Yeah, Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keane jay Ley. We bring you insight from the best in economics, finance, investment, and international relations. Find Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Bloomberg dot Com, and of course on the Bloomberg. And here to help us understand what is going on in the world before we get to the investment perspective is Professor Jeffrey Sachs. He is a professor at Columbia University.
He is also the author of the Global Index on Sustainable Development Goals for the United Nations, and Professor Sachs has written about international trade as well as US politics, and he joins us here in our eleven three oh studios. So, Professor Sacks, thanks very much for being here. Let's maybe just describe for people what exactly is the Global Index
on Sustainable Development Goals. The idea of sustainable development is that we should watch not only g NP and the economic indicators, but also the social indicators of inequality, health, violence, and the environmental indicators on climate change and pollution. So this index looks at the economic, the social, and the environmental conditions of countries all over the world, and we take a look at whether they're making progress towards the
goals that we've set. For example, when we agreed in Paris two take limit the global warming, our our country is really doing that. So where does the United States rank in this global index? Not very well. Of course, it does well on the economics side, broadly speaking, were a rich country, but on the social side we have about the highest inequality of all of the high income countries of the world. We have the biggest gaps between rich and poor of the high income world. And on
the environment, we're massive polluters. Unfortunately, we omit almost seventeen tons of carbon dioxide per American every year, one of the highest rates in the world and therefore one of the biggest contributors to global warming. So among the high income countries, were near the bottom. The countries that are at the top, not surprisingly for some of us who watch these things and have the chance to visit them, are the Scandinavian countries. This year, Sweden is number one,
Denmark number two, Finland number three. Uh those countries have a remarkable combination of prosperity and social fairness and environmental sustainability. I believe You've also written that the countries that are the happiest are the countries where they tax themselves the most. It's exactly the opposite of the American assumption, which is cut taxes and people will be happy. But the countries that I've just named, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, they rank the
highest in happiness. How do you know about happiness? Because Gallup International asked people all over the world how satisfied are you with your life? This year? The country that ranked the highest in that was Finland, followed by Norway and Denmark. And then look at their taxes. They're taxing half of the national income in those countries, and you'd say,
my god, everybody must feel miserable. But what they use those taxes for is free universal access to quality health, free universal access to quality education, no student debt for university, child care for all, six weeks, vacation for all. In
other words, they're living the good life. They paid the taxes, but then the government services that they get give them the life that we all think is the kind of life we would like, which is the access to quality services and leisure time and ability to raise our kids
in safety. Well, then what do you say, to those critics that may describe the United States as a place where innovation and the motivation to succeed that drive is particularly because there is not the state support for the very things that you described, that the individual has to work themselves in an outsized way in order to make those things a reality. Well, I think there's some truth to that. The US is an innovative society, but so
to our those countries in Northern Europe. They're doing it a bit different differently, but they are competing on world markets and cutting edge industries. Sweden, we know from Spotify and so many others, are very dynamic and exciting uh startup places in the world. But what we have in the United States is a kind of excess because we now have an epidemic of suicides, we have an epidemic of drug addictions, opiate addictions. We have falling life expectancy
in this country. We have more people behind bars than any other high income country in the world by far in per population to arms. We've got rising depression rates in this country. Um, we've got some serious, serious social problems that we're not attending to, and we're also doing damage for the future in not even paying attention, not even caring, just denying all of the environmental issues which
are staring us in the face. When you're hit by three mega hurricanes, massive forest fires and say, duh, we don't believe in that, it shows a pretty high degree of political corruption or neglect, or a combination of the two. So no, I don't think that the United States is balancing these various factors very well. Right now, let me just push you a little bit more. The very things that you described, they could not all be the result
of activity over the last eighteen months. Do you believe that these are the very issues that President Donald Trump ran against or at least offered solutions for, and as a result, what President Trump is doing now makes sense in light of what you've just described. Well, first of all, the things that I've been describing our trends over the last forty years. So this is absolutely not about Donald Trump. This is about America, and this has been going on
for a long time. I wish I could say that the kinds of directions that we're taking right now would be addressing these issues, but I just don't see it. Tax cuts for the rich, larger budget deficits, whereas the rebuilding of infrastructure. I don't see it. We're cutting social services, were squeezing help for the poor. We have an epidemic of school shootings, we have anxiety in this country. Division. So these are not, uh the immediate results of this president.
