Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Wall st Week. What's the state of
Speaker 1: corporate governance? The deficit is a real issue. The US
Speaker 1: economy continues to send mixed signals. The financial stories that
Speaker 1: cheap our world fed action to con concerns over dollar
Speaker 1: liquidity and encouraging China data. The five hundred wealthiest people
Speaker 1: in the world. Through the eyes of the most influential
Speaker 1: voices Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, star Ward CEO,
Speaker 1: Kevin Johnson sec Chairman J Clayton, Bloomberg wool Street Week
Speaker 1: with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. A year like no other,
Speaker 1: from the pandemic to race relations to foreign relations, as
Speaker 1: told through the books we read. Welcome to a special
Speaker 1: year end edition of Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm David
Speaker 1: Weston this week special contributor to Larry Summers of Harvard,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg editor in Chief, John Micklethwaite Westmore of the Robin
Speaker 1: Hood Foundation, and Richard has of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaker 1: We spent the year glued to our screens, whether it
Speaker 1: was a terminal or a laptop, or a smartphone, or
Speaker 1: just to play an old television set, and the headlines
Speaker 1: came in faster than we could really absorb them, going
Speaker 1: back and forth among COVID nineteen and a presidential election
Speaker 1: and gyra, any markets and stark reminders of the very
Speaker 1: different lives that we lead based on our wraiths and
Speaker 1: our ethnicity and our economic status. But even as we
Speaker 1: struggle to keep up with the day today, it is
Speaker 1: not too soon to start thinking about the larger themes,
Speaker 1: the longer arc of history that we are living through.
Speaker 1: And there is no better way to do that than
Speaker 1: to read some of the books that were published during
Speaker 1: this year. And so we have this special installment of
Speaker 1: Wall Street Week given over to books that were published
Speaker 1: this year, seeing his history through the eyes of some
Speaker 1: of the authors who are making us think and reflect.
Speaker 1: We begin, as we must, with the pandemic and what
Speaker 1: it showed us about how we deal with the crisis
Speaker 1: and whether our governments are up to it. Bloomberg Editor
Speaker 1: in chief John Mikeltway joined with economist author Adrian Waldrich
Speaker 1: to bring us the wake up call, a penetrating look
Speaker 1: at which countries worked and which did not well. The
Speaker 1: very short answer is that Britain and America, you know,
Speaker 1: to the countries that have led the world have done
Speaker 1: it incredibly badly. Um if just monitored by the number
Speaker 1: of deaths per million, well over eight hundred deaths per million.
Speaker 1: By contrast Germany down round a hundred and fifty, and
Speaker 1: especially these Asian countries Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, you
Speaker 1: know they're they're in very small numbers three, sometimes as
Speaker 1: a few as five deaths per million, sometimes twenty thirty
Speaker 1: deaths per million, and so there has been a real difference,
Speaker 1: as you put, between good government and bad government. Indeed,
Speaker 1: government has been the difference between living and dying in
Speaker 1: many places. And what accounts for that. There are various theories.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, the Asia, particularly Taiwan, Korea, and
Speaker 1: something that China done well because it's more of a
Speaker 1: collectivist approach to society rather than individualistic. I think we
Speaker 1: should come back to China in a second. But on
Speaker 1: the on the broad terms, I think that's a too
Speaker 1: good an excuse for the West, on too several different levels. Firstly,
Speaker 1: if you look at any measure of other things to
Speaker 1: do with state efficiency schools, you know who's whose schools
Speaker 1: are doing well. It's the same set of countries are
Speaker 1: doing well. Whose whose general health systems lead to long
Speaker 1: life expectancy. The same thing virtually every barometer of whether
Speaker 1: a government is working well or not. There's been moving
Speaker 1: in Asia's direction over the past twenty thirty years. And
Speaker 1: it's just that's the reason why it's a wake up
Speaker 1: called the argument consensus. Yes, there is an advantage there,
Speaker 1: but it's the kind of advantage which gives you a
Speaker 1: ten or advantage. It's not the sort of advantage which
Speaker 1: explains somebody being twenty or thirty times better. I mean, you, David,
Speaker 1: mostly in our day jobs, when we look at a
Speaker 1: company and one company is sort of twenty better than
Speaker 1: another one, you think that other ones in trouble. In
Speaker 1: this case, countries were twenty times better. And that brings
Speaker 1: me on the second thing. If you look at South Korea,
Speaker 1: look at Soul, London and New York, they're roughly the
Speaker 1: same size. It souls a little bit bigger, and yet
Speaker 1: New York has lost over twenty five thousand people, London
Speaker 1: well over six thousand, Souls lost a few dozen. And
Speaker 1: this is the place that bought parasite. It's a place
Speaker 1: with some of the world's largest nightclubs. It's a place
Speaker 1: that bought K pop, which I know you listened to
Speaker 1: all the time. It's a vibrant, chaotic, democratic city with
Speaker 1: a lot of creativity, crowded subways, huge things. It's got
Speaker 1: exactly the same kind of dynamic as London or New York.
