>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: jim o'neill is here. the former chief economist and head of asset management at goldman sachs. he has not slowed down since retiring in wall street. and prime minister david cameron. that role, he was tasked with

advising economic performance. i am pleased to have him back at this table. first of all leaving goldman , sachs, why was that the right time? jim: i don't know if it was. but for many years, there was always a time where you have to leave. a place as competitive as goldman, i had seen a number of senior people stay too long. they did not know how to cope with life. i kind of told myself that i would certainly rather leave before the best time rather than after the best time. of course, you don't know when that is. i thought that i will take the risks when i want to learn and explore elsewhere. when i am comfortable with pursuing the same path. i thought i wanted to do

something else besides goldman sachs. i love the place dearly. i saw a couple of people from their over the weekend. i don't think about it a great deal. it did wonders for my career. it was a great meritocracy. i am happy i left when i did. 40 years nearly since i first -- it was a great enabler for many things sense. charlie: let's take them at their best. whatever for there might be. at best, as an institution, it is what? jim: it is pretty genuinely meritocratic. nobody, in terms of bringing me on board remember that i joined

as a partner when it was a true partnership steel. i was maybe the fifth person that it happened too. it was quiet a big step for them to do. nobody was interested in my background, how i spoke, where i came from, what university i had been to. which for a british person is quietly it. and people were really focused on whether you could contribute to the success of the firm and its clients. that part of it is the absolute best. charlie: what are you doing in government? what is this job? jim: five weeks ago, i had no idea that it was going to happen. i deliberately left having no idea what i was going to do. i also thought on the advice of some people i have also leave -- the scene leave separately into other walks of life. it's best to give yourself some time to breathe. i kind of developed this mantra

that i would do whatever it was. if it couldn't be better, it had to be different. in some ways it was a screening devices to enable me to say no to a lot of conventional things. how can it be better than anything else? i don't want to do that. i didn't want to go on boards of public companies. i was thinking, why do i want to do that? the first thing i did was a bbc radio documentary. i traveled around mexico, nigeria, and other places. when i came to an end, i was asked if i would be interested in leading a review into the challenge of getting more economic growth in urban britain outside of london.

the u.k. has seemingly gone on for decades, an economy that is dominated by london. and it is quite rare to the degree of a developed world. and coming from the north of england myself, it is something that i have a lot of historical passion about. and that certainly qualified the different. and i thoroughly enjoyed it. because it was just one year and it was something i didn't know and it was also in order to make a difference you had to think of some pretty dramatic ideas. the theory came to the corner and in manchester, within 40 miles, there are three others by british standards three reasonably sized cities. and so i focusing on acronyms --

[indiscernible] which does not roll off the tongue. that became the basis of what the chancellor embraced in the northern powerhouses. fast-forward 18 months later after the commission finished. the government is reelected and i got a call from the chancellor. i am kind of like, wow. and beyond wow i can't really do , that because i'm leading this review into global resistance. an incredible amount of weird symmetry about it. when i first was asked to lead the review by the british prime minister, i was halfway through this commission. i said i'm not going to not do the city commission stuff because we have a lot of momentum with it. there is a lot of excitement

with it. i will do it if you wait in till until the end. fast-forward and the same thing happens in reverse. it was something i would never dream. i am lord o'neill -- [indiscernible] charlie: i am really interested in science. for that reason, i'm happy to hear you talk about it. when you look at the global economy today, every time i pick up something, i get a concrete -- contrary point of view. there seems to be no consensus as to where we are. we do not know how much china is slowing down. we know that the best economy in europe in terms of gdp growth is britain? jim: it has been the case.