But I don't see that we're moving in the direction to address these problems. I think you're absolutely right by the way that a lot of the support that he got was a reflection of this sense that we're moving in the wrong direction. But I don't see us getting on the right direction in the specific kinds of approaches
that are underway right now. I want to get your views on something specific that, of course happened in London over the last couple of forty eight hours, the resignation of Boris Johnson of Foreign Secretary David Davis, Brexit UH Cabinet minister. What do you believe will happen with Brexit? And maybe you have different scenarios. I don't think that there is a good scenario for the UK. That's what
they're realizing. That's why they can't get behind a single approach, because the Brexiteers sold a kind of utopian view that they'd saved so much money, they'd have so much benefit by leaving Europe. Now they're realizing that they're basically going to give up their markets, their economy, and so they're scrambling to try to keep the link with Europe. And what emerged from this realization was what's called the soft Brexit, which is well, will leave the European Union, but will
basically stay in the terms of Europe. That's what caused these two cabinet members to leave this soft option. But the hard option is even uglier. So they've really been backed to a corner. Basically, the this slim majority to leave was sold a bill of goods. Uh, they can't deliver, and that's why there's no consent within the Conservative government. Thank you very much for being with us. Much appreciated,
Professor Jeffrey Sachs. You can follow a Professor Sacks on Twitter at jeff D Sacks and he is also the author of the third annual Global Index on Sustainable Development Goals. Tom, you know you were speaking about the Brett the Kavanaugh as Donald Trump's the President Donald Trump's selection to the seat being vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy. And really we've got someone who is the best I would say to
tell us about this selection is Mr ken Starr. He is a former Whitewater Independent Council, former US solicitor generally is a former judge, and he is now the author of a book entitled Contempt, a memoir the Clinton Investigation that comes out in September. Ken Star joins us from our One Studios in Washington, d C. Ken Star, thank you very much for being with us. Oh my pleasure. Thank you give us your first impressions about learning that that Mr Kavana, the Judge Kavanaugh has been tapped to
join the Supreme Court. Joy, Brett's a great man. He's a great human being. Uh, extremely able, buddy, is a personal great humility and kindness, generosity of spirit. I think that character started to be seen by the American people last evening. Uh. He worked for you, he did? What did he do for you? Well? We worked together both in my former law firm of Kirkland Analys here in Washingt d C. I recruited Brett off of the clerkship with Justice Kennedy, so I won the Brett Kavanaugh Derby.
So we worked together as private practitioners, but we also worked together in the UH the Whitewater investigation, and he performed brilliantly every task. So one of the great things about Brett is he has just tremendous judgment and that came through in the most shall I say, controversial parts of the investigation involving Monica Lewinsky. But he was with me off and on through that very long period of time,
taking on different responsibilities and doing a great job. I wonder if you could comment on the idea that a great judgment is now being exercised in a world of great political partisanship. Yes, the job of a judge is to set all that aside, to leave his or her politics at the door, and to say, I've got to concentrate on the facts and on the law, and I need to respect both. I'm not to manipulate either one
to achieve a desired result. And that's especially hard for judges in the federal system um interpreting our constitution, where there is a running room, there's elasticity. What is the meaning of freedom of speech or free exercise of religion? So these do call for for judgments. And one of the things about Bratt about Judge Kavanaugh uh is he will approach the task with a really admirable humility and say, I really need to listen and learn and evaluate an assess. Now.
