♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin 200 floors up in lower manhattan, from the one world trade center. this morning my colleagues at cbs and i got a rare opportunity to see what you will be able to see. we all remember 9/11. now what has come in that space a remarkable new building with a wide expanse of new york and more.

here are my colleagues reflecting on our extraordinary experience this morning. welcome to one world trade center. and sitting with my fabulous co-anchors, gayle king and nora o'donnell. we did the first ever live television show from the top of the brand-new one world trade center and the one world observatory. we are the one -- we are on the 102nd floor. we can see up to hudson, down the east river into the atlantic. we can see the physical presence of this great city as you have never seen it before. >> it is so true that the star of the show is the view, but what this building represents is so much more than that. that is what i keep thinking. we knew come in this building you can't help but feel what the people that built it feel. one guy said, no matter how challenging a day it is i look outside and have appreciation and gratitude that i get to be there. >> i agree. you think about what happened to the city on 9/11, and the

rebuilding of this building. >> it is the rebirth of this area from businesses and people and residences all coming back in this area, and the strength of this tower, the symbol of it 776 feet high the largest in america, the largest in the western hemisphere. i think it is so american, right? >> i do too. >> and proud of the workers who built this, reflecting on that this was more than just a building for them. >> if you come experience this one world trade center, when you come in you will see on the walls videos, more than 25 hours of videos of the men and women who helped put this building together, from the steelworkers to the electricians, many of whom have family collections -- connections who are also builders. >> my favorite bite is a construction worker who said, you can consider at the middle finger of new york. other people say it is a metaphysical -- metaphorical fist bump.

charlie: you can see the hudson river and the east river, all the great landmarks of new york. you can also see how this is a tiny island. yet all of this has grown up over the years. the context is amazing. >> one of the things that struck me this morning was seeing the statue of liberty. my grandmother was the oldest of 10 kids and came over by herself in her 20's from ireland, came through ellis island -- charlie: which is right next to it. >> and to see it from this vantage point is very moving. gayle: they want people to come. they want the public to come and see this. run, don't walk. may 29 is when it opens. ♪ charlie: also joining me 102 floors of the new one world trade center, actor george clooney. you talk about his life, his marriage and his new movie

"tomorrowland." you and i have been friends for a while. you're getting married. you sent me an e-mail that said, i have never been happier. how has your life changed? george: i suppose -- there are some obvious things. closet space. another decision-maker. a real decision-maker, much smarter decision-maker. i have a great partner. i have someone who i can talk to about everything. usually i would find her opinion better than anybody else's i could ask and someone who i care more about than i have cared about anybody. it is really nice. charlie: you were amazing at i think it was the golden globes. she was sitting out there. you saying what you said, how

she changed her life and what she meant to you, and they did a cutaway of her. the pride from her was equally strong. it was almost like, it is not supposed to be this good. george: we do have a really fun time. we really love each other, we really get along. it is something really exceptional for me and i think for her too. charlie: how long was it between the time that you met her and you thought, oh my god? george: it happened pretty quickly. and you very quickly that i wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. -- i knew very quickly that i wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. we had never talked about it. there wasn't like a, maybe we should get married. i dropped it on her. charlie: the ring and everything? george: everything.

i was at my home, and i queued up a playlist and i asked her. i sort of thought, why shouldn't i? i thought maybe that's a good song to ask her. we go back to the playlist and laugh about it. it took about 28 minutes before she said yes. charlie: did she say, i'm thinking? george: what's his name, your money or your life? [laughter] she just kept saying, oh my god, and wow. finally i just said, i'm -- 53 at the time, or 52. i said i have been on my knee for about claim in its. -- 20 minutes. i have got to get an answer or

i'm going to throw a hip out. it was a complete surprise for her and for us it was just a great -- we have been happy ever since. everything fell into place, going to venice, a place where i spent a lot of time before. i have been with you in venice. charlie: you don't expect it. all of a sudden you realize, i'm ready for this. george: it wasn't that i was ready for this, it wasn't that i was looking for it. charlie: in fact, you said you were not looking for it. george: in fairness, i did say that in 1994. [laughter] i feel as if i wasn't really looking at all. in walked this person but i could not imagine not spending another day with. charlie: should i be surprised that you married a woman smarter than you are? george: that wasn't so hard.

