talk about his campaign shake-up. that's all for us. thank you so much for spending your sunday with me and everyone here. i'm dana bash. "fareed zakaria gps" starts right now. this is "gps," the goblobal world. i'm fareed zakaria. in the battle against isis and the struggle to find new homes for refugees, in the american presidential race and its swirling controversies, in the west, chilly relations with russia. in the united states and the world's economies. china, india, africa. much more.

also, do you need a little nudge to pay your taxes? a push to not spend all your money. a little help being honest. the u.s. government is here to help. is it good news or is it big brother? we'll explore. and women waging peace. why the way to end much of the fighting, the battles, the skirmishes around the world, may be the almost 50% of the population that has more interest in peace than war: women. but first, here's my take. 2016 will bring with it the usual share of surprises and new trends. but there is a striking piece of social science research unearthed last year that will continue to shape the conversation next year and beyond. we've had one of its authors on the show recently, the 2015 nobel laureate in economics,

anger us deeton. as you know, for decades people in rich countries have been living longer lives. but deeton and case found that over the past 15 years one group, middle aged whites in the united states, are dying in increasing numbers. and things look much worse for those with a high school diploma or less. the "washington post" notes that people who make up this cohort are largely responsible for donald trump's lead in the race for the republican nomination for president. now, there are concerns over the calculations, but even a leading critic of the paper has acknowledged that however measured, the change compared to other countries and other groups is huge. the key question is why. why is middle america killing itself? exploring it provides answers that suggest that the anger

shaping american politics will only get worse. the main causes of the increase are as striking as the fact itself. suicide, alcoholism, and overdoses of prescription and illegal drugs. as deeton told me here on "gps," people seem to be killing themselves slowly or quickly. these circumstances are usually caused by stress, depression, and despair. the only comparable spike in deaths in an industrialized country took place among russian males after the collapse of the soviet union, when rates of alcoholism skyrocketed. a conventional explanation for this middle class stress and anxiety is that globalization and technological change have placed increasing pressures on the average worker in industrialized nations. but the trend is absent in any other western country.

it is an exclusively american phenomenon. and the united states is relatively insulated from the pressures of globalization, having a fast, self-contained internal market. trade makes up only 23% of the u.s. economy compared with 71% in germany. part of the answer, deeton believes, is that in the united states, doctors and drug companies are far too eager to deal with physical and psychological pain by prescribing drugs, including powerful and addictive opioids. but why don't we see the trend among other american ethic groups? while mortality rates for middle aged whites have stayed flat or risen, the rates for hispanics and blacks have continued to decline significantly. these groups live in the same country and face greater economic pressures than whites. why are they not in similar despair? princeton anthropologist

caroline rouse suggests that other groups may not expect their income, standard of living, and social status are destined to steadily improve. they don't have same confidence that if they work hard, they will surely get ahead. in fact, rouse said, after hundreds of years of slavery, segregation and racism, blacks and developed ways to cope with disappointment and the unfairness of life, through family, art, protest speech, and above all, religion. the hispanic and immigrant experiences in the united states are different, of course, but minorities by definition are on the margins. they do not assume that the system is set up for them. the united states is going through a great power shift. working class whites don't think of themselves as an elite group. but in a sense, they have been compared with blacks, hispanics, native americans, and most

immigrants. they were central to america's economy, its society, indeed its very identity. they are the world of the greatest generation. but the world has changed. the economy has changed. america has changed. donald trump is talking about this demographic when he promises that he will take charge and make them win again. but he can't. no one can. and deep down, they know it. for more, go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" colombia this we column this week. and let's get started. so how in the world will the wild story of the presidential campaign end? will trump or clinton be the next leader of the free world, or somebody else entirely? will isis be defeated in 2016?

the iraqi pm says his forces will do just that in the coming year. events suggest that tensions between iran and saudi arabia will ratchet up in 2016. will that cold war become a hot one? speaking of cold wars, what of u.s.-russian relations? will they further sour or will they improve over syria? ann marie slaughter is a former director of policy planning at the state department. richard rouse is as well, he's also a president of the council on foreign relations. and ian bremer, the big trend, it seems to me, one of the dominant trends maybe ends up being the big trend of 2016, the continued weakness of oil prices, the collapse of commodity prices, and what this does in the world.

