A Universe Apart

  The Great Eastern Hotel near Liverpool Street train station was designed with the City of London financier in mind. Its minimalist interior, clean lines and discrete atmosphere create the right setting for business people to work on a deal or attend a mid-sized forum. I escaped into the Great Eastern in late March for a few hours at a gathering of Egyptian ministers and business people to discuss the outlook for the region’s most populated country. The talk inside the meeting room was about robust growth of 7%, foreign direct investment hitting a record $11 billion dollars and re-positioning Egypt to capture more than its fair share of Gulf petrol dollars. On the way over to the meeting, I read my morning paper with headlines reacting to the Federal Reserve’s orchestrated bailout of Bear Sterns and yet another drastic cut in U.S. interest rates to help cushion the blow