people in the united states exaggerated how different they are and how side how exceptional to history and that in fact the history of the united states and many many important ways has been part of larger movements larger ideas the protestant reformation the enlightenment there are all kinds of political and legal ideas which came from europe but also such great historical movements as the competition between the british and french and powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries industrialisation the industrial revolution all of these things said present the united states is somehow created by only american events and ideas such as you know massachusetts puritanism or french or jackson turns the front here seems to me to be distorting history that's the one idea the second idea which is probably more controversial is the idea that somehow since the end of the cold war american exceptionalism become more nationalistic more aggressive and more of a problem for the rest of the world if i go to you peter i mean a lot of people say american exceptionalism is a problem from americans

what the united states needed to do during the cold war was to contain the u.s.s.r. in the u.s.s.r. in the region and hence you know started to cut those some less than friendly regime or well thought another marketing christians in the case of. what's going on in egypt like now i think that we should look at this from a more modern perspective if you keep talking about the parts of the whole body falls and saw i mean we never we don't know i'm talking about today i'm talking about george bush's war on terror and it seems like obama is the accepted it is well no i'm talking about what's going on today not the cold war. ok so well in this case i would say that there is a clear progression in the obama administration about democracy promotion and the discourse is not linked anymore to the war on terror of course you still have references to what is called the democracy peace theory and the fact that democracies don't go to war with each other. no would it mean that these emerging democracies in the middle east would be friendly to the united states offing he in this case history might

the french and dutch are being supportive say they still have faith in the united states. is is actually vindication of britain's austerity program, because they kept their aaa level. many countries, though, in europe, which have high sovereign debt level, are now worried if they'll be on the chopping block as well. there's already been a lot of anger directed at the rating agencies in europe. there's a feeling that they have too much power. there's no transparency. there's no accountability. the eu is actually looking at laws to try to address all of that. even punishment if the rating agencies get it wrong and cause economic damage. now, the nicknames for the agencies there are moody, sulky and snitch. there's been a different reaction, though, in beijing, and it came in the form of a commentary by the state-run news agency. some familiar lines here, americans have to stop living beyond their means, they have to cut their bloated military budget, stop the social safety net programs. and a familiar call for a new global reserve currency. even international supervision of t

the united states it was a result of world war two war one of the united states came out as a pretty predominant power but it was not wilson campaigned about keeping neutral there was a huge debate united states we weren't prepared and it was a tragic result of the ravages of world war one on europe and the united states did come out as a more dominant power relative to the destruction of europe after world war one but look what happened after world war one look what happened after world war two the united states' role in rebuilding other countries other former enemies was specific and peter i think i think obviously we should all learn more about history but i would say that the policymakers in the united states who thought about the importance of protecting the sovereignty of russia's neighbors who thought about the importance of nato enlargement knew well the massive contribution of the citizens of the soviet union during world war two and knew well of the ravages that stalin brought on russia's neighbors afterwards and i think that those two things made the importance of what pres

well it really is more than anything a huge a symbolic and unprecedented blow to the united states to its status as a safe investment basically what this credit rating lowering does that it is it really raises questions about the validity of the united states and the ability of the u.s. politically to get its financial house in order so to speak the record here for the american people for the u.s. government could be severe now while this only takes it down from aaa to a.a. plus with a negative outlook threatening in fact that the rating could get lowered even more in the next two years what it does is it potentially sends the message that the united states is a risky investment that could send interest rates going up for the federal government and because other borrowing costs are tied to that that means mortgage payments could go up mortgage interest rates can go up car interest rates can go up and really the rest of the u.s. economy could be severely affected now one thing that we do have to keep in mind here is that the obama administration had pointed out that the s. and p. had m

to the united states. since ply arrival in prague in january, i worked with a talented embassy team in three principal areas. first, the defense and security relationship between the two countries. second, commercial and economic ties and, third, shared values. particularly the shared values of good governance and of civil rights for all. in each area, the relationship was good. but we have worked with the czech government, with officials across the political spectrum, with czech civil society and with the czech people to make it great. in the defense and security realm, the czechs are staunch allies. in the past years they've increased their contributions in afghanistan to over 700 soldiers and civilians. czech personnel operate in some of the most dangerous parts of the country and they have suffered numerous casualties there. when i recently visited afghanistan to thank czech and u.s. personnel for their service, the u.s. soldiers that i met with gave the czechs high praise. that included general petraeu