the last time you had such a dramatic decline of oil, the soviet union collapsed and the cold war ended. what's going to happen this time? >> the first thing to say, it's likely to endure for the year. the one exception could be major instability involving saudi arabia. we'll get back to that later, i expect. it hurts the producers, the saudis, the iranians, the venezuelans, and so forth. for other countries, it's a boon, it contributes to the economic growth. for china it should help but doesn't, because china has its own internal economic problems. the united states, it's a mixed blessing. on the one hand it's probably a bonus of a thousand dollars a year to every american family, given lower fuel prices at the pump. on the other hand, the economic spillovers from that are hurting. by and large, for the world it's a major downer. it's hurting africa, hurting

latin america. it's a major blanket on world economic growth. as a result it probably feeds into political uncertainty. >> ann marie, what happens, for example, i mean, brazil could implode with the collapse of commodity prices, venezuela could implode. and then you have the middle east, where iran and iraq need high oil prices, saudi arabia needs high oil prices. >> i'll start with the middle east with an optimistic prediction. i think we're going to see a settlement of the serial civil war this year. >> wow. >> we've got a little disagreement. i really do think that russia and europe and the united states and the parties in the region will get a settlement. but i'm going to predict that turkey is going to be a bigger obstacle to that settlement than russia, because the only way to get a settlement is to have a kind of federated syria.

and for turkey, that's going to be a huge problem. so we need the kurds. the united states needs the kurds and others do to defeat isis. but at the same time, if you give the kurds too much autonomy, that's a huge problem. but i'll start with that. >> this is fascinating. so the big problem in settling syria will not be iran, our enemy, but turkey, our ally? >> absolutely. because the turks really are caught here. if the kurds in syria get as autonomous, essentially a pro to state, then they have a proto state in turkey. erdogan has a huge problem with the kurds finally close to having kurdistan, which they've always wanted. >> there's no question that at the end of 2016, the trajectory of u.s.-iranian relations will

be better than u.s.-saturday relations. i agree that iran will not necessarily be the biggest thorn in the region. but in order to get syria resolve, you need leadership. the americans still don't care enough. the europeans are still much more focused on their own individual and national problems. and in the region, as we see very violently right now, the iranians and saudis could not be farther from each other, either in syria or anywhere else in the middle east. so while i agree that there's going to be more headway on a political process to talk about what a federated syria might be, the ability to execute and get the powers in the region to come to terms with each other, which would be required, we're going to be much farther away from that in 2016 than we are in 2015. the middle eastern countries are under so much internal pressure, more likely to play nationalism

and focus on their own internal security. none of those things bode well for peace in the region. >> richard, you said to me you thought the most underprized risk in the world today is saudi arabia, meaning i presume this weakness of oil prices, were saudi arabia to start having instability, all bets are off. >> i agree. it's low oil prices. the saudis are basically doing what i would call their vietnam, and what they're doing in yemen, a major case of strategic overreach. you've got simmering or worse than simmering rivalries inside the saudi royal family. now the beheading of sheik al nimr, a prominent shiite cleric. i almost feel like we're seeing a fuse lit in the middle east.

i disagree with ann marie about syria. i wish she were right. i'm afraid she's not. i think we're going to see isis possibly rolled back a little bit in iraq. i don't think they'll be rolled back in syria. they'll see saudi arabia as an extremely ripe target. my guess is saudi arabia could become the next major battlefield of this larger play. you could have the shia-sunni conflict. to me it's the biggest question mark for the fate of the world, what's going to happen in that space. >> is russia going to be more likely to do a deal in syria, in your view, because oil prices are going to pressure russia? and will that affect ukraine? is russia going to be playing nice? >> i do think russia is going to be playing nice. not just because of oil prices, but because russia can't handle casualties. as casualties rise, putin gets

in trouble domestically. first in ukraine, then in syria. i've been the one that's been the cassandra on syria for the last three years, saying it's going to get worse. i've agreed, it's like the 30 years war. the things that are different now are refugees and isis. so europe, for instance, is now completely focused on getting a settlement because of the refugees. and everybody else is focused on isis and knows we have to solve syria to solve isis. >> on that cheery note, we'll be back with this great panel and talk about the 2016 presidential race. able to recognize a fair price. truecar has pricing data on every make and model, so all you have to do is search for the car you want, there it is. now you're an expert in less than a minute. this is truecar.

we're back with our panel for our predictions. this one is going to be easy. who is the republican nominee going to be? who is the democratic nominee going to be? who is going to win? >> not trump. i didn't believe it before, i don't believe it now. 2015 was the year of trump. i don't think we'll say that again in 2016. his ability to channel media excitement in a two-year, $10 billion race is unprecedented in american history. but ultimately, as you say in your "washington post" column, he's going after the losers. and historically in the united states, losers don't vote. there's no question that the fact that they're being impresse impress depressed is not enough to get him the nomination. they have to go to the polls. i don't think that's going to happen. that means either cruz or rubio on the republican side.

