Busy week -
Monday - enjoyed opening day at Wimbledon grace a CNBC where Steve Peck, Nicholas de Santis and I were reunited.
Tuesday - I meet Sir Peter Vardy - one of my heros - who I had read a lot about, and met in Newcastle recently; he keynoted at Entrepreneur Country on Wednesday.
Wednesday - Entrepreneur Country relaunched www.entrepreneurcountry.net, and 300 people joined forces again at the Institute of Directors grace a Andrew Main Wilson, our generous host. Our dinner for 100 was at the restaurant at the IOD which was very good, and we spilled out into the garden afterwards.
Thursday - there is always the recovery stage. I joined the IEA - http://www.iea.org.uk/ - run by the wonderful John Blundell, whose recently published book on Margaret Thatcher I am in the midst of - for a dinner following a talk by John Micklewait, the Editor of the Economist, my favourite publication - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Micklethwait
John has just written a book - God is Back - which I'm reading as well. I've always thought it was boring to read one book at a time.
John spoke about three things:
· Where were we going
· What happened
· Paranoid Optimism
I took note, and hope that I've captured the key points of his excellent talk.
The past 25 years of capitalism have been the Great Opening. One billion people have been lifted out of poverty through capitalism and freer markets. He urged that when people try to tie this period with the greed of Bernie Madoff and Fred Goodwin, that we should remind them that it is / was really about those billion people.
That 25 year period he argued was good for freedom and good for Britain as well.
Interestingly, there are now 100 million Christians in China compared to only 70 million Communists. Random fact from his book.
John argued that Barack Obama by 2017 must do two things:
· bring the emerging world into the world order with participation in the institutions of power
· resell capitalism
He doesn't think Obama is protectionist
When asked if he had been hired by the Church, what would he do - given his "God is Back" book? - interestingly he said abandon the state mandate.
Another week, 90 hour week ... tomorrow is Julie day.....
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