Skip Reimer
Showing 1–15 of 18 transcripts.
- Milken Institute1h 15m
American Politics: The 114th Congress and 2016 Presidential Election
Skip Reimer, Mike Allen, Ed Gillespie, Jason Grumet, Frank Luntz, Van Jones
The 18th annual Milken Institute Global Conference convened over 3,500 attendees and 700 speakers to analyze the 2016 election landscape, economic stagnation affecting the working poor, and rare bipartisan consensus on criminal justice reform. Key figures including Frank Luntz, Van Jones, and Ed Gillespie identified Marco Rubio and Scott Walker as top Republican prospects while warning of an asset-based recovery that leaves the working class feeling hopeless. The dialogue further explored structural congressional dysfunction, the demographic "swarms" reshaping the Democratic coalition, and the critical electoral stakes for swing states like Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.
- Milken Institute1h 5m
Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear (II)
Frank Luntz, Skip Reimer, Jim Gray, Bob Shapiro, Eric Schmidt Jr., John McWhorter, Priscilla Burton, Charlie Stokes
A prominent business leader outlines a strategic shift from traditional corporate branding to building trust through emotional connection and value-aligned language, citing record-low public confidence in CEOs and corporations. The presentation details specific linguistic reframing tactics, such as replacing "CEO" with "Business Leader" and "capitalism" with "economic freedom," to align with public priorities like peace of mind and stability. Ultimately, the speaker argues that future business success depends on adopting "hardworking taxpayer" messaging, prioritizing tangible results over abstract metrics, and addressing deep-seated societal fears regarding financial security.
- Milken Institute1h 17m
How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class
John Hope Bryant, Paul Irving, Skip Reimer
John Hope Bryant challenges the traditional focus on political rights by defining poverty as a "disabling frame of mind" and advocating for financial literacy as the primary tool for economic empowerment. His newly launched Project 5117 aims to deploy 1,000 "Hope Inside" locations to provide financial counseling, entrepreneurship training, and job placements, with the specific goal of raising 700,000 individuals' credit scores into the mainstream banking range by 2020. By positioning financial education as a civil right and mobilizing corporate CEOs to hire students through the "B-minus business compact," Bryant seeks to transform the psychological state of despair into a catalyst for creating one million new startups annually.
- Milken Institute1h 13m
MI Forum: Hall of Mirrors
Barry Eichengreen, Michael Hiltzik, Skip Reimer
Economist Barry Eichengreen joined Michael Hiltzik at the Milken Institute's January 2015 forum to analyze historical parallels between the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis in a discussion of his book *Hall of Mirrors*. Eichengreen argued that the Euro's structural flaws and the Federal Reserve's past policy errors, including the Lehman Brothers failure, created systemic vulnerabilities that Keynesian fiscal intervention successfully averted during previous depressions. The session concluded with warnings that prioritizing short-term stability over long-term structural reform risks precipitating a future financial collapse within the next eighty years.
- Milken Institute57 min
Don't Wait for the Next War: A Strategy for American Growth and Global Leadership
General Wesley K. Clark promotes a comprehensive peacetime strategy centered on achieving energy independence through liquid hydrocarbons and biofuels to address five existential challenges including the rise of China and climate change. He argues that this approach, funded by a carbon tax, would boost GDP growth, isolate adversaries like Russia and Iran, and provide the economic foundation necessary to stabilize the Middle East without reinstating the draft. By shifting focus from partisan values to a unified national vision, Clark contends the United States can activate idle industrial capacity and establish a sustainable framework for global leadership.
- Milken Institute1h 6m
A Thousand Hills to Heaven: Love, Hope, and a Restaurant in Rwanda
Josh Ruxin, Kathy Eldon, Alissa, Skip Reimer
At a Milken Institute summer forum, Healthbuilders director Josh Ruxin and Creative Visions Foundation founder Kathy Eldon discussed Rwanda's decade-long economic transformation from post-genocide devastation to a stable, high-growth hub driven by public-private partnerships. Ruxin detailed how his organization's model of transferring fully funded, government-operated health centers to local communities, alongside social enterprises like the "Heaven" restaurant, has spurred private investment and reduced poverty without traditional aid dependency. The speakers concluded that Rwanda's strict anti-corruption governance and focus on sustainable infrastructure offer a replicable blueprint for development, urging international observers to shift their perspective from humanitarian aid to direct economic engagement.
- Milken Institute1h 15m
The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
Author and journalist Louisa Lim presented at the Milken Institute Forum to analyze how the Chinese government has enforced a state-sponsored amnesia regarding the June 4, 1989, crackdown. Her research details a comprehensive strategy that includes erasing historical records from education and digital platforms, suppressing public commemoration through detention, and obscuring parallel violent incidents such as the Chengdu massacre. Lim highlights the severe human costs of this censorship, noting that families and survivors often feel compelled to collude with the silence to avoid persecution, effectively severing the nation's connection to its recent history.
- Milken Institute1h 19m
The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge, Skip Reimer
John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge argue that the West faces a critical Fourth Revolution in governance driven by fiscal unsustainability, technological stagnation, and intense competition from an increasingly efficient Chinese state. They propose replacing the bloated "nanny state" with technocratic safeguards, consumer choice mechanisms, and private sector management techniques to restore democratic legitimacy and economic vitality. Without adopting these reforms to shrink and modernize government, the authors warn that Western nations risk losing the ideological contest for freedom and liberty to rival authoritarian models.
