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Male Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CNBC Debate
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"The West Isn't Working."
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Please switch off your phones. We are ready to begin.
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This debate is being televised by CNBC, and your presence is considered your
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consent to be filmed.
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And now, please welcome your moderator,
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Maria Bartiromo. [Applause]
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Maria Bartiromo: Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this
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morning. For the first time in a long time, if not
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ever, there is a conversation happening around the world that is questioning the
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sustainability of the super power status of the West.
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Why is the West not working? We are here today to talk about one of
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the most urgent problems of our time, unemployment.
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The global recession has resulted in a massive loss of jobs, creating what the
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head of the IMF has called "a wasteland of unemployment," and Dominique Strauss-Kahn
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is not the only one concerned.
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President Barack Obama: That world has changed, and for many, the change has been
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painful.
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I've seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories and the vacant
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storefronts on once busy Main Streets.
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I've heard it in the frustrations of Americans who've seen their paychecks
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dwindle or their jobs disappear -- proud men and women who feel like the rules have
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been changed in the middle of the game.
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They're right.
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The rules have changed.
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Maria Bartiromo: Without jobs, the economy cannot recover.
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We are here today to find solutions. Meet our panelists: Arianna Huffington of
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The Huffington Post; Naveen Jindal, the head of Jindal Steel and Power; Laura
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Tyson, professor at the University of California Berkeley and an adviser to the
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Obama administration; and Philip Jennings, General Secretary of
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UNI Global Union. Ladies and gentlemen, our challengers.
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Today's debate is in two parts and in each of these, a motion will be argued by our
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advocates.
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They'll have 90 seconds to make their case.
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They'll then face questions from our challengers and from all of you,
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the audience. We are looking forward to your
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participation so get ready with your questions.
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Motion 1: For a dynamic workforce, go East.
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Most of the jobs lost since 2007 have disappeared from the West.
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Meanwhile, some emerging countries have barely felt the recession.
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In the battle of jobs, who is winning? Manuel Salazar: We recorded open
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unemployment going up by more than 30 million people.
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It becomes more and more difficult to get those millions of people out of the
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unemployment and into jobs.
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Ian Cheshire: Our key challenge in the West is to prepare for the next generation
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of jobs, the type of skills that will be needed, the type of industries that will
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be around in 20 years. Ben Jealous: We need vision for how we in
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the West continue to employ people who have fewer skills or whose skills can be
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found somewhere else for cheaper. David Arkless: In places like China,
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Vietnam, Indonesia, where the workforce is probably as dynamic as we've ever seen in
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the industrial era. President Barack Obama: When global firms
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were asked a few years back where they planned on building new research
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and development facilities, nearly 80 percent said either China or India.
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David Arkless: They should be scared about how efficient the Chinese economy
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is becoming because it will, if we allow it, dominate the world economy.
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The issue is can we compete? Can the West come back?
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Maria Bartiromo: Let me introduce our first advocates.
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Arguing for the motion that for a dynamic workforce, go East is Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw,
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CEO of Biocon. And against the motion is Barry Silbert,
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CEO of SecondMarket. Kiran, please begin.
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Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Thanks, Maria. Well, you know, in an interconnected
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world, it's just bound to happen that jobs will move from the stagnant mature markets
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of the Western Hemisphere to the very vibrant and high-growth markets in the
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East. And in an interconnected world, I think
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companies will be compelled to move money and jobs to make them more globally
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competitive to the East.
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So there is enough evidence to show that this is happening.
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I mean if you look at what's happening with companies in U.S. and Europe,
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they are on a hiring spree in Asia whilst they are shedding jobs back home.
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So the evidence is there.
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We have to accept that jobs will move to regions where there is high growth
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and higher returns. Manufacturing, conventional,
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traditional manufacturing is going to move East because that's where the lower label costs
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are. That's where better capital efficiencies
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are. So this is the shape of things to come
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and the West has to accept it. But having said that, I do believe that
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it's not all bad news because the Western consumer has benefited in a big way.