didn't just downgrade the united states they put us on further downgrade watch they're suggesting that this downgrade may be big the beginning of a process and not be am i do think that the leadership of united states here for the dollar has come in for increasing question over the last few years we know the direction but this is heading in more or less down the problem we have is that there is no other currency present a position to fill the shoes of the u.s. dollar i mean the euro normally mentioned as a possible replacement is in the shape that makes the dollar situation look pretty good right now so clearly that doesn't look likely you may see regional currencies emerge with euro zone rules of renminbi in an even virtual u.b.i. taking up some of the position dollars berkeley had in their respective world regions. china has a media leader reacting to the news of the downgrade by suggesting a new stable reserve currency is needed instead of the dollar concerns are also rising in asia's third largest economy india were finance ministers called the situation grave artie's previous read

i want to alert our viewers in the united states and around the world we're awaiting a statement from the president of the united states, and he will go in the dining room over there at the white house, and the president will go to the podium there and make a statement. we are told it will be on the overall state of the u.s. economy, and the u.s. economy as well as the tragedy, the death of the 30 american troops in afghanistan over the weekend. 22 navy s.e.a.l.s killed when the helicopter went down. we are told it has been delayed by half an hour. he will speak in about 30 minutes from now. we will have live coverage here in the "cnn newsroom." we have all the reporters and analysts standing by, and we are continuing the conversation with donald trump. the decision you made a couple months ago not to seek the presidential nomination. any regrets? >> first of all, i want to say as i was listening to you eloquently state about the president's conference, i was saying what a terrible time this is for our country. our economy is absolutely doing horribly, and the helicopter was just a di

god bless the united states of america. e have the following message from the american wind energy association. >♪ ♪ >> please direct your attention to the stage as we prepare for mr. herman cain. >♪ >> hope and change ain't working. we do not need to rewrite the constitution. we need to re-read the constitution and in force the constitution. ♪ america one voice, we stand i am america one hope to heal our land this is the work that must be done i will not rest until we have one i am america ♪ >> arise, shine, and the glory of the lord has risen upon the. herman cain. ♪ >> the founding fathers did their job. we have to do our job and be the defending father. >> i love you. all right, they did not give me much time. thank you, thank you, thank you. we are america. we are the greatest nation in the world. and we do not have to apologize for it either. [cheers and applause] i do not have to tell you about the problems this nation faces, so i and going to spend my few minutes talking about how we solved this mess. [cheers and app

listen to the american president blame storming everybody else for the nation's woes before the united states of america suddenly get on the backs of europeans at least there is somebody who vaguely seems as if he's in charge of the picture in the united states of america the euro zone is a fiasco we have a series of politicians who've got no concept of economics no concept of economies and they're busy destroying the eurozone in one fell swoop and all of this is ultimately only helping the world go east this is a huge political economic problem it's being driven by a large number of politicians who've got no idea what they want to do what they're trying to do all they're trying to do is desperately hold on to control and actually that's the nub of the problem because they need to get out of the picture they need to run away from it they need to help us entrepreneurs get there and be able to invest and the reason we're not investing in the united states of america at the moment is because in the new europe such as poland where i'm speaking to you today all the way through that wonderful cresc

the united states states there has been a lot more resistance to the idea. there has been a lot more fight against foreign tax havens and also a fight by people like senator levin as a tax haven offering secrecy and saying, welcoming the dirty money or criminal money or whatever. so, this is you know what powerful democracy having a lot of trouble at the moment but this is an issue where i think there's a huge potential if people begin to understand the importance of this and how dangerous it is. i think we can get change and then we can really get real change in the offshore situation. oecd is another organization that i think is susceptible to pressure. all of these things are very difficult when the long-term programs are required to address this stuff. but certainly there is plenty we can do. i can get into more specifics later if we have time. >> grade, thank you. rebecca, is one i guess on messaging. we have heard lots of policymakers go on and on about corporate tax rate and how that is harmful for u.s. businesses and yet you are painting quite a diff

