Paulson Sees Progress in U.S.-China Ties

martes 17 de junio de 2008

Paulson Sees Progress in U.S.-China Ties

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The United States opened two days of intense economic talks with China on Tuesday with the Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. declaring that despite recent tensions over trade, investment and food and product safety, ties between the two countries were “growing in a positive direction.”

“The United States and China don’t always agree on economic issues,” Mr. Paulson said in prepared remarks Tuesday at the United States Naval Academy on the Severn River here. “Sometimes we may even disagree quite strongly. But we keep talking.”

Seeking to smooth the way for the discussions, Mr. Paulson said that while China faced many economic difficulties, so did the United States. One reason that China does not import more American goods, he said, was that its savings rate was so high. In the United States, he said the savings rate was too low.

The last round of talks in December in Beijing set up a 10-year goal of cooperating on energy and the environment, and Mr. Paulson said he hoped that the two countries could take additional steps in that area.

“As the two largest net importers of oil, China and the United States face similar challenges as demand for energy increases, and the global production capacity has remained relatively flat for the past 10 years,” he said.

In the last several months, Mr. Paulson said there has been progress on issues like monitoring the safety of food and other products imported from China.

Now, he said, China needed to do more to crack down on piracy and counterfeiting of American goods, including software and movies, and opening its markets to American investments and goods. The trade deficit between the United States and China topped $250 billion last year, causing some anxiety in Congress.

Mr. Paulson’s comments came the morning after Chinese and American businesses, seeking to overcome mutual suspicion of foreign investment, announced $14 billion in new deals.

The deals involve $8 billion in Chinese investments and purchases of aircraft engines, telecommunications equipment, semiconductors and electronic components, said Chen Deming, minister of commerce in China. Another $6 billion involved American purchases and investments in China.

Among the American companies signing deals were Chrysler, Cisco Systems, Ford Motor, General Motors, I.B.M., Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Paulson said the meetings were not meant to resolve specific disputes but to discuss how to overcome economic downturns and deal with impending crises in energy and the environment.

“The tone will be one of constructive engagement,” Mr. Paulson said. “We’re going to be dealing with some of the most fundamental economic issues there are. I know some people would like to see quick fixes. But the most important issues don’t avail themselves to quick fixes.”

The Chinese delegation is scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

The Annapolis talks are the fourth in a twice-a-year series that Mr. Paulson started when he left Goldman Sachs to become Treasury chief in 2006. The biggest issue at the time was American irritation over China’s intervention in currency markets to purchase dollars and keep the value of the dollar high in relation to China’s currency.

Since mid-2005, China has allowed its currency, the yuan, to appreciate nearly 20 percent, easing at least some of the criticism in Congress. The Bush administration continues to accuse China of raising barriers to foreign investment, and China has increasingly complained that its attempts to invest in America often provoke an outcry.

Mr. Paulson said that, although China had made only limited reforms in its economy and taken limited steps to open its market to American goods and investment, the “strategic economic dialogue,” known as the S.E.D., produced more progress than otherwise would have been the case.

“I would argue that the reason we’ve made progress is that the S.E.D. is a mechanism for convincing China that certain things are in their interest,” he said, citing American efforts to get China to open its economy to foreign investment and to lift government subsidies of export industries.

In recent months, the Chinese government has pushed back with demands that the United States do more to open its economy to Chinese investments and to halt the depreciation of the dollar against European and other currencies, a trend many economists say has helped drive up oil and food prices.

The Chinese delegation will be led by Wang Qishan, a vice premier and former mayor of Beijing, and a graduate of Northwestern University, who took office as the country’s chief economic negotiator earlier this year. He succeeded Wu Yi, one of the highest-ranking women in China and often described as a tough negotiator.

Mr. Paulson said that though China had lately stepped up its criticism of the United States, “I sure didn’t find Wu Yi to be a shrinking violet.”

Producer Prices Rise 1.4% in May

Businesses struggled with higher production costs last month, primarily as a result of record-high oil prices, meaning Americans may face more expensive items on store shelves soon.

The Producer Price Index advanced 1.4 percent in May, its fastest pace in six months and another troubling sign that inflation is worsening, the government said Tuesday.

Many economists, however, prefer to measure price increases in products other than energy and food. While this gauge, called the “core” index, does not measure the full effect of inflation on Americans, it does offer a guide to how long inflation might linger. For May, core producer prices rose at a tepid pace, 0.2 percent, in line with economists’ expectations.

