Bloomberg周末版：美债回购、伊朗局势与阿西莫格鲁访谈

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This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex [music] economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser [music] and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio.

Hi everyone, welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Tim is off. Well, this week traders took stock after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant announced a surprise increase in long-term bond buybacks to stem a rise in yields that had taken them to a near two decade high. Analysts have warned the plan may be a short-term fix given concerns about large fiscal deficits and oil driven inflation. Also a concern, US government debt.

We got an update on that this week coming in at $40 trillion. We also got retail earnings, continued uncertainty over the US war in Iran, a softening trade stance between the US and Canada, and the latest FOMC minutes showing some hawkish sentiment that could re-energize bets for a rate hike come September. All ahead of remarks this coming week from Fed Chairman Kevin Walsh at the annual Jackson Hole Symposium. His lack of guidance on when or whether the central bank will adjust rates has added to uncertainty over the policy outlook.

As always, the latest on all of this and more can be found on the Bloomberg terminal and at bloomberg.com. Now, one of the things we love to do is give a topic, an individual, a leader, a market watcher an extended amount of time to talk with us. We learn more. We hope you do as well. So last week we did this on the US's latest push to secure rare earths and critical minerals. This week we feature one of the most influential and frequently cited economists in the world.

We are talking about Nobel laurate and MIT professor Deron Asamoglu. Our conversation coincided with his new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a politics of shared prosperity. He joins us in just a moment. That chat is chalk full of topics for weekend discussions. And since it is the weekend and because we believe in mixing thoughtful discussions with some fun, we are going to wrap up with the founder of HSP brands on how Gen Z is impacting the cocktail hour.

All right, let's get to it and let's begin with one important question. What happened to liberal democracy? That is what Nobel laurate economist and MIT professor Deron Asamoglu explores in his latest book aptly named what happened to liberal democracy remaking a politics of shared prosperity. He argues that liberalism is dying primarily of self-inflicted wounds. His solution what he calls workingclass liberalism. He began talking with Tim and me about the initial success of the idea.

I think liberal democracy is one of the greatest achievements we've had from our ape beginnings and lives in very unequal circumstances in very uncertain existence mired by violence. Today we live in very complex societies open to ideas with lots of individual freedom. people participate in politics peacefully, reach compromise, sometimes consensus, and moreover we get lots of things from the government including our ability to express our voice.

That is an amazing achievement and we are I think at the cusp of losing it. Liberal democracy which still in my mind is the best framework definitely something we very much need for the future is in crisis after decades and decades of actually serving us quite well. So we have to understand that crisis and we have to rebuild liberal democracy unless we risk we want to risk losing it. We're going to talk about how you think we can rebuild it, but I want to just get some parameters set here and and and do some definitions because early on in your book, you talk about the definition of of liberalism and how it means different things to different people depending on where you live, the European view versus the American view.

Just straighten that out for us right now before we dive into this conversation.

Yeah, thanks Tim. And that's very important. Liberalism has had many meanings over the ages and today it's a big tent but at the core of it is a commitment to protect individual liberties also protect the weaker members of society and also a commitment to progress from which we all benefit. Those are the defining features of liberal ideas and they have acted as a rallying cry for people to build a better society. And the way that I define it, liberal democracy is the institutionalization of these ideas.

It's a

it's carrying them to the actual practice of our lives. And it's been brilliantly successful in the grand scheme of things. We've had decades of very rapid growth under liberal democracy for the about four decades following World War II. Those were not just high growth periods, but they were periods in which inequality was remaining stable or sometimes even declining. Every demographic group

Mhm. men, women, by race, different education groups. They saw their earnings grow very rapidly and you know always political disagreements were very important but generally peacefully. Today if you look at the picture is very different. Shared prosperity doesn't work anymore. inequality has increased a lot. But worse, in the United States, we've seen about [snorts] half of the population without a college degree experience stagnant or declining wages for about four decades.

While productivity increase, while people with college degrees, post-graduate degrees improve their living standards significantly. And when you ask Americans, they have such negative views of democratic institutions. Their trust in Congress, in the Supreme Court, in the presidencies at an all-time low. The country is polarized. And very concerningly, [snorts] all Americans, but especially the young are much less willing to say that democracy is the best form of government and they're willing to experiment with different ideas.

Joe, were we destined to come here? I think people point fingers at a particular president or political figure,

but we were we destined to be here.

I wouldn't say we're destined to be here, but I would also not blame it on a particular president or particular set of choices that are US specific because you see very similar trends across many advanced nations and even in the emerging world.

Mhm. So there are some commonalities there. So that's very important to get the diagnosis right so that we know how to deal with it.

You you actually make the point early on. I mean this is the way your book begins and and Carol and I were both struck by this because we hear a lot about Victor Orban

now and the figure that he is in in Hungary. But you make the point that look this is somebody who in the late ' 80s early 90s was a very different leader and represented something very different not just for that country but for Europe.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think uh it is sort of telling of the arc of liberalism that he was the poster child for you know liberty for building democratic institutions and then he turned his back to on all of these ideas. You know the exact circumstances in Hungary of course are different. Post-transition societies had a lot of troubles. Many of them navigated them better than Hungary. But I think the issues that we see in the United States have commonalities with Hungary, but they have a lot of commonalities with what's going on in the UK, in France, in Germany, in the rest of Europe.

I

is there anywhere where this is not happening right now that you would hold up in 2026 as as a an ideal liberal democracy?

Ideal absolutely not. And I don't think I if you ask me what is an ideal liberal democracy going back, no, there isn't. That's liberalism is always an aspiring ideology and liberal democracy is always a work in progress. But today you see different degrees of crisis.