"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economics editor for 'The Economist,' responds to readers' questions on recent economic data, the national minimum wage and gridlock in Washington.
Figures out this week suggest groundbreaking declined at home construction sites, factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region dipped. How concerned should we about these kinds of numbers?
I think we’ve had a fairly mixed crop of numbers, some of which are worrying, and some of which are quite positive. You have to be careful not to draw too much from any individual number. But broadly, my sense is that the private side of the U.S. economy is recovering at a reasonable, but not terribly dramatic, pace. The housing market, in particular, is on the mend.
Yes, some numbers disappoint, but broadly it’s a good news story. But I think the overall pace of recovery is being held back by the fiscal tightening that is going on. We had quite big tax increases at the beginning of the year. And in the sequester – and we’re getting somewhere in the order of 1.9 percent of GDP in fiscal tightening. So that’s acting as a brake on the economy and so the overall recovery is not as strong as it otherwise would be, which means there’s slower job growth than there otherwise would be.
It is a recovery, but it’s a pretty lackluster one considering how much we have to catch up, and I think that has quite a lot to do with fiscal policy.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
America’s economy is showing further signs of slower growth, Reuters reported today, with “factory activity slipping in the mid-Atlantic region while groundbreaking declined at home construction sites.”
How much of a concern are these latest numbers? How big an impact has sequestration – the forced budget cuts in Washington – had on the economy? And what can we expect going forward, in the U.S. and globally?
Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economics editor for The Economist, will be taking readers’ questions tomorrow. Please leave a question you would like us to ask Zanny in the comments section below.
What's going on in the world? What topic would you like to hear Fareed's take on?
From the U.S. presidential race to unrest in Syria, from China's rise to the latest on Iran — and all points in between — submit your questions to Fareed Zakaria in the comments below. He'll share his thoughts in later posts.
You can also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter @FareedZakaria.
Hungry for some more? Check out past posts of Fareed's Take and more of Fareed's answers to reader questions.
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Here is my response to the question: When countries acquire nuclear weapons, don't they become more emboldened on the world stage?
Nuclear weapons don’t create some kind of magical change of geopolitical position. Do they provide you with some additional sense of immunity and power? Probably they do because it becomes unlikely that the United States is going to invade. But in the case of Pakistan, there was no such guarantee with regards to what India’s actions were going to be.
Does anyone really thing that North Korea or Pakistan are regarded as fearsome adversaries, countries to emulate, countries with great influence in the councils of the world? No. They are regarded as basket cases - failed states that are dangerous largely because they are unstable and are run by irresponsible governments that are willing to do destabilizing things in their region. The result is they are more watched, cordoned off and contained then ever before. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Here is my response to the question: Is the Arab Spring bad for women?
I think that overall the Arab Spring will be good for women. In the short run, however, the Arab Spring has opened the lid on a Pandora’s Box of problems, which have existed for decades, and are now being aired. Reactionary, illiberal forces that have been suppressed and repressed are coming to the fore. But I don’t think these forces will determine where the countries of the Arab Spring end up.
Take a look at a very rural, tribal society like Afghanistan, which does not have progressive attitudes toward women. Nevertheless, the Taliban’s imposition of reactionary policies on women was very unpopular. Most men didn’t like it; most women didn’t like it. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Here is my response to the question: Should people born outside the United States - but now U.S. citizens - be allowed to become president?
I think they should for one very simple reason: I was born outside the United States. I’m only half kidding, but this is the only place where there is a distinction made between naturalized Americans and native-born Americans.
There are scholars who believe that this distinction was made because Thomas Jefferson did not want Alexander Hamilton to become president. Hamilton was born in Nevis.
It does seem an odd distinction to make because nowhere else in America and in no other aspect of American life is there a distinction made between native-born and naturalized Americans. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Here is my response to the question: What should Obama do with Karazai calling on the U.S. to pull back and with the Taliban canceling talks?
