, but, you know, it's not an easy exercise and frankly, there's no textbook for it. So yes, to some extent, she is the central banker to a very large part of the world. Dr. Beschloss, we look at the impossible trinity, which is the macroeconomics of international economics. What is your impossible trinity for the growth and the building of these economies? One's got to be a good political foundation, good rule of law. Tell me some other ideas that are going to be the underpinning to growth. I should first say that the sad thing post-2008, as liquidity came into emerging markets, is that we did waste an opportunity to build the rule of law, build the institutions you need. You need a financial sector that is solid and that operates, that is transparent. For example, in Brazil, relative to transparent, but the cost of transactions are very high. So you need a financial system that is transparent, but also the costs are reasonable. A lot of costs within the financial sector of transactions are still non-transparent, non and pretty high. In terms of the rule of law, as you said, I think it's a bigger thing. It's not just the rule of law in terms of governments and rule of law to make sure that Putin doesn't keep all your money in there, but it's also governance of the companies at the company level. Again, going back to the theme of micro, that is a huge thing still within this country, especially as there are lots of family-owned businesses that come into the economy and still run not quite well. So those, I would say, are really quite large and then, of course, the structure of the economy and creating power shortages are the biggest problems in across every single emerging market and dealing with that. So the mantra when you, your people were building your great country was Go West Young Man. I think almost inexorably, the mantra today is Go East Young Man. I think the reality of these markets transcends any short-term thinking around where instability happens. I am not advocating to anyone in this room. Everybody's a smart investor. Don't rush to put your money in today. Things are a bit unclear and the market sentiment is a little bit dicey, but that means in the private space, in the course of the coming 12 months, there will be some fantastic buying opportunities. And as you rightly pointed out, if you've got the stomach to hold it out for 10 years, eight years, five years, you will make a lot of capital returns. When you put that against a backdrop of governance reform that is needed and the fact that currencies and the lower oil price is going to, by definition, lead to structural reform in economies that are dependent on oil. So why would you continue to subsidize basic commodities? Of course, you're gonna do away with them. Of course, you'll impose VAT. Those are normal, sensible things and those in turn will help provide stimulus to the economies. So in overall terms, I feel very strongly that there has not been a better time to look at putting capital to work over a 10 year cycle than today. This has been absolutely wonderful. I come away with the two major takeaways and I love so much what I heard about thinking micro much like we heard in Paris at the climate talks. And the other thing is don't listen to the media. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.