"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.
By Richard Pearshouse, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Richard Pearshouse is a senior health and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of Toxic Tanneries: The Health Repercussions of Bangladesh’s Hazaribagh Leather. The views expressed are his own.
Last year, I spoke with a 40-year-old woman working in a Bangladesh leather tannery in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka. The Hazaribagh tanneries, which export hundreds of millions of dollars in leather for luxury clothes, shoes and boots around the world, spew noxious pollutants into surrounding communities. They can also make their workers very ill.
Much tannery work involves measuring and mixing chemicals, adding chemicals to hides in drums, or hauling hides saturated in chemicals out of pits. Fungal infections, scabies, hives, and contact dermatitis are common. Others suffer from respiratory illnesses and chest pains.
Asked what she thought of the possibility that Hazaribagh’s tanneries might eventually move out of the city, the woman told me, “It would be very good…They could start garment factories. This would be cleaner work with a better salary.”
By Rep. Trent Franks and Rep. Rush Holt, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) are members of the U.S. Congress. The views expressed are their own.
For the first time since hosting Burmese dictator Ne Win nearly 50 years ago, the United States will host another head of state from Myanmar. The historic visit from President Thein Sein on Monday will, no doubt, lead to much discussion of Myanmar’s extremely long road toward democracy and whether there may be a relapse in their recent reform. It is also an opportunity to evaluate America’s new Myanmar policy.
As the U.S. reengages with Myanmar, also known as Burma, some Americans have lost sight of the ongoing, violent war against many of Myanmar's ethnic and religious minorities. This being the case, the U.S. must closely evaluate its policy towards Myanmar and ensure that no action or word from the U.S. government be interpreted as a lack of concern for human rights abuse that continues in Myanmar, some of which Human Rights Watch has gone so far as to call “a campaign of ethnic cleansing.”
The U.S. relationship with Myanmar from 1990 to 2011 was virtually nonexistent, governed by strict sanctions brought about by the military government’s widespread, often brutal, violation of basic rights.
By Fareed Zakaria
Conservatives are, of course, mad at Barack Obama. But they are also mad at a country that isn't outraged enough at him. This frustration is now taking over mainstream and intelligent voices within the movement, and about broader issues than Benghazi.
Bret Stephens, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, laments that President Obama is not paying a price for a foreign policy that he describes as "isolationist." But our isolationism will surely come as a surprise to the diplomats, soldiers and intelligence officers working on American foreign policy. Washington spends more on defense than the next 10 great powers put together – and more on intelligence than most nations spend on their militaries.
We also have tens of thousands of troops stationed at dozens of bases abroad, from Germany to Turkey to Bahrain to Japan to South Korea. We have formal commitments to defend our most important allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The prime minister of which country bordering Syria met with President Obama this week? Tensions have flared between Taiwan and which country? Which country is astronaut Chris Hadfield from?
Take our weekly quiz to find out.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
On GPS Sunday: Washington’s week of scandals. How should the White House deal with them? Fareed speaks to a man who might have some ideas: former chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, Ken Duberstein.
“You know, every second term president, certainly since Eisenhower, has gone into a ditch,” Duberstein says. “The cardinal rule is when you go into a ditch, you stop digging. And so far, this White House has not stopped digging.”
Then, has America fixed its deficit problem? Fareed convenes an economic panel that includes Glenn Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School, and Zanny Minton Beddoes, economics editor at The Economist.
And later, a journey into the future of technology, with Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
By Peter Fragiskatos, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Peter Fragiskatos teaches at Western University in London, Canada. You can follow him @pfragiskatos. The views expressed are his own.
Amidst the horror that continues to plague Syria, a glimmer of hope emerged last week as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced they will try to bring together the Syrian state and its opponents by convening an international peace conference.
In principle, negotiations are the right way to go. Had talks taken place earlier, the bloodshed, which has now claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, could have been vastly reduced. The only way it can be stopped is if there are some compromises, and this will only happen when the warring sides start talking in earnest. Yet reports that Russia is sending advanced anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria are a reminder that Moscow's commitment to the process remains an unpredictable wild card.
In preparing for the discussions, a division of labor appears to have been set – the Americans are trying to persuade the rebels to take part, while Russia is pressing the al-Assad regime. And there are some promising signs on both fronts. According to Kerry, Salim Idriss – chief of staff for the main opposition Free Syrian Army – has expressed strong interest in negotiations, while reports suggest Lavrov has received a list of negotiators from the Syrian government.
