Watch the full interview on GPS this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.
Fareed speaks with Steven Brill, founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer magazine, and David Goldhill, author of ‘Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father – and How We Can Fix It,’ about the problems with America’s health care system.
How would you change it?
Goldhill: Well, what I'm seeking is a balance, right? What we've done is all the way in this direction, in fact, further than almost any country on Earth, believe it or not, in reducing the amount of skin consumers have in the game.
But the problem isn't just money. The problem is the way the health care sectors compete now…we have a non-functioning price system in health care. Prices are not cost. They never have been. Their prices may make no sense by any normal economic means. It is to remove the consumer from the equation.
Consumers don't exercise power through leverage. They don't have leverage in any market. You don't have leverage in the cell phone market. Or the personal computer market or the home building market. We never have leverage. That's things that people say in health care they don't say in anything else. It's the competition for consumers that drives good behavior. And in health care, everything we've done has been to reduce competition.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
On GPS this week: President Barack Obama has released his budget. But what should we make of it? Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, debates Obama's top former economic adviser Austan Goolsbee.
Then, the biggest driver of U.S. debt: Health care. Steven Brill and David Goldhill discuss why the system needs fixing – and how to do it.
“You volunteer to have LASIK surgery,” Brill says. “You certainly volunteer to have a facelift. You don't wake up in the morning and say, gee, I think I'm going to, you know, have a heart attack today, I ought to go shop around and see which emergency room is going to be the best for me, what their prices are and what their quality is.”
Later, why the future of food may well be Chinese: a conversation with new CNN host Anthony Bourdain. Finally, a business ethics lesson from an unlikely source: India. 1-on-1 with Ratan Tata, the former chairman of India's Tata Group.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
This Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT sees the first in a new series on CNN, Parts Unknown, which will be hosted by renowned U.S. chef, food critic and Emmy-winning globe trotter Anthony Bourdain.
Anthony’s travels have taken him to the far corners of the globe, but this week he'll be in New York to speak with Fareed on Global Public Square. Before then, we are inviting GPS readers to pose their own questions for Anthony.
So what would you like to ask? Please post your questions in the comments section below, and we’ll ask Anthony some of the best ones later this week.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
This week on GPS: Would North Korea attack the U.S. or its allies? Fareed convenes an all-star panel of global thinkers including New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens to discuss the Koreas, the Middle East, gun control and President Obama.
Then, some good news for America: Morgan Stanley's Ruchir Sharma explains why emerging markets are slowing down – and the U.S. is on the up.
“We still dominate because the U.S. is the largest economy in the world. But even as a share of the economy, the amount that the U.S. spends on R&D is very high,” Sharma says. “I think only a couple of other countries in the world, such as South Korea and Israel maybe, spend a bit more of the share of GDP.”
“But what the U.S. spends is a lot. So again, a lot of sort of negatives about the infrastructure out here, but we sort of tend to overlook the fact that the U.S. is still spending on a lot of right things.”
Plus, What in the World: Why thousands of Chinese rivers are simply disappearing.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
This week, GPS highlights some of the most memorable interviews so far this year.
First, Fareed speaks with Jordan's King Abdullah about the state of the Arab Spring, and his own country's evolution towards democracy.
“We’re still living in the shadows of the Cold War. And during the Cold War, it was more sort of, let’s say, the monarchies that were allied to the West and the republics that were allied to the Soviet Union. And so maybe you've seen the reaction more in the republics than you've had in sort of the countries that are either emirates or monarchies. But this is what makes maybe the transition to political reform even more difficult.”
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
Should the U.S. spend more to try to stimulate the economy? What should NASA be spending its money on? What does the rise of Asia’s economies mean for the United States? Fareed speaks with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and former permanent secretary at the Singaporean Foreign Ministry, Kishore Mahbubani, for some answers.
I know you think the stimulus was not large enough, but it was fairly large. Certainly by historical standards, we went from debt to GDP of about 40 percent to about 70, 80 percent. And the argument is we're in the weakest recovery since the Great Depression. Is that proof that this kind of stimulus, Keynesian stimulus, just doesn't work in today's economy?
Krugman: No, because it's exactly what you would have expected to happen. I mean, this was one hell of a financial crisis – the worst since the Great Depression, exactly. We've had a huge fall in private investment, the collapse of the housing bubble, coupled with a huge rise in private savings, corporations and households trying to pay down debt. Of course you have to run large budget deficits just to stay in place. You don't expect the numbers that we've been seeing to be enough to actually produce full employment.
American media spills a lot of ink on polls that tell us which nations hate America, which ones tolerate America and which ones really like us. But much less is known about how Americans feel about our brothers and sisters abroad when we even deign to think about them. Gallup has a new poll that does just that, with some surprising results.
So, without further ado, America's most hated nations: Number five, the Palestinian Authority. Number four, Syria. Number three, Pakistan. Number two, North Korea. And the nation Americans feel least favorable about is Iran. So, who do we love? In fifth place, France. Then Japan, then Germany. Those last two show that Americans can really get over the past. Great Britain gets second place, and we don't have the luxury to travel very far to find our bosom buddy.
