| | |  Editorials | Issues | November 2008 
Carlos Slim: Leaders Must Help Small Businesses
 Michelle Roberts - Associated Press
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| | Mexico billionaire Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, talks about art and the economy during a visit to the Museo Alameda, in San Antonio, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008. Slim's personal art collection is on display at the museum. (AP/Eric Gay) | | |
San Antonio — Policymakers must focus not just on big financial institutions in the current economic crisis but should also provide capital to smaller regional banks that lend to small- and medium-sized businesses, billionaire mogul Carlos Slim Helu said Tuesday.
Slim said he approved of many of the approaches to solving the economic meltdown, but noted it was important to get credit flowing again, he said Tuesday in an interview at the Museo Alameda, a Latino art museum currently showing a portion of his vast collection.
A combination of private and public money should be made available through regional banks, which tend to have relationships with smaller and medium-sized businesses, said Slim, a Mexican businessman who Forbes magazine named this year as the world's second-richest man.
"These regional banks can't get out of the market because they're in contact with these businesses," he said. "It's important government doesn't focus just on big business."
Overall, U.S. policymakers and those from elsewhere in the world have made the right decisions to stabilize the financial markets and restore the availability of credit, he said.
But it will take some time to recover from the current problems — which were the result of excesses by borrowers and lenders. "It was too much of everything," he said.
The current crisis, however, provides some opportunities to correct those problems and others, he said.
Appropriate regulation should ensure transparency and that loans are backed by real assets, Slim said.
Industries like automakers should be restructured for long-term health, he said, not just given immediate capital.
"It's not just a problem of money. It's a problem of structure," Slim said, noting that out-of-line union contracts may be renegotiated by providing company stock, for example.
As the efffects of the financial meltdown have spread, Mexicans have seen a decline in the value of the peso, but Slim said it should not be a significant concern because Mexico has good fiscal policy, strong reserves and a healthly economy overall, unlike in some past crises.
"Mexico is in very good condition, but a very good condition in very bad times," he said. "We're looking at a situation that will hit everyone without any exception in the world."
He said without significant inflation, Mexico should be able to weather the crisis. But it's important to his home country and others that the United States emerge from this crisis, he said.
"All the world needs a stronger and healthier United States. Not just for the United States but for the health of the world," said the 68-year-old.
Slim, who is worth an estimated $59 billion, has vast international holdings including Telefonos de Mexico SA, which operates more than 90 percent of Mexico's fixed-line phone services, and America Movil SAB, Latin America's largest mobile phone service provider.
He is also a voracious art collector. He said he started aquiring pieces to expose his countrymen to more of the world's art and is building an enormous new arts complex for his Museo Soumaya, named for his late wife, in Mexico City. |
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