[laughter] it is very fun to be able to -- she is my spellchecker too. charlie: it makes a difference to be married to someone who has a really interesting life. george: the things that she does have great meaning. there are consequences when what she does works and doesn't work. they are much bigger than the kinds of consequences that i deal with. human rights, basic rights. charlie: a shared passion. george: absolutely. i grew up in a child of the 1960's, which dealt with all kinds of human and civil rights. everyone felt that you could singularly be a part of something. she sort of proves it to be true.

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charlie: this movie, both you and i have a passion for the future. this is a movie about the future and the ability to shape the

future. george: brad bird, who directed it -- he doesn't do bad films. the way he was looking at it was the idea that we look now at television and we turn it on. as you know it is rough. it is a tough time for us. it hurts your soul after a period of time. you see it out there, and it is all these things that quite honestly we had just as bad in the 1960's, if you think about between the riots and vietnam and civil rights, everything going on. without the world was blowing up then too. but we had the space program. i remember conk right -- cronkite was so excited by the apollo mission. all of us were wrapped up in the idea that we could do something. charlie: we will put a man on the moon in 10 years.

a bold idea. george: when rockets were just doing this. the russians are doing this. the idea that we did it and we said, we can do that, we always think of it as an apollo project, the idea that we can do something in 10 years, we still talk about it. and bra'dsd's thought was we have gotten away from the idea that each individual has the ability to change and shape the future and that the darkest parts of our future that we look at and see are not inevitable, there are things you can do to change it and i love the overarching themes of it. i thought, if that is a movie he wants to make for a summer film, i'm in. charlie: went to the world trade center, comes away with a big idea. and then there is a young woman who you become kind of what?

george: as a young man, he is enamored with her. then he becomes disenchanted as time goes on, and as we see in life, there is a correlation between those characters and sort of how we feel our progress for the last 30 years in some ways has gone. when i was going up, we thought we would be flying around in jets and cars by now, in bubbles. we feel like we did not achieve half of those things, even though we have done smart phones. the world is completely different. but there are parts of us that think, maybe we did not fulfill all those. charlie: have you thought about the fact that technology has taken us so far, did you see things like sudan and other places that you go or i go, the middle east, where there are conflicts that are so passionate

in their different viewsthat it is a war that never changes, it feels like it never changes? george: and i don't know, i'm not sure. the differences are so incremental. we had great successes with the door for movement -- darfour movement in 2006 when we made the word -- i was part of that movement -- made the word darfour synonymous with genocide , atrocities, and made it harder for that to happen. but what happens when you do that is everybody slept everybody on the back and goes home and says, we took care of that. it has to be sustained, and it's hard to sustain. charlie: it happened in haiti as well. george: it happen everywhere. look at sub-saharan africa right now, between the congo and what is going on in somalia now.

we are difficult times and try to figure things out. i am on -- an optimist, and i think we will eventually as a world are going to slowly figure it out. it just takes a long time. i want to be part of the process that says when you look back on your life and say, what did you do, you want to say, i participated. did we succeed? probably not. i never thought we would succeed completely but i always feel as if there is a chance. charlie: that is why you go into the arena. george: if you don't, it is easy to stand back and say it is hopeless. but i wasn't raised that way. charlie: you have to take your shots too. people will say, here he comes again. george: you cannot just be that person and every cause, as much

as you would like to be involved. you have to pick them and you have to be informed on them. you have to immerse yourself. you have to go to the places spend time. there are mistakes you will make early. for the best intentions you will try to help one village which will throw out of balance a whole area. what you realize is you have to get there and understand what exactly is going on. charlie: how do you do what you just suggested, make sure your interest and participation is not simply temporary, that you have a long and sustaining relationship with an issue you care about? george: the first time i went to south sudan we were on the border of darfour. a little girl was there. i was throwing up because i had eaten some bad goat. charlie: you should try camel. george: i can live without camel.

