One of the best parts of this conference is the unprecedented access that we have to VIPs. Two days ago, we had the opportunity to go to the ABAC meetings, mainly to check out the area where we'll be participating in the CEO summit etc. But, my group got lucky, because the Voices of The Future program set up an interview with Peter Scher for my small group (Kelly and Dez also got to sit in on it). Scher is the Vice President of Global Government Policy and International Relations for JP Morgan Chase. I think the spirit of the interview was to hold him up for about twenty minutes, but my group asked him questions for a solid 45 minutes, after which time, Dr. Gordon talked to him and he agreed to come speak at Furman. Scher was one of the lead negotiators that helped China join the World Trade Organization, so his insight into global economic issues is one of the most impressive in the field.
Being an employee of a huge financial institution, Scher also has a lot of insight regarding how to prevent future financial crises. He talked a lot about the need for government regulation to be combined with institutional values. This part of the interview was especially inspiring to me because it is easy for me to be disillusioned with the ethical failures of many businesses, and hearing a higher up at a financial institution say that values are important gave me hope for the future of market economies everywhere. According to Scher, institutions should work to create an environment of transparency, diligence, and responsibility. Transparency refers to everyone should know what he or she is doing enough to explain it to anyone else. Diligence is simply hard work. Responsibility is the idea that each person should be encouraged to voice their concerns at anytime, and they should feel the obligation to do so. Although Scher may simply have a charismatic presence, I felt like he was being genuine, and that he himself embodies the values that he lauded to us.
In addition to enjoying the interview immensely, I have never been so impressed by my liberal arts education as I was during that day. We only had about twenty minutes to prepare for the interview, and most of the members of my group had a really hard time coming up with insightful questions to ask Scher, but I, along with the one other delegate who attends a liberal arts school, had an easy time deciding what piece of insight we wanted from Scher that we couldn't get from the internet. It seems that all those philosophy classes have actually paid off, because we had a handle on balancing the flow of conversation with the ability to direct it. I usually don't believe my professors when they say that they are teaching us to think for ourselves, but after that interview, I'm a believer.
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