Agreements. This portion is about an hour and 15 minutes. Perfect. So im one of the conference chairs for the mccourt 2018 policy conference. I would like to start off by thanking those who have just arrived and thanking those who have been with us from this morning or just arrived for the ambassadors panel. I think the next panel is in some respects at the heart of the trade subject, Financial Services is integral to our everyday lives and integral to the modern economy, at least in the western world, developing world. Every modern economy relies on Financial Services. It is also in many respects a good, kind of like the digital discussion that we dont often think how it crosses borders. We assume when we go to atms we will take money out of the bank and we assume we will have the same service when we go to other countries as well. Theres an infrastructure in place that supports a global web of service, but not one we engage with in everyday discussions but it is an important one. The Financial Services is incredibly important, and not just because of everyday lives but because of the size of services that cross natural borders. I think it is one that in recent years, especially the last decade, has become much more important to the Global Political discussion. How do you rec lagulate this z , industry, whats best way to do it, how do we make sure it contributes positively in the economies in which it resides. We have panel to tackle this discussion and the larger discussion of trade. Moderning will be Nicolas Vernon who cofounded the think tank in brussel also in 2002. He is currently employed on equal terms by both organizations as a senior fellow. His research is primarily about Financial Systems and Financial Services policies and i frequently briefs senior policy officials in europe, the United States and asia and has testified at parliamentary hearings in member states. He is a financial [ inaudible ]. Hes been a financial policy expert for european commission, european parliament, International Monetary fund and the world bank. A lot of organizations trust his judgment. Next we have robert kyle, who i will start out by saying you cannot trust my judgment on because he is my current professor. Bob kyle is a highlyrespected lawyers assisting clients with washingtonbased problems. He previously served in senior positions in the white house and congress, and he is skilled in challenges involving International Dimensions and substantive economy of complexity of the Global Economy. He brings 15 years of private sector experience in helping clients solve difficult problems and is seen as one of the most savvy toernls in washington. He served in the Clinton White house first as a special assistant to the president for International Trade and finance. With a National Security council and National Economic council and as one of the project assistant developments of office and management budget where he oversaw the u. S. Budget. He has focused time on special international events. Next frank samolis. He is with Squire Patton boggs, where he focused on International Trade negotiations. He is chair of the India Practice Group and leader of the colombia desk Latin American Task force. He frequently handles matters before u. S. Office of trade representative, other executive branch trade agencies, u. S. International trade commission, u. S. Court of International Trade, u. S. Custom services and u. S. Congress. He has represented foreign multinations from asia, europe, africa and the middle east, so someone that knows the needs of governments and corporations in respect to Global Economy and trade. Next we have douglas midland who works in Financial Division within opic structured finance Insurance Department where he underwrites loans across a wide range. Prior to joining the group he spent time working with an opic policy division, assessing deals in finance departments. He previously worked at Morgan Stanley in new york as a fellow member of the next Generation Council sr 21, a Nonprofit Research group, and is and has holds a masters in arts and International Relations from johns hopkins. Finally, wouter bossu is a senior Legal Counsel at imf. He is a belgian national. Prior to working for imf he worked for belgian and European Central banks. He works in financial and stability policy. With that i will leave it to the people with more impressive resumes than me and we can start the conversation. Thank you so much. That was indeed an impressive setting of the scene for this panel. We are going to talk about trade but also about investment, about financial regulation. Thats the distinctive attribute of this panel. Im going beyond the pure core trade stuff of exchanging goods, and theres a lot of jargon in that area as there are a lot of acronyms, a lot of specialized knowledge, inevitably so. I encourage our panelists to go into the weeds to a certain extent but to explain the weeds for the audience. So if you use an acronym, explain it and those kind of things. I think we shouldnt be shy, we shouldnt shy away from going into some at least some of the technical stuff because otherwise it is difficult to be relevant. Without further noise from me, lets go first to our panelists. I will ask each of them to make relatively brief introductory statements and i will take it from there. Bob. Thank you, nicolas. I want to begin by asking one very important question, and my comments will center around that. That is where is the Global Economy heading . What path are we on . So are we on a path where there will be greater nationalistic trade policies, a decline and embrace of International Institutions, a path that is more characterized by the policy also of president trump, Marine Le Pen and brexit, or are we on a path where for several years we may be through that period but we will then return to the post world war ii path that evidenced greater globalism, gradual embrace of International Institutions . Which of those paths are we on . Thats what i would like to begin to talk about today. Before i do that though let me first of all thank michael observerman and georgetown for putting this together. Michael has done a great job. He has been helped by dar saresh also in my class. A special shoutout to my geeding shepherd as i have done my teaching at georgetown. Lets go back to the question, which path are we on. All of us like to think we live in a special era and were at a big inflection point. It is not a threw bumspeed bump true inflection point. Let me give the contemporary review. They have done studies of what is the political aftermath in countries after you have a financial crisis. They went back and looked, going back to the 1800s and looked at 60 developed countries and examples of what happened politically in those countries after you had a financial crisis. They found a very clear pattern, four things happened. First of all it takes about eight years for a country to get out from under the economic effects of a financial crisis. Those are the eight years we have been through with the election of president trump. Two, you saw an increase in those countries of far right politics. Think populism as well. Three, you saw a distinct challenging of the traditional political parties. Think Bernie Sanders challenging the democratic Traditional Party and donald trump challenging the traditional republican party. Four, saw an increase in confrontational politics. Have we seen weve seen that as well. Now, after that eightyear period is over, gradually those effects dissipate and things go back to a little bit more the way they were before the period. So if you believe that pattern, then this is a speed bump. Weve changed things but we eventually return to that. Thats one point of view. The second way to look at it though is this isnt a speed bump, it is moran inflection point. There are certainly unresolved tensions in the Global Economy right now that we need to think about. One is what do we do about middle income workers in developed countries and their capacity to compete and have good living given low wage workers and the rides of automation. Thats an unresolved issue. It is not going to resolve itself within an eightyear period. Second, what about immigration and the pressures that causes in countries . Good and bad, but the problems that countries have absorbing greater immigrant populations