i was sick, and his little girl came up. she was holding onto my finger like this. she was speaking to me, and i did not understand what she said. the translator came up. she said, when will you come back? i said, tell her i will be back. she giggled and walked off. i asked the translator. she said, that's what you always say. that convinced me that i'm sure that's the truth, she has seen people like me come and go all the time. i thought, my job is to be more permanent than that. we have a satellite over the area, a sentinel. now we are doing some interesting stuff. because the money can't be used on the international market -- these people are still able to buy bombers and rockets. they are buying them from

something besides the sudanese. we are tracking the money and following it through the banks and how it is laundered. it has been an amazing project to find a where the money is going. charlie: one of the things about being who you are, you can go to a prime minister and say, can you lend us some helicopters? george: i've done that. [laughter] you have 33 c147's? we have three south korean pilots? we need three. sometimes you have luck with that, and sometimes you don't. no harm in asking. i think every citizen, and adjust -- not just of the united states but the world, given the opportunity to meet certain people -- i have testified in front of the senate and asked for certain things. it is not a right or left issue. there is a tremendous amount of the christian right who have

been the biggest supporters of the things we are trying to accomplish in sub-saharan africa . charlie: why is that? because they simply see the problem? george: there are several different twists to it. there are a great many people who -- there is a great generosity that they see people having a very difficult time. also with aids in africa, it's a big deal to them. there is an element of it that is christians versus muslims version which is one of those things you have to try to avoid because it isn't the case in most of those places. it really isn't that simple at all. charlie: you are friends with the president. george: sure. charlie: you have said that, and proudly so. is he doing enough? george: it's a good question. i do not think anybody can do enough. the answer would be, he isn't. president bush did a lot too,

and it wasn't enough. but i don't know what you would do. we constantly argue about the differences that you could make here are carrots and -- carrots and sticks and what we are able to do diplomatically, but not militarily. we are not going to go into the largest country in africa and try to correct it militarily. it would be a folly. but there are things we can do diplomatically and we have had some good success with that over the years. there are still things we can hold against them and hold out for them to take and we have had some success with it. we suggested some, they have done other things. it's a long process. charlie: talk about your career now. george: now we are in trouble. charlie: yes, we are. you produce things. you produced "argo." you are producing for hbo

gloria steinem. george: we just used a movie with sandra bullock in it, which is a fun film. it's a comedy. charlie: in some movies you simply act, with jodie foster directing. george: yes. charlie: some you both direct and act and right. "monument man." george: yes. charlie: how do you choose what you want to do? george: grant, my buddy for 30 something years -- from the time we were in acting class in 1982 together we always thought, if we get the opportunity, we would just do the things we want to do. it doesn't always work out that you just do the things you want to do, but the ones that we write and i direct and he

produces, those are the ones we want to do. we did "ides of march," which you were kind enough to be apart of. we like the idea of having this discussion of how do people get elected and what do you do, and what are the deals that are made. we like the subversive story like that. quite honestly, "good night and good luck," we wrote that because i was disturbed with our lack of accountability by the press as the son of a news man in asking the tough questions before we went to war. charlie: before we went to iraq. george: and how we were frightened by the idea of being called a traitor by asking questions which i thought was one of the most patriotic things you can do. charlie: there is power in questions. your dad, is he in good health? george: great health.