In a separate report on Tuesday, the Commerce Department said that home construction fell to its lowest point in 17 years last month. It came as little surprise that the housing industry is hurting, but the decline in groundbreakings suggested that the market is unlikely to make a recovery anytime soon.

Groundbreakings, or “housing starts,” dipped 3.3 percent in May, to an annual rate of 975,000, the lowest level since March 1991. Declines occurred for single-family homes and apartment complexes alike.

Permits for groundbreakings, an earlier phase of the construction process, also declined for the month, slipping 1.3 percent, to a 969,000 annual rate. Permits for new condominiums, however, ticked up slightly.

Investors were likely to focus on the producer prices report as the Federal Reserve shifts some of its focus to the inflation issue. The index was up significantly over the last 12 months; from May 2007 to May 2008, producer prices grew 7.2 percent, and core prices were up 3 percent.

The price of wholesale gasoline alone rose 9.3 percent last month, a far bigger move than any other product. Residential gasoline prices rose 3.8 percent. Over all, the wholesale price of consumer goods increased by 1.8 percent. Prices for passenger cars, women’s clothing and computers dipped slightly.

Other reports on Tuesday suggested further problems for businesses. Industrial production dipped 0.2 percent in May, the second month of declines, according to the Fed. Capacity utilization, a measure of efficiency in American industries, dropped slightly to 79.4 percent from 79.6 percent in April.

The current account balance, as measured by the Commerce Department, widened to a $176.4 billion deficit in the first three months of this year. The deficit was $167.2 billion in the final quarter of 2007.

McCain to Lay Out His Energy Prescription

DALLAS — Senator John McCain is set to say in Texas today that conservation is no longer a “moral luxury’’ or a “personal virtue’’ and that the next president must break with the energy policies of the current and past administrations to free America from its dependence on foreign oil.

In a major energy speech that implicitly criticizes Vice President Dick Cheney, who dismissed conservation as a “personal virtue’’ in 2001, Mr. McCain is to call for a variety of means to increase production, including lifting a federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling and building new refineries and nuclear reactors.

But the speech, or at least the excerpts provided in advance by Mr. McCain’s campaign, does not dwell in detail on conservation measures.

Instead, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is to provide an audience of Houston oil executives with more details of his proposal to lift the federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration in states that want it. Mr. McCain’s position is welcome news for the oil industry, which has called for years for the ban to be lifted.

“With gasoline running at more than four bucks a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians,’’ Mr. McCain plans to say. “We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production, and I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.’’ Mr. McCain first made public his position on the moratorium on Monday in Virginia.

In his remarks in Houston, Mr. McCain also plans to cite investment firms and oil ministers who predict a not-distant future of $200 for a barrel of oil and up to $7 for a gallon of gas.

“Somehow the United States, in so many ways the most self-reliant of nations, has allowed and at times even encouraged this state of affairs,’’ Mr. McCain is to say. “This was a troubling situation 35 years ago. It was an alarming situation 20 years ago. It is a dangerous situation today.’’

In his prepared remarks, Mr. McCain criticizes his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, for supporting a windfall profit taxes on oil. “If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea, too, and a lot of good it did us,’’ Mr. McCain plans to say, adding that such a tax would hinder domestic exploration and that he is “all for recycling, but it’s better applied to paper and plastic than to the failed policies of the 1970s.’’

In the speech, Mr. McCain also intends to renew his call for new nuclear reactors in the United States, where none have been built for more than three decades. “One nation today has plans to build almost 50 new reactors by 2020,’’ Mr. McCain is to say. “Another country plans to build 26 major nuclear stations. A third nation plans to build enough nuclear plants to meet one quarter of all the electricity needs of its people — a population of more than a billion people. Those three countries are China, Russia, and India. And if they have the vision to set and carry out great goals in energy policy, then why don’t we?’’

The Democratic National Committee responded that Mr. McCain’s speech “will cave in to his friends in the oil and gas industry’’ and that he would be offering “more of the same failed Bush policies that have driven energy prices through the roof.’’

lunes 16 de junio de 2008

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A Delegator, Obama Picks When to Take Reins

WASHINGTON — In the months leading up to Senator Barack Obama’s big loss in the Pennsylvania primary, he was a detached manager: around, but not meddling. Rarely on early-morning conference calls with his senior advisers, he delegated most decisions to others and did not immerse himself in all of the nuts and bolts of running for president.