i'm leaning a little more cruz than rubio but not much. on the democratic side, i don't see any serious challenge to hillary. >> who wins? >> it's too far away. there are so many mistakes to be made, so many scandals we still haven't heard about. hillary is certainly competent and more experienced but certainly a horrible candidate. and we don't know who the republican will be. for me it's a coin flip. >> you obviously want hillary to, you worked for her. >> personally, as the head of my organization. i'm nonpartisan. but yes, i think it's going to be clinton versus cruz. i think it will be clinton winning. i think the worse the world gets, the more people do want someone who knows the names of world leaders, who talks to them, who projects confidence if not excitement. i think a cruz-clinton election is incredibly good for america's soft power in the world. it's like "the force awakens,"

it's the new "star wars" versus the old. suddenly america's election is between a woman and a hispanic man. and regardless of what you think of their specifics, what the world sees is a new america. >> what do you think? >> again, on the democratic side, likely to be hillary clinton. but if you look at the most recent fundraising statistics for bernie sanders, not just the large amount but how distributed it is, it suggests to me the democratic race could be longer and tougher than conventional wisdom has it. on the republican side, i'm not known for my modesty, i have been wrong more often in the last six months than i've ever been. so tough, but obviously i would say cruz, trump, rubio are the three most obvious, but that leaves out bush, christie, and kasich. i think there's room for one of them. new hampshire has become the turning point. >> you mean one non-trump?

>> one moderate. >> one someone who's, quote unquote, centrist, establishment, whatever word you want to use. everybody is basically saying cruz wins iowa, so that's sort of off the table, but new hampshire becomes the place it's going to be determined. there's two or three tickets out of new hampshire to face up against cruz in south carolina and the other states. i think it's probably rubio. i think it's probably trump. and i think it's one other, christie, bush, or kasich. >> what happens in terms of, you know, looking at growth and america's prospects, for all its problems, the united states has really dominated the recovery since the great depression. somebody pointed out to me that the stock market under barack obama has compounded at 14% a year, almost, which is or may be the longest, strongest bull market in history. i haven't doubled checked it, but certainly very, very strong. it can't quite go on. it's been six, seven years. you normally have a recession.

china is in recession. europe is going nowhere. the emerging markets, oil producers are off a cliff. what happens to growth in 2016? >> well, i mean, i think that growth -- the imf just reduced their 2016 expectations for growth a couple of ticks. and that's not a surprise, ginn everything we're talking about. they'll start having market impact. >> explosions in places like brazil or venezuela. >> or saudi or whatnot. i think if you look at where economic growth is going to be in 2016, you have larry summers and others saying recessions come every six or seven years on average. we're increasingly due. but china is the big mover here. it's the most volatile, the most uncertain. it's also the country where the government has by far the most tools to kick the can down the road, if they want to, and they do. they really want to forestall that instability. coming out of china is much more

state intervention if markets start looking softer, which means that globally we should expect the six or seven-year average actually becomes longer. but when recessions hit, they get much larger. >> we've got 90 seconds for chief of you. ann marie, what do you think on china and the world? >> so the first thing is i think this is a year that trans-pacific partnership will go through. the reason is it's going to be seen in a more security context than economic context. isis helps there. china is maneuvering in the south china see, that helps there. i think we'll see that go through. i also think the dollar is going to rise and rise and rise. china instability, the euro, who knows what's going to happen with the eurozone. >> i think that's a better prediction than your syria prediction. we have a better chance with tpp. one piece of good news in the

united states is speaker ryan and the ability to get a budget through. the year 2015 ended on a positive note both in the substance and the appearance that the united states can at times function. i thought that was an important reality, as well as an important message to the world. >> amazing, at the end of the day the united states always somehow muddles along and kind of looks better than everybody else, even though we beat up on it all the time. thank you, fascinating panel. next on "gps," should the u.s. government be in the business of nudging its citizens using psychological tricks to get the american people to do what it wants? believe it or not, it is doing just that. is it big brother or good government? we'll explore. you both have a