32 inch waist, he's running around. charlie: do you put him in movies? george: i had him in the last shot of "monument man." the first credit that comes up "in loving memory of nick clooney." he said, what the hell? i said, you never know. charlie: where do you see your life at this moment? we have established the you have never been happier. you have a variety of interests. you can do more than one thing in your own chosen profession. give me a sense of where george sees his future. george: i think that probably it will become more about behind the camera things, writing and directing, and less acting. i think that is a natural progression for actors as they age. it's not much fun aging on camera. charlie: tell me about it. george: i'm fine with that.

i'm much more interested in the process of filmmaking than i am necessarily being in front of the camera. charlie: are you growing as a filmmaker? george: sure, i hope. you keep trying things. charlie: you have to be interested -- george: you have to be interested in telling stories. that's the thing. i have been given this toy box to play with. in it i get to make films that studios maeke directly, and say i will work for nothing and we will get all these other people and make it a low-budget version of it, and we will force it to be made. nobody was to do a black and white film about edward r murrow. charlie: but you did. george: there are reasons for that. i feel that we continually try to do that to make films that would not be made if we did not

do it. they are going to take it all away at some point. when they do -- charlie: they will say george who? george: tell them i'm busy. i'm on the phone with anybody but me. i understand that, and until that moment, i want to play with it as much as i can and push the limits as much as i can. charlie: because he did exactly what you are doing. he became a director. understanding there would be a huge demand if he could understand you could make good films with good taste. the one thing i don't have in my life is children. you ever think about that? george: i haven't really. i have thought about it, i suppose. it hasn't been high on my list. i have been asked a lot lately

because i'm getting married and doing a movie with kids in it. charlie: i hope as we look at this magnificent city and you are living in london and living in a lake, you will at least think about spending more time here. george: i just spent three months here. charlie: and she loved teaching at columbia? george: and i think they liked her teaching. charlie: until we meet again, george clooney. my thanks to cbs news the team at cbs this morning, chris flick, the executive producer, and my colleagues, nora o'donnell and dale king, for allowing us to show you these remarkable this does from a new place -- vistas from a new place in new york city. ♪

charlie:charlie: the former treasury secretary under president obama. in 2007, as part of the new york fed, he helped devise a controversial mesko with bear stearns. he writes about all of this and more in "street test reflections of financial crisis," is currently out in paperback. welcome. guest: nice to see you. charlie: did you say and it knowledge meant that i asked you where you said you would write a

book and you said, no? no chance of that? [laughter] what does that tell us? tim: i thought about it a lot. i wanted to give people a chance to sit in our shoes and look at that miss of choices through our eyes and understand better at least why we chose to do what we did. it may not convince them that we were perfect or did everything right. charlie: it talks about the power of questions for me. this is what you said were the key questions. why did it happen, and how did we let it happen? how did we decide who gets bailed out? why didn't we nationalize the banks, or let more banks failed? -- fail? why didn't we do more or less fiscal stimulus? why isn't the economy booming

again? what really happened with lehman anyway? in this book, you answer those questions. before i moved to the future -- so what are you doing now? tim: working for this classic long horizon growth investing firm learning a new craft. charlie: you spend most of your life in public service. tim: i was a civil servant initially. charlie: did you learn different things from it, other than this doing of -- investment strategy? tim: it is a very different craft. you are trying to figure out who has a great idea, are they able to do it, and sorted out in a world that is full of capital chasing a lot of ideas. i am also doing some teaching at

yale and i'm trying to design a college for financial crises the ntsb goes back and looks at every accident, you might call it a mastercraft in crisis management for the next generation of practitioners from around the world. charlie: do you think we are significantly better prepared to deal with the crisis that you had to face in 2008? tim: better in some ways but worse in other ways. we are better in the sense that the system -- financial system that exists today after these reforms is a much more stable system great it is a much more conservatively run system. we did the most important thing you can do which is force these institutions to run with less risk. things are going to happen in the future and you want them to be more stable against the risk

of plausible threats to the economy. i think there has been dramatic progress on that front. we are worse in other ways, which is that congress in the part of the reforms took away some of the emergency authorities that were so important in the crisis in preventing second great depression's. charlie: emergency powers for the fed? tim: an fdic. in financial crises, the things you have to do to protect from mass unemployment seem immoral. understandably, in some sense. the natural reaction of people, which is to say no more aid for the arsonists. if you go too far, just like if you were to put fire stations out of existence, you would make people more vulnerable in the future. that is something we will have to fix in the future. charlie: there's enough capital

