captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> hello, and i am the host of "white house chronicle." because i have a british background people often ask me about what should we borrow from the british system of government? i think some policy things might be bothered but nothing from the way the government operates because it cannot be done.

the parliamentary system is so different. our system is pretty nifty for our country. i was once in northern ireland and the proprietary of the hotel said i will not be there to show you around because i am taking my sister to washington. i said what would you do that? i want her to see congress. you will never get a good government in ireland with the parliamentary system. we need a system with checks and balances because of our system -- because of our situation. i thought it was fascinating. each fits very different requirements. some of the ideals are -- we will have questions and answers like the commeons, but who will

ask the president the questions? members of congress? that would be some violation. party discipline, that is under the british system the individual member of parliament has little say in anything because they have to adhere to the total discipline of parliament. much better in the american system, and much better when we didn't have too much parliamentary discipline. what would be an improvement is something in the house of commons of london, more drinking. i have seen argument's solved in one of the many bars over a drink by people who could not

agree on the floor and something move forward. when i first covered congress at 6:00 p.m. the cocktail's would come out. i am sorry to say the bottle of water comes out and nothing gets resolved. we will talk about the great issues facing the world currency and infrastructure, and problems with us no matter what the political party. [unintelligible] it was done in france with the constitution which is still the constitution of france. it was put together by charles de gaulle. we will be right back. >> "whitehouse chronicle" is produced in collaboration with

howard university television. now luellen king. >> hello again and thank you for coming along. i am joined by andy from polito, and a journalist with many years' experience, and another guest. [unintelligible] he predicted the crash of 2008 with back in this program. and he forgot he had predicted it. andy glass, we see endless troubles in the financial world. we had our own with the banks and suddenly europe is in chaos because the greeks have been cooking the books.

what is going on? why can we not trust any numbers that we get? >> because it is all one ball of wax. in athens, it is in germany or the u.k. with their separate currency. it is a perpetual market. when the markets are closed here they are open in asia. what we saw in the crash of 2008 is that everything now is interconnected. we cannot separate the economic situation on a national basis, and yet individual governments still have a lot to say about policy. you have a disconnect there we

have not solved. >> markets are supposed to be all milling. how is it that they don't know when governments are cooking the books? >> there are 37,000 of you. another brilliant insight. now we have come around and the new thing is that markets are driven by psychology, so folks say it is part psychology and part economics. they are rewriting some classical economics. we are beginning to understand that bubbles are phenomenons that economists should understand. i think this idea but there is perfect knowledge and markets and statistical anomaly is has

been debunked. >> is it a case that markets are willful even when the underpinnings are rotten and known to be? >> we have close to 10% unemployment. in certain groups it is 15%. so this is -- if you are looking for disconnt, here is all sorts of evidence that the recession is over, yet in a nay rational system with unemploynt liking it is you cannot talk about a strong economy. >> if you interview any republican and ask them about health care, the answer is we want market-based solutions.

do we believe in markets, or believe them to be treated with such suspicion. george soros who has made billions says the market's don't work because they approach the equilibrium and repel. i never understood what he meant by repelling. i talked to him and still don't understand. >> i am not sure i can explain it better than he can, but i will be interested to is the how the free market side and republican side -- how they come to reckon their ideology. it is beginning but they have not done that. what we will see going forward

is an appreciation markets are powerful tools that are more limited. regulators will correct markets more aggressively. the fed is already talking about what they can do to pump bubbles. the fed is to say who are we to pop a bubble. the market destroyed their home value and now the fed -- >> one thing that is changing. if you are a wall street entrepreneur who used to make a lot of money, is that washington is a bigger player in the whole economic market seen, so banks would have gone under without washington bailing them

out. that created the honed dynamic -- that created their own dynamic. people could not understand why a liberal left government was following policies that were against their better interests. by taking rich bankers and giving them money. >> you mentioned the global thing and i mentioned greece, but in a global market i don't know where it began. i was at a cocktail party in athens years ago and a colleague said when you look at these people, they wear suits, drink

scotch, read the "economist, " and speak english. these are the people that run the world. they could be anywhere in the world and he was right. that was the precursor to this transnational world. they would be -- the world economic forum brings them together every year to cut the deal. >> they may speak theyor hindi. -- they would speal english or hindi. >> it is not english we follow easily because it is so correct. the might say well done.

