>Maybe people have done this, but I wish someone in Congress would follow up
>one of his answers with "Can you be a little more specific?" and then follow
>up the next answer with "You're still being ambiguous, let's try a little
>harder now shall we?" and then "better, but I think you can still do better
>than that."
>Peter
Spokespersons on the international economy are often non-specific because the art is in giving nuances. It is true that in the nature of such questioning you are trying to pin them down on something more specific but its success should be judged in whether you can put your questionee on the spot in front of the audience *they* want to influence.
I am writing on this thread from the experience of intervening in a series of Shell Annual General Meetings, during the apartheid years. Easier in a way because we were demanding total disconnection and embarrassing them with news stories.
So to have a stab at this, because experience builds knowledge, and you need a lot of trial and error, (but then the internet allows us to compare notes so we can build this up),
assuming my English accent will be quite apparent and without agonising too much about all the subtleties I would try something like this...........
Mr Greenspan. The long period of continuous growth in the USA with which you have been associated has impressed analysts on both sides of the Atlantic. Given that fears of a global crisis are perhaps exaggerated, is there not however a danger that a whole series of countries which we have thought of as emerging markets may be stagnant for several years? A mere cut in interest rates of the central banks of the developed economies may benefit them without necessarily giving the boost to wider markets. Given that the IMF is inevitably seen as under the influence of the USA, is it not nevertheless in the long term interests of the USA now to agree reforms to the IMF which will include more stakeholders who will help to address the needs of the economy world-wide as a matter of some urgency?
I think this is an interesting thread because it is about whether we can move from cynical analysis to any influence. Asking questions of Capital Personified is not the revolution, but in a modern bourgeois democracy, if pointed questions cannot be asked by progressive intellectuals, I dare suggestt there can be no revolutionary movement.
Chris Burford
London.