Said this will make banks act irresponsibly but we never visit that this connection of the system. Weeks spirited it from 2000 he hands added on in the insurance for free in the end freddie and all the other things but we promoted that moral hazard problem that is supposed to resolve. We tried with Flood Insurance but in those cases nobody could articulate for safety reasons for reforming those systems. Day you see any hope . I would get a slightly different interpretation. You are right fdr was very worried of the moral hazard consequence is but it was an upsurge that it had to be dense would happen in the way. But with deposit Insurance Scheme more federal oversight we can argue that was good but that meant banks could do certain things it actually deprived a lot of people love credit because regulated banks could make certain loans but what happened because they wanted loans this waterfall Innovative Society created alternatives that is what we call the shadow banks keep the bailout in the 80s and the 90s as restrictions tightened we saw the creation of a lot of Household Finance and the countrywide they would originate the mortgage the mortgage so they would put them into a mortgagebacked security to sell to private investors. Everybody thought this is great. This is not only protecting banks that did using risc instead of one bank in north dakota or massachusetts being exposed to only those in their area but investors a Chinese Investor cannot that exposure all around the country. So in a perverse way that effort to make it safer cause the risk to migrate out where did they falsely believed that it made it safer but it actually unleashed the supply of credit through the peony in freddie that allow that to happen in may not have happened if it did allow that risk up to my great but were i agree is the bailouts of 2008 and 2009 created the aura of too big to fail and you can see this as they systematically barrault so one of the priorities is to squeeze out that premium and one is to have more capital and shareholders will discourage the banks to be subject to those rules but to make it as clear as possible and i think we can prove we succeeded until something actually happens. I am not sure i want to be around when that happens but if you watch the pricing of the bonds they are slowly converging on the higher rates to take away the benefit of too big to fail but i do believe we are going in the right direction the key for having me. [applause] spinneret good evening will go into big Manhattan Library please silence your cellphone this is taped by a cease ben n booktv jus a you know, the microphone is there a microphone and will not project slowed please speak loudly and clearly tonight is the talk based on the book the reproach of hunger i david rieff. The world on to conquer thought by leading intellectuals is called into question the new book to discuss complex factors pushing the goal of eradicating hunger out of reach. To make ethanol based fuels and the Global Warming with the extreme weather patterns. And to reduce the supply of grain for direct consumption. Thatd is a stellar in addition of literature. David rieff apolitical analyst and critic graduating with a degree in history from princeton focusing on immigration in International Conflict alien humanitarianism. The author of eight previous books with the new York Institute with the humanities has collaborated with the world policy journal on during the book review of the founder of the war crimes project in washington d. C. Please give him a warm welcome. [applause] thanks for coming out it seems like we may get a little bit of winter. This is a key obituary. But in fact, but i started to write about migration in the u. S. In case you dont know my work with us transformation and they do this in the 80s. In with those cubanamericans as well and have some connections to that world. In between 1982 in the 2004 i pretty much was with the predictable places and i am much too old to do that now so in any case i was not interested in with military questions but i thought i had something to say about the humanitarian defect first of all, in terms of relief. But to have those relief workers around in all the places and many others. I was in liberia and sierra leone. And in central america. So this represents the move from the emergency relief to a more general question in the book is about end surrounding that which i referred to is warranted or not are justifiable. So i thought because in the end that starkest measure of poverty is under, i would write a book about development the effort to reduce or end extreme poverty in her. Of many ngos of philanthropy from the bill and Melinda Gates foundation. But they really believe so extreme end hunger. I laid my temperamental cards on the table thinking about that up close probably not the most optimistic. But i founded very startling it took me seven years to write the book in all kinds of places. But i was at a loss to industry and the optimism family along with more is the great killer of Human History with every generation as far as most experts believe whether they agree in the and a comment economist the estimate is in every society as a great way of Human History as we think of that indefinable terms in every society. And seemingly with regularity so why do people think as this is my question in the un system that these foundations why is there so much optimism . In between optimism and hope. It should be empirically justifiable. You can hope in their religious sense and you dont have to think a good outcome is likely to hope for one but if you are optimistic you are saying something very different to say we believe with a rational person on the