Speaker 1: It just happens to be a lot better run, and
Speaker 1: it's run because people have paid attention to government. How
Speaker 1: much of it is because of the leadership the particular
Speaker 1: people involved, That's a really good question. And again I
Speaker 1: think this is where America particularly has to be a
Speaker 1: bit careful. And I think there are a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans who think that because Donald Trump did a bad
Speaker 1: job with COVID, and I think by most people standards,
Speaker 1: he did do a very bad job. Um that, so
Speaker 1: to speak, the problem is solved. And I think that
Speaker 1: just isn't true. You look at the fundamental reason why
Speaker 1: America was bad at this, it's because it has a
Speaker 1: health care system that's designed to look after the rich
Speaker 1: and the old. So any a pandemic hits everybody, hits
Speaker 1: the poor particularly, so America was always bound to be exposed.
Speaker 1: And you look at the other things wrong with American government,
Speaker 1: racist policing, Well, you know, Donald Trump may not have
Speaker 1: helped that much, but I covered Rodney King in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles thirty years ago. That has been going on a
Speaker 1: long time. Look at American schools, okay, the twentieth or thirtieth,
Speaker 1: depending how you measure it. In the world when it
Speaker 1: comes to education, there's education tables that the Asians come
Speaker 1: top in, but that's been going on for years. To
Speaker 1: Trump may not have done much to help. It said
Speaker 1: that the structural problems with the American state go much
Speaker 1: deeper than just one man. It is to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that the Republicans don't have any answers to
Speaker 1: do with government other and to make it smaller, and
Speaker 1: the Democrats two wedded to the public sector unions to
Speaker 1: engage with the reform. And as long as that continues,
Speaker 1: America is going to have that problem that any big
Speaker 1: crisis is public sector is not going to be much good.
Speaker 1: That was John Michels Waite, editor in chief of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and author of The wake Up Call Coming Up. America's
Speaker 1: long struggle with race came to the four again with
Speaker 1: the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Westmore of
Speaker 1: the Robin Hood Foundation took us through the anatomy of
Speaker 1: a similar incident in Baltimore five years ago, when Freddie
Speaker 1: Gray was killed. That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston.
Speaker 1: The United States was rocked this year by a series
Speaker 1: of police killings of unarmed black citizens, including that of
Speaker 1: George Floyd in Minneapolis and Brianna Taylor in Louisville. And
Speaker 1: this is just the latest in a long line of
Speaker 1: such incidents through American history, revealing the deep divisions in
Speaker 1: our society. Westmore, the head of the Robin Hood Foundation,
Speaker 1: had written about one of these. It was the killing
Speaker 1: of Freddy Gray in Baltimore back in two fifteen, and
Speaker 1: west lays out what happened, what led to it, and
Speaker 1: what the aftermath was from a variety of perspectives. I'm
Speaker 1: a Baltimore native and in many ways Baltimore City helped
Speaker 1: to raise me. Uh and I I one of the
Speaker 1: things that really struck me about Freddy's story was, you know,
Speaker 1: I I I unfortunately have been to many funerals before
Speaker 1: my life, but his funeral was the first funeral that
Speaker 1: I had ever been to, when the person who was
Speaker 1: laying in the casket I never knew in life, and
Speaker 1: that haunted me because pretty Rays funeral was a big
Speaker 1: deal in Baltimore. But then the thing that really helped
Speaker 1: to to to trigger wanting to write this book and
Speaker 1: tell this story was was not just the horror of
Speaker 1: his death, but in many ways the horror of his life.