charlie: we know the u.s. is recovering but we see issues. charlie:jim: i am still in the optimistic camp. not quite as optimistic to everybody else as i often have been. obviously, brazil and washington. i think it is two steps forward and 1.5 back. i think what a lot of people tend to underestimate, if you think of it in terms of six years plus on from the crisis -- the u.s. and china had to come out of that mess in different places than they were before the mass. and you can't do that overnight. both the u.s. and china, two of the most important economies in the world, they are structurally adjusting more than people realize. i was raised on the notion that the u.s. could never have

domestic demand growth without an account deficit. but here we are, less than 3% of gdp. it has pretty reasonable domestic growth. that's a pretty decent place to be. the flipside of that in china, china has slowed down. it has gone from 10% of gdp to less than 3%. charlie: and it is in the process of trying to create domestic demand. jim: which i think is having reasonable success. i think that both of those places are having to adapt to that way of driving themselves. there are lots of challenges in some parts of the emerging world. particularly those that are going to be vulnerable to external financing as the fed starts to raise rates. in the number of challenges in some european places. they seem to never get out of

the way. by and large, it's doing ok. charlie: greece. what is going to happen. what are the consequences. do you know what the scenario is? jim: when i see greece, i think, thank god i'm not my old life. it is a game of chicken, it seems to me. there's a lot of game theory going on. i have assumed all along in typical european style at the last moment there will be some kind of deal. obviously, right now that seems like a pretty outrageous a thing to say. the second thing i would say is most importantly, the peripheral economies have changed quiet a bit as well since the greek crisis started. a lot of debt is not owned by the private sector. the whole contagion issue seems to be much less of a risk than before. even if greece chooses to play

hardball and the europeans say we are not giving you anything else. i don't watch this closely, but china creates another greece every four months. even with china's slowing, they're probably creating another greece every three months. if i were managing my staff in my old life i would say don't , spend so much time thinking about it. charlie: you are going to russia next week to talk to the president of russia and others. where do you think their economy stands with this energy dependence? jim: i think it's the summit -- i will never forget back in 2008, they asked me about if it , where russia would be with the bric.

charlie: they said what would it be like in 2020? jim: i had not been fully briefed on what they expected me to say and i pointed out that it was pretty unlikely oil prices would spend the next 12 years doing what they did the previous eight. charlie: going up. jim: right. and the inevitability that oil prices start to go in reverse. and the aging demographic. it was pretty inevitable that russia would see much slower growth. there were not overly pleased with what i said. what was more interesting, they were particularly un-pleased about the kind of media coverage about what i said. it was interesting, i kind of half suspected that some part of the russian camp wanted me to say that to try to engineer some kind of change and economic policy. but i think ignoring the political issues that are so prevalent the core problem is that they are just so dependent on commodities.

irrelevant of the ukraine mess they need to do much more substantial things to stop that dependency. charlie: what's a microbe? jim: so we all have these things inside of us that evolved and allow us to have natural healing processes. as we creep through time some of , them become resistant and some of them don't. partly because of her interactions -- charlie: resistant to what? disease? jim: disease and infections. and importantly, resistant to antibiotics that we get prescribed or, in many cases where we just demand that we are given them. because we think they are this magical solution. it kind of goes back to penicillin. and the problem we have is the

economics for the farming industry are such that there has not been any new antibiotics for about 30 years. charlie: explain that economics. they only make money on certain kinds of -- jim: they want to sell as much as possible for something that is at the highest price they can get. with antibiotics, and this is what they need to help solve the problem is the opposite. we don't want them to so much of something because that causes the resistance problem. we want it to be as affordable as possible for the emerging world. if that is the condition for the former world, i am not interested in producing any. that culls the supply problem and there is a huge demand , problem where, in our generation, we have kind of learned incorrectly to think that there is a solution to the

slightest thing, whether it's a sore throat, your infection, we don't even know what's wrong with this, give me an antibiotic. in hospitals, there has been the growth of of superbugs. and importantly, in the emerging world, there is a very crucial interplay with infectious tb, aids, where the great strides that a been found in the past couple of decades require antibiotics to help ease the treatment. and if we have more and more resistance to these different challenges come than were not going to be able to keep up with the progress we have made. we showed in the first paper soon after we started the review that if we carry on the path we are going down by 2050, there

will be 10 million people around the world dying. 10 million. as scary and as horrible as ebola has been -- 20,000. today the data is very difficult to get to grips with. our best guess is about 700,000 people are dying every year. 25,000 in the u.s. alone. and in addition, to emphasize the point, economic growth driven by productivity, together with those numbers of deaths -- i elaborately chose 2050 because it would go with the whole bric story. you could lose any cumulative $100 trillion of global gdp.

