Amanpour & Co. - May 30, 2024
In the runup to the U.S. presidential election in November, the economy is the biggest driver for voters. However, there appears to be a disconnect between the economic facts on the ground and how people feel about it. Austan Goolsbee is President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He updates Walter Isaacson on the state of America’s finances — from the labor market to the housing market.
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00:00I'm Hari Sreenivasan in New York.
00:02The first ever criminal trial of an American president ended this afternoon in a Manhattan
00:06courtroom.
00:07A 12-member jury convicted Donald Trump on all 34 felony counts related to the hush money
00:13payments concealing an affair with Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.
00:18On the second day of deliberations, the jury found that the former president falsified
00:22business records in a scheme to influence the 2016 election by keeping information about
00:27the affair from the public.
00:29Leaving court today, former President Trump once again called the case rigged and a disgrace,
00:34saying the real verdict will be on November 5.
00:36He also falsely claimed that the prosecution was undertaken by the Biden administration.
00:42Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg tweeted simply, quote, today a jury found Donald J.
00:48Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.
00:51Shortly after the verdict, a Biden campaign released a statement saying, in part, in New
00:55York today, we saw that no one is above the law.
00:58Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking
01:03the law for his own personal gain.
01:05But today's verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality.
01:10There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office, at the ballot
01:15box.
01:16The judge will sentence Mr. Trump for those 34 guilty counts on July 11, just days before
01:21the Republican National Convention.
01:23He faces a punishment ranging from probation to up to four years behind bars.
01:28He is expected to appeal the verdict.
01:30We will have full analysis of this historic day on tomorrow's program.
01:34We now return to Amanpour & Company, recorded earlier today.
01:38Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour & Company.
01:45Here's what's coming up.
01:46I saw things at Al-Aqsa Hospital, which I still wake up at night thinking about.
01:53An eyewitness to war.
01:55I speak to Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon just back from Rafa, about the health care
02:00collapse in Gaza.
02:01Then...
02:02Music is not dead in Afghanistan right now, even though the Taliban's back in charge.
02:08John Legend shines his light on the music of Afghanistan, while the Grammy winner is
02:14looking back at Kabul's version of American Idol, Afghan star.
02:18Plus...
02:19I'm struck by the resilience on the job market, the strongest part of the economy.
02:25Facts over feelings.
02:27Austin Goolsbee, president of Chicago's Federal Reserve Bank, gives an economic reality check
02:33with Walter Isaacson.
02:35Music is not dead in Afghanistan right now, even though the Taliban's back in charge.
02:40I'm struck by the resilience on the job market, the strongest part of the economy.
02:45Music is not dead in Afghanistan right now, even though the Taliban's back in charge.
02:50Music is not dead in Afghanistan right now, even though the Taliban's back in charge.
02:53Common Pour & Company is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Atwood
02:59and Leslie Williams, Candice King Weir, The Family Foundation of Layla and Mickey Strauss,
03:07Mark J. Bleschner, The Philemon M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, Charles Rosenblum,
03:16Ku and Patricia Ewan, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara
03:23Hope Zuckerberg.
03:24Additional support provided by these funders and by contributions to your PBS station from
03:31viewers like you.
03:33Thank you.
03:35Welcome to the program, everyone.
03:37I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
03:39Smoke rises over Rafah in the face of mounting international criticism.
03:44Israel's operations there continue, with the IDF announcing they've taken over the border
03:48between Egypt and Gaza.
03:50And in the occupied West Bank, a fire ripped through a market in Ramallah following an
03:54incursion by Israeli troops overnight, according to local authorities.
03:58Two Israeli soldiers were killed earlier near Nablus, and amid reports of Hamas gunfire
04:03near the town of Tulkarim, Israel's far-right finance minister, Smotrich, issued this threat.
04:09If the terror continues, we'll turn Tulkarim into ruins like in the Gaza Strip.
04:14In a moment, we'll get a first-hand account from a British surgeon just back from Gaza.
04:19But first, correspondent Jeremy Diamond has the latest on the controversial military operation
04:25in Rafah.
04:27On a hilltop in western Rafah, Israeli tanks overlook Gaza's border with Egypt, the Israeli
04:33military's latest prize.
04:35Three weeks into its Rafah offensive, Israel says it now controls the strategic Philadelphia
04:40Corridor, spanning the length of that 7.5-mile-long border, which the Israeli military says Hamas
04:47has used to smuggle weapons into Gaza.
