from washington is senior fellow for middle eastern studies at the council of foreign relations, steven cook author of "the struggle for egypt." steven, i'd like to go to you first and just talk about the strategy here. it seems like you started out as someone who was in favor of intervention. but in the intervening weeks and days you have come to put it out there that going into syria or intervening in syria as it were will only exacerbate the situation. can you tell us more about your views on what the american government should or should not be doing? >> sure. thanks so much, alex. i wrote actually way back in january 2012 that if we were going to take the policy that assad must go seriously, the only way he was going to go was through a military intervention of some sort, that he was likely to kill his way out of the political challenge that what was then an uprising, was providing. in the interim 18 months, the syrian civil war has evolved in a way that suggests to me that if we take the very limited types of military operations that secretary kerry is talking about we're likely to inte

syria deeply, and senior fellow for middle eastern studies on the council of foreign relations, steven a. cook for joining us. steve, if i can start with you, president assad is suggesting that there will be repercussions from others in the region if america launches air strikes. do you believe that any of assad's allies would take military action on his behalf? >> well, it's certainly within the range of possibilities, that we would see some sort of retaliation on the part of hezbollah striking either at the israelis or american interests, either in the middle east or around the globe. remember, hezbollah was once described as the a-team of international terrorism and truly does have a global reach. so i think that, you know, assad's interview this morning was a lot of bluster. but there are certain consequences of an american military action that certainly should be given consideration. >> okay. laura, you, i know, will be interviewing the secretary of state tomorrow. here's what mr. kerry said in london earlier today. take a listen to this. >> a very limited, very targeted, very short-term

to cast a wide net over asia and say everyone is cooking the books is unfair. >> i was going to say. steven, you've been making that same point for a very long time now, and people here in -- >> i've been right for a long time. negative view in china. >> china is up 14% since the end of july. >> i caught 7% of that move. >> so we had a good move there. >> but you're buying it for a trade. like anything else, i don't think anyone wants to get married to china. but there's -- >> no, they're happy to be married. they said they had a position -- >> no, can you trade china the same way you trade u.s. >> i agree. >> and, the same debt load argument you make about china you can make about the u.s. >> no, you can't. >> the difference with china is the debt is all held domestically. >> -- you cannot make the same debt load -- the u.s. is not a house of cards, okay? >> china is? >> yes, it is. >> says you. >> not says me. >> i don't want to get into a debate over whether china's numbers are real or not. that's tired, old. u.s. >> yeah. >> are there reasons to be bearish about what we're seeing in the

and steven mandel, who sits there with his potions and -- >> jimmy: is that what those things are -- is that what they're called? potions? >> beakers, yeah. and he -- and cookingmean, it's getting unbelievable reviews, which i'm so happy about. congratulations on this. [ cheers and applause ] explain to me -- >> this is the -- >> jimmy: have you seen this yet? >> no, this is the first one i've seen. this is the moment that, you know -- like, it doesn't matter how many of these you make. when you get this thing in your hand, this is the -- this is it. and this -- look at this. it's, like, a proper record album. >> jimmy: yeah, it's a record out. it's art. [ cheers and applause ] they don't this anymore. they don't do it like that anymore. >> if you're going to have people, you know, sort of say, "well, we want you to hear what we did -- we put a lot of, you know -- lot of feeling into it." we cut up songs of mine, put them back together a different way to tell a different story. and i've never had as much fun making something that's as -- it's -- there's a lot of contemplation of the things in the world. we all know what's wrong. we want to make it better. i th