After that defeat in April, a friend gave Mr. Obama an urgent piece of advice: “Put your hand on the tiller.”

And that Mr. Obama did. He began participating in more strategy sessions, spoke out against a summertime gasoline tax suspension more forcefully than some advisers initially preferred, and last week was involved in conference calls that led to the departure of James A. Johnson, the man leading the campaign’s vice-presidential search.

He did not assign blame for the first big misstep of the general election campaign, participants said. But he asked his aides to assess the gravity of the problem and listened as they charted a course to proceed.

Mr. Obama did not deliver the bad news himself — he seldom does — but he accepted the resignation of Mr. Johnson, who faced Republican criticism for getting cut-rate mortgages from the troubled lender Countrywide Financial.

Like most presidential candidates, Mr. Obama is developing his executive skills on the fly, and under intense scrutiny. The evolution of his style in recent months suggests he is still finding the right formula as he confronts a challenge that he has not faced in his career: managing a large organization.

The skill will become more important should he win the presidency, and his style is getting added attention as the country absorbs the lessons of President Bush’s tenure in the Oval Office. Mr. Bush’s critics, including former aides, have portrayed him as too cloistered, too dependent on a small coterie of trusted aides, unable to distinguish between loyalty and competence, and insufficiently willing to adjust course in the face of events that do not unfold the way he expects.

Mr. Obama’s style so far is marked by an aversion to leaks and public drama and his selection of a small group of advisers who have exhibited discipline and loyalty in carrying out his priorities. The departure of Mr. Johnson, who was brought in to provide managerial experience to the vice-presidential search, was a rare instance of the campaign’s having to oust one of its own in the midst of a messy public crisis.

He reads widely and encourages alternative views in policy-making discussions, but likes to keep the process crisp. He is personally even-keeled, but can be prickly when small things go wrong.

As the chief executive officer of Obama for America, a concern of nearly 1,000 employees and a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Obama is more inclined to focus on the big picture over the day-to-day whirl.

He delegates many decisions, and virtually all tasks, to a core group that oversees a sprawling, yet centralized operation in his Chicago campaign headquarters, which going into the general election season is absorbing many of the political functions of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Obama stays connected to advisers and friends via a BlackBerry, sending frequent but unsigned messages that are to the point. A discussion that cannot be conducted in a sentence or two is likely to be finished by telephone.

A night owl, Mr. Obama is known to send e-mail messages well after midnight. Laurence H. Tribe, his Harvard law professor who now serves as an informal adviser, said he received an e-mail message from the candidate at 1:30 a.m. on June 4, when he had received enough delegates to claim the nomination.

In interviews with more than two dozen senior advisers, campaign aides and friends, a portrait of Mr. Obama emerges as a concerned but not obsessive manager. By now, his associates have learned, there is no need to deluge him with unnecessary details, so long as someone knows them.

No state was more important to his candidacy than Iowa, but when he arrived there for campaign visits he stopped aides who tried to give detailed accounts of developments.

“I’d get in the car with him and talk a mile a minute,” recalled Paul Tewes, who was the campaign’s state director. Mr. Tewes recalled that on the candidate’s fifth visit to the state, Mr. Obama interrupted one of his detailed updates, saying: “You know what, Paul? All I want from you is for you to do your best, and I trust you and you know what you’re doing.”

On policy issues, Mr. Obama can have a photographic memory of intricate details, but he often struggled to remember the names of local political supporters he had met. A cool demeanor on primary election nights, even in defeat, can give way to a short temper when a speech text is not on the podium, a loudspeaker crackles or an aide has not brought over a throat-soothing herbal tea.

“Who’s handling sound? Who’s handling sound?” he snapped at his staff when a microphone repeatedly went haywire at a campaign event in South Carolina.

Most high-level gatherings involving Mr. Obama are held either in his kitchen or at an office away from campaign headquarters, and are expected to unfold in an orderly manner. Written agendas and concise briefings are preferred.

He does not stir dissent simply for dissent’s sake, but often employs a Socratic method of discussion, where aides put ideas forward for him to accept or reject. Advisers described his meetings as “un-Clintonesque,” a reference to the often meandering, if engrossing, policy discussions Bill Clinton presided over when he was president.