empirical ground should believe things will get better. As a caricature and pessimism but you cannot just say i am optimistic because i want things to be this way or because to abandon optimism is to a bandage humanity abandoned community between that distinction between optimism and hope is less land people see. So why was there this optimism . As one might have thought it leads to a pessimistic conclusion. Wars have diminished over the last 100 years and while i dont agree with the psychologist of spanker everything but his argument the world is Getting Better he is right that the prevalence has diminished. If he is right we made extraordinary progress with the human species to reach than with a set of powers. There has been a great progress made it is less lethal than it has ever been. Even though it was known everywhere from the beginning of time. They have not seen a major famine, the chinese famine which was manmade. Let is part of decisions made by his colleagues from the republic of china. So you already are talking about a famine that could have been averted without that murderous industrialization and collected a it that they decided to impose on the chinese people. With that great chinese famine in that single event in Human History and that is in one event. So you could say we dont have those anymore. Even in africa in some ways has become the less lethal cuvier classic example in nature in the 1970s. There is the of quasi famine is a terrible thing. But it is still the fact it is in the same place largely the result of the same climate conditions of various disasters but yet many fewer people died because there are technologies to allow the of vulnerable to survive and then did not exist even 30 years ago. But the world is a complicated can complicated place in the seven you may know that he said every documents is of barbarism. That the record is mixed and would be foolish to play cassandra in all of this. But when i ask myself when they read the assertions from brilliant people at the institute with bill and lyndon gates high happen to be in complete disagreement to say they are brilliant but it seems to me there was just as much reason for pessimism as optimism. For lower Global Warming. End Climate Change even these declarations made in paris we are talking about 2 degrees celsius people would be very satisfied if this could be kept at 2 degrees celsius. That would make vulnerabilities for agriculture there will be plans that wont survive in their current form the yields will decline. This is not speculative. We have run these test in controlled environments to see why a particular jury of we dash as if you raise the temperature in we know that yields fall. Im not talking about the apocalypse. But it seems like anything but resolve if you drive up on first avenue you will see what has been put out the lobby eliminated 52030 but that is the gist of the argument. Since we dont know if we will have what it falls through wire they so optimistic . These are pressing issues if i could do my global summary there are seven plus billion people is in the world today. Ashley asteroid coming to kill us all there will be 952050 that is no longer a fact that can be changed. Will there be 12 billion . Nor will there be a stop . Talk to demographers or not the happiest people they have been wrong so often the most flat line predictions go into more distant future that is the inventor more or less that are geared in the early 19th century because it could only increase geometrically that people lead starve to death in the near future but yet that is not what happened. But i tell think even the most optimistic among us would suggest their realestate and 10 billion people so that is an increase with onethird more human beings on this planet than you do now with a steady increase. How does one order the world end Global Warming has been unfair because it gives the agency the phenomenon it cannot have but enough is enough of the poor parts of the world that our likely to be most effective. The poorest people will get the most with that situation of their agriculture is the worst affected. So the optimism is pervasive to go on the web sites and then the agencies of the world bank of the major philanthropies in the world the optimism is a restricted it is quite widespread. There is an organization of which the former secretary general of coffee in nine is now a the president called the alliance for a revolution in africa. But there youre also talking about smart people to think things will be steadily better if the disasters are averted in we will come out with these goals by the way the definition of extreme poverty is 1 to defend cents per day or less. There are probably 1 billion people one at a seven sundays regions have not begun what is called the demographic transition of the fall of the birth rates that has come in many parts of the world who look at mexico going about five kids per family to the replacement level but yet coming back to my skepticism , i dont think anybody saw that 30 years ago. There was a roman writer who once said somewhere he did not understand when they met in the road with a burst out laughing. Then why the optimism . My bias is having spent that much time in the world that optimism is hard for me. There is actually one called mr. Pessimism so be warned that it did seem to me i couldnt figure out why people felt this way. In to look at that mainstream view to try to understand it. And most of whom are free market libertarians there is one who belongs to that School Moving it is associated from a book that is controversial the duse critique of development aid. But that made opposition to that view that asserts we will abolish extreme