i'd change this, i'll change that and mind you the lead artist, the originator is richard hass. he's not a cincinnati native. so coming back to cincinnati and looking at all these other statues of cincinnatus, that's what made him say when this is restored i think i will do it differently. >> i think he also thought of it as a living breathing piece all these 30 years. since he was the original creator, he felt like he had all the authority in the world to make whatever changes he might want to. it's just interesting that he thinks of it as a constantly, can be changed. >> so as a mural maker, have you sometimes -- not because you are 30 years away from having made that mural -- that can't be -- but you finish a mural and you sit back and you say maybe a year later, hmmm, if i had done it this year i might have done something different -- sort of the artistic process do you say -- and of course you are working on these huge walls. i mean, you got to have scaffolding, you can't just go up and re-touch it a little bit. >> yeah, i think about it all the time. it's funny, we were at

richard hass joins me from the council on foreign relations. where is the u.s. influence here? john kerry is about to launch these peace talks on syria. we have just sold all this military equipment to saudi arabia. we pleaded with them not to execute this cleric and they completely ignored the pleas from the white house and state department. >> well, as you are suggesting, we don't have an awful lot of influence. i think the saudis made a strategic decision several years ago that they are going to chart their own course. they were upset over how the united states reacted in egypt to mubarak's weakness. they are obviously more than upset over what the united states said it would do, and then didn't do in syria and the saudis essentially said they have to take matters into their own hand. they ignored us on the execution of sheikh nimr and my hunch is they will largely pay little heed to our preferences. they simply think the stakes that they have are much greater than the stakes that we have. >> the saudis announced big domestic budget cuts, hampered by low oil prices. how much

emery slaughter, she and richard hass are former directors of policy planning at the state department. he is, of course, now the president of the council on foreign relations. and ian bremer is the president of the eurasia group, an international risk consultancy. richard, let me ask you, the big trend it seems to me, certainly, you know, one of the dominant trends, i would argue maybe ends up being the big trend of 2016 is going to be the continued weakness of oil prices, the collapse of commodity prices, and what this does in the world. i mean, 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? >> well, first thing to say is it's likely to endure for the year. the one exception, and you mentioned it in the introduction, could be major instability involving saudi arabia. we'll get back to that later i expect. assuming it does last, it obviously is an uneven effect. it hurts the producers, the saudis, iranians, venezuelans and so forth. for other countries like india, it's a boon. it contributes to