“He doesn’t sit there for hours chewing on it and discussing it,” said Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama who worked in the Clinton administration. “He’s very thorough, yet efficient about it.”

If a presidential campaign is intended to be a test-run for the presidency, his chief priorities are the words in his speeches, messages in his television advertising and policy pronouncements. On other matters, even if he disagrees, he often allows himself to be overruled.

Mr. Obama was not thrilled with a campaign slogan, “Change We Can Believe In,” that was unveiled last September. And he did not initially like the campaign’s blue and white logo — intended to appear like a horizon, symbolizing hope and opportunity — saying he found it too polished and corporate.

“He made his concern clear, but said, ‘We have bigger fish to fry here,’ ” recalled David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist who was behind the logo’s design. “That’s one of his talents, his ability to distinguish between things that are absolutely essential and things that aren’t. He’ll give you some latitude based on your expertise.”

But Mr. Obama’s ease belies a more controlling management style. For all the success his campaign has enjoyed with grass-roots organizing, the operation is highly centralized around Mr. Axelrod; David Plouffe, the campaign manager; Robert Gibbs, the communications director; Pete Rouse, his Senate chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend from Chicago; and a handful of senior advisers that has barely changed since he opened his campaign in January 2007.

Nearly all information is funneled to him, but he also makes his own inquiries.

Last month, only hours before he was scheduled to make his first campaign appearance before skeptical Jewish voters at a Florida synagogue, Mr. Obama received word that an important vote had been scheduled in Washington. He was needed in the Senate.

Mr. Obama was annoyed, but senior advisers traveling with him were livid at the prospect of the senator canceling a meeting with this critical constituency. Mr. Obama let them huff and puff, and began making calls himself.

Soon, he was on the line with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, who said he was trying to be accommodating, but his fellow senators needed to vote on a spending bill and military legislation before leaving for a long weekend. It sounded reasonable, Mr. Obama told his aides, and plans were made for him to fly to Washington and delay — not postpone — the meeting in Boca Raton, Fla.

Mr. Obama’s circle of advisers takes seriously his “no drama” mandate. It is a point of pride in his campaign that there have been virtually no serious leaks to the news media — small leaks are immediately investigated — about internal division or infighting. He is a careful reader of daily newspapers and magazines (titles from Foreign Affairs to Maxim are stocked on his campaign plane). He takes his briefing books — three-ring binders filled with political memorandums and policy discussions — to his hotel room or home every night, but aides say how well he reads the materials may depend on what is on ESPN.

Mr. Obama has tried to learn from the mistakes of others. During the course of two long dinners at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington this year and last, Mr. Obama sought the advice of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. “We covered a lot of territory,” Mr. Kerry said, adding that he had advised Mr. Obama to concentrate on his rapid-response operation. “I was as clear as I could be: you don’t let a moment go by unchallenged.”

Mr. Kerry said Mr. Obama was a “quick study” who is as sure-footed on the national stage as he was new to it when he ran for president four years ago. Mr. Kerry, whose campaign was at times riven by division, said Mr. Obama’s operation seemed free of any such issues. “His staff is exceedingly loyal,” Mr. Kerry said.

These days, Mr. Obama pays little attention to his fund-raising, a stark change from a year ago. “Barack was interested daily in knowing how we were doing, were we on track or were we not,” said Penny Pritzker, the campaign’s national finance chairwoman. After a record-setting first quarter tally of $25 million, he stopped asking as often.

One area where he does not easily acquiesce is on speeches and television commercials, where he often rewrites words that shape the core message of his candidacy. Mr. Obama generally gives his ad-makers room to produce his spots, but he reviews scripts and often reworks them if he believes they do not capture his natural speaking style.

“He’ll say, ‘that is not my voice,’ ” said Jim Margolis, a senior media consultant to Mr. Obama who oversees television advertising. “Definitely this isn’t somebody you just throw the script to and he’ll say anything that comes up on the screen. He tries to make sure that he’s got his imprint on it.”

Three days after claiming the nomination, Mr. Obama, who makes infrequent visits to the campaign’s Chicago headquarters, offered his gratitude by way of a motivational pep talk.

“I want everybody to catch your breath. Do what you do to get your ya-ya’s out — that’s an old ’60s expression — and then understand that coming back we’re going to have to work twice as hard as we’ve been working,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re going to have to be smarter, we’re going to have to be tougher, our game is going to have to be tighter.”

