Fareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 09-14-14 – Investa Asset Management LLC

Salient to Investors:

Fareed Zakaria said:

The purpose of ISIS’ execution videos was to provoke the US and it worked.
Al Qaeda tries to appeal to all Muslims while ISIS is distinctly sectarian and anti-Shiite and hostile to Kurds, Christians and many others in the Middle East – if they all fight in a coordinated fashion, ISIS would lose ground.
Large parts of supposed territories shown on TV that ISIS controls are vacant desert.
This means that it has large numbers of foes in the region who will fight against it not because the United States wants them to but in their own interests.
ISIS is a direct outgrowth of America’s invasion of Iraq and the ruinous political decisions to disband the Iraqi Army and de-Baathify its democracy.
It is impossible to battle ISIS without strengthening Assad.
Sanctions have a poor track record – one study found that sanctions only succeeded a third of the time between 1945 and 2005.
Unlike Iran, sanctions against Russia are not coupled with the threat of force and is far less isolated from the global economy. Russia supplies a third of the EU’s gas supply, which is why EU sanctions have been largely toothless.
Cutting Russia off from Swift, the network used by more than 10,500 banks, would have far-reaching consequences – it was profoundly damaging to the Iranian economy in 2012.
Without a solution to the Ukrainian crisis, Europe’s outlook looks grim; mired in recession, facing a secessionist vote from Scotland with anti-European populists rising in every column.

Henry Kissinger at Kissinger Associates said:

In 5 wars since 1945, the US has only achieved its objectives in the first Iraq war and, in a limited way, the Korean War.
The West provoked Russia in Ukraine, which can never be just another country.
Putin believes he is head of a potentially weak country with a 3,000 mile frontier with China, a strategic nightmare, and thousands of miles with Islam, an ideological nightmare.
We are in for an extremely difficult period.

Vinod Khosla at Khosla Ventures said:

Solar and wind solutions are naive and simplistic because they only produce power when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
Like black swans, our solution is some unknown improbable path.
It is impossible to innovate without screwing up – innovation means risk, and risk means failure.

at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1409/14/fzgps.01.html