Back to Work - Bill Clinton [79]
I don’t know how this will turn out. I just know that for more than two hundred years, everyone who’s bet against the United States has lost. A lot of people are betting against us today. I’m betting that once again, in a very different world, we’ll find our way to a “more perfect Union.” Let’s get the show on the road.
* * *
1 A report by the Aspen Institute, Overcoming Short-termism: A Call for a More Responsible Approach to Investment and Business Management, is really worth reading, for the sweep and the specificity of its bipartisan proposals to reform the financial sector to create more jobs and long-term value, including a tax on financial transactions that has bipartisan business support. See http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/images/Overcoming%20Short-termism%20AspenCVSG%2015dec09.pdf.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AS IN THE WRITING of My Life and Giving, I am most indebted to Justin Cooper for helping me gather and organize materials, doing extra research, fact-checking, and correcting errors, and working with me to make the book clearer as I wrote and rewrote it. Justin was assisted with fact-checking in the final weeks by Betsy McManus and Caitlin Klevorick.
My editor, Bob Gottlieb, and managing editor, Katherine Hourigan, were, as always, invaluable in making sure that in substance and style the book would be interesting and useful to all kinds of readers.
I am also grateful to others at Knopf for their support. Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor in chief; Tony Chirico, president; Carol Carson, Maria Massey, Jessica Freeman-Slade, Andy Hughes, Virginia Tan, and the many others who did the proofreading and put the book together in record time.
I want to thank all those who read all or part of the book and offered suggestions, beginning with Hillary, Chelsea, my lawyer Bob Barnett, Doug Band, Oscar Flores, Rolando Gonzalez-Bunster, Bruce Lindsey, Terry McAuliffe, John Podesta, Matt McKenna, and Mark Weiner.
I am indebted to the many people who provided information and insight on the mortgage crisis, the corporate tax reform system, and other issues and ideas discussed in the book.
While I was writing this book, the work of my foundation, presidential library and center, the school of public service, the Clinton Global Initiative, and our work in Haiti continued, thanks to the efforts of the many good people who work in those areas. I am profoundly grateful to all of them. I want to especially thank Laura Graham, my chief of staff and representative in all our Haiti efforts; Ginny Erlich, who leads the Alliance for a Healthier Generation; Bob Harrison and the staff of CGI; Ira Magaziner and the staff of CHAI; Ami Desai, my foreign-policy aide and liaison to the Clinton Climate Initiative.
Finally, I want to thank those who make the work I do today possible with their donations of time and money. They span the political spectrum, all income and age groups, and live all over America and across the world. Every day, they prove cooperation works better than conflict.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.
The charts on 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 5.3, and 5.7 are © 2011 New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.
2.1: Excerpted from New York Times/Boston Globe graphic “The Debt Crisis,” July 31, 2011.
2.2 and 2.3: July 24, 2011.
5.3: February 19, 2011.
5.7: August 5, 2011.
The charts on 5.5 and 5.9 are from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
5.5: OECD (2010), Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932459831.
5.9: OECD Tax Revenue Statistics, OECD Tax Database, www.oecd.org/ctp/taxdatabase,