the world economy today is $75 trillion. if we didn't have this threat the world could more than double by 2050. probably quite a bit more. but as this problem grows, we will lose that cumulative -- a cumulative gdp. and in some parts of the emerging world, it's already in india. i have a story from one of the african ambassadors to the u.n. last night at dinner. the child deaths because of resistance to antibiotics in some of these places are very high. the number of these people that enter the workforce will be significant less than would otherwise be the case. productivity will be greatly impaired. common treatments in the developed world that we all take for granted hip replacements

, knee replacements, we will not be able to do in 20 odd years. charlie: why you? jim: that is a very good question. that's what i asked them. when they call me up, i'm like i don't even know what it was. antimicrobial. the answer was -- a lady deserves an enormous amount of credit. she is the chief medical officer of the u.k.. she persuaded the prime minister that a lot of scientists know all this stuff. they are so stuck in the detail and the woods and there is so much bureaucracy that they can't see the big picture. she said we need an economist to basically turn this into an economic problem so it will get solved. as i joke about it, it eventually stop at me as they found other people. charlie: is there something

related to your core competence and your capacity to see the big picture. you know the details but you can see -- that you don't lose sight of the forest because of the trees? jim: i would like to think that is the case. i think the bric story creates some evidence for that. one of the big issues that really matter and what i've learned not just in that instance, but many other things in life, it is the simple big issues that really matter. you have to keep your mind focused on where the trend of all these things is going. i am trying to find the big things that matter. i wrote a piece for the english times about it. charlie: let's review the 10. embarq on a massive global pr exercise. speaks for itself. tell people what the problem is and what has to be done. jim: with the power of some of these technical apps and the

generation below us, i got interviewed the very first thing by cctv. it was a young woman. she said our generation is really eager to help you get this correct. i chatted off line. charlie: i know, right. jim: the domestic chinese version. you need a whatsapp campaign in china. you need a bollywood campaign in india to influence the things that really capture the imagination of the next generation of people. to help them demand of our policymakers we don't want to be , infected by all these things. help us control ourselves. we will write a big paper, an

important paper about this. charlie: something like $19 billion -- [laughter] wash our hands more? jim: it's one of the basic things. if we just washed our hands more as human beings we go to the bathroom, it reduces the likelihood we will pick up infection. charlie: stop using antibiotics for animal growth and others? jim: this is a really big area in the united states when you look at this topic. the u.s. is normally, on so many things, way ahead of europe. it's not true all over europe but particularly in some of the scandinavian countries, we basically made it really difficult to use antibiotics as growth stimulants for animals and food. in the united states, i think i am right in saying that a good

60% of antibiotic consumption is probably high, maybe close to 80%, is for stimulating animal growth and it's a big issue in china and india and other parts of the world. from it, you get some of these resistance problems growing and spreading the humors. -- spreading to humans. charlie: there is no agreement on the facts. i'm trying to say this right. no agreement -- jim: put it like this. there seem to be a lot of powerful voices that try to create doubts about the facts. charlie: corporate interest? jim: yes. towards the end of this week, we will be learning about the views and the mindset. this is a key issue. were going to write a special paper. charlie: your conviction is that

europe is on the right track? jim: your comment in this particular sphere of life, it's better than the u.s.. it may well be the younger generation. -- it may well be that the younger generation plays a role in changing the mindset. a powerful anecdote, they made an announcement that they will stop using chickens that have been given antibiotics. it seems to me -- i don't know the exact reason -- it seems to be the main influence on making that decision because the small but rapidly growing new companies that are playing on environment to issues and better quality food, they are the next educated generation. those kind of developments are