Canada is number one. It looks like we have entirely gotten over the War of 1812. Does anybody even remember what it was about? Hint: if it had gone the other way, there would be no Canada today.
For more What in the World, watch GPS on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET
By Global Public Square staff
A curious phenomenon is unfolding in China. Hundreds of couples are rushing to marriage bureaus across the country. Perhaps the first signs of spring are bringing on a sudden impulse for romance?
No, it's the opposite. These couples are filing for divorce. In each case, a husband and wife mutually agrees to quick separation, no arguing, no quibbling over money or assets. How? Why? Well, actually, it was about money and assets. A vast majority of these couples are getting divorced so they can avoid a new Chinese tax.
Beijing recently decided to impose a 20 percent capital gains fee on sales of second homes. So the theory goes, if you have two homes and you get divorced, you can register each home under separate names. Then, if you see one of those homes, you escape the new tax and, then, perhaps you can get remarried. The bizarre exploitation of this loophole tells a larger story.
FULL POST
By Fareed Zakaria
For decades, Beijing saw Pyongyang as a historical and natural ally. But now, a senior Obama administration official told me Wednesday, “We are clearly hearing increasingly levels of frustration and concern” from Beijing about North Korea. A few weeks ago, a senior Communist Party analyst, Deng Yuwen, argued in an op-ed in the Financial Times that China should “abandon” North Korea.
Now talk is easier than action. China has never imposed penalties or strictly enforced sanctions against its ally. Beijing’s reasoning is understandable. We tend to think about North Korea through the prism of two issues: nuclear weapons and human rights. But the Chinese have a more pressing concern — national collapse. If they were to push the North Korean government too hard, they feel, the regime could fall, leaving millions to seek refuge in China. Even more important, China would be bordered by a formal ally of the United States — one with about 28,000 U.S. troops on its soil as well as nuclear weapons. You don’t have to be paranoid to worry about that scenario.
Fareed speaks with former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about the lessons of the Iraq war. Watch the full interview this Sunday on CNN at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET.
After 9/11, there were people like Richard Clarke, who was at the National Security Council, who said that there were people - and he specifically mentions you and your boss Donald Rumsfeld - who immediately started diverting attention away from al Qaeda toward Iraq. That you viewed this as an opportunity to deal with what you regarded as the unfinished business of Iraq…
No one was arguing to divert attention from al Qaeda and Afghanistan. That was clearly part of the problem. The question was whether Iraq was also part of the problem. And we could spend an entire show going into the historical detail. But I think the important thing is to say, well, we had this experience. Was there a way to avoid this war? Was it necessary? And what did we learn from it? And I think it's important that the reason this has been so painful and lasted so long and cost 4,000 American lives – and I've spent a lot of time with wounded soldiers and their families and with families of the fallen. I understand the pain involved, or at least, well, as best as someone who hasn't experienced directly can.
But the reason it was so difficult and lasted so long is it took us so long to understand that we were dealing with an insurgency, that to deal with an insurgency, you need a counterinsurgency strategy. Instead, we were out trying to kill terrorists. But the essence of counterinsurgency, which is known to people as the surge, but it wasn't primarily about putting in more troops – it was primarily about using them in a different way – is that you have to get the population on your side. And you can't get the population on your side unless you undertake to protect them, because taking on these killers is dangerous.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
On GPS this week: What should be done about North Korea? As Pyongyang gets ever more belligerent, Fareed talks to two men who have been involved in crafting Washington's East Asian policy: former Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg, and Victor Cha of Georgetown University.
Then, 10 years on from the start of the war in Iraq: what went wrong, why, and what needs to be done now? Fareed speaks to one of the original architects of that war, former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
“The price was high and I think the price in lives is the one I feel the most acutely,” Wolfowitz says. “But this is a critical part of the world. I would like, as much as anyone, to be able to say let's forget about the Persian Gulf. Let's forget about the larger Middle East. Let's focus on Asia, where I've spent a good part of my career and which is a much more satisfying place to work. But that part of the world isn't leaving us alone. Al Qaeda isn't leaving us alone. Pakistan isn't leaving us alone.”
And in What in the World, why hundreds of Chinese are suddenly getting divorced.
By Fareed Zakaria
Later this year, the Obama administration will have to make a decision on whether to green light the Keystone pipeline – the 2,000-mile pipeline that would bring oil from the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. I’m sure you’ve heard all the dire warnings about it. But another way to look at it is to ask what would happen if the project does not go forward.
The U.S. Department of State released an extremely thorough report that tries to answer this question. It concludes, basically, that the oil derived from Canadian tar sands will be developed at about the same pace whether or not there is a pipeline. In other words, stopping Keystone might make us feel good, but it wouldn't really do anything about climate change.
Why? Well, given the need for oil in the U.S., Canadian producers would still get Alberta's oil to the refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. There are other pipeline possibilities, but the most likely method of transfer is by train. The report estimates that it would take daily runs of 15 trains with about 100 tanker cars each to carry the amount planned by TransCanada…And remember, moving oil by train produces much higher emissions of CO2 (from diesel locomotives) than flowing it through a pipeline.
For more on this, read the TIME column here.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| Advertising practices | Advertise with us | About us | Work for us | Help