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Take for example mobile phones. If it wasn't for the huge economies of
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scale created by India and China, you couldn't get those bargain prices at
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Walmart or Best Buy. So the way I look at it is that times have
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changed and I think the West has to accept that fact that there has to be a different
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way of creating new jobs. Jobs being lost have to be replaced with
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different jobs. Maria Bartiromo: Kiran, thank you very
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much for that side of the argument. Now let's hear the other.
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Barry, over to you.
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Barry Sibert: When I was first approached about participating in this debate, I was
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hesitant to accept the invitation to defend the West.
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Aside from the fact that I have two very large Asian investors in my company,
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how can I overlook the success of incredible entrepreneurs like Ms. Shaw and the many
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startups in developing countries blazing paths oftentimes against significant odds?
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But it got me thinking given that small businesses are the largest job creators,
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what does it take to start a business? I quickly realized that contrary to the
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title of the debate, the West is working quite well.
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There are really kind of four key critical elements that are necessary to starting
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and growing a business. First, you need a skilled and educated
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workforce. Second, you need rule of law,
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including intellectual property protection. Third, you need a proper balance between
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government regulation and free markets. And lastly, you need access to capital.
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And it is this final element that I believe the West outshines the East in
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particular. The West I believe has the most developed
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capital formation process, from angel investing to venture in private equity
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funds to the markets both public and now private necessary to support innovative
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businesses, and it is these types of companies that create long-lasting
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sustainable jobs. So I offer to the audience that the West
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can in fact be the engine for future job creation, particularly if the government
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and business can work together to find easier access to risk capital for small businesses.
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Maria Bartiromo: Thank you very much. You both make terrific arguments.
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Challengers, these are the two arguments. Who is right?
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Naveen Jindal: Well, I think Kiran Shaw is completely right, that it is happening
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in the East.
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We are all the time looking for people. We are hiring, say, in our steel
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and power business, we are looking, we are hiring thousands of workers,
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skilled, semi-skilled, even unskilled people and giving them those skills which are
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necessary. In fact, we have a problem of not finding
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enough skilled people, and that's a very big responsibility.
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We almost need an additional 300 to 350 million trained people by 2020.
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And I completely disagree with what Barry said because if the West was working well,
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now why would the unemployment rate be so alarming?
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And all those clippings you showed,
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why would there be such an alarm? Why would CNBC host a program called "The
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West is Not Working?" if it was working well?
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So CNBC can't be this wrong.
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Maria Bartiromo: A fair point. Philip J. Jennings: We need a message of
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hope from this event. The working people of the West are ready
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to save the West if they are given the chance.
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There was a rotten business model in the West which brought those economies to
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their knees. It was the people that paid the bill.
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They are angry. They are cornered.
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And if we have the argument, if I have to face a group of workers and I say,
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"The future is in the East," they will be more Jasmine Revolutions by the day.
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Maria Bartiromo: And we've seen protests. Philip J. Jennings: People have to wake
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up. People have to wake up.
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The G20, wake up. We've asked for a working party at the
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G20 on unemployment. We are still arguing.
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Sarkozy is here tomorrow. I hope he's got his jobs mojo with him.
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We have to -- there are things to address.
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The G20 has to wake up. We have to look at inequality.
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Henry Ford was right. You put money in workers' pockets
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and we'll make the wheels of the economy turn. It is not happening.
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The top 10ths of one percent in the
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States took 30 percent of all the income during the course of the last 20 years.
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Maria Bartiromo: So you agree with Kiran? Philip J. Jennings: We got to plan.
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Maria Bartiromo: You agree with Kiran? Philip J. Jennings: No, I don't agree
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with Kiran. Kiran, we need to grow in the East and the
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West. India, you have to create 270 million jobs
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in the next 20 years. You are going to need the help of the
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West to help you get there. You have 100 million people living in
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poverty today.
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Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Well, you know, Philip, I do agree with you in a way that
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this is about creating a new kind of global job market.
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This is about creating complementary and equitable jobs in both hemispheres, and I
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think we have to create jobs that share risks and resources across the innovation
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and commercialization continuum. So I agree with you to that extent and I
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think the West will have to become more, depend on countries like India and China
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to be globally competitive. You cannot build vertically integrated
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job markets in the Western Hemisphere or in any hemisphere for that matter.
