Clinton Opens Meeting With Economic Reveille : Conference: President-elect rallies American business leaders in battle for growth at home and abroad.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — President-elect Bill Clinton opened his two-day economic conference Monday with a competitive call to arms, then peppered business leaders and academic experts with detailed questions about how to rebuild the nation and restore its place in the world economy.

Flanked by more than 300 leaders representing corporate America, small business, academia, labor and other key constituencies, Clinton led a discussion aimed at bolstering support for his basic prescription of more active government involvement in the economy.

“We are here because our people and our nation must prepare for global competitiveness,” Clinton declared in remarks that opened the two-day event in Little Rock’s Robinson Convention Center.

The session, while characterized as a public relations gesture by some critics, is giving Clinton an unusual opportunity to explain in a post-campaign setting why he thinks the nation needs fundamental economic change. The nationally televised conference also is providing the President-elect with a forum for demonstrating his ability to communicate in “town meeting” settings as well as his grasp of economic fundamentals and policy.

Among those participating in the conference are Orange County Republican business leaders who supported Clinton--Roger W. Johnson, chairman of Western Digital Corp., and Kathryn Thompson, a developer. Orange County resident Frank Cruz, president of Gulf Atlantic Insurance Co. in Los Angeles, also is attending the meeting.

Clinton said the conference had drawn together “the most distinguished and diverse group of Americans ever to meet to discuss our economic promise as well as our economic problems.”

It was clear that the session was not intended to shape Administration policy so much as to articulate the arguments for Clinton’s existing economic agenda. Monday’s session brought forth few proposals that went beyond those offered in his presidential campaign.

As experts used charts prepared by Apple Computer to illustrate their points, with Clinton adding his own running commentary, the daylong discussion resembled an introductory college lecture. “It’s a long time since I’ve been to a teach-in, and an economic one is just right for today,” said Paula Stern, a trade expert.

The conference lined Little Rock’s airport with corporate jets and filled its hotels with business luminaries such as Ford Motor Chairman Harold A. Poling, Citicorp Chairman John S. Reed and Coca-Cola Chairman Robert Goizueta. The diverse list of attendees included Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund, United Steelworkers Union President Lynn R. Williams, and Joan Claybrook of the consumer group Public Citizen.

Also in the audience were Clinton’s four top economic appointees and the President-elect’s wife, Hillary Clinton. Underscoring his role in the new Administration, Vice President-elect Al Gore sat next to Clinton and joined in asking questions.

After a series of presentations that described the nature and extent of the nation’s economic problems, Clinton opened the meeting to general discussion. His guests were seated around a circular brown table in a room decorated in deep blue and red draperies.

One after another, speakers discussed problems that have become familiar in Clinton’s campaign speeches. Several experts hit one of Clinton’s favorite recent themes, arguing that the need to undertake long-term improvements in the economy is far more important than the short-term cyclical recovery that some have seen in recent statistics.

Robert M. Solow, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and Nobel laureate, observed that the nation’s productivity increased at an annual rate of 2.5% to 3% for a quarter of a century but then fell nearly to 1% in the 1970s. Meanwhile, Solow said, the earning power of less-educated workers began to slip, sharpening divisions between rich and poor.

“The two basic long-run problems of the economy are weak productivity growth . . . and increasing inequality,” Solow said. In combination, he added, they mean “that for many families life gets worse, not better.”

Apple Computer chief John A. Sculley, a Republican and a Clinton supporter, described the need to keep retraining workers as jobs change. “We know that people are going to have maybe five, six or seven careers during their lifetimes,” he said. “Education therefore must become a lifelong pursuit.”

Thompson suggested that the paralysis in the economy could be cured by easing the “credit crunch.” This could be accomplished, she added, by setting up two types of banks--one for insured loans and another that would be more willing to make loans considered to be riskier.

“I can’t build houses for first-time home buyers if I can’t get a loan,” she said.

The housing market also would improve, Thompson added, if the new Administration quickly outlined which tax credits will be available, and when, to spur investment.

Johnson was expected to offer his suggestions when the conference resumes today.

Another favorite Clinton theme was sounded as Alicia H. Munnell, director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, who spoke of how the country could stimulate the economy by spending more on airports, railroads and highways.

“Public investment in infrastructure crowds in, rather than crowds out, investment,” Clinton observed.

Anne Markusen, professor at Rutgers University, generally followed Clinton’s views as she urged an active government role in converting defense industries to peacetime applications.

If the government cuts the defense budget by the same 50% that it rose during the 1980s, “we will have 2.5 million people on the (jobs) market,” she said. “That’s why we have to have a strong, coherent defense conversion strategy in this country,” Markusen said.

But while many of the experts agreed with each other and with Clinton, there were a few dissenters. Thomas Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, said that members of organized labor have been among the hardest hit by the economic dislocations of the past decades.

He cited unemployment, a low minimum wage, a “badly broken” unemployment insurance system and labor law rules that hurt workers.

“They’re asked to participate in an experiment to make the nation more competitive and nobody’s offering them much of a stake in that,” he said. “Nobody’s talking about sharing the gains from that productivity increase with the people.”

Marion O. Sandler, president of Goldwest Financial Corp. in Oakland, the parent company of World Savings, said that the conference group had been “nibbling around the edges” because it had failed to address the need to cut defense and entitlement programs that absorb much of the government’s resources. “We’ve got to face up to the problem of entitlements.”

Karen Nussbaum, of the working women’s group Nine to Five, urged attention to child care and paid family leave. “If we (women) hadn’t flooded into the work force, family income would have been even lower.”

The conference also intermittently took calls from some Americans who were listening on National Public Radio.

Some critics of the conference have mocked the televised event as a sort of TV talk show on the economy. Clinton behaved as if he would have been quite at home if it had been.

He asked the participants polite and searching questions and seemed interested in their views. “I’ve got my ideas; we want yours,” he said at one point.

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