I think that the words and the deeds we are hearing out of china, jim, are encouraging. This administration seems to be much more committed. Lets keep going. The reforms they are making in terms of letting the market determine the distribution of resources. These are revolutionary. We will hope that this leads to a kind of openness that ends up being a model for the world, if they continue with what they have told us. His activities are all related to corruption internally. They are not related to corruption that relates to external business. I think that is a very big hurdle to jump. Again, i think our role is to be as vigilant as we possibly can and call it out when we see it. The first decision i had to make was this one. It set a tone. This is what we have to do. We have to call it out when we see it. We have to encourage it everyone, especially all the major players, to look at it internally and externally. I think the new york example is a good one. There are so many things that
Planning. It is months and months to close down a base. If you just look at the physics of this, in an antiseptic world, and afghanistan is not antiseptic, it takes months to get all this done, just to get out. And to get to the end place of our 2014 ending our combat mission there. Then we are asking our commanders and budget hers and our allies our budgeters and our allies to start with commitments for the coming year when they have no idea what that means. No leader can commit their country, or the military, or any of their resources to their nation or any other nation without some certainty of what that is. We have pulled back on some of our historical roles in brazil, and our program today is focused on i o diversey issues and climate biodiversity issues and Climate Change issues. We have a few alternative energy programs, but this does not represent the future of our developed assistance program. However, it does represent the future of our commercial engagement, our investment e
Second, we need to empower citizens with information and tools to make the governments more effective and accountable. Third, we need to build a Global Movement to prevail over corruption. The World Bank Group will be creating a single pool of technical experts in rule of law, public sector, financial him and state management and public sector, financial, state management, public improvement. We know that we and our partners have had an impact. For instance, when corruption threatened to derail the Critical Power project for Southern African countries, the world bank intervene, preventing more than 6 million from being misused. In afghanistan, we supported a network for integrity and reconstruction, which trained 980 people who have monitored 281 Infrastructure Projects with 247 million. 83 of the concerns they raised have been addressed. Through Innovative Solutions in key sectors like engineering and consulting, we have convinced major firms to commit to clean business practices. We
Some of the most exciting things we are seeing are related to the other major shift. Here is one experiment. In afghanistan, we have given afghani women cell phones. They can take pictures of projects in action. They can transmit them to our office. It has a feature that if they are stopped on the road side, there is one button they push and gets rid of the pictures. It does not put them in danger. We give them access to Cell Phone Services and give them a concrete way of monitoring corruption. We also protect them in case they get stopped. Citizen voice will not go away. If there is anything we have learned from the arab spring, everybody can twet and go on facebook. If you bring together best practices with citizen engagement, that is a great path. You have to have delivery. I started off with a Nonprofit Agency to try to improve government. The slogan i got from Thomas Edison is appropriate. Vision without execution is hallucination. [laughter] we have a lot of vision here about dea
Market makers on Bloomberg Television. I am Erik Schatzker. I am Stephanie Ruhle. Im here at the nasdaq at the founder summit. This brings in great names like aero and oculus, and the bankers to represent them including Goldman Sachs and blackstone. P are hot. Is stephanie, looking forward to it all. On assignment not too far away in midtown manhattan this morning. In the meantime, the monthlong feud between ebay and carl icahn appears to be over. This will give him confidential access to the company, and he has withdrawn his demands for a paypal spinoff and 2 seats on the board. I spoke to ceo john donahoe in the morning, who characterizes this as a win for shareholders. I asked him, why give carl icahn anything at all. What he has done is seeing the potential in the opportunity in our company. So he is becoming a longterm shareholder, which i think is a winwin. And dave dorman is coming on as an independent director. An independent director that i respect and that carl respects. I th