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now for our "what in the world" segment. corporations have researched how to place ads on tv at just the right time of day or placing junk food at the checkout line. what if the government used similar strategies to help more students get into college, improve services for the military or get more people to sign up for health insurance? in fact, the obama administration has a new group that's trying to do just that. the social and behavioral sciences team. a group of experts that's

leveraging psychology to make government work better. it's a variation of britain's behavioral insights team, the "nudge" unit. the team which started in 2014 launched a series of trials to see what tricks of their trade might help uncle sam. their results were released this past fall. most were successful by the group's count, showing smart ways to improve government at little to no cost. for example, as the report points out, around one in five students in urban areas who are accepted to college don't actually end up going in the fall, simply because they don't fill out the necessary paperwork. so the white house team had specially designed text message reminders sent to students and their parents. the message worked. according to the group's analysis, enrollment among more low-income students increased by

9%. another way to persuade people to get something done, experts say, is to show them a concrete set of steps to follow. e-mails using that approach to encourage the military to sign up for a workplace savings program nearly doubled the enrollment rate. another effective way to motivate people is to have them agree to a specific time to complete a task. messages using that srategy spiked enrollment in the federal health insurance marketplace seven times as much as e-mails that did not include a time frame. smart psychology can improve our government's integrity. government contractors have to fill out a form to confirm the accuracy of their sales reports. that small tweak led to additional dollars in self-reporting fees collected in a single quarter. these initiatives may be relatively small so far, but applying behavioral sciences to

government has enormous potential. psychology is relevant any time americans do business with their government, notes the white house agency's senior adviser. the president signed an executive order encouraging agencies to get closer to the behavioral sciences research community and recruit experts to join their ranks. some are concerned such government efforts to manipulate people's minds smack of george orwell's big brother. richard taylor, an expert on such practices, agrees that we should be wary of that possibility. but as long as the nudging is transparent, easy to opt out of and good for our welfare, he said we should embrace it. using psychology to improve government is a smart and cheap idea. one that should easily get bipartisan support. now all we need is some psychological mechanism to nudge politicians to be less partisan in washington.

next on "gps," as we learned in the first half of the show, peace is in short supply around the world these days. what can we do to change that? well, how about bringing more women into the peace process? it works. my next guest will give you the evidence that it works. erman dae group. i wore lederhosen. when i first got on ancestry i was really surprised that i wasn't finding all of these germans in my tree. i decided to have my dna tested through ancestry dna. the big surprise was we're not german at all. 52% of my dna comes from scotland and ireland. so, i traded in my lederhosen for a kilt. ancestry has many paths to discovering your story. get started for free at ancestry.com.

with all of the conflict going on around the world, people are searching for the path to peace. my next group of guests say it might be staring us in the face.

and the answer is, half the world's population. women. the ambassador to austria appointed by president bill clinton in 1993. she hosted two rounds of negotiations at the embassy wondering why the parties were having such problems coming together. then on a trip to washington, ambassador hunt had a revelation. i'll introduce you to her colleagues in a moment. she picks up that story right here. >> we go to the white house, and it's time for the signing. and in comes the presidents. the auditorium is a sea of gray suits. the interesting thing is that i, who care a whole lot about the importance of women, i didn't see it. >> you didn't notice it until

then? >> this is a failure story. i thought, how on earth? it's because i was looking through a lens called security. i wasn't looking through gender. so i completely missed why these negotiations, these peace talks turned out to be really flawed. he went to the u.n. for a meeting and asked the official, why aren't there any women in the peace talks in these different countries, in africa? and the u.n. official said to me, you know, ambassador hunt, the warlords won't agree to have women. i said, why not? he said, because they're worried the women will compromise. and a light bulb went off in my head. and i discovered, after gathering a hundred women from ten conflict areas, that in fact they told one story after another after another of how they were working across lines. >> in fact it was through the women that they would compromise. >> that's right. the problem is we're so used to

negotiations, let's bring together the killers and they'll put the guns under the table, you can have the diamonds, the oil, the timber, and that's called a peace agreement, put together by people who have no experience or even interest in having peace. so if you add more chairs, you've got to have them around the table, add more chairs, have the women, have others in the community who wouldn't be allowed, and you get a different agreement that lasts. >> ambassador hunt brought to our studios two women who personify what she calls women waging peace. first, a canadian born woman who has been trained as a medical doctor in libya in 2011, when the nation revolted against qaddafi's regime and had to put itself back together. the problem was women are not at the table, she says. >> we noticed women saying,