probably really powerful and getting this problem corrected. indirectly, a lot of the pressure for this fast yielding of growth and animals is coming of course. charlie: number four, explore the scope for using vaccines. that speaks for itself. jim: it speaks for itself. charlie: number five, dramatically improve the surveillance of resistance. how do we improve surveillance? jim: this is one of the five no-brainers. one of the things that we found so alarming when we first tried to show the global impact it , pretty hard including an advanced countries to have good, national wide data as to what is the true resistance. we need to build it or surveillance systems. it should be reasonably straightforward. we are very proud to say in this regard that the u.k. authorities, when they saw this

report, announce the the international aid program to kick off an incentive for 695 -- 100 95 million pounds to finance countries around the world that benefit from different programs. jim: charlie: state-of-the-art diagnostics. i said before that we have a supply problem in a demand problem. jim: these guys influence so much of our lives, we go in to visit a doctor. say i have a sore throat. a guy basically guesses as to whether i need an antibiotic or not. charlie: guesses? jim: an educated guess. i know that the boots, they are experimenting with something

where within two minutes after taking a swap, they can determine whether you need an antibiotic cannot. -- antibiotic or not. the very small sample, it's reduced by 70%. charlie: the problem is too many antibiotics. improving the numbers and the pay. a global innovation fund. jim: a controversial part of that is that we believe the pharmaceutical industry should collectively finance that. charlie: you mentioned a priority at the g-20 leadership. and big new drugs that are overcoming big farm business model. -- big pharm'a business model. jim: on the supply side, you've

either got to bite the bullet or it is very complex. we will happily produce more. if you try to solve the problem in the u.s., maybe you can do that. how can you do that in the emerging world? where people cannot get access to antibiotics today. never mind if you allow them -- if we were in a world where the demand was much lower, perhaps. charlie: jim o'neil. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

charlie: 48 years after the watergate scandal, the fascination with richard nixon continues. he was a self-made man and rose to occupy the most powerful position in the world. he remains the only one president to resign. two nubile girl he's explore his complex character. one man against the world, the tragedy of richard nixon. and, being nixon a man divided. , i am pleased to have both of them at this table. the same question for both of you. i will begin with you. why nixon? other than what i just said. a fascinating character -- why nixon? other than what i just said, a fascinating character. >> i was at the nixon presidential library 2.5 years

ago, talking about his relationship with j edgar hoover. the archivists came up to me and said, listen. we know how you work. you like declassified documents. by the end of 2014, all of the tapes and hundreds of hours of tapes never been released, and all the documents, the secret diary of nixon's chief of staff, had never been released. by the end of 2014, everything will be out. i thought, i will write that book. they said at the end of the conversation, everyone will have to rewrite history. charlie: why did they say that? >> i think of nixon's five years in office as a five-act shakespearean tragedy. this material, the tapes in the document, are the the

fourth act, the king goes mad. charlie: and you, sir? having written about so many historical figures -- evan: i worked for the washington post company and i was the enemy to richard nixon. he was saying, get rid of those harvard guys. get rid of them. i saw him as a cartoon figure. i knew it had to be more complicated than that. having been the enemy, i wanted to switch sides and see what it was like to actually be richard nixon. partly as tim says, there is a , mother lode of documents and tapes. there are 3000 hours of richard nixon talking extemporaneously in a very uncensored way amongst his friends. they are his chief of staff. not only famous diaries, but a

also daily notes, sitting down and taking note of every word of what he says. so there is a fantastic paper trail that allows you to get into the head of richard nixon. charlie: so you find in the had a man divided? between good and bad, dark and light? evan: we think of nixon being dark and bad. nixon had some pretty dark sides. but what really intrigued me is that late at night, he would take his yellow pad, his best friend and would write notes to himself about how he wanted to be joyful, inspiring, confident. these are not words you normally associate with richard nixon. charlie: he was constantly self introspective. evan: i think he was fighting the dark side and it was ultimately a losing battle. he was haunted by his demons. he tried much more than we realized, he tried to be a confident person.