within financial institutions because of the requirements much more likely not to be in trouble. tim: yeah, and that's the most important thing. you can't see the future. you can't predict the nature and timing and source of the next crisis. you assume they are going to happen. you have to make sure these firms run with thicker shock absorbers. where the most important things we did in the crisis and reforms was to say, we want you to run with enough internal protections and safeguards that you can withstand something like a great depression. and doing that, you make a great depression less likely. charlie: some of them cried and said, your stunting our growth. tim: we ditch dramatically change the economics of finance. charlie: and of investment banking. tim: we did. but in ways which i think are important and good for the help of the economy going forward but it was not pleasant and it

was not designed to be pleasant for the people in that business. charlie: trying to take some risk out of the system and make sure there was protection, is that the most important achievement? tim: the most important achievement. there are two things that determine how bad these crises are. the probability they happen, how bad they are. one is how successful you are in building a system with bigger levels of capital shock absorbers, safeguards against risk. that is essential and very important. what we did in that context is hugely valuable. the other thing that matters is how governments respond, faced with the threat of panic and collapse. that requires a set of emergency authorities and tools and resources deployed very aggressively, and in that context as i said we are slightly unbalanced, a little worse off. charlie: if that kind of

emergency authority was in place in 2008, what would have been different? tim: it's a really good question. when of the reasons why this crisis was so terrible is our authority going into the crisis was played limited. understandably limited because people are worried that the moral hazard involved and the morality and the political costs of intervention in these crises are so offensive, better not to have that authority, but that is a painful lesson we learned. if we had more authority earlier, i think we could've done a lot of things. we would have had a bad recession and a bad crisis, but we could have made the cost of the average person substantially less. charlie: would you have saved lehman? tim: i don't know how to answer that. let's think of it this way. what is the ideal? the world is uncertain, you are

not sure who is solvent, who is insolvent. you don't want to step in and protect everybody. you have to do a form of triage in medicine, trying to separate out who is fundamentally strong enough to withstand, survive this, and who is so central to the functioning of the economy that it would be devastating to go -- to let them fail. you have to make a fire break around them. but there will be people outside that fire break who will be caught up in the storm or get consumed by the fire, and that is a necessary thing and probably desirable thing, however painful it is to say that where you draw that line that's a hard thing to say. charlie: st. paul said at the time he did not have the authority to do more.

this is what moral hazard is, in finance people think fire stations cause fires. it's not true. fires tend to happen and you need to fire station to put them out. because of that fear, we don't invest in the central bank or the president with the type of broad discretion to step in and protect the country from these kinds of things. for that reason, we went into this crisis ill-equipped. the feds was really the only authority available at that time and congress did not give the fed the authority to lend to an institution, even if they were important. what congress gave fed the authority to do is lend against collateral. even if it wasn't the bank if there was a serious crisis. you had to be able to make a judgment that there was a reasonable chance, collateral

available to cover your variables. in the jpmorgan-bear stearns case, we found a willing buyer strong enough to take on the vast bulk of the risk in bear stearns, and we with our authority were able to say, we will finance a piece of that risk, and we let against collateral -- lent against collateral. in the lehman case, there were two really important differences. lehman was much bigger, and perceived to be much more risky. the world was much more fragile. there was not this long list of willing buyers. charlie: he saved aig. tim: we did. in aig's case, they had a set of businesses around the world that were generating and would for the foreseeable future quite a lot of income, and we could lend against that legally. our judgment was at that time that where we had the authority to act, we would air on the side

of acting. the imperative did not change our scope of authority. charlie: david boys is representing greenberg, suing the government, based on a decision having to do with the negotiations. you were a witness in that. i assume it's not fun to be the cross examiner. the conventional wisdom is that what he started off with was a case that nobody thought he could win, and now he's looking at a situation where people think he may win at the district court level. his argument is that the negotiation was not necessary, it was necessary to do something for them, but the negotiations were too tough, too demanding. the rate at 14% was too high. tim: if you told me today i