listen, we've been systematically excluded, we're not being invited to the talks, our conversations are not being listened to, our opinions on priorities for the community. we say schools, they say no, it's the oil infrastructure. so that was very clear to us. we then began to lobby on a national scale with our then-government. and we started talking about the religious manipulation that was causing a lot of these divisions and a lot of these conflicts. and i say manipulation -- >> so explain that. so you look at the religious violence, the jihadi consult of the the jihadi focus of these fanatics, and this is being encouraged by some people? >> exactly, for their own gain. as early as 2011, 2012, women were saying, we're having more difficulty driving alone, i'm

having difficulty driving my daughter to school, they want women to dress in a specific way. before there are weapons with these particular groups. so what we found was, by talking about that narrative, by saying, listen, this is not religion, this is a manipulation of faith. >> and the reason you could say this is not religion is because you noticed the gangs pushing this stuff were not particularly religious. >> not at all. but they definitely compared it to it. when you're in a hospital and you're telling a family a bad news, they pray. the same thing happened in libya. at the time of the conflict, when you have nothing else to look at, when political apparatuses don't exist, security is diminished around you, when you don't know if your baby is eat that night, the voice of god is important to you. it's a very easy way to

manipulate societies. >> also joining us was esther ibanga, a nigerian christian pastor who founded a group there called women without walls, who tells her story of bringing the women of two religions together to fight one common enemy. >> i live in the city of joss. for the past two decades joss has been embroiled in religious conflict. five years ago, 532 women were killed by religious fundamentalists in a village less than 3 kilometers from where i live. as a christian pastor, i felt enough is enough, we have to do something about this. i organized a march of christian women. about 100,000 came to the streets, protesting the killings and demanding for our government to bring the perpetrators to

justice. the muslim responded and said, hey, our people were killed as well. they had a muslim march, i had a christian march, and the killings continued. then together we led a march as both muslims and christians. since then we formed this organization, women without walls, and we've been working with the communities prone to violence and talking to the young people to sheath their swords and refuse to be used by politicians. we want to put as much pressure as we can on the government. we want our voices heard. we want to hit the streets and say, listen, we're still advocating for the release of the girls and for boko haram menace to come to an end in nigeria. >> it's a story of female empowerment that's made a difference. >> that's right. in rwanda, 64% of the parliament is women. half the supreme court, happen

the cabinet. and that's extraordinary. no one has ever seen a country that has leap frogged as fast in terms of the indicators in education, in healthcare, et cetera. absolutely there are problems. no question. there are political problems. there's all kinds of intrigue. but you know what? the corruption hardly exists. and women are considered less corrupt. in fact, huge difference, when you have that many women. a country that has just 35% women in parliament has almost zero chance of falling back into violent conflict. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. next on "gps," the 2016 republican candidates don't agree on much, but here is something they are nearly universal on: the government needs to shrink and get out of the economy. but what would happen to the american economy if it did?

my next guest, a distinguished economist, says it would be catastrophic, when we come back. come on in pop pop.

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i have a confession to make. i have an iphone. i love it. i hate when the auto correct corrects to the wrong word. but otherwise i love it. if steve jobs was still here and if i were to run into him, i would that i think him for it.

my next guest says i should not be thanking steve jobs or even apple for it. she's author of a book just out in the united states called "the entrepreneurial state: debunking the private versus public sector mix." it's a fascinating book. it says the technology wasn't invented by apple. >> first of all, it's not that steve jobs want a genius or that apple wasn't a wonderful story. steve jobs was great. the narrative we tell around him as an individual and the company completely misses this intervention. the story is that every technology that makes an iphone smart and not stupid was actually publicly funded. the internet, gps, touchscreen display, even siri, the voice-activated system that never works for me but is apparently a great thing, were all funded by different types of public institutions in the u.s.

where is that story? >> you argue this is part of a pattern, that you can go into industry after industry and you'll often find the basic -- some of the key basic innovations, much more than people realize, were publicly funded. >> absolutely. what's interesting is it wasn't just about the basic science. this intervention, which was strategic, courageous, mission-oriented, and direct, included the basic research, applied research, and even early-stage financing for companies themselves, because let's be honest, most venture capitalists are exit-driven. >> the government has the patience to stay. >> absolutely, this is patient, long-term, committed finance. there's this myth that we have a credit crunch or not enough finance. there's plenty of finance out there. it's not the right kind of finance for innovation. >> you're turning on its head

which is that the government can't pick winners and losers, gets it all wrong. you're saying the government has picked lots of winners. >> absolutely. all those technologies were picked. the biotechnology sector itself was picked. picked. the national institutes of health have spent $930 billion on the technology that formed that industry. private companies of course was important but they basically surfed that wave. we have plenty of surfers just not that wave, for example, today in the green tech industry. >> what about solar? >> absolutely. for every success you have about 8 or 9 failures. that's fine. but what the private venture capital industry has had some public investors have not is an ability to reap something from the upside to cover the downside. tesla, the s car, we see a similar amount of money as