there is an oral history that julie did. when richard nixon came home at night, he would whistle as he came to the door. he would turn on the lights, put a show tune on the record player, and when they had dinner, it was upbeat and positive talk. he was fighting against the dark all the time. late at night, if he had a drink, maybe the darkness would come back. he wanted to be a better person. charlie: is this amateur psychology? evan: all biographers are amateur psychologist, charlie. what do you think we do for a living? unlike a lot of biography, this is based on what the guy was saying and thinking and doing. presidents leave an incredible paper trail. you can get much more into their head. i've done a lot of these books and i have never gotten as close to my subject as i did with nixon. charlie: you have read his book? tim: i have. charlie: you knew something about the man.

what did you learn from his book? tim: i think what evan sees as the light side, let's say it is a double helix of character in his dna, i see it as political genius. the man achieved the greatest political comeback since lazarus when he won election in 1968. charlie: not a natural politician. tim: not a back slapper. basically, awkward. i found a key, i think. in a letter that martin luther king wrote to a friend in 1958 after he met nixon. martin luther king said, nixon is a genius at convincing you that he is sincere. if he is not sincere, he is the most dangerous man in america. this is where we divide in our

books. i see a genius who had a grand strategy for world peace. and i also see a man that is fighting two wars. he fought the vietnam war on two fronts. in southeast asia and at home. over there, he used b-52 bombers . over here, he used bugs break-ins, black bag jobs and political espionage to destroy his enemies. the domestic enemies, the press. among them, nixon said to kissinger famously the press is the enemy. the establishment is the enemy. the professors are the enemy. write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it. evan: nixon could be a blowhard and blow off steam like that. he hated the press, that is halfway true.

but a certain amount of nixon on these tapes is nixon just showing off eating this macho guy. all the profanity that people get upset about. nixon was bad at swearing. he was faking it. lbj was good at swearing. nixon was trying to be something he wasn't. and about watergate, something that grabbed me -- i have this dark view of watergate. watergate was less than a machiavellian plot to disrupt american civil rights than it was a screw up. charlie: that the democrats had something? tim: nixon created an atmosphere where people did bad things but he did not know about the break-in. he could not confront his own subordinates. he was too shy. it is not that he was this master schemer. he was too shy to go to john mitchell and say, ok, what happened?

why did you guys go into that building? he couldn't bring himself to do it because he didn't want to hear the answer. he should have brought in a tough lawyer to do it. he didn't get everybody in one room until it was way too late. it wasn't a plot. it was a screwup. tim: what we call watergate was not an event that took place 42 years ago tomorrow. it wasn't just the break-in at the democratic national committee headquarters. it was a series of what john mitchell called "the white house horrors." breaking into the office of daniel ellsberg, spying on teddy kennedy. spying on senator at muskie. putting spies in the enemy camp. stealing people's papers. and when j edgar hoover said i'm , not going to do this anymore

which he did in 1970. he said no more black bag jobs. that is when next and set up the crew that he called the plumbers. bud crowe, gordon liddy, hunt, ex-cia and ex-fbi guys. the plumbers were there to stop the leaks. links torment every president but none more than nixon. charlie: it seemed that he was a man who felt aggrieved meant and he felt like those people had an advantage. the kennedys had something. at every stage, he said, they did it to me. i will do it to them. what the system had done to him he felt almost justification to , do what he wanted to do. evan: that's true.

he did have a grievance. bobby kennedy audited nixon three times. next and was not the first person to abuse the irs. he abuse the irs a lot but he , wasn't the first. you're right nixon had this view of the kennedys that they were better at dirty tricks than he was. he kept saying, why can't we do it as well as they do it? he exaggerated how good the kennedys were at 30 tricks, but the kennedys were not bad at dirty tricks. bobby kennedy did a lot more wiretapping than richard nixon did as attorney general. including martin luther king. bobby kennedy ran some very sophisticated political dirty tricks that were almost a model for richard nixon. he thought he was catching up to the joneses. we always talk about nixon being paranoid and all that.