Speaker 1: And that's what I want. I wanted to uncap when
Speaker 1: I wanted to uncover, and you say, I'll just read
Speaker 1: a bit from the prologue here. You say we had
Speaker 1: come from similar places, you and Freddy Gray, but I
Speaker 1: had been so fortunate, so blessed, And you're going to
Speaker 1: talk about your mother and your grandparents and the breaks
Speaker 1: you got along the way. How does it happen that
Speaker 1: two people with similar sorts of situations can take such
Speaker 1: divergent paths. Well, you know, I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things I wanted to be able to look at
Speaker 1: is when you look at the life of Freddy Gray,
Speaker 1: for for so much of us, particularly for individuals, all
Speaker 1: of us who feel like we're coming out from the
Speaker 1: margins right where where this wasn't always destined that we
Speaker 1: can end up being there. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: factors that play into it, but one of the big
Speaker 1: factors that plays into unfortunately is luck. It's it's had
Speaker 1: getting getting a break that someone else might not get,
Speaker 1: an opportunity that someone else might not get, and and
Speaker 1: the idea that we would have or can have a
Speaker 1: society that is relying on luck as a prerequisite in
Speaker 1: order for people to be able to move from one
Speaker 1: position to another to another position is really hard. And
Speaker 1: you think about Freddie's life in particular. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Freddie was born premature, under eight, addicted to heroin. His
Speaker 1: mother never made it to high school. She couldn't read
Speaker 1: or write. She has these twins, Freddy and his twin sister, Frederika.
Speaker 1: By the time they had gained enough weight to actually
Speaker 1: leave the hospital, they moved into a housing project in
Speaker 1: West Baltimore that had endemic levels of lead inside of
Speaker 1: the home. And so Freddy Gray is now underweight, addicted
Speaker 1: to heroin, lead poisoned, and by this time in his
Speaker 1: life he's two years old. And so it gets back
Speaker 1: to this larger point of did Freddy Gray even have
Speaker 1: a chance, did he even have a shot, or was
Speaker 1: that last interaction that he had where where he was,
Speaker 1: where he died, was killed in police custody for the
Speaker 1: crime of making eye contact with police which triggered probable cause.
Speaker 1: Was that a just want the last system to break
Speaker 1: in the life of Freddy Gray. Well, see, that's what
Speaker 1: I found. One of the things I found very powerful
Speaker 1: in this book is obviously what happened with the police
Speaker 1: was inexcusable. Police officers were indicted, although I don't think
Speaker 1: they were convicted, but it was inexcusable what happened in
Speaker 1: the police fan But the problem with Freddy Gray started
Speaker 1: away past that. And when you talk about systems, we
Speaker 1: talk about systemic racism, systemic inequality. It's a series of systems.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of systems here that put Freddy Gray
Speaker 1: in the wrong place and for that matter, put police
Speaker 1: in the wrong place at the same time. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look at the life of Freddy Gray,
Speaker 1: every every system failed him. Uh, you know, the education system.
Speaker 1: When when the last day of attendance that he had
Speaker 1: recorded in Baltimore City Public schools was in tenth grade,
Speaker 1: when he was nineteen years old, he had been in
Speaker 1: special education developmental coursework his entire academic career because of
Speaker 1: the lead poisoning. The CDC indicates that five microbes of
Speaker 1: lead and every decolet of blood is enough to give
Speaker 1: him a person cognitive damage for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: Freddy Gray had thirty six, and so this was a
Speaker 1: young man who, from the earliest ages from from room
Speaker 1: being a toddler, was going to be cognitively damaged for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life because of something he had
Speaker 1: absolutely zero to do with. And now is that the
Speaker 1: fact that the home that he was living in and
Speaker 1: the water that he was drinking was making him sick.