would be sitting here six years from the crisis and we are being sued in court and not one but two cases for essentially being too tough on institutions, i would've found that implausible. but yeah, right, you are stating a case, which is that we were too tough on them and we exacted terms as a condition for assistance. the idea that we were too hard on them i find it hard to except. charlie: your point is if we had not done that, there would have been nothing. but if you had done it at a more generous -- tim: on sweeter terms. charlie: that would have accomplished that, and not simply said to the stockholders we own 80% of what you formerly owned. tim: when governments take

action like this, you can test them. you can test their merits and legalities. that is a good thing. charlie: what are the consequences if he wins? tim: it will be one more step in the wheels of justice. the law underneath this case has already been tested in one other courts, same basic facts. we will work through this. i am confident that we did the best thing for the country given the tools at hand and acted appropriately. the system was not designed to be fun for the recipients. and it should not be. it is designed to balance different objectives. you want to make sure you're not being too generous. if you set up a system to generous for the recipients the fear is that they will take to much risk in the future.

charlie: this is what warren buffett said, tim's book and others have praised you, and hank and ben bernanke did, at a moment of crisis. tim: we are human. we do not have perfect knowledge and we do not make perfect choices. it was a messy, terribly damaging crisis, even with all the things that we did to custom traction. what is the cause we are invested in? we are trying to improve the odds that our successors have better tools, make better choices, because these things are so devastating. charlie: there is also this idea, and you are knowledge this how did we convince the left we were wall street's wingmen

while convincing wall street we were che guevara in suits. how is it that you and hank and then were not able to speak to the country in a way they understood what the stakes were? tim: we were not that good at it. there is this fundamental conflict at the heart of financial crises, which is the things you have to do, if you care about reducing the risk of mass unemployment, are things that at the core will seem deeply immoral because of things you have to do to keep the economy from falling off a cliff look like you are aiding the enemy. at their core, there is no overlap between what works and what is popular or appealing.

that is why governments typically -- we are a lucky country -- governments typically do such a terrible job of managing these things. in the last six years of history, you can see governments adopting a very different response than we did in the hopes of crafting something more popular with a price of much worse outcomes for their people. charlie: how do you say to people, this will be painful for you and it may not even seem fair to you? somebody on wall street got bailed out, they will say, look at what happened to me on main street. and you say, sorry about that we understand but we have to save the economy. tim: i won't speak for them. i was not great at that.

it was hard for me to do it. when of the challenges is that these kind of panics that we had , that we had in this crisis, it happens so rarely. there's no memory, no people who live through that. there's no experience to help provide a better foundation for understanding. it seems strange and new and rare. these things are all fresh to people. ultimately, a neighborhood for effective responsible, moral, responsible policy in this area is no man's land. there is no chance that the right or left are going to embrace the set of things that

were going to be necessary and ultimately were so effective. charlie: how bad is europe and what will happen to greece and what will happen to their membership in the european eurozone, and what are the germans going to do? tim: i don't think we know yet. it is better, though. their fire's got really bad again in early 2010. from that period until late 2012, it was terrible, at the edge of collapse. since then they have been doing a set of things to gradually improve. charlie: domain with the new and -- you mean with the new government? tim: europe as a whole. greece is very hard. what the europeans are trying to do is make the whole union of europe, make it more viable. that requires a set of reforms

that are deeply hard politically for a lot of countries. if they try to protect governments from the need to make those decisions, they are going to create a weaker europe. they need to be very tough, i think, because they have to make sure that in this case they are improving the incentives for future governments to do some things that would be hard politically to do but are essential for economies to work together. they are likely to hold it together. they have looked into the abyss and looked at the alternative. they don't find it attractive. charlie: how long ago was everybody worried about the deficit and what happened? did the economy perform in a way that you and others suggested so that the fear of the deficit and the debt turned out not to be because of the power within the