poverty and hunger more or less what you might sum up that capitalism cannot solve that problem and in the end one of the most famous slogan is is another world is possible no amount of technological wizardry to solve the problems to have enough to eat or for poor people 90 b. Porter anymore. Slender steel and the critique is to some extent i share that but why do all these part people think that congress is at the end . Why has he written a book wide is the current secretary general continually say that it is second to from their head of the world bank why do they think we have reached this millennial moment . Sure to of abolishing mortality is about as unheard of as you can imagine. In the equivalent views in the individualism tells you have done something terrible at least that is a common interpretation for what you find in india. There are a couple of the answers. But what all these people share is to some extent a belief whether explicitly or implicitly to except what you call that we did you and also a very smart guy. But he said basically not the we have reached the end of days but we know what a Successful Society had to be. So we should all agree lots of people would not accept this but i think that view permeates the thinking of the Mainstream Development world alien to read antiglobalization people that we are all the same page we wanted to fair taxation but not onerous taxation but we all agree on that so then there is no political problem so they said this is the political problem that we solve that and i point you to the relevant agencies and certainly if you go on the web site this is absolutely what people believe so if you take politics out of the equation and it is much easier to be an optimist because theyre not being constructive i limited debate with the guy at m. I. T. Who says we want to criticism of but not the kind that you give because it is a constructive. I said if that is really what you mean and you are talking about brainstorming which is different altogether. And sometimes in the late 80s and 90s there is the famous speech of fidel castro it is famously called the speech to the intellectuals and said outside of nothing i think that has the view of the Mainstream Development world so these are very smart people it is unlike the critics have a monopoly on intelligence or information if anything. What is the reason they are optimistic beyond politics . The belief that technology and science will solve every problem i call this technical utopianism in is as realistic as utopianism that means no place. , many things in the book but i used to be a contributing writer it to do a long piece and one who was most recently the administrator through last year a unit these people say it is true we dont have the solutions now but it intends years we will provide that even if we dont know what they are. Also the notion is that there are no great moral questions because we know what that looks like. In bill gates is the engineer in the engineering terms of the problems to be solved, not managed, assault , the gates said in a speech he has his own log if it is most revealing it would have been nice to a similar insights he does put out what he thinks that perhaps it is a conversation for another day. But he says if i believed we were not going to make progress but i know we will. And that is the question are we living in a different time . He also said people live miserably for all of Human History since people are nine to number then there were 250 years ago and there were good politicians before the answer must be technology he may be right although that has given as Global Warming. Buyer beware but the question you need to ask is does the past conditions in the future . If you look at cnbc over fox business looking at mutual funds there is that moment at the end after they make their profit of the small print says there is no guarantee of future profit. Is bill gates bought a company he would not say because as it has been successful it would be successful for the next 51 on the contrary the Smart Business position today is eventually companies out live themselves it is about Creative Destruction to be imagined and everything so you could say these last 250 years are surefire guide i know the answer to that but i insisted is worth asking the former governor of texas and richards said he was going to third base because he thought he hit a triple and you could say that question is how to be profit from these 250 years . For when we ravage the planets looking for fossil fuels for cheaper energy. Is that the inevitable shape . And that is the fate of hundreds of millions of people to be determined by a the answer. I doubt have a lot of the answers but i do have a critique of the mainstream view and of that has been taken over by business. To say business is not everything the right now the rhetoric the private sector does everything better but all the creative thinking in the private sector or in the academy if you believe that there is the evidence of paying taxes is and it is calculated they paid the taxes that they pay in the north and in the south africa is by half a trillion dollars if he has all this money to spend it is because would he has chosen not to pay or succeeded but what one consider the minefield but to be undermined that what has gone on with a hostile takeover so it is typical unless it is an emergency so the u. S. Postal service is what serves poor people does that make them more efficient . That is what they would like you to think but i think it is quite a different matter if you take the not a school with a note tradition of learning the ins a Public Schools are a failure bin surely you have made a mistake i think it is