Speaker 1: And so when you're looking at all these various systems
Speaker 1: that then were in place and just were not in
Speaker 1: place in the life of Freddy Gray, uh, it forces
Speaker 1: all of us to understand that this is not just
Speaker 1: going to be about policing. Performing the police department is
Speaker 1: necessary and it is imperative. However, we also have to
Speaker 1: understand that the amount of systems and the amount of
Speaker 1: touches that Freddy Gray had in broken systems throughout led
Speaker 1: to the to the idea that that last interaction with
Speaker 1: the broken system without one broken system, was just kind
Speaker 1: of a continuation of a lot of the larger life
Speaker 1: challenges that he was facing, and I want to take
Speaker 1: us through some of the concrete steps, because you have
Speaker 1: constricrete steps in your book that should be taken. But
Speaker 1: before that, this is a story about Freddy Gray, but
Speaker 1: it's also the story about eight other individuals. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a really interest in compelling way to tell
Speaker 1: the story sort of Russiaman from different people's points of
Speaker 1: view at the time over those critical five days that
Speaker 1: were really Baltimore was on fire. Gives a sense of
Speaker 1: some of those characters that you identify. I tell you, David,
Speaker 1: it was one of the things that I actually loved
Speaker 1: about the story because if if Baltimore, Baltimore is one thing,
Speaker 1: it's full of characters. And I was hearing it from
Speaker 1: every single strata of our society about what people thought
Speaker 1: about what happened, and what were the lessons learned, and
Speaker 1: and so I really wanted to then take some of
Speaker 1: those conversations that I was having personally with people and
Speaker 1: share them with the world. And so I broke it
Speaker 1: down to these eight characters. You know, Uh, a police
Speaker 1: major who grew up in West Baltimore, who was having
Speaker 1: conversations with me where he said he's one of the
Speaker 1: highest ranking African Americans on the police force, but he
Speaker 1: was having conversation and it would say, you know, I
Speaker 1: know that none of my colleagues woke up that morning
Speaker 1: with homicide in their mind. But I also know for
Speaker 1: the kids in West Baltimore why they don't believe me.
Speaker 1: You know a woman who lost her brother to police
Speaker 1: violence just eighteen months earlier in Baltimore City, and who
Speaker 1: was loving the fact that Baltimore was rising up and
Speaker 1: Baltimore was was was marching and doing something about this,
Speaker 1: but also was feeling a real sense of frustration because
Speaker 1: she's basically saying to herself, but where was this when
Speaker 1: my brother was killed by police and no one had
Speaker 1: anything to say. You know a basketball star turn protester,
Speaker 1: the son of the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who
Speaker 1: was the head of baseball operations. So when the Baltimore
Speaker 1: Orioles played the Chicago White Sox and for the first
Speaker 1: time in baseball history, they played a game and the
Speaker 1: official attendance was zero because the city was in the
Speaker 1: state of emergency. He was one of the final people
Speaker 1: to make the call and say I want to play
Speaker 1: the game even if there's no fans in there, because
Speaker 1: I want the world to see this. And so by
Speaker 1: looking at it through these various sets of eyes, by
Speaker 1: looking at it through people who come up and represent
Speaker 1: different stratas of our society, you know, we really wanted
Speaker 1: to show a kaleidoscope of how complex so many of
Speaker 1: these situations are, but also how it's still fundamentally colms
Speaker 1: down to two disparate issues, its race and its poverty,
Speaker 1: and how those two beasts have a way of coinciding
Speaker 1: to create pretty disastrous results if we are not dealing
Speaker 1: with them. That was Westmore, head of the Robin Hood Foundation,
Speaker 1: an author of Five Days, The Fiery Reckoning of an
Speaker 1: American city. Coming up in a year full of ups
Speaker 1: and downs, energy was no exception. Expert Dan Jurgen put
Speaker 1: it all in a broader context in his book The
Speaker 1: New Map That's Next. On Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston.
Speaker 1: The pandemic hit worldwide, demand for oil hard, leaving OPEC
Speaker 1: plus scrambling throughout the year to figure out how to
Speaker 1: respond to that fall in demand. Dan Jurgen of I
Speaker 1: H S Market kept us abreast of all of the
Speaker 1: has changes, but also put it in the larger context
Speaker 1: of how we are shifting the way we get our
Speaker 1: energy and use our energy, all of which is covered
Speaker 1: in his new book, The New Map. I think it's
Speaker 1: an evolution that's going on, but I was recently with
Speaker 1: a bunch of the leaders of the electric power industry.
Speaker 1: They do look to be net zero carbon by or
Speaker 1: many of them are moving that direction. Other parts of it.
Speaker 1: I think it evolves over time. There are two eight
Speaker 1: million cars in the United States and about two hundred
Speaker 1: seventy nine million run on gasoline, and I don't think
Speaker 1: people are going to throw away their cars. So I
Speaker 1: think it's this is the longer evolution, and I think
Speaker 1: there's what's happens in the US, but the US remembers
Speaker 1: only fifteen percent of CEO two emissions, China's twice that.
Speaker 1: India other emerging markets are looking towards commercial energy to
Speaker 1: get away from burning wood and waste in people's houses
Speaker 1: with their health consequences. So I think this is something
Speaker 1: that unfolds time directionally, where it's going. That's clear directionally
Speaker 1: in the timing really matters, and the bets can be
Speaker 1: rather substantial. In your book, you point out how many
Speaker 1: obs you know, I think there's ten million are tied
Speaker 1: to the energy industry. We also have trillions of dollars globally.