Before finishing, he included a self-assessment, adding, “I am going to have to be a better candidate.”

Bernanke Says Rising Health Care Costs a Strain

WASHINGTON — Bolstering the performance of the health care system is one of the biggest challenges facing the country, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Monday.

New medical technologies and treatments are allowing people to live healthier, longer and more productive lives. However, the aging of millions of baby boomers coupled with rapidly rising heath care costs are accounting for an ever-growing share of both personal and government budgets — strains that will become increasingly burdensome unless changes are made, the Fed chief said.

Challenges, he said, fall into three major areas: improving access to health care for the 47 million Americans — or about 16 percent of the population — who lack health insurance; bolstering the quality of care; and controlling costs.

“Improving the performance of our health care system is without a doubt one of the most important challenges our nation faces,” Mr. Bernanke said in remarks on health care changes organized by a Senate panel on Capitol Hill.

On his remarks, the Fed chief did not talk about the Fed’s next move on interest rates or the state of the economy.

Many economists believe the Fed will hold a key interest rate steady at 2 percent, a four-year low, when it meets next week. Mr. Bernanke and other Fed officials have sent strong signals that the Fed’s rate-cutting campaign, started last September to shore up the ailing economy, was probably over because of mounting concerns about inflation.

Wall Street investors and some other believe that the Fed might be forced to raise rates later this year to thwart a dangerous inflation flare-up. Others, however, still think the Fed will be able to hold rate steady through the rest of this year.

It is a difficult spot for Fed policy makers. They are trying to aid an economy that has been badly bruised by the blows of a housing, credit and financial debacles. At the same time, they don’t want inflation to take off. If the Fed were to start boosting rates too soon to fend off inflation, that could deal a set back to already fragile economic growth.

On the health care front, Mr. Bernanke did not recommend specific solutions, saying the difficult choices involved with improving access and quality and controlling costs were best left to policy makers in Congress, the White House and elsewhere.

“Taking on these challenges will be daunting,” he said. Given the complexity of health care matters, he suggested that it might be better for policymakers to consider an “eclectic approach,” rather than one single set of changes to address all concerns.

“We may need to first address the problems that seem more easily managed rather than waiting for a solution that will address all problems at once,” Mr. Bernanke offered.

domingo 15 de junio de 2008

Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Weapon Design

WASHINGTON — American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.

The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.

In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program. Those blueprints were for a Chinese nuclear weapon that dated to the mid-1960s, and investigators found that Libya had obtained them from the Khan network.

But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation.

Investigators said the evidence that the Khan network was trafficking in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design was particularly alarming, because if a country or group obtained the bomb design, the technological information would significantly shorten the time needed to build a weapon. Among the missiles that could carry the smaller weapon, according to some weapons experts, is the Iranian Shahab III, which is based on a North Korean design.

However, in recent days top American intelligence officials, who declined to speak about the discovery on the record because the information is classified, said that they had been unable to determine whether Iran or other countries had obtained the weapons design. Pakistan has refused to allow American investigators to directly interview Dr. Khan, who is considered a hero there as the father of its nuclear program. In recent weeks the only communications about him between the United States and Pakistan’s new government have been warnings from Washington not to allow him to be released.

Dr. Khan’s illicit nuclear network was broken up in early 2004; President Bush declared that shattering the operation was a major intelligence coup for the United States. Since then, evidence has emerged that the network sold uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and investigators are still pursing leads that he may have done business with other countries as well.

While Libya gave up its nuclear program, North Korea and Iran have not, despite intense international pressure, sanctions, and repeated offers of incentives to do so.

On Sunday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said that the administration remained concerned about the possibility that additional plans have been disseminated, but he did not address any of the latest revelations about the Khan network.

“We’re very concerned about the A.Q. Khan network, both in terms of what they were doing by purveying enrichment technology and also the possibility that there would be weapons-related technology associated with it,” he told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush from Paris to London on Sunday.

“That was a concern. That’s one of the reasons we rolled up the network here three years or so ago, and fairly successfully. And part of that rolling up was to roll up the network and part of it was to pursue what kind of relationship the A.Q. Khan network had to individual countries with which they are dealing.”

The existence of the compact bomb design began to become public in recent weeks after Switzerland announced that it had destroyed a huge stockpile of documents, including a weapons design, that were found in the computers of a family in Switzerland, the Tinners, who over the years played critical roles in Khan’s operation.