- Milken Institute1h 23m
Lunch Panel - Gary Becker and Mike Milken on the Marketplace of Ideas
Gary Becker, Mike Milken, Skip Reimer
Governor Brown's absence due to recent surgery necessitated venue reallocations for the Business of Sports panel while the Milken Institute recognized key partners and outlined a 2011–2012 global conference calendar. Nobel laureate Gary Becker utilized the forum to advance arguments for small government, universal economic principles, and structural reforms in education and retirement, specifically advocating for a $50,000 visa fee to reverse brain drain and a raise in retirement age to address demographic shifts. The panel concluded by resolving historical debates on capital structure and highlighting global trends where market liberalization in China and India has reclaimed historical economic dominance despite the failure of centrally planned systems.
- Milken Institute1h 12m
The Global Economy: Hoping for Momentum amid Tepid Times
Skip Reimer, Jim McCoggan, Terry Duffy, Alex Friedman, Joshua Harris, Alan Howard, Min Zhu
The 17th annual Milken Institute Global Conference convened 650 speakers, including Jim McCoggan, Joshua Harris, and IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu, to analyze diverging global monetary policies and tepid economic growth. Panelists debated U.S. GDP forecasts of 2.7% to 3% against risks from elevated valuations and potential recession, while highlighting Europe's banking deleveraging and emerging market vulnerabilities driven by China's credit boom. The discussion concluded with warnings that geopolitical tail events from the Russia-Ukraine crisis and regulatory fragmentation could disrupt market stability despite current low volatility.
- Milken Institute1h 12m
The Path to Awakening
Shamar Rinpoche, Marc Junkunc, Skip Reimer, Lori Milken, Dr. Mark Junkins
At the Milken Institute Forum, Shamar Rinpoche, the 14th Red Hat Lama of Tibet, presented his secular commentary *The Path to Awakening* to a panel including Dr. Mark Junkins, addressing Western anxiety through non-sectarian mind training methods. Rinpoche outlined specific practices such as Tonglen meditation and the "horse eating grass" technique designed to help practitioners manage thoughts and emerge from dualistic illusions without requiring strict guru-disciple commitments. The session concluded with an electronic Q&A that clarified the relationship between ancient Buddhist concepts like karma and modern challenges, including the impacts of urban life, technology, and brain science on spiritual development.
- Milken Institute1h 15m
Unleashing the Second American Century: Four Forces for Economic Dominance
Joel Kurtzman, Tom Nuttall, Skip Reimer
Joel Kurtzman presents a "Second American Century" thesis, asserting that advanced manufacturing, energy independence, and a robust innovation sector are reversing the narrative of U.S. decline. He highlights that $65 billion in new domestic plant investments and a surge in oil production have lowered costs while reducing geopolitical reliance on the Middle East, even as CO2 emissions drop to 1993 levels. To sustain this momentum, Kurtzman advocates for automatic green cards for foreign university graduates and urges policymakers to address wealth inequality through STEM education rather than redistribution, warning that political dysfunction remains the primary obstacle to realizing these economic potentials.
- Milken Institute1h 16m
Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture
Erez Aiden, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Skip Reimer
This analysis of a 5-million-book corpus derived from Google Books reveals how irregular verbs have regularized, collective memory decays faster than ever, and the time for technological adoption has plummeted from 65 to 26 years. Researchers also quantified the suppressive power of regimes like Nazi Germany and modern China through automated detection of n-gram frequency drops while demonstrating that cultural inertia allows for predictable long-term language trends. Ultimately, the study advocates for democratized big data access to objectively track public sentiment, career fame trajectories, and potential algorithmic biases across diverse fields.
- Milken Institute1h 21m
The Mideast's New Resource: Entrepreneurs
Christopher Schroeder, Jonathan Spalter, Skip Reimer
Christopher Schroeder, author of *Startup Rising*, presented a transformative narrative to the Milken Institute challenging Western perceptions of the Middle East by highlighting a youth-driven entrepreneurial revolution fueled by mobile technology. The discussion detailed how regional innovators are overcoming systemic barriers such as "Wasta" nepotism and educational deficits to build a mobile-first economy where women comprise nearly one-third of tech startups. Schroeder concluded by urging global investors and policymakers to adopt a forward-looking strategy that leverages this demographic dividend for economic integration rather than relying on outdated geopolitical frameworks.
- Milken Institute1h 15m
Hungry and Obese: Food and America's Well-Being
Michiel Bakker, Laurie David, Robert Egger, Nona Evans, Kelly Chapman Meyer, Lawrence Soler, Jane Wells, Skip Reimer, Michael Gerson, Kelly Meyer, Larry Soler, Carol Kretschman
A diverse panel of industry leaders from organizations including Google, the Whole Kids Foundation, and the Partnership for a Healthier America convened to address the systemic drivers of the American obesity epidemic, which currently affects one in three children and costs the economy approximately $1 trillion annually. Participants detailed strategic solutions ranging from Google's focus on teaching cooking skills and LA Kitchen's employment of marginalized populations to process "ugly" produce, alongside efforts to reshape marketing norms and implement corporate accountability through public-private partnerships. By leveraging demographic shifts among younger generations and the political influence of aging Baby Boomers, these stakeholders aim to transition the cultural narrative from fear-based messaging to sustainable lifestyle changes that integrate healthy food into schools, workplaces, and underserved communities.