I have long believed that the United States should move from a counterinsurgency strategy to a counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan. But it would be unfortunate if we were seen to be accelerating the pace of withdrawal in the context of the Quran burning and the horrible murders. These crises always blow over with time. With some intense consultations with the Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai, we can make the relationship move on. So I wouldn’t accelerate the pace of a drawdown in the context of these very unfortunate events. Nevertheless, I fundamentally think it would be a good idea for us to pull back from Afghanistan and move from a counterinsurgency to a counterterrorism strategy.
Counterinsurgency has gotten this free pass in military strategy partly because of the success of the "surge" in Iraq. But the idea that the only way we can fight bad guys is to go occupy vast swathes of foreign countries, modernize economies and societies, provide power, electricity, food, jobs and good governance is totally unworkable. This strategy commits the United States to a very ambitious nation-building program in countries that are, by definition, very difficult to nation build in. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Over the next few days, I am going to post my text and video responses to some of the most common questions and a few others that caught my eye.
I've always been bullish on China. People have often told me that China can't continue to grow like this and that the whole thing is going to come crashing down. Well, for 25 years, it hasn't come crashing down. China's had ups and downs - but mostly ups. And they have managed the downs very effectively. I continue to believe that China will manage to do that.
I think that the Chinese government has a very bizarre situation where it is being run as a pro-growth dictatorship in which technocrats run the country and they do it with long-term planning and, by and large, do it in ways that are friendly to the markets and trade. It's not replicable. When people talk about a "China model" I think, there is no model! Mostly when you have a dictatorship or you have any kind of unelected leadership, they tend to mess up the economy. The Chinese do the opposite. Why is not entirely clear. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Over the next few days, I am going to post my text and video responses to some of the most common questions and a few others that caught my eye.
How do we make sure that America continues to thrive in a post-American world?
It strikes me there are two ways:
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Over the next few days, I am going to post my text and video responses to some of the most common questions and a few others that caught my eye.
A number of you asked me whether I agree with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey who described Iran as a "rational actor" on my program a couple of weeks ago.
My answer is: I very much agree with General Dempsey. It's very important to understand, however, what it means to talk about a "rational actor." A rational actor is not a reasonable actor. It is not somebody who has the same goals or values as we have.
In international affairs or economics, the term rational actor is used to describe somebody who is concerned about their survival, prosperity or strength and is making calculations on the basis of these concerns. It describes someone who calculates costs and benefits. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Hundreds of you have submitted very thoughtful questions for me through Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Over the next few days, I am going to post my text and video responses to some of the most common questions - and a few others that caught my eye - here on CNN.com/GPS.
One of you asked me: Why there aren't more serious third party candidates in the United States?
One very simple reason is the two parties have effectively created a duopoly. It is very, very difficult to get on the ballot in any state. There's a group called Americans Elect 2012 that has been trying to create a third party platform just to get on the ballot. And it takes hundreds of thousands of signatures - over a million in California - to do it. It's a scandal, really, because democracy should be about giving people alternatives and allowing peoples' voices to be heard. But the two parties collude to make sure that you don't get a third party.
The second piece of it is America just does not have a very broad ideological spectrum. If you look at America's two parties, they're actually very close together in terms of their ideological differences. Both American parties - the Democrats and the Republicans – would fit comfortably as center-right parties in Europe. You have no real social democratic party. You have no real hyper-nationalist parties. If you look at the width of the European political spectrum, the United States occupies a kind of narrow position on it. So it makes sense that we don't have ten competitive parties. FULL POST
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Editor's Note: The following is an edited excerpt from a transcript of Fareed Zakaria answering viewer questions online.
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
I am very bullish on the emerging economies.
At a short-term, tactical level you can look at these economies and say, “Oh, Indian reform has slowed and the government isn’t doing much. In Brazil the stock market and the currency have appreciated too much. In China there is a housing bubble.”
All of this is true and there might be temporary setbacks as a result, but the long-term trend here is very simple. For the past 300 years, the Western world discovered the secrets of economic success and implemented them. These secrets were a market economy, private property, rule of law, education, science and hard work.
After a while people began to realize that these secrets were actually open source –anyone could use them. FULL POST
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