Your Excellencies, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted that so many of you are here. Let me welcome all the participants and delegates who arrived late last night and thank them for abbreviating their sleep to be here with us this morning. There were a few planes from Europe and other parts that were delayed by several hours due to another concentration of Icelandic volcanic ash, but happily all the planes that we were expecting to arrive last night did indeed arrive, although some just in the early hours of this morning. Allow me to begin by thanking again His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Bahrain for the honour he did us by gracing us with his presence last night. I would also like to thank the Economic Development Board of the Kingdom of Bahrain for their support and enthusiasm for this inaugural Bahrain Global Forum.
Let me begin with a few brief housekeeping remarks. The first plenary session is on the Changing Global Balance of Economic Power and Its International Impact. We have a number of plenary sessions today and two tomorrow. The plenary sessions are entirely on-the-record, both the remarks made from this podium and the questions and comments that are made from the floor. Tomorrow morning, we have four special sessions that are simultaneous, each being addressed by three to four speakers, and those sessions are entirely off-the-record, and so I hope that you will respect the formality. We also anticipate that there will be free-flowing discussion in those sessions, as there will be I am sure in the plenary sessions. The International Institute for Strategic Studies will after this event provide an analytic summary of the main arguments and points made, and in relation to those made in the special sessions we will preserve the anonymity of the interveners but try to reflect the weight of the arguments that will have been made.
The plenary sessions will each be chaired by a different chair; I hope that will keep a sense of freshness in our proceedings but all chairs will respect the basic principle, which is that each of the speakers should speak for 15 minutes, no more, and then we will turn to the floor for both comments and questions. If you want to catch the chair’s eye, please raise your nameplate, ideally horizontally, so that the chair can read the name and note it down. Once you are recognised, please press your microphone and begin speaking. The cameras will then be able to project your image dramatically and fulsomely on the screen, so no matter where you are sitting people can see you properly. Do identify yourself, even when you are called on by name, so people understand the perspective from which you are coming.
With those preparatory remarks and on the understanding that there are no difficult questions to ask, let us move immediately to the first session. We have two very distinguished speakers. The first, Dr Heizo Takenaka, many of you will know as one of Japan’s leading economists and commentators. He was a minister in Prime Minister Koizumi’s government at a very particular time in Japanese financial history during a major banking crisis. He was given responsibility for ‘being tough’ with the banks so he has some experience of what is now of interest in other parts of the world. He also was responsible for the privatisation of Japan Post, an enterprise that is now being renationalised by the current government. In a moment, he will provide his perspectives on the changing global balance of economic power and its economic impact, but obviously with special reference to the various countries of East Asia, of which he has special knowledge.
Next will be Professor Richard Cooper of Harvard University, who has a longstanding career as a political economist. He has written innumerable books and articles and has long been a student of the United States economy. He is also a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council and has been responsible for thinking about how financial and economic issues affect international relations more broadly. We look forward to his remarks. We want to animate a conversation amongst ourselves. Do not be intimidated by the size of the room or the number of participants; we can still have a conversation and I shall try to call on as many people as I can to ensure that we have a spritely conversation and one that advances thinking on these matters. Heizo Takenaka, can I invite you to take the floor?
