HOW can we capitalize on the inherent desire of people all over the
world that things should be done, wherever they can be done, by private
enterprise?” This fundamental question was raised by David Lilienthal,
onetime chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, now a consultant to
foreign governments on their own development programs. Along with such
far-reaching solutions as the Magna Carta of investment capital's
rights proposed by Germany's Hermann Abs and the
world-investment-guarantee plan proposed by Vice President Richard
Nixon, the delegates had some ideas of their own on how to speed
private investment. Among them: Ceylon's Chelliah Loganathan, head of his country's Central Bank,
urged each underdeveloped country to establish its own Development Savings
Bank. Depositors would be encouraged to save by making the money they put
in the bank exempt from income taxes. But if such voluntary funds were
inadequate, deductions would be made from payrolls in return for stock in
new enterprises. In effect, the development bank would operate like an
investment trust in the U.S., diffusing stock ownership over the maximum
number of depositors and eliminating the risk of a bad investment that might
wipe out a single investor's capital.India's Minocher Masani pointed to the success of India's Forum of
Free Enterprise−a voluntary association of enlightened businessmen to
tell the local people how responsible, creative capitalism works in other
countries. Tokyo's Taizo Ishizaka, president of the Japanese Federation of
Economic Organizations and president of the Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co.,
suggested an international agency to exchange technical know-how and
services, thus promote industrial development and combat anti-foreignism in
backward countries. In much of the world, said Ishizaka, there is still a blind
prejudice that “capitalism leads to imperialism” and alien rule.Germany's Berthold Beitz, general manager of Krupp Industries,
suggested that the job of economic world uplift is too big for the
investors of any one country, instead proposed that investors form a
multi-nation investment association in much the same manner that six
individual contracting companies joined together to build the Hoover
Dam. Such pooling, said Industrialist Beitz, would provide “a great new
source of investment capital.” It would be a private world bank that
would receive and that would lend local currencies for investment
anywhere in the world.A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany emphasized that “American
labor believes that private enterprise has been and can be a great force for
economic and social progress.” To increase its effectiveness in helping
underdeveloped nations, Meany suggested 1> an International Investment
Code under which nations receiving private capital or governmental
technical assistance would guarantee investors against arbitrary
treatment; 2> a multi-billion-dollar International Consumers Credit
Fund ito underwrite long-term installment purchasing of consumer goods.