In May, Switzerland’s president, Pascal Couchepin, announced that more than 30,000 documents had been shredded, saying the government acted to keep them from “getting into the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state,” according to Swiss news accounts.

Indian to the Core, and an Oligarch

AT a recent cricket match here, Mukesh D. Ambani sat in his private box quietly watching the team he owns, the Mumbai Indians. He seemed oblivious to the others around him: his son cheering wildly, his wife draped in diamond jewelry and a smattering of guests anxiously awaiting the briefest opportunity to speak with him.

A minor bureaucrat stood a few rows back, strategizing with aides about how to buttonhole “the Chairman,” as Mr. Ambani is sometimes called. Waiters in baggy tuxedoes took turns trying to offer him a snack, but as they drew near became too nervous to speak.

In the last century, Mohandas K. Gandhi was India’s most famous and powerful private citizen. Today, Mr. Ambani is widely regarded as playing that role, though in a very different way. Like Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Ambani belongs to a merchant caste known as the modh banias, is a vegetarian and a teetotaler and is a revolutionary thinker with bold ideas for what India ought to become.

Yet Mr. Gandhi was a scrawny ascetic, a champion of the village, a skeptic of modernity and a man focused on spiritual purity. Mr. Ambani is a fleshy oligarch, a champion of the city, a burier of the past and a man who deftly — and, some critics say, ruthlessly — wields financial power. He is the richest person in India, with a fortune estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, and many people here expect that he will be the richest person on earth before long.

Although he lacks a politician’s silver tongue — he can be a nervous public speaker, and his diction can be halting — he talks more like a father of the nation than a corporate executive. Describing his goals, he says they are for India’s benefit as much as they are for his sprawling company, Reliance Industries.

“Can we really banish abject poverty in this country?” he mused aloud in a rare interview at his headquarters here. “Yes, in 10, 15 years we can say we would have done that substantially. Can we make sure that we create a social structure where we remove untouchability? We’re fast moving to a new India where you don’t think about this caste and that caste.”

As millions of Indians graduate from burning cow dung for energy to guzzling oil, Reliance is plowing billions of dollars into energy exploration and is building the world’s largest oil refinery. It has also opened a chain of nearly 700 stores selling food and various wares; Mr. Ambani promises that it will funnel money from the flourishing cities into the struggling agricultural heartland. He envisions Reliance, with $39 billion in revenue, as providing incomes to 12 million to 30 million Indians within the next five years by buying from farmers and employing new workers in its stores.

And as Mumbai, Mr. Ambani’s hometown and the commercial and entertainment capital of India, has grown ever more populous and ever less livable, he has proposed that Reliance simply build a new, improved city across the harbor.

MR. AMBANI, 51, who feuded with his younger brother after their father died six years ago, took control of roughly half of the divided company. Even as he enters new areas, he has maintained his family’s dominance in its petrochemical, oil and gas and textile manufacturing businesses.

He maintains a low public profile; even those close to him describe him as inscrutable. On one hand, he is seen as a man whose heart bleeds for India. He is motivated by “the ability to change the face of the country,” said K. V. Kamath, the C.E.O. of ICICI Bank and a longtime financier and friend of the Ambanis. “That is the biggest kick anybody would get today — that they could touch the lives of a large number of these billion people and make things better for them.”

On the other hand, Mr. Ambani is also known as someone who lets little stand in his or Reliance’s way.

“Remember: these guys all grew up in the License Raj,” said a close friend of the tycoon, referring to India’s decades-long experiment with rigid state control over the economy. “They grew up as lotuses from the filth. It makes them tough, it makes them suspicious, it makes them vindictive at times, and it makes them come out in a hurry. They always see life as, ‘Oh God, better not miss an opportunity.’ ”

“When they were growing up,” added the friend, who requested anonymity for fear of upsetting Mr. Ambani, “you didn’t get a second chance.”

Emblematic of his ascent is the towering residence he is building on what was once known as Altamount Road, one of the most exclusive streets here. Hundreds of feet tall, it will offer several levels of parking, a multi-tiered gymnasium, a ballroom, a theater, ample living and guest quarters, and a helipad on the roof. (Although the price tag for the residence has drawn estimates as high as $2 billion, a Reliance spokesman said it would ultimately cost $50 million to $70 million.)