Speaker 1: Who's putting bets on which side of this? And we
Speaker 1: saw a report today that Xson basically internal documents leaked
Speaker 1: suggests that Exon is not moving as quickly as maybe
Speaker 1: some others away from fossil fuel emissions. China certainly might benefit.
Speaker 1: You point out in your book, Russia, maybe not. Who's
Speaker 1: betting on which side of Well, let me say I
Speaker 1: think the X and thing, of course that's still unfolding story.
Speaker 1: But I think what's happening is all major companies now
Speaker 1: are looking at their at their at their emissions and
Speaker 1: saying what are they going to be? And then the
Speaker 1: question becomes how do you mitigate them? And in the
Speaker 1: in the New Map, you know, there's this whole chapter
Speaker 1: called Breakthrough Technologies, based upon the work that Ernie more Needs,
Speaker 1: a former Energy secretary, and I did for lead for
Speaker 1: Bill Gates Foundation and Breakthrough Energy Coalition about the technologies
Speaker 1: we need, and one of them that's really very major
Speaker 1: is what's called carbon capture carbon mitigation. Simply when you
Speaker 1: look at the numbers, and I think that's where you
Speaker 1: know we're going to see increase uh investment going in
Speaker 1: terms of research on that to meet it. In terms
Speaker 1: of countries, China is a significant winner here because it didn't,
Speaker 1: unlike the US, it imports its oil and it regards
Speaker 1: that as a major strategic problem, particularly in the geopolitical
Speaker 1: issues that are now developing, and it has a dominant
Speaker 1: position in many of what you might call that they
Speaker 1: call the new energies. For instance, about sevent the solar
Speaker 1: panels of the world are made in China, another ten
Speaker 1: percent by Chinese companies, and it's Chinese manufacturing that's partly
Speaker 1: responsible for this revolutionist solar costs which have come way down,
Speaker 1: so you know they would be a big beneficiary of this.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I was surprised I learned
Speaker 1: from your book is the Department Energy under President Trump
Speaker 1: is investing an awful lot of money in research, science
Speaker 1: and research, some of which actually has to go to renewables.
Speaker 1: Right uh. Six and a half billion dollars in UM
Speaker 1: in basic science research, and that's the foundation, really, the
Speaker 1: true foundation of an energy transition, and that's been pretty consistent.
Speaker 1: That has been one area of bipartisan cooperation in seeing
Speaker 1: the importance of maintaining that commitment. And this is where
Speaker 1: the U strength really comes from, which is we have
Speaker 1: this incredible ecosystem that goes from seventy national labs, that
Speaker 1: kind of expenditure, universities, companies, startups. No other country has
Speaker 1: that advantage in new technologies take wind and solar there
Speaker 1: those are fifty years old industries, but it's only in
Speaker 1: the last ten years that they've really become so competitive.
Speaker 1: So it takes time, and so the investment you make
Speaker 1: now really pays off, but it can take ten or
Speaker 1: twenty years from now. Dan draw one other contrast that
Speaker 1: again I got from your book, the New Map, and
Speaker 1: that is between Russia, which is very dependent on fossil
Speaker 1: fuels goodness knows, and Saudi Arabia, which is also very
Speaker 1: matter but they have that vision campaign going. Do is
Speaker 1: Russia have anything similar to that about what comes after
Speaker 1: fossil fuels? No, I don't think so. I mean a
Speaker 1: gladim Our Putent said, it's great, O. Our budget is
Speaker 1: own nowt to oil instead of being oil that money
Speaker 1: coming from it. But I think Russia has been talking
Speaker 1: about diversification for UH for twenty years since Putin came
Speaker 1: to power, and it's really not happening. In fact, I
Speaker 1: was at a conference where I asked Putin that question.
Speaker 1: He and Chancellor Merkel were on the platform about diversification,
Speaker 1: but we got sidetracked because I mentioned shale and he
Speaker 1: really doesn't like US shale. So he he gave me
Speaker 1: his UH, his his opinions on that, which were pretty strong.
Speaker 1: So I think Saudi Arabia is trying to do it,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's hard to shift an economy that
Speaker 1: is so dependent upon oil. It was hard before COVID,
Speaker 1: it's more difficult right now. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that saudis it's clear to them in order
Speaker 1: to diversify away from oil, you actually need some oil revenues.