He doesn't come to it without principles, and we've heard some of those principles last night. He believes the Constitution is the law of the land, and while there is room for interpretation, what it does mean, just very briefly, is the judge or justice is not to impose his or her own policy preferences on we the people. So that's that's the beginning of the conversation, and I think
it's going to be a great conversation. There will be a lot of yelling, unfortunately, but that's just welcome to democracy. Can start within our democracy. There was a time which I remember, and I'm going to think of Jacob Javits and others, where you you, you checked on the guy's credentials and then even if you didn't agree with their politics, you voted him in. And we seemed to have removed
ourselves from that. Do you have a nostalgia that we can get back pre Robert Borke, pre Abe Ford us to some form of Supreme Court process where we just say somebody's qualified, Okay, it can happen. I don't see the path forward to making it happen. But but even after the Judge Bork situation, Ruth Ginsberg ran the gauntlet
and her nomination was approved almost unanimously. Now, Ruth, who's a great human being and obviously very distinguished judge, had a record that all conservative Republicans in the current environment, we said, no, of course she's capable, and she's honest and the like, but we don't agree with her, and therefore we'll go against her again. The vote was almost unanimously, almost unanimous. Ditto with Stephen Bryant. Are these um this
wasn't so terribly long ago. It was the last interest it's for one thing, I think the emergence of the special interest groups, and that's who we were hearing from last evening, and the special interest groups, not that they didn't exist before, but I think there's just great power, and they have platforms, they raise enormous amounts of money, and so they're inflaming I think on both sides of
the aisle, they're inflaming passions. One thing you did within all of your public service in the controversy over Kent Star, which Pim and I remember so well, is then you went onto a bigger headache, which was a college president, which has got to be the worst job in America, I mean the yard by any What did you learn going from the Ken Star craziness of Washington and all the controversy For those of you younger folks, Ken Starr was mentioned in every third news story for about two years.
What was it like when you realized you had a bigger challenge at Baylor University and talking about humbling and the and the need for a humility. But I felt very privileged to be at at Baylor University with its great history of the oldest continuingly operating university in the state of Texas. Before the state of Texas was uh, there was Baylor University. So it had a great tradition. I'm a six generation Texas. It was a great call home. We won't hold that against you, no, I I put
that to my credit. But you're you're very kind, Thank you. And so the long attort of it is the university is extremely complex with many constituencies, and I think it many respects. Being a college president is tougher than being a United States Senate. There. I never was one, but I've been on Capitol Hill a lot because trying to manage those constituencies, but also in this day and time, showing courage, showing courage and to say no, this is
what we stand for. For example, I'm a free speech guy. And so the idea that, uh I use this just as an example that speakers on college campuses can be heck old and so forth and and and almost physically assaulted, is utterly inimical to what a university stands for. And I think college presidents, university presidents have to take the lead and stand up and say no, that's wrong, we don't do that, um and that, and that takes courage.
Uh So I learned you need to be courageous virtually every day and trying to manage the constituenties, but constituencies, but also say, hey, what is it that we're here to do? And as I was fond of saying, it's all about the students. If what we're doing isn't about student welfare and well being, then we need to really
reassess kind of star. Thank you so much for joining us today to comment on at your former clerk, Mr Kavanaugh, who starts a path towards the Supreme Court kind Star, the former Whitewater Independent Council US Solicitor General and of course a former judge is well him. I thought that was great. We should you know. It's great to talk to people that either worked for whoever we're talking about, or they worked for them. You get a whole different perspective,
don't you. Yes. And just to remind everyone that Ken Star has a book that is come out in September. It is entitled Contempt, a Memoir of the Clinton Investigation that will be out in September by Kent Star. This is the interview of the day because within all the uproars speaking to the elites of Washington, the elites of New York, the people in six zip codes are certainly pim fox the elites of this London, England. There is another United Kingdom. Daniel Kazinski is the Minister of Parliament
for the Wisconsin of the United Kingdom. It is to the northwest. It is buttressed up against the border with Wales. Um minister, wonderful to have you with us today. Are there more cows than people in your district? Well, good afternoon. We in Shrups are very proud of our cattle farming and we have a lot of some of the best cattle ranches in the country, and yes we are very agriculturally based community. I am horrifically guilty, unlike Pim who's it was a rural kind a guy of only focusing
on England and the five newspapers. How do the people of your district, how does rural United Kingdom? How do people outside the seven zip codes of London? How do
they respond to the uproar of the last forty eight hours? Well, I think the British people generally are very sensible, pragmatic people, but they want they have experimented whether they have allowed this experiment of our being a member of the first the European Economic Community, then the European Community and then the European Union because it is morphed into something completely different from what we joined in nine two. They have
allowed this experiment to continue for forty six years. Uh and they have come to the conclusion that it does not suit our country. We have tried very hard, we have been very patient, They have been very tolerant. They have acquiesced to us handing over nearly seven hundred and fifty billion dollars to the European Union. Since we joined, they have seen a huge amount of our powers being diminished as a result of legislation coming from the European Parliament.