i don't think nixon was a paranoid. he had some paranoid instincts. charlie: go ahead. tim: evan is exactly right. richard nixon loses to jfk and 1960 by this much. it could've gone either way. charlie: west virginia, chicago -- evan: it was stolen. tim: we could have had bush v gore if nixon challenged the results of the presidential election. he is determined that he's going to win in 1968, and he went to extraordinary lengths including sabotaging the paris peace talks that could have ended the war in vietnam, but once he got in in he was determined to win in 1972 1960, by the greatest landslide in american political history and there in light of roots of watergate.

to win at any cost. charlie: you would think that all of this is unnecessary. he had a weak opponent running against him. he was coming off of some positive things in his administration. that is not the time to be garnered about what the other guy is doing to you. evan: he had this idea of the new american majority. he was going to take democratic centrists, john, secretary of the treasury, a southern conservative democrat. he wanted him to be his successor. he wanted to create a new party a new majority. nixon was a genius as a politician and long before ronald reagan created the modern republican party, nixon created a modern republican party by appealing to the disaffected. charlie: the so-called silent majority. evan: he knew where the courts

were going. he said we will desegregate now. he did it cleverly. the deep south was deeply resistant. there would be riots, fights trouble. he created these commissions in every state, brought them into the white house, had john mitchell come in and say that we will enforce the law. he will bring these people to the oval office and here is where the tough decisions get made. you have to make a decision. every one of those commissions agreed to go along. when richard nixon came into office only 9% of black kids went to integrated schools. two years later, 70%. he did that without a big fuss, riots, or trouble. this was nixon being practical and clever. george schultz ran the operation. scholz is a very clever guy about this. nixon, although he said racist

things put in affirmative action. he understood the economics of this. he said that these black kids will never get to the middle-class high school or to a middle-class college unless we help them. nixon was -- this is an important point about nixon to me. nixon was an outsider. he understood what it was like to be an outsider. he said terrible things about blacks. he did. but on so many levels, he understood that they were outsiders who needed help, and he did help them. charlie: what about sheer brainpower? do we look at him and say this is a very bright guy? tim: a political genius and a man who committed political suicide. who made so many disastrous and self-destructive decisions that he brought himself down like the shakespearean king in the fifth act. charlie: that was a a personality flaw?

a value flaw? tim: he said it himself. he said it himself the day he resigned. he said that others may hate you, but don't let yourself hate them. because then you destroy yourself and that is what richard nixon did. through hate, through fear, a disastrous series of decisions about the vietnam war that ended not with ending the vietnam war as if we all shook hands and walked away, but with a disgraceful retreat and a disastrous american defeat. nixon was the first american president to lose a war like that. saigon fell shortly after that. it was a consequence of the decisions that he made, his defiance of congress -- charlie: nixon lost the vietnam war. not a whole series of mistakes

made by different presidents? tim: he didn't start it. he inherited a horrible, horrible war with 500,000 american soldiers in conflict. he promised the american people that he would and it and give us -- that he would end it and give us peace with honor. he did not. peace with honor was a deception. the war went on and on. ♪

charlie: we need to talk about two relationships, nixon and kissinger. evan: tortured. shakespearean. fun to write about. think about this. this is the guys closes advisor. -- this is the guy's closest advisor. kissinger pretty good at playing to nixon and giving him valuable advice. he's going up to nixon's greatest enemies, the georgetown set my old boss, misses graham, , he's having fun with the president and making jokes about his drinking habits. kissinger is charming and self-deprecating. mrs. graham and her crowd just loved him. but nixon knew his principal foreign-policy advisor was selling him out on a regular almost weekly basis.