Speaker 1: That was Dan Jurgen, vice chairman of i h S
Speaker 1: Market and author of the New Map. Coming up, we
Speaker 1: end this special edition of Wall Street Week with Larry
Speaker 1: Summers and his book Picks for the Year. That's next
Speaker 1: on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Wall
Speaker 1: Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. We are
Speaker 1: back with our special contributor Larry Summers of Harvard for
Speaker 1: his view on some books this year that really stood
Speaker 1: out for him. So, Larry, what books really made an
Speaker 1: impression on you this year? There are three that I'm
Speaker 1: going to comment on, David. Uh. The first is my
Speaker 1: former boss, Barack Obama's UH memoir. Politicians memoirs are usually
Speaker 1: ghost written exercises in self justification and in rewarding UH
Speaker 1: the politicians UH friends with compliments. UH. President Obama's UH
Speaker 1: book is obviously self written. It is much more candid
Speaker 1: than most such memoirs. Like all of US, President Obama
Speaker 1: sees himself in a basically favorable light, but with much
Speaker 1: more admission of uncertainty, of possible regret, and much more
Speaker 1: candor in his portraits of events, UH and ideas. And So,
Speaker 1: if one's looking for a government memoir or a political
Speaker 1: memoir that gives a feeling of what it's like, UH
Speaker 1: to be there seeing things as a senior actor does,
Speaker 1: I can't think of one that's better uh than UH
Speaker 1: President Obama's. Whatever you think of his skill as a president,
Speaker 1: his skill as a memoirst is quite extraordinary. And one
Speaker 1: thing that struck me about that book, Larry, was that
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like it's pulling a lot of punches,
Speaker 1: but it also doesn't feel like it's a lot of
Speaker 1: score settling. And there are people clearly has really distrigan
Speaker 1: differences opinion with people. Actually he really doesn't quite admire,
Speaker 1: and yet it doesn't feel like he's settling scores. I
Speaker 1: think the President Obama's strength, and some would say his limitation,
Speaker 1: is a kind of extraordinarily mature perspective and capacity for
Speaker 1: strategic empathy. He has the ability to walk in the
Speaker 1: shoes of others and therefore to understand where they're coming from,
Speaker 1: and that limits his capacity for rage or for a
Speaker 1: desire for revenge. And for many of us that is
Speaker 1: a great UH strength UM. For others, it bespeaks to
Speaker 1: an excessive neutrality UM when merits are clear. But I
Speaker 1: think that is something that comes through UH you know
Speaker 1: bulk that is certainly quite revealing of the character of
Speaker 1: its author. So that's one President Obama's book, Deaths of Despair.
Speaker 1: Deaths of Despair is written by UM the Princeton professors
Speaker 1: in case and Anguish UH Dton, and particularly for those
Speaker 1: like me who are drawn to statistics and quantitative information
Speaker 1: nation it is a profoundly disturbing evocation of what is
Speaker 1: happening to the middle of our country. What's happening to
Speaker 1: the middle of our country geographically, what's happening to the
Speaker 1: middle of our country in the sense of the middle
Speaker 1: of the income UH distribution, what's happening to people who
Speaker 1: have middle wrong jobs in hierarchies, And what's happening is
Speaker 1: that too many of them are dying too young. We've
Speaker 1: taken it as a hallmark of a progressive society that
Speaker 1: life expectancy goes up, and for substantial subgroups in our population,
Speaker 1: that has stopped being true, and that is disturbing in
Speaker 1: it in its own set sake, And it is also
Speaker 1: disturbing because of all of the things in terms of
Speaker 1: fulfillment that are likely to be coinciding UH with that,
Speaker 1: and so in terms of pointing to what is going
Speaker 1: to be a huge challenge for our democracy UH going forward.
Speaker 1: This book does a superb job of complimenting more individualistic
Speaker 1: treatments like uhlbility elogy of UH life, and you're can
Speaker 1: agree or disagree with some of their policy recommendations. But
Speaker 1: there's a starkness in decreasing life expectancy and increase in
Speaker 1: UH death that I think has to command the attention
Speaker 1: of anyone who cares about our country's future, and and
Speaker 1: that that increase in death, as I understand it comes
Speaker 1: from things like OpenD addiction, alcoholism, suicide rates, which may
Speaker 1: actually be tied a bit into employment, right, because we've seen,
Speaker 1: particularly in males of prime age, a decline and employment
Speaker 1: rate that's attributed to some of those causes. I think
Speaker 1: it goes both ways. People are more likely to become
Speaker 1: addicted to substances because they're without work, and they're more
Speaker 1: likely to be without work because they're addicted to substances,
Speaker 1: and so uh there's a kind of vicious cycle that's underway.