the united states had frankly been extremely duplicitous in the war between iran and iraq. we are well aware of the iran-contra scandal where the united states was selling military equipment to iran, and then using that money to purchase military equipment to be used by the contras in their war against the sandinistas in nicaragua. what's not so well known, but is truthful, is what we were doing for iraq during the same time. iraq had a nascent nuclear program that it started in the early 1980s. it was sort of going along at a modest pace. one of the problems was that there were important pieces of equipment which they could most readily get from the united states but which fell under a doctrine called the dual use prohibition. that is, if a piece of equipment that might be useful in a medical context also could be used in a military context, it was not to be sold to iraq, and a list of other countries. beginning in the mid '80s, we essentially rescinded that policy as it related to iraq, and begin selling in equipment which was very useful in their nuclear program. and so,

by s&p, where the markets fully to is the united states. this is being pointed out. and much of the commentary we've seen, some of the u.s. analyst who we are competing for, a dysfunctional europe and dysfunctional japan. so the west, weirdly a good job states. is not kind of the question, and i'm sure bob will comment on this, there's the question in your about the volume of u.s. leadership. they are concerned about populism in the united states but they have plenty of their own problems with the riots in london, the various massive debates in terms of people than having no, country at what went wrong. we have seen plenty of a people's, sort of the fringes of european space of people protesting, populist parties have certainly a lot of fraction. elections coming up in france next year in 2012 where the main competitor for president sarkozy is not perhaps the socials we saw, a new brand of populist politician in france. and we have the elections in germany in 2013 where the coalition that angela merkel has tried to keep, how politics in germ

and the united states so clearly a lot of the blame. should be going for them on the other end zone now or as we are already seeing this very high debt bargain and clearly there needs to be some other political solution because i don't think there's any is a greater fix that as i mentioned are from some form of debt restructuring but one point that was made earlier i do want to comment on also though is that the european central bank is any better than that i reserve my opinion clearly that's not. the norm and ruining the eurozone but bailing out every eurozone country they can find on every bank left and right is that a smart again records are not of italian debt spanish debt italy is sitting on two trillion euros of bad there's no it's absolutely impossible even if germany was going to spend all their money that they have got and italy still wouldn't be enough to to give that same awful old saw right now the eurozone is in the process of total disintegration as a result of those policies and the e.c.b. is already doing quantitative ea

but if you question is should the united states goodwill it turns out to be a go to the united states like a. rest and balance balance so we know that when we were going to war all right right now this is a discussion that we're having between if shari'a and western values can coexist and how that work that isn't just limited to libya or to what we've seen in history and iraq it's a discussion that's going on now in london i want to take a look at what's going on there a story from one of our reporters laura and and i want to get your response to that mr brown and let's take a look. so we are here to tell you now islam. is unstoppable in europe stoning for adultery cutting off hands for stealing death of renouncing islam this group of men is trying to enforce shari'a law in the u.k. they started a campaign to make certain areas of london and other cities islamic law control so starting with walthamstow east london people are good for being evil because of these numbers were targeted to the muslim an enormous community also looking we believe that was suspended together trade according

they give the united states their money and the united states says -- we'll pay you back with interestate and credit of the united states still means quite a bit and, indeed, some other major nations have seen their credit rating cut and it didn't have all that much impact on those countries, including japan. >> in a moment i want to talk to you about what it may mean for states and fannie mae and freddie mac. whether they may face downgrades as well. i want to bring in john king. you've been talking to your sources in washington. was this a surprise for the obama white house? did they have much advanced notice of this? >> around anderson this is what i'm told, at 1:30, s&p sent word they were planning to make this decision. i'm told treasury analysts quickly caught what they caught a glaring mistake and they say, and this is the administration's view, s&p overestimated future deficits by $2 trillion because they made a miscalculations -- from a congressional budget office report. the administration says s&p then acknowledged the mistake, went back and redid its analysis and still came