economy to deal with it? tim: it's going to come back. charlie: we still don't know anything about the structural problem. tim: we still have an unsustainable set of commitments which we will have to figure out. the near-term deficit came down from 10% of gdp to 3% of gdp in five years. changes to how people use and provide health care are dramatically slowing the rate of growth and health care costs. those things will make even the long-term picture better than it was. we purchased those improvements in the near-term deficit at the price of pretty damaging cuts in a set of core public investments, which we are going to have to figure out how to repair because if you leave those in place to long, you believe the productive parts of the country weaker going

forward. don't take too much comfort from the fact that we achieved much more progress than we thought we did on the deficit. the long-term debt is mostly health care. charlie: what is going on in china? tim: china -- there is an economy facing daunting challenges. you would not trade hours for theirs not even with their rising power. still, chairman increase in their relative economic power, and a lot of uncertainty. are they going to be a stabilizing force, a force for good globally? will they have ambitions that will lead them overtime to be more destabilizing? charlie: in terms of their economic or military posture? tim: economic. it is hard to know what you

should interpret from that. what matters is not just that, what are their intentions? that is harder to judge. charlie: they do want to play a role. you would know this. you not only spend a lot of time there, but you speak mandarin and you negotiated with them over the four years you were in government. what is your take with respect to the jinping -- xi jinping and what he wants to achieve for china? tim: i don't think we know yet. they have a richer debate than people give them credit for. the debate is what do they want to become, and how should they use their power, and after they interpret what are their interests. they are fundamentally very pragmatic leadership. you can see on the economic side, a deep pragmatism

underlying what they do on the reform side. on the national security side they are trying to find what their interests are. for us, the question is how do we improve the odds that they interpret their interests as consistent with being a stabilizing force in the world. charlie: what is it about them that we don't understand? tim: part of it is they are a very different system from ours a less accessible system for us to understand. they are not a democracy. part of it is because they are having such a rapid change increase in their relative power, such a dramatic change, that they don't even know what they want yet and that makes it harder for them. charlie: my impression is that they are beginning to be more comfortable with it. tim: you see them acting on a basic premise.

you would not want to extrapolate from that to suggest that that suggests underlying these actions, some strategy of aggression destabilizing expansion that would be fundamentally in conflict with our interests. it is possible, but i do not think you can interpret that from the things you are seeing them do today. charlie: when you look around the world, what worries you the most? tim: it's a messy, dark, sad world we live in. there's a lot out there that could damage our interests. the thing that really worries me is the challenges of politics. which are getting in the way of governing and making it possible for our government and we are better at this than most countries, but it's true elsewhere, and his gap between

the problems we face that only governments can help solve, and the capacity governments suggest, it is a growing gap. charlie: have you seen hamilton? tim: i have. it's fantastic great charlie: what did you think? tim: it's great history, and it's based on the wonderful book. it's a story about an amazing man. charlie: alexander hamilton. tim: and the people around him. the scale of things they did is amazing. charlie: and done in rap, too. very young actors. it's wonderful. but it also is wonderful in that you learn things about history. i did not know. until that, i did not know that hamilton was an immigrant. i did not know that hamilton was george washington's chief of staff during the war. tim: when he was in his late

20's. he reminded you about how divisive the politics were at that time and how deep the fishers were in the american political system. and even at that time, they found the ability to do things. today you look at what we deal with in politics today and you wonder how we got to be a great country. that helps you remember why we got to be a great country. charlie: the book is called "stress test to get a "the new york times" bestseller. it is as "the new york times" said, and intimate take on the financial crisis. i look forward to whatever your next book will be. it has to do with how you strategize and how you think about financial crisis. that will be a valuable addition as well. thank you, timothy. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> reaching new highs on speculations that the fed will not raise rates. corporate tax spending hoping second quarter earnings topped estimates. building relationships. building infrastructure in asia. welcome to "first up," coming to you from hong kong. i am shery ahn. some good news for