charlie: he tolerated it because he thought he would be an agent of mind to change history? evan: he tolerated him for a number of reasons. he said henry needs this. he needs to be this way. he was hurt by it. nixon would say there goes henry , to talk to the georgetown crowd again. i think it did hurt his feelings. he had to sort of bear it. he got a lot out of kissinger. one thing that is important about nixon and kissinger nixon was the idea guy. kissinger will tell you this. the idea to go to china was richard nixon's idea. in fact when kissinger heard that nixon was going to go to china, he said, fat chance. kissinger brilliantly executed nixon's policy, and nixon was

lucky to have somebody as smart as kissinger with him. but he was the one calling the shots. tim: it is true that nixon was the great strategists and kissinger was the tactician that carried out the strategy. but what was the strategy? why did nixon go to china? why did nixon become the first president to set foot in the kremlin. it was part of the grand strategy to bring the vietnam war to an end. he thought he could play the russians against the chinese. he thought he could convince chairman mao and the communist leader of the soviet union to be nice and be our friends. he was clinking evan: glasses and making toasts with the men arming our enemies and killing american soldiers in an absolutely futile attempt to bring the war to an end.

he came away with nicely worded communiqués. the shanghai communiqué is a completely meaningless document. the chinese say, we think this and the american say, we think that. the arms control agreements. the salt agreements in 1972. jim schlesinger was head of the atomic energy commission. he said, with some pride 1972, we produced, the united states produced more nuclear warheads than any year in our history. it did not end the arms race and it did not bring the war to an end. china and russia today are not our friends. he did not bring us together. his campaign slogan of 1968. he tore us apart.

tim:evan: he wrote that china cannot be left outside the community of nations. he wanted to bring china in and make him a partner. he knew that only he could pull it off. on russia that arms control , treaty was flawed. for an american president to go to moscow and start dealing with russians and tried to create detente however flawed that deal was it was a good thing for , the united states. it slowed down the cold war. evan:tim: what i understood after reading these tapes and reading through the declassified diaries that came out just six months ago, nixon knew before he was sworn in for his second term that he was going down. charlie: nixon knew that he was going down before he was sworn in for his second term?

tim: he knew that the cover-up of the watergate break-in went all the way to bob altman, all the way to john mitchell. he knew that his closest aide , chuck colson, had been a primary instigator. and he knew just a few months later that he should probably resign. in may of 1973, 15 months before he resigns in the midnight rambling, exhausted, drunk telephone call on tape with al haig, he says wouldn't it be , better to check out now? i can't fight the dam battle alone. i've had it. but he had to fight the damn battle alone and he fought the damn battle for 15 more months before he finally stepped down. charlie: if he and fact had

burned the tapes, would he have the rest of his term? tim: only nixon could have gotten away with it. [laughter] [talking over each other] tim: it certainly was. only nixon constitutionally might have been able to get away with it without causing a complete cataclysm in the american political system. but nixon didn't strike a match and his aides began to debate if we will have a bonfire on the white house lawn. who will strike the match? evan: he actually gave the order to destroy the tapes much earlier, thinking about watergate, but then he remembered kissinger. he wanted to have his own record so that he could rebut kissinger's version. that's why they didn't destroy the tapes. tim: the tapes were invaluable

to him. he knew that he could write a postpresidential memoir worth millions if he could hold onto the tape. he was a smart guy and knew that history is made by the people who write history. he was determined to write it. i intend to write it. charlie: paraphrasing churchill. and the books again, "being nixon" by evan thomas and "one man against the world" by tim weiner. thank you for watching. see you next time. ♪

rishaad: it's thursday. this is "trending business". ♪ rishaad: live in sydney, singapore, and mumbai. here is what we were watch this morning. the fed maintains its forecast for a rising rate. janet yellen sees optimism in job growth. they want more data to show signs of a turnaround. even then, only gradual increases. china's housing market with

prices falling for a third month. prices rose after an easing of mortgage policies. new zealand shares have fallen the most in four years. a major expansion in the domestic markets. qantas chief executive will unveil the deal later today. you can tell us what you think by following us on twitter. here's david with a quick check of markets. >> a fairly mixed reaction to the latest fed announcement overnight. fairly dovish. broad dollar weakness. there are a lot of data points that have come out. property