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| David Patrick Columbia’s New York SocialDiary.com |
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Lunch at Grand Central
October 1, 2002
There was a lunch at Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse above Grand Central today at half past noon. Sponsored by THE WEEK magazine, it was billed as “Health Report: American Business and the Economy.” Harold Evans was moderator and the panelists were Donald B. Marron, Chairman of USB America, for Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Pete Peterson, chairman of the Blackstone Group and Secretary of Commerce under Richard Nixon. They also had panelists over the phone: Ralph Nader and Bono.
In Grand Central Terminal.
THE WEEK is the newsweekly with the motto: “All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters,” which I guess is okay as far as slogans go. The magazine is succinct and easy to glean. It’s what Time and Newsweek started out as, covering a lot of territory in 42 pages. It is a good instrument for current events. It is not in-depth, trenchant but is excellent for keeping informed about the world in the week just past.
Harold Evans is an old hand at moderating public discussion. He’s well informed himself, keeps a balance in the discussion and moves things right along when people get bogged down. He keeps his own opinions out of the discussion. When he asked the panelists to predict where we’re going to be in a year or two down the road, no one wanted to go there.
There was a lot of discussion about executive (especially CEO) salaries. Rudman quoted the now popular statistic that twenty-five years ago the highest executives were paid (on the average) forty times the average worker’s salary. Last year it was 400 times, or somewhere thereabouts. Graef Crystal has been writing about this disproportionate compensation for years but until recently prevailing opinion in the business community was that he was something of a spoil sport.
Ralph Nader and Bono, who were call-in panelists both brought up the business of helping the developing countries and dealing with the matters of drug-resistant strains of diseases that are coming this way. Bono said we needed to do more in the way of foreign aid to the help the poorer countries. He pointed out that the U.S., although the richest country in the world, is twenty-second in foreign aid. Senator Rudman assured us that Congress at this point was in no mood to change that.
There was talk of interest rates. Coming down, moving up. There was a wide array of prominent New Yorkers present (lunch was slices of sirloin, salad and iced tea), including socialites, bankers, lawyers and journalists (Myron Kandel took the mike from the audience a couple of times) and politicians (Geraldine Ferraro was seated next to Mario Cuomo).
Senator Rudman said the deficit for next year was going to be shocking (or words to that effect). He also led us to believe that he wasn’t sure about this move into Iraq saying that it was going to cost us $200 billion and we didn’t even know how much Afghanistan would cost.
What is certain is that no one knows. Donald Marron joked about the television show “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” the sequel of which could be “Who Used to be A Millionaire?” All of which is lighthearted stuff around the subjects of impending war, terrorism, and disease. There were many other related issues that never came to the fore in the short time allotted (the lunch began at 12:45 and was over at ten to two). Uncertainty, and fear. Fear for the world.
Nevertheless. To consider the positives: THE WEEK’s efforts to bring together a knowledgeable group of people to discuss matters which affect all of us was very impressive. How fortunate we all were to be sitting there on the wide balcony overlooking the great railroad terminal built in another age of boom, followed by bust, followed by war, followed by resilience and exuberance; all almost a century ago.
That was lunch. A lot to digest. What, you’re not hungry?
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