Jose Maria Anzar on Why Obama Won't Attend Economic Conference
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This is a rush transcript from "Your World With Neil Cavuto," November 14, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: All right, he's the big guy not here, Barack Obama. And, to be fair to the president-elect, as he accurately pointed out, there is only one president at a time, and he is not it until January 20 of next year.
Well, you can count a lot of the foreign leaders who will be gathering in the White House for din-din tonight a little upset that he won't be here.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Now, Mr. Obama does have some surrogates here, including Madeleine Albright and the former Congressman James Leach, but that isn't good enough for Jose Maria Aznar, the former president of Spain, who says that it does make it a difficult summit.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAVUTO: Barack Obama isn't going to be at this summit. Does that make it pointless?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}JOSE MARIA AZNAR, FORMER PRESIDENT OF SPAIN: Well, the problem from - - for the next president of the United States, Barack Obama, is that he must decide in some ways the right track or the bad track to maintain discrete (INAUDIBLE) for constructive of the American economy or to choose more interventionist and public in the economy.
• Video: Watch Neil's interview with Spain's former President, Jose Maria Aznar
I prefer the first track, because they are good decisions.
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CAVUTO: Mr. President, the prime minister of Britain has said that maybe a key solution would be tax cuts across the globe being implemented, in other words, cut taxes everywhere.
What do you make of that?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}AZNAR: That may be. I think that -- I believe that the debate is between more state -- more interventionist, less freedom, more taxes, or less taxes.
I defend the response is more free markets, more freedom, more (INAUDIBLE) more competitiveness, more flexibility, more openness. And I am against all restrictions of free markets in the answer of this crisis.
Another question is to improve some institutions, as International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or to improve the capacity of establish more control of supervisory organizations, regular organizations, and transparency of responsibility, but based all in free markets. And cut taxes is a very good response in general to relieve quickly, rapidly this current crisis.
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CAVUTO: Did that fellow ring a bell to you? Well, he should. You see, President Aznar was the leader of Spain when they had that train station terrorist attack. Remember?
Spaniards responded by essentially throwing out the government, for fear of terrorism rearing its ugly head again in Spain. He responds to that and his global fear now that the folks who gather in this building behind me tonight are forgetting about the cost for dealing with terror always.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It's part of a special we are doing tomorrow live, continuing from the White House, where we're going to be the most annoying guests to the president and his family, talking about what is at stake with terror, and talking about what is at stake with this financial crisis.
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