Speaker 1: But it's a profound statement about the way things function
Speaker 1: in our country that fifty years ago people in their
Speaker 1: fifties had men and men in their early fifties had
Speaker 1: a five percent chance of not working, and today, most
Speaker 1: of the time they have a fifteen percent chance of
Speaker 1: not working. And of course, if fift percent of the
Speaker 1: people overall are not working, that means that the number
Speaker 1: who will be without work for six months within a year,
Speaker 1: or the number of those from disadvantage demographic groups who
Speaker 1: are not working is much greater than and to what say,
Speaker 1: you use a critical word there men, to what extent
Speaker 1: is this skew mail? The the increases have been much
Speaker 1: more substantial among men. Some of that is because something
Speaker 1: else has gone on with respect to UH women. We've
Speaker 1: had a change over the last fifty years in the
Speaker 1: attitude towards women UH working. But I think there is
Speaker 1: an increasing body of evidence some of it has to
Speaker 1: do with the replacement of physical labor, that these trends
Speaker 1: have disproportionately hurt UH men and hurt the economic prospects
Speaker 1: of men. And your third selection goes overseas to China.
Speaker 1: Kishore Madubani, a longtime Singaporean diplomat and international thinker, has
Speaker 1: been perhaps the most powerful voice over the last decade
Speaker 1: making the case that the big transformation in the world
Speaker 1: is the shift in the center of gravity of just
Speaker 1: about everything from the West to the east. And he
Speaker 1: makes this case in many ways and in different forums,
Speaker 1: notably in this book as China one. But I have
Speaker 1: to say that when I looked at non democratic China
Speaker 1: running its society in a way where, despite early mistakes, UH,
Speaker 1: the death rate from COVID as a share of the
Speaker 1: population was in the range of being just one or
Speaker 1: two per cent of what ours has been. It does
Speaker 1: have to make you think about the capacity of different
Speaker 1: systems to protect their people. And I think that people
Speaker 1: have to look very carefully at the differences between Asia
Speaker 1: and the West in terms of the success with which
Speaker 1: societies have dealt with COVID, and think very carefully about that.
Speaker 1: I'm not prepared to say what it means or what
Speaker 1: policy inferences follow uh from it, but it is a
Speaker 1: very stark kind of observation and one that I think
Speaker 1: will deserve over time a lot of reflection. Okay, Larry Summers,
Speaker 1: it's always a light to end the week with you.
Speaker 1: That is our special contribute. Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary
Speaker 1: of Harvard. Finally, one more thought. It was truly a
Speaker 1: year for the history books. Was some of that history
Speaker 1: already written and much more yet to come. But as
Speaker 1: we start to look forward, take a look at what
Speaker 1: we read this past year. According to both Amazon and
Speaker 1: the New York Public Library, it was not the books
Speaker 1: about the pandemic or about the economy, or about the
Speaker 1: presidential election. No, it was the books about race that
Speaker 1: captured our attention this past year, books like The Vanishing
Speaker 1: Half and White Fragility, and Where the Crawdad Sing Not
Speaker 1: to mention not one but two books by the Obama's
Speaker 1: speaking personally. The book I read this year that made
Speaker 1: the most difference to me was Elizabeth Wilkerson's The Warmth
Speaker 1: of other Sons, the story of the mass migration of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century of Black Americans from the South to
Speaker 1: the North, what they endured, and how their experiences have
Speaker 1: profound and lasting effects to this day. We have a
Speaker 1: lot to put behind us, a lot to repair in
Speaker 1: our health care system, to our economy, to the way
Speaker 1: we govern ourselves. But if there's one thing that should
Speaker 1: have taught us is that we cannot really move forward
Speaker 1: until we fully understand our past, until we fully understand
Speaker 1: the extent to which we have fallen short of our
Speaker 1: goal to make sure that all of us have the
Speaker 1: means to pursue our hopes and our dreams, that all
Speaker 1: of us can truly exercise our right to life, liberty,
Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness. That does it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: See you next week.