They have gone along with all of that, but finally they had come to the conclusion that they want to get back to being a sovereign nation state and they don't want to continue on the path of moving ever closer into a super nationalist state, which is exactly what's happening on the continent of euroau Daniel Krazinski, I'm wondering if you could just speak a little bit about the Conservative Party and do you believe that they will eventually
speak with one voice as regards a Brexit conclusion. No country in my lifetime has ever successfully negotiated pulling out of the European Union. This one size fits all straight jacket which the elites of Brussels, who are by the way, unelected and unaccountable to the people. But this straight jacket which they want to impose on the whole of the continent is something that, as I've said, is not for us. And being the first to do something is always fraught
with difficulties. I say to some of my constituents, Brexit fields sometimes as if we are walking through a mind field. But what we're doing is we are laying out a
path with bread crumbs for others to follow. And when other country is particularly my country where I was born, Poland, and others, when they see the United Kingdom thriving outside of the European Union, navigating as a global country with all the other countries around the world, because of course ninety five percent of the world's growth is coming from outside of the European Union, they will want to follow
us into becoming sovereign nation states. So of course it's difficult, but we are absolutely resolved as a party and determined to put the spot forward in our negotiating stance. In the interviews that I've done, Sir, with the people that are remain or like you, the people that are leave, all are focused on Michael Gove. Tell our American in our global audience who Michael Gove is and why you're watching him in the next two days, the next two weeks,
the next two months. Well, Michael Gove had you know, when we had the Prime Minister Cameron, he tried to, i think, make sure that all of us went along with his dream of campaigning to remain in the European Union. He brought back a negotiation which many of us considered to be a fig leaf, something which wasn't worth the paper was written on. And that's why people like Michael Gove decided a senior member of the cabinet decided to rebel and to actually say to him though, I am
going to campaign for Brexit. He showed great vision, a great courage at that time, and many of us supported his stance. That's one of the reasons I voted him
for him to be the leader of my party. He is still in the cabinet and he has decided in his wisdom, along with his other cock Brexit colleagues in the cabinet, that this Checkers settlement with the Prime Minister has presented to the cabinet is the most pragmatic way forward, and as long as he continues to support the Prime Minister that many of us moderates in the Conservative Party will also give her that space to try to negotiate
something tangible and mutually beneficial with the European Union. Thank you so much, Daniel Kazinski. Where this from Shampshire in the northwest of the United Kingdom and of course a member of Parliament. The president will leave for Europe. We are saying Trump in Europe and we need perspective. We're gonna do a lot in this in the next number of days. Is Francie like and I travel to Helsinki? Pim Fox in New York. I'm Tom Keene in London
and joining us now. Someone you need to listen to Charles Coupstion uh counts on formulations are senior fellow and an exceptionally interesting and varied experience with NATO. Dr coups in good morning, what is the thing that we most get wrong about NATO? We go NATO and I know it's from another time in place and we talked to Stavita's or, we talked to kap Lennen, we talked to has. What's the thing that drives you nuts about what the
media covers of NATO? You know? I think the key point here is that the President is right that allies have not spent enough on defense and need to do more. We we spend about twice as a percent of GDP what they do on defense. But the constant haranguing of
our traditional European allies, the dissing of NATO. That's that's where I think the President is off the mark, because if you think historically, if you think about the onset of racism, of anti semitism of World War One, of World War Two, and the unique revolutionary success that the Atlantic democracies have had in carving out a piece for world, you don't want to mess with that. You don't want to tinker with that. We don't want to go back
to the nineteenth century. And that's where I think Trump is taking threatening actions and shaking the foundations of the world that Americans worked so hard to build. After well within that and from the Atlantic Charter on was the new way. And then some would say, including Mersheimer in Chicago, that we ever reached that we took some adjacence, ease, and then we really drissed up against Mr Putin by jaw owning about Georgia, jaw owning about this and that,
and the result was Crimea maybe even Ukraine. Did we overreach? I think we did overreach, you know. I think in the in the triumphalism that came after the end of the Cold War, we thought we could we could take at NATO and our principles and our charters and simply
extend them eastward. And the result was that we crawled right up close to Russia, and Russia felt uncomfortable, you know, to use a kind of analogy or counter factual, if Russia form an alliance with Mexico and Canada and to put Russian troops on our border, we would go crazy, right uh, And so we we sort of did that
