New York, September 24-26, 2008 – While world leaders were in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, Bill Clinton took advantage of the opportunity to bulk up the guest list for his Clinton Global Initiative, which was going on at the same time at a Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan.  World political leaders from Clinton to Al Gore to Shimon Perez to Tony Blair to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to wannabe leaders like Sarah Palin called attention to global problems at the CGI. 

But unlike the U.N. Assembly, celebrities like Drew Barrymore and Matt Damon also lent their voices to Clinton’s “Call to Action”.  George H.W. Bush joked that he had trouble getting in, so he told them at the door that he knows Bono, who was, indeed, inside, and was quite smitten with Queen Rania of Jordan.  Lance Armstrong answered the question of the week when he spoke about having met French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “I met his wife – that’s what everyone asks me,” Armstrong quipped about the popular Carla Bruni. 

Clinton even had the pull to attract business leaders like Bill Gates and T. Boone Pickens – at the same time that Wall Street was in the throes of its biggest meltdown in history.