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Maria Bartiromo: Arianna. Arianna Huffington: What is missing in
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the West is what really was here in the introduction to the show, which is that
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sense of urgency. I think the introduction to this show
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should be played at the White House and on Capitol Hill and in parliaments around
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Europe everyday because that sense of urgency around jobs is really missing.
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I mean politicians, as the President said in the State of the Union, talk about jobs
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but they are not really doing anything about jobs and it's this dysfunctional
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political system in the West that's making it so difficult to produce anything but
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suboptimal solutions that's creating that danger because remember, when the West
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brought a sense of urgency to saving the financial system, they saved the financial
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system. We have enough tools in our toolbox.
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It's just that we never brought that same sense of urgency around jobs.
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And yet, it's not just the economic problems that ensue.
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It's the political instability that is growing.
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And I have two daughters in college and increasingly, we have college graduates
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who cannot get jobs. Just imagine that.
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That really disrupts the natural course of events.
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So as well as all the other problems we are facing, the problem of youth
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unemployment in the West is particularly large and so we cannot just,
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unfortunately, assume that things will get better by themselves.
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Laura Tyson: Can I say something here? I think actually Barry raised a very
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important point. I think we should realize that until the
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crisis, if we had a discussion here five years ago, we wouldn't have this
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discussion. Five years ago, and the evidence is very
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strong on this, it's not an either/or proposition.
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There was complementarity and jobs growing both in Asia and in the emerging markets
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and certainly in the United States. So we have here a very profound deep
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cyclical problem. It does not mean if we go forward,
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we cannot find a world with enough growth that we have jobs growing in both places.
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So I don't agree it's like a shift, oh my God, a job there is a job lost.
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It's just not true. Research establishments in emerging
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markets are complementary in many respects to research establishments in the U.S.
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or Europe. To Barry's point, I think Barry is making
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a very important point. Look at issues of ease of doing business.
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That list is dominated by many Western economies, including the United States.
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And with the right capital market conditions, with the right demand
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conditions, with the right physical and monetary policy, the U.S. has been
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and will be in the future a powerhouse of entrepreneurship.
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Most jobs that most people have in the world for now and the foreseeable future,
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even though they will be globally integrated, will be local jobs.
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They will be jobs that are service jobs for the people who live in their regions,
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their communities, their states, and their nations.
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And those jobs will depend upon two things: one is the amount of demand,
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how healthy the macro-economy is, and two is the strength of the educational system in
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those economies. And we can talk about that.
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That's going to be the second session here, but I think that's, for me,
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I believe the U.S. can get its macro house in order.
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I worry very much about the educational challenge.
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Maria Bartiromo: Education is a critical part of this and we are going to get
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there. Let's bring in our audience and our
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special invited guests will kick that off with the front row.
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Comments? Who is right?
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Adi B. Godrej: I think that what we should realize, as Laura mentioned,
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that the recent rise in unemployment in the Western world has little to do with job
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transfers to the East. It has to do with the slowdown of the
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economy post the financial crisis.
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The system worked very well just prior to that and we need to encourage that.
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Comparative advantage will create for productivity increases which will add to
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global growth and lead to employment creation in both parts of the world.
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I think we should also distinguish between unemployment and unemployability.
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Some of the unemployment may be because of economic factors.
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But a lot of it is because of unemployability created by lack of
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education, lack of training. I don't see why in the Western world
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where unemployment benefits are paid out in large numbers simultaneously insistence
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of those people going through training programs is not done.
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Maria Bartiromo: This is a very critical point and we will get to the skill sets
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that are required to get the jobs of tomorrow in the next segment.
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Zhu Min, you've spent a long time running the People's Bank of China and then moving
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over to the IMF. You have a special vantage point here in
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terms of what's happening in the world. Give it to us.
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Zhu Min: Well, thank you. We at the IMF in the past few years
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coupled with the labor unions particularly on these issues because these are
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absolutely important. If we are looking for the job, there are