with with the Russians. That having been said, I don't think that there's any reason that that kind of decision to expand and NATO justified what the Russians have did in Ukraine, or what they've done in Georgia, or what they've done in terms of interfering in Western elections. So uh, I do think that we need to kind of separate the week from the taff and make sure that our core relationships with the UK, with France, with Germany are in good working order. If they're not, we are in
deep trouble. Charles cup Chain does the United States is outsized contribution to NATO bring US outsized benefits such as the dollar as a reserve currency and also the United States having a bigger voice in NATO and European affairs as a result, you know, there's no question that the what we call the liberal international order is also the
American order. The world that was built by Americans and Europeans, in Japanese and South Koreans after World War Two was a world that benefited the American people, American corporations, the American way of life. That's one of the reasons that the Chinese and the Reussians don't like it, because it represents our values, that organizes societies in the way that we like to organize them. So, yes, we do reap
inordinate benefits. But I do think that the that the kind of key issue here is we have carved out a unique, historically unprecedented zone of peace across the Atlantic, right from our west coast right through Poland and the eastern frontier of NATO. There's a group of nations among which war is unthinkable. Could could brinker with that, to threaten that, to insult Germans as unworthy allies because they sell more BMW's here than we sell boards in Germany.
That doesn't strike me as a move. It's in the interests of American Yeah, let's press the Germans to spend more on defense, but let's treat them with respect. And realize that if the U s relationship with Germany or the French relationship with Germany goes south, the fundamental anchors of global peace are going to disappear. Do you believe that the position of the United States will also hurt the ability of US defense companies to sell their wares
to our allies. For example, the Europeans are looking at a new Eurofighter rather than taking on the new F thirty five Joint Strike fighter. Yeah, some of that, Some of that is in play. You know. The Kirks, with whom we have a troubled relationship right now, have been looking at Russian military equipment. On the other hand, Poland has recently made a decision to buy Patriot missiles, so
they're they're buying American uh many respects. These decisions are made on the basis of cost and military efficacy, not on when you whether you kilt this way or or that way. But I think over time, if our relationship with Europe stours, and the economic tariffs that we have recently imposed on steel and aluminum, and tariffs that might follow on other products, you know that that adds to
the sense of estrangement. So I do think we need to to put the cart before the horse and make sure that our fundamental relationships are fine and that we don't see a rising tide of anti Americanism spread across Europe. And what outcome does Vladimir Putin want from the NATO meetings that he will not attend. Well, you know, unfortunately, I think Mr Trump, whether he knows it or not, is doing Putin's bidding, because what Putin wants is a
weakening of the West. What Putin wants is democracies that turn against themselves. What Putin wants is a European Union that suffers setback such as the departure of the United Kingdom country that you're in right now. And so the kind of uh differences and the open acrimony that we see right now, and the degree to which the European Union is dealing with rising populism, that's all what what
Putin wants. And so I think the real danger this week is that Mr Trump goes to Europe, he ends up creating a sense of of distance and a sense of alienation within NATO, and then he goes the Helsinki and his chummy chummy shoulder to shoulder with the Russian president that's that's the last signal that I think the United States President should be sending to UH to European allies. Dr Cupchen as a senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also professor at the Wolfsh School of
Foreign Service at Georgetown University. I know you served on the staff of the National Security Council in the Obama administration. Do you really believe that this is the end of the American era? I think that we don't know yet. I think that it's possible that historians will look back at nineteen and say that was the day, that was the moment that the order that was built during the
tough years after World War Two came undone. It's also possible that we're that we're witnessing a detour, that the populism here in the UK, in Germany, in Poland and Hungary and Turkey is a response to this location, a globalization, to the onset of the digital economy. And we'll figure out how to adjust to this shift, just as we
figured out how to adjust to previous shifts. But I don't think that we should be polly anish about the scope of the changes that are going on within our society, and I do hope that whether it's two years from now or six years from now or whatever, that that we do see the pendulum swing back in the direction of political centrism political moderation. Thank you very much, Charles Cupchin, Senior Fellow counsel on Foreign Relations, also Professor of International
Affairs at Georgetown University. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at Tom Keane before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio.