Salient to Investors:
Fareed Zakaria said:
- The US economy has recovered nicely.
- A 2014 UCLA study found that many black and Latino students face almost total isolation from white and Asian students and middle-class peers.
- Much more Saudi oil wealth has gone into pernicious causes over the last 30 years than Iranian oil wealth.
- Tharman Shanmugaratnam says half of the Muslim population in Britain lives in the bottom 10% of its neighborhoods by income.
- The UN estimates the average woman needs to have 2.1 children to maintain the population of a developed country. Every EU country is below that level, though France has one of the best rates in Europe. Demographers say that it is difficult to get people to have children using just financial incentives.
- Pew predicts that by 2050, populations in Greece, Portugal and Germany will have dropped by double-digit percentages. The UN predicts over-65s in Europe will increase to more than 25% of the population by 2050, Japan’s will increase to more than 33%.
- The US will be demographically vibrant and growing for decades. Pew predicts that America’s population will grow by 27% from 2010 to 2050 due to immigration and a relatively younger population. The CDC says the US fertility rate hit a record low in 2013.
- The World Wildlife Fund says half of the earth’s wildlife has been lost in the past 40 years.
Elliott Abrams at the Council on Foreign Relations said:
- Obama is turning away from America’s responsibilities around the world. Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans, feel less safe facing Russia; Australia, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan feel less safe facing China; Israel, the Gulf Arabs feel less safe facing Iran.
- The US is asking for nothing and getting nothing on human rights in the Iran and Cuba deals.
Peter Beinart at Haaretz, New America and CNN said:
- The polls show Obama is much more popular around the world than George W. Bush, while America is more popular than it was.
- The Iran nuclear deal is a major accomplishment akin to Nixon and China.
Meghan O’Sullivan at Harvard said:
- Strategic restraint might make sense in a world where the US does not have much at stake, or US allies are active in promoting US interests, or where world order is self-perpetuating; but we don’t live in that world. International order is not in good shape and the Middle East is significantly worse off than 7 years ago.
- The Iran nuclear deal has very real flaws; including the fact that Iranians get all their benefits up front in exchange for a promise to stick to the deal for a decade or longer.
Gideon Rose at Foreign Affairs said:
- The international order is not fraying. The US is the world’s strongest power by leap years, with a defense budget equal to the next 7 nations combined. The US and its allies account for 75% of global defense spending. Core allegiances and alliances in the major industrial and economic centers are intact and thriving.
- Much of the Middle East is no longer a core American strategic interest and US direct involvement there is not necessarily improving things.
- The Iran nuclear deal is not great but is dramatically better than all the realistic alternatives.
General Stanley McChrystal said:
- In combat, soldiers are much more frightened of the enemy than their sergeant.
- You want personnel confident enough in their relationships and in what they do to be able to operate effectively.
- Personnel must have confidence in the competence of their leaders, and more importantly their values.
- The confidence of personnel is undermined when they see a difference between what senior management says it will do and what it actually does, or if they believe senior leadership is uninformed.
- Key to being a leader is personal discipline and empathy.
Watch the video at http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/category/gps-episodes/ or read the full transcript at http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1508/30/fzgps.01.html