second place it might be appropriate to the united states west but what problem could it pose to the united states or to the western world well for example if you had an islamist government that was very actively militant anti western. electric big problem in a country that's a major oil supplier. it could be a problem because it weeps abseiling the general climate in a very belligerent middle east and soap so there are potential problems there would be no more liberal on the border to crack to a country like libya will turn out to be the better leader and go to united states on the other hand it's also very possible to have a democracy which turns out to be anti western and very nationalistic what that could be represents a popular current in the country and it's not it's fantasy or even if it works in the democratic. machine should the u.s. speak out very loudly or get involved to not have it be a government that is anti western because you have made the point that the us going on spreading democracy has got a really bad name after iraq and afghanistan was pretty much a mark receive

code was designed at a time when we did not have to worry about the competitive position in the united states. we were fully dominant when this tax code was developed. i don't think anybody if they were going to sit down and the fis tax code for the united states in 2011 or 2012 would come up with one that looked anything like this one. my time is expired and i thank the panel for their testimony. >> thank you very much. for your work on the commission the gang of 6i don't think anybody disagrees on the last statement, too it is clearly time to overhaul and an antiquated tax code. but it's not going to be easy. one thing i've learned around here the abstractions are easy sometimes abstractions are cruelty because it's the specifics that really count. for example, a lot of talk about the base. the current tax rate 35% federal , how much could the rate below word if all expenditures were eliminated you don't get very far to stick to the territorial systematists territorial you don't get very far. you get down to 29% approximately. then the next question is what about the interest expense? q1 to

the united states has the kind of budget imbalance that normally does occasion a downgrade we do have a particular set of opportunities in the united states not available to countries which is a good reason not to downgrade and that is we can print the world's global reserve currency not without debasing and devaluing that currency but we can print it so the united states borrows in dollars and has the sole unique legal right to pay things and produce dollars which is eniac situation and makes us more credit worthy a downgrade which i think is quite possible and the sheer spectacular public failure of the american political system will take a while to figure out but they will not be minor and they will not be positive just so people know the statutory debt limit of the united states has been raised ninety times since one nine hundred forty that's an average of one point three to one point. times a year every single year there's another funny thing that no one seems to mention about the debt ceiling which i find interesting as something of an economic historian and that is that

to the united states. since my arrival in prague in january i worked with a talented embassy team in three principal areas. first the defense and security relationship between the two countries. second commercial and economic ties and surge shared values particularly shared values of good governance and civil-rights for all. in each area relationship was good but we have worked with the czech government and the czech civil society and the czech people to make it great. in the defense and security realm the czechs are staunch allies. over the past year they increased their contributions in afghanistan to 700 soldiers and civilians. czech personnel operate in some of the most dangerous parts of the country and have suffered numerous casualties. when i visited afghanistan to thank czech and u.s. personnel for their service u.s. soldiers that i met with gave the czechs high praise. that included general david petraeus who explained the important responsibilities that czech allies are carrying out side by side,

it wasn't restricted to the united states. the same thing happened in british columbia, and the same thing happened in the west coast of mexico and elsewhere. there war very few newspapers that opposed mass confinement of japanese americans. among which were disproportionately black american newspapers, such as the los angeles tribune and the chicago defender. the san francisco chronicle also resisted executive order 9066. by and large the american press did not report a great deal about the japanese americans. people outside the west coast didn't know or care much about the japanese americans, until the government moved them, and then people figured, where there's smoke there must be fire. the government must know what at it doing. and so for the balance of the war years, the press was fairly negative, until the exploits of the japanese american soldiers of the 442nd, in combination with the government efforts to present a positive public image to japanese americans to aid in resettlement of people getting out of camps, began

thank you very much, everybody. >> that was the president of the united states, don. the president coming out into the briefing room at around 8:40 p.m. eastern to make that statement saying that he has reached an agreement and the united states will now avoid a default. the agreement of course though has to be approved by the senate and the house of representatives. they've got tomorrow to do that before that august 2nd deadline comes into play. stand by for a moment, don. because i want to go to capitol hill. kate bolduan is getting details on what the house speaker, john boehner, just briefed the republican caucus. he had some talking points on how good this deal is for the republicans, kate. >> actually, i just dropped the paper so let me grab it real quick, wolf. this is actually a power point presentation that speaker boehner was going through with members on this conference call and it's really ticking off exactly what this deal is and also trying to make the case why they need to support it. what i'm seeing in the notes that i'm reading here in this power point