solyndra did. $465 million guaranteed loan. had tesla not been the success that we know it is, that money would have been, you know, bailed out by the taxpayer as they have to bail out solyndra. but the population doesn't realize that this is what happened and they only see that sew linyndra lost. they only hear that story. but also we haven't been wise in terms of treating this like a portfolio. >> that's fascinating. you're saying two identical investments, one loss, one, you know, has gained massively. but we wrote off the one that lost. we didn't gain anything as taxpayers for the one that succeeded. >> exactly. >> israel, however, their government investments, they take a piece of the action. >> absolutely. so through their public venture capital fund, they actually retain royalties so again they can get a bit of the upside to cover the inevitable downside skweas well as the next round, whereas in this country we think that's

socialism. first of all we do have all this government investment and where will the return come from? economists often think that happens with tax. we no many companies including google, whose algorithm, the algorithm behind google was funded by the national science foundation, don't pay much tax. does apple pay the tax they owe? amazon? there's not just that. tax rates themselves have fallen immensely. sona is a, people will be shocked to hear this, but the national space agency was founded in a year, that the top marginal rate was 93%. right? >> under eisenhower. >> he was not a communist. the point is not to go back to that era. however, could we get a bit more real in terms of perhaps sometimes retaining equity? why not? >> universities do this when they fund technology. >> absolutely. but, for example, you know, the money that's actually -- well, you know, nasa, for example, is not allowed to make any matchup. they can only get money from the budget appropriations committee. why? just look at the privatization

of space today. so you have the elon musks of the world with spacex or galaxy making use of this publicly funded infrastructure for free. why? that would be fine, by the way, if nasa didn't have another big project like going to mars. but where will the money come from for the new missions? i always say if we don't want the state to get involved, fine, step back. but that would mean throwing away your iphone and not having the teslas of this world. if we want that strategic intervention, we have to ask where the money comes from. >> fascinating. thank you so much. >> thank you. next, we normally seek to improve lives but we'll tell you about a book that could save lives.

the imf recently approved china's yuan as one of the world reserve currencies. it brings me to my question of the week. other than china's how many other currencies have been granted world reserve currency status? stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. this week's "book of the week" is "midnight at the parapalace: the birth of modern istanbul" by charles king. this is a terrific story of the slow collapse of the ottoman empire and the rise of modern istanbul. it's a story of politics, war, passion, sex, all set against the backdrop of one of the world's great cities.

and now for "the last look," which is sort of another book recommendation. it's called the drinkable book. at first glance it looks like an average book with information about sanitation. but let's just say you wouldn't want to buy the kindle version of this book. you see, the pages themselves are water filters containing silver nanoparticles that kill bacteria. to use, simply tear out a filter, place it into a plastic filter box and poor contaminated water through it. the result, according to the book's developers, is safe, clean drinking water. something the world health organization says 663 million people around the world still do not have access to. in fact, waterborne illnesses kill nearly 1,000 children every single day according to unicef. the drinkable book is relatively inexpensive to produce and the pages are reusable. a page can filter 26 gallons of

water. so an entire book can provide a person with clean water for up to four years. up until now, a small number of books have been made in the kismen of a church in pittsburgh. but the book's inventor, dr. terry dankvitch, and her partners hope to scale up production later this year to distribute books to many communities around the world. they hope to include cartoons and pictograms as well as to teach those who can read in their languages about water safety. stephen king once wrote books are a uniquely portable magic. this one certainly is. we toast to it and more ideas like it in 2016. the correct answer to the "gps" question of the week is c -- four. the yuan will join the u.s. dollar, of course, the euro, the japanese yen, and the british pound in the basket of special drawing right currencies when its new status go into effect october of this year.

the imf said this was a, quote, important milestone in the integration of the chinese economy into the global financial system. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week and happy new year. hello, everyone. thanks for joining me. i'm fredricka whitfield. president barack obama arriving back in washington a few hours ago. he will begin his 2016 agenda by tackling the, quote, unfinished business of his presidency. the epidemic of gun violence. sources tell cnn that he is preparing a new executive action on the issue. this thursday the president will join cnn's anderson cooper for an exclusive live town hall on guns in america. cnn investigations correspondent chris frates is joining us now. chris, the timing of this town hall should be noted and we also are talking about the president meeting tomorrow with