the same mistake made in the Development World and unfortunately i wish i could sympathize with the view but since i dont think for the moment they will prevail with the analysis and this is the plea and make at the end of the book ainge is the great example the brazilian government and to continue under the socialist president it is called zero honker. This date made it a priority to radically he reduce hunker. There is plenty of poverty in brazil of very problematic place but also 30 million have been brought out of poverty in those rates have cratered. I have spent a lot of time in mexico i used to live there. And i am appalled by what has happened in terms of justice attuned cry rate but it has reduced and the mortality with the program did period depending which period that you looked at. They did it because it wasnt done with outside money but it was done by this date. Im sorry they can talk all they like about their good intentions and the charitable work and they often do wonderful things but a shareholder is not a citizen that the also be a conversation for another day. If to imagine another world is possible but what is feasible . Particularly in the global south to reclaim its authority is not a great conclusion it is it pessimistic but optimistic either. The by analogy reason was up lower candle but that is all we had. To talk all love the news to readers and felonies but it is the only accountable structure because i remind you bill gates is accountable to absolutely no one in which is his partner melinda. If he decides to put all of his money into building churches nothing will stop him. He can close the foundation anytime he wants. There is plenty wrong with democracy given the influence of money. But there is some accountability in a very difficult time for lots of good things are happening in it is better than the alternative if. I will be happy to take some questions. First of all, thank you for coming out tonight to share this with us. If i am understand we do have the users to these problems . So do we have the answers . And another is this second part but i feel we have some of them but it is the view that says there are a set of the answers in how we apply the funds we are home safe. Which view du you subscribe to . The reason i am asking is if you do feel is specifically what ordinary people could pursue or ask our representatives to encourage that would be positive. What could citizens do to encourage . There are a lot of groups that do just that there is an organization run by a minister and they do fantastic mobilizations to change that aspect and to defend policies that in this country a lot of people would go hungry if you are familiar with the wic program that is constantly under attack as citizens can try to persuade their representatives or mobilized to protect those programs is to abolish when it with child malnutrition it is already bad enough. To was a little late but i am getting the gist of your theory is doing with extremes is said extreme poverty so where do we start . What is the Tipping Point from regular poverty to extreme than famine . Does that factor into the work done by any organization and whether state or private . Extreme poverty is not a metaphor it is those who live on less than a dollar a day that is the definition if you bring everybody above that level and you have and extreme poverty but the problem with that three of the model, and i think there is a continuum but using famine in and that successful fight or the disease model that the world has been very successful with disease is now polio is restricted to a handful of countries and river blindness is a thing of the past largely. The problem this it is not at all clear that the message used is applicable that is not a famine that malnutrition and undernutrition for those who dont get enough calories or that dont provide them with the nutrients that they need. Yet the prosperity of now about 300 million chinese is undeniable. Indeed if you take optimistic about development about poverty and use strip out the chinese contribution then you get much more dismal figures. People tell you about progress and aggregate but if progress is ask in china is why, x minus one is not a good results. It may not happen, you look at india and one will whose succeeded in making prosperity in the socalled license in the nairobi in times was not successful. We will see. I do not think there is one formula, but i do think trusting , i think things have to come from inside places. If i had my way this is a pipe dream it will never happen, and ngos in the global north which stopping operational and start being funders. I think its about time the imperial conundrum was ended. Even though one of these ngos do extremely good work in emergencies in particular through admirable work. In the end, societies do not change from the better from the outside. In my view. Thats a fantasy, the british were going to abolish, even the war on afghanistan, george w. Bush and tony blairs is partly justified because it wouldnt power india with afghan limits. I dont think thats how enduring sustainable change happens even if you grant that was the intention rather than justification which is what i believe. This opposition by some countries particularly in europe to gm owes have any factor in this globally . I dont think so. I dont have a strong opinion about gm owes. There is a poet who is a great of my she said toward the end of her life, i dont know would become her favorite say. Im rather tempted to take refuge in that at this moment, but certainly i was absolutely convinced as i wrote this book that i just did not have the time to write the opinion. As a political analyst, if china, india and