>> i once did a fellowship at harvard and the person with the office next to mine was the editor of the "times" of india. he said i have the largest english circulation of any newspaper in the world. >> i used to do correspondence with india in the red -- that the same person -- met the asme same person. incidently wendy [unintelligible] if has made all those people speak english anxious to live in england which they cannot do. >> we did a story on india's economy and one of the things i've found is while he may say that, the pool of people who

speak english well enough to be agile participants was smaller than i would have thought. wages were driven up for people who have those skills. it was a smart sliver that i would have thought. people thought all our jobs would go to india and any job can be outsourced, that i did not find. >> i never remember where there there are 42 religions and 62 languages, or the other way around. those are the two numbers. diversity of language in india is extraordinary, but so is the economy.

i thought that india and not china would be the great [unintelligible] i never understand why these peop are so talented at math and engineering were failing. it is because their markets were over protected. you could buy after waiting on a waiting list, a brand new 30- year old car. it was made in britain in the 1950 costs and was exporting them in the 1980's without any changes. once the import controls were listed, [unintelligible] it has been stunning. india may want possibly day surpass china -- the mdma

possibly surpass -- any dat indy supass china one day. there is also racism. agents say things about other asian countries we would never think. really old-fashioned racism of superiority. it is very much a factor randi south china sea. >> we have been talking about how things are broken. i have a small suggestion which goes back to the theme you raised in the british system. we should keep congress and the president, but how about a

queen? if we had a clean we could separate the functions and elect a clean on television. -- if we had a queen. >> on sirius xm radio it airs at 9:30 a.m. eastern every saturday. we get a lot of e-mails and are glad to be there. the program is "white house chronicles." i am joined by andy and darren. >> you are talking about our economy being broken. if you look at our economy, we are having problems but we but wegreece -- talked about

greece. look at what is going on with me euro. they are looking -- they are an example of how one country can tell. it is not out of the realm -- how a country can fail. >> the euro is a transnational currency. [unintelligible] move very correctly -- who very correctly. greece needs reflation, and only one currency to deal with that which makes it very difficult. nobody wants to listen to the conservative economist and there are huge emotional desires to

have this currency. >> you have one currency but not one the government. that disparity creates all sorts of problems. >> here is why it matters to people listening. there is concern about whether the dollar will stay the preeminent currency. it matters to americans because whate are doing now is people are creating goods and services and selling them to us. they are excepting dollar bills gladly. we are not giving them much of value. that amounts to an ec loan for us. as long as we can keep that going it is great. the only challenge in the world

market is the euro, as a place where peple can put their savings. the euro is not looking like a safe bet, so it shows the u.s. still has time to get our house in order so we can continue to be the major power of the world. >> what underlies the strength of a currency? when japan is [unintelligible] the yen still stays high? >> i don't understand that. the dollar was once said to be high because of the soviet union. i heard this at the aspen

institute. i did not believe that. >> if there are five people that you know and they will write yield an iou and you decide which to take, you will say who has the best job prospects? whose character can i count on? who will pay me back? >> who has an open system? >> who has a functioning legal system? >> you look at countries the same way. we keep our promises almost all of the time. that is why people trust the dollar. i think we underestimate -- one way our markets work is they are massive.

our treasury market -- we have close to $8 trillion outstanding. if you are a country that needs to put your money somewhere, you say that is a $7 trillion. >> out of that there is $1 trillion that is with the chinese. they would do something bad to date soup if they -- do something bad to the soup. >> [unintelligible] >> they eat from the san bowl -- the same bowl.

powhata >> looked at our banking system, it is great. the chinese are feeling like

they made a brilliant decision that the american model was flawed. they are much more vocal of their criticisms with our economy. we are two big countries and the chinese need a big market. we need a big market in china. and the savings in china has to go somewhere. >> add to president obama's credit, recently met with the dolly llama -- dahlai lama. now with their new industrial posture they are complaining more than they used to. >> tibet is a problem, it is occupied by china.

this represents an awkwardness. we will not help insurgents in tibet. there is not even a government in exile. [unintelligible] there are many difficult issues with china in which they can do this to us because that is the nature of this system. it is their problem. >> china is less monolithic than if it appears. a great chinese scholar said some of what they do is for consumption on the internet. there is a channel where the chinese government gets pressure where people are saying why aren't you being tough on americans? they are sticking it in our i -- in our eye.

there is an element of that. we do this thing in washington a lot. there are these experts but decisions are made by a small group of people, or by one person. lhis study like the soviet desire was to get a foothold in the middle east, we don't know whether they were smart enough to even think about that. i think there is a tendency to build up this structure of study to assume that you are dealing with a whole country. you are dealing with a small group. >> it is a different system.

the military is deeply involved in the business structure in china. the pentagon maybe by buying contracts, but it is nothing like this. >> the same thing about military involved in congres is the same in pakistan. >> the military is one power structure and there are more hard core elements. >> you need independent institutions even if it is not democratic. with the soviet union when i asked about a detained individual they said he is still a member of the academy, as though they can take that away from them. the weakness in most emerging

countries in the post colonial time has been a lack of democratic institutions. there is no backstop to support that or organizations to say you cannot do that. there is nothing there except political institution. >> in shanghai there is going to be a huge world fair which is the book and to the olympics. -- book end to the olympics. the second-largest pavilion is de americans. >> we are nearly out of town. conclude in 10 seconds. -- we are nearly out of time. >> that is our program of

that. we look forward to bringing mikheil next week. -- look forward to being with you. go to our web site where we had many archive programs and articles. >> "white house chronicle is produced in collaboration with rsity television. from washington, d.c., this has been "white house chronicles," with an insight and sense of humor. this program may be seen on pbs

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