would it mean that these and merging democracies in the middle east would be friendly to the united states i think in this case the history might not be in favor of the united states and what we might see is the image and so for of some different models of democracy which will not be the liberal democratic model which we know in the west with an emphasis of on elections essentially and creating procedures and structures favoring elections between competing elites favoring individual freedoms we're going to trying to say here is that the receive is very contested as a concept there is more than one type of democracy and that's in order to sort of guess the outcome of democracy it is essential to look at the realities affecting the temperature to democrats in the nation so where do i see stating roots and look at you know the realities there and how they will proceed can adapt if you want to and we have competing models we talk a lot about islamic or islam democracy. so would that mean that we live in well i mean or i mean jeff jeff i mean you're right i mean this again it's very academic bu

democracy isn't a marsh it's not recognized at least by the united states and its allies and then the united states has been a huge impediment to democracy in the arab world since its inception since independence so what is its track record. its track record is very negative as many serious american historians admit themselves throughout the cold war period when the begin to me was communism the united states not just in the middle east but also in south america was prepared to tolerate tyrants took data as butchers of their people because it's there in cross with the end of the cold war. humanitarianism became one of the ideological pillars except in those countries where it wasn't convenient so we've seen in the middle east in particular. dictatorship in egypt which appears to be collapsing as we speak which has been there for the last twenty five to thirty years we have seen regimes over twenty years long in the matter of b.m. countries tunis and morocco. we've seen the toleration of a completely authoritarian brutal monarchy in saudi arabia jordan itself has been reduced to the st

-- across the united states. to support that bid we have adopted a whole of government approach here in the united states and with embassy prague to establish a broad, civil nuclear strategic ownership between our two countries. so from fostering the relations between u.s. and abroad rad facilities to making regulatory exchanges, to working together to improve nuclear safety, our two nations are building a model civil nuclear relationship for the 21st century. my third area of emphasis has been the shared values that bind our two countries together. czech and slovak national aspirations in the 20th century were first realized by the pittsburgh and washington declarations, signed right here in the united states after world war i by president wilson's great friend and czechoslovakia's first president, a revered name in my home growing up. thomas masher it. the united states helped liberate czechoslovakia from the nazis, supported against communism and transform the goals of the revolution into reality. i have carrie

boston built the first modern sewer system in the united states. ours was completed between 1877 and 1884. with this wonderful new sewer system, we were taking our filth and moving it out to the ocean. of course, all of this was untreated. in the 1960s, we were still pumping all of our sewage out to moon island, untreated. we would get swimmers here, never knowing, in the middle of summer, why you would have a cold. well, we were swimming in diluted sewage. melosi: the major way to deal with pollution, at least until early into the 20th century, was through the process of dilution. the assumption was that the capacity of rivers and streams, and even the seas, allowed for certain levels of pollution that eventually would purify themself. as we get later into the 20th century, it becomes clear that the volumes of waste made dilution unworkable as a single solution. and so treatment became the ways in which we deal with pollution. narrator: to protect public health, starting in the 1950s and '60s, there was a push to put in wastewater treatment plants

of the united states so there is a certain loss of confidence on the part of the united states that you cannot have that you cannot have the political will and the political consensus to seriously. deal with the long term issue and of course next year you have the presidential election you also have the congress you know and there will be all will be more practice in fighting mr chang thank you very much for your insight there joseph shine professor of political science at the city university of hong kong thank you. well russia is keeping a close eye on washington's political struggle to resolve the crisis prime minister vladimir putin says the american economy stays at risk despite the deal which means washington can no longer be a symbol of economic stability around the world. actually there's nothing good about it just postponed making more systemic decisions this colossal debt fourteen trillion normal means that the country has been living on credit which is really bad for one of the world's leading economies this means they live beyond their means and put a part of that burden on t