part, brazil, argentina, the united states, canada, all except jim o what the europeans do is a very little consequence. I think the lady in the front. Do we have enough production, the production for everybody on earth, if we do then i think its a distribution people who are hungry right now because they dont have money to buy food, theres not enough food on earth. That is certainly true now. The lady said the problem was partly distribution and partly access. And not absolute production. I certainly i certainly think it i make this point in the book and i shouldve talked about this but i decided when i was in public i was gonna wing it, for better or worse. One of these days i will open my mouth and absolutely nothing will come out. So far so good as the guy said from the 50th story dropping down to the ground. The question or comment is absolutely borne out. The great indian economist, what he has many roles, hes a political philosopher. There other things, but as an economist what he showed was that in 1943 that there was no food, there are strange resources because the British Empire was taking some of the food stocks away and giving it to the troops. Even then it wasnt as though there was no food, is that poor people cannot afford the prices. So he sent and has always argued that the problem of hunger isnt the problem of access and what he calls entitlement. I think that is right. As of now is there enough food to feed everyone on the planet . Yes, absolutely. Now dont go too far down this road because remember you only have to be right once, he can be wrong decade in a deck it out but youll have to be right once. The problem is again coming partly back to Global Warming mike i called this book food justice and money for a reason because i do think the fundamental problem of hunger is a lack of justice. Rather than my big criticism of the uns view and a Business Driven Development is it is largely marketdriven and productive. , but there is a fly in that ointment which is, lets say country x produces a huge surplus, are they really going it is country x going to make it available to poor people who cannot afford to pay for it . Who are out of the world market in a certain sense. Or are they going to export it to countries with rising middle classes . China is a good example of that. Or, indeed are they going to use food staples that could feed hungry people for meat production. Remember that a lot of the four staple grains are used to feed pigs, chickens, and cattle. That is a very inefficient way of providing for people because cattle eat. But the energy in his much larger than the energy meat provides. These are cultural questions. Youre not going to talk some prosperous person in shanghai, ive had these conversations ive spent a great deal of time researching this in china and india. You go to someone and they say, i like to eat meat, its my culture and theres more of it and that is great. So i dont know how you make access possible except through more justice and less inequality. Those are political. Thats a great problem with the scientific, technological account. Its productive but thats not the way were going to get out of this. Thank you for coming. You talk about returning the power to the state, with all the political unrest going around in the south and in the middle east areas impoverished, how would you recommend that ngos start funding and become stable enough to help poverty within their regions. The first thing i would say is that its not for us to decide these things. Its not up to what is the legitimacy of the Ford Foundation in deciding what the government should be . Im sorry but i have a lot of friends and theyve done a lot of good work but in the end i will give you a counterfactual. Maybe thats a better way to describe it. We think its perfectly normal to say and have ngos going around the places where government is dysfunctional. Lets use a polite term. It seems perfectly normal that the new yorkbased International RescueCommittee Goes to malawi or goes to burma, or goes wherever, just ask yourself what people in this country, maybe not you that what most people in this country would have thought if during katrina the venezuelan government had sent eighteenths, and yet there is no difference, katrina was is royally botched as any emergency in modern memory, the same description you gave of these governments remove south could have been given of all the actors from georgia bushes fema administrators. In the end, absent world government, nations have to work it out. History doesnt go at the same speed everywhere. If i could show you books written by British Imperial travelers about singapore in 1900 saying that the climate in the confucian culture made it absolutely impossible that these people could amount to anything. Its on many measures the most prosperous and impure health outcomes, educational wealth, et cetera to countries in the world. Things change. I. I do not think the imperial messages going is sustainable anyway. I mean some things have to be, countries have to go through things. Imagine another counterfactual for you. Imagine an 1861 when the American Civil War was about to begin that the martians had landed and said we dont want you to fight this war. War is uncivilized, you must eat us. First of all societies have to work out, you dont want to be worked up by war but sometimes there is a place for war. I think these countries have to go through the things theyre going through. You can help but the biggest help would not be ngos, it would be making corporations pay. At some point its not unreasonable to believe that things might change. Thats not optimism but its not pessimism either. I think this will be the last