By Fareed Zakaria
“Thanks to ambiguity about what it means to be ‘primarily’ concerned with ‘social welfare,’ political activists have reaped a bonanza for years while the IRS ignored their chicanery," writes Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times.
“And once again, now that the agency has tried to regulate, the regulated parties have blown its efforts up into a ‘scandal.’ It's amusing to reflect that some politicians making hay over this are the same people who contend that we don't need more regulations, we just need to enforce the ones we have. (Examples: gun control and banking regulation.) Here's a case where the IRS is trying to enforce regulations that Congress enacted, and it's still somehow doing the wrong thing.”
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In normal presidential elections, it is only the candidates and their platforms that matter. Not so in Iran, argues Mohsen Milani in Foreign Affairs.
“There, the key player in the upcoming presidential elections is the septuagenarian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is constitutionally barred from running for the office. He recognizes that the election result will have a profound impact on his own rule and on the stability of the Islamic Republic. So behind the scenes, he has been doing everything in his power to make sure that the election serves his interests. But the eleventh-hour declarations of candidacy by Hashemi Rafsanjani…and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei…have made his task more difficult.”
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“I think the question of whether the U.K. should remain part of the EU is a closer call than either side wants to admit, writes Clive Crook in Bloomberg, suggesting Britain might really be poised to leave the European Union.
“If the EU responds to the economic crisis with new strides toward a United States of Europe, the costs for the U.K. will surely outweigh the benefits: Britain just doesn’t want to be part of that enterprise. If EU membership will require eventual membership of the euro area – and that’s the prevailing model, as though the crisis had never happened – Britain should again say no thanks.”
By Alex Vines, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Alex Vines is director of Area Studies and International Law and heads the Angola Forum at Chatham House. He is also a senior lecturer at Coventry University. The views expressed are his own.
Twenty years ago this Sunday, the United States belatedly recognized Angola. Today, Angola is the second-largest trading partner of the U.S. in sub-Saharan Africa, a country at peace and enjoying one of the fastest rates of economic growth in the world. It is the second largest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa and an OPEC member that has allowed major U.S. oil companies to prosper. But all is not well in the relationship.
Angola achieved independence from Portugal in 1975 and immediately became a major battle ground of the Cold War. The U.S. refused to recognize the pro-Soviet and Cuban backed MPLA government, encouraged apartheid South African military incursions and trained and supplied the rebel UNITA forces. At one point, Angola became the second largest recipient of U.S. covert aid after the Afghan Mujahedeen.
Fast forward to today, and the MPLA is still the ruling party, with President José Eduardo dos Santos having been in power since 1979. And, despite the many global suitors, dos Santos said recently that Angola has only four strategic partners: Brazil, China, Portugal and the United States.
"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.
"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
On April 17, a U.S. drone strike killed an al Qaeda militant and four others in a remote village in Western Yemen. CNN’s Jessica Gutteridge talks to Farea Al-Muslimi, a former U.S. exchange student who grew up in the village.
“I grew up in Wessab, a remote the mountain in Yemen. It's nine hours south away from the capital, a very deprived area where mostly farmers live there. It’s a place where there is no electricity, even today, not a single hospital, not a single school. It’s a very miserable area.
I lived here in high school with a host family, as an exchange student. The best year of my life – ever. It's beyond imagination. It was the richest year of my life, I think, in every sense – education-wise, knowledge-wise, friendship-wise, school-wise, because it's just like taking someone from the seventh century in a time machine to the 21st century. I became technically an ambassador for Americans for the rest of my life. The people, I think, are the best, the very best part about my year in America.
There was at the day of the strike, there was a plane hovering over the head of the village, though people didn't know that this plane was targeting someone or looking for someone. And it was…not a physical strike, but a heart and mind strike for the people.
By Fareed Zakaria
America has risen to global might, and yet it has not produced the kind of opposition that many would have predicted. In fact, today it is in the astonishing position of being the world's dominant power while many of the world's next most powerful nations–Britain, France, Germany, Japan–are all allied with it. This is the exception that needs to be explained.
The reason surely has something to do with the nature of American hegemony. We do not seek colonies or conquest. After World War II, we helped revive and rebuild our enemies and turned them into allies. For all the carping, people around the world do see the U. S. as different from other, older empires.
But it also has something to do with the way that the U.S. has exercised power: reluctantly.
Read the full column at TIME
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