04:50Egypt denies these tunnels exist.
04:54The Philadelphia Corridor served as Hamas' oxygen pipeline, through which Hamas regularly
04:59smuggled weapons into the Gaza Strip.
05:03So far, our forces have located about 20 tunnels in the Philadelphia Corridor area.
05:08We investigate these tunnels and neutralize them.
05:12This is the human toll of that military offensive.
05:15The United Nations says more than 940,000 people have been forced to flee the city in
05:21recent weeks.
05:23For many, this is not the first time.
05:27There is no safety.
05:28Al-Mawassi is hit.
05:29The U.N. warehouses are hit.
05:30The U.N. schools are hit.
05:32There is no safety.
05:33Taysir al-Jaz says you might die at any moment, anywhere.
05:39Multiple Israeli strikes on camps for displaced Palestinians in recent days have made that
05:45point with deadly clarity.
05:47None more so than this strike in northwestern Rafah on Sunday night, which killed at least
05:5245 people and injured hundreds more, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.
05:57The Israeli military has said it did not expect civilians to die and has launched an investigation
06:02into the strike, which killed two senior Hamas militants.
06:06But at least three people can be seen on the road outside those structures moments before
06:11the strike.
06:12The Israeli military targeted these two container-like structures, just steps away from structures
06:18housing displaced civilians, which were also destroyed in the blast or the subsequent fire.
06:24Four weapons experts tell CNN the weapons used in the strike were U.S.-made bombs.
06:29They say these remnants found at the site of the attack are pieces of a GBU-39 small-diameter
06:36bomb, carrying a relatively small payload intended to minimize civilian casualties.
06:42Dropping them in densely populated areas can still have devastating consequences.
06:47If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to
06:52deal with Rafah.
06:53But for now, the U.S. doesn't plan to stop providing those weapons, with the White House
06:58insisting Israel hasn't crossed that red line.
07:02We don't want to see a major ground operation.
07:04We haven't seen that at this point.
07:08Danger or not, the Israeli military is now deep in Rafah, where Palestinian rescuers
07:13are struggling to safely reach the wounded, as the dangers are mounting for so many.
07:21Jeremy Diamond reporting from Jerusalem.
07:24Now, on Wednesday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said two of its medics were killed
07:29near Rafah when their ambulance was hit.
07:32Israel says it fired on a, quote, suspicious vehicle that was approaching troops, and the
07:37incident is under review.
07:38British surgeon Dr. Nick Maynard is just back from Gaza, where he saw the collapsing health
07:43care system with his own eyes.
07:45He left Rafah just before Israel's offensive began, and he's joining me here now in the
07:50studio.
07:51Dr. Maynard, welcome to the program.
07:52Thank you very much for asking me.
07:54You left, and I'm just going to read what you said, because you left just as the Israeli
08:00incursion began.
08:01You told Reuters that you heard bombs and gunfire all over, driving through Rafah.
08:05The tension was palpable, with people evacuating as rapidly as they could.
08:10You saw some of that attempt to evacuate in Jeremy's package there.
08:14What did you see, and what is the status of people who just want to get out of the way?
08:19So they issued the initial evacuation orders about two hours before we left for the crossing,
08:24and we saw hundreds of people rushing out of their, I was going to say houses.
08:31They're not houses, of course.
08:32These people have been displaced many times, and they were leaving their very temporary
08:36shelters, their makeshift tents, their tarpaulin shelters, gathering their belongings together,
08:44going in cars, some of them walking, some of them going on a cart with donkers, and
08:48rushing out.
08:49And it was very distressing to see them leaving so urgently, because for some of them, this
08:55is the fifth, sixth, seventh time they'd done that in the last six months.
08:59You were leaving as well.
09:00What was it like for you?
09:02I mean, did you get, you're obviously out safely, but was it dangerous as you were trying
09:06to get out?
09:07So we didn't think we were going to get out.
09:08We were initially turned away, so we went back to the temporary, well, we were advised
09:13to leave.
09:14So there was ongoing discussions between the Medical Aid for Palestinian Ground Staff and
09:19COGAT, the liaison part of the IDF, and so they initially decided for security reasons
09:24we should go back to the house, but then we left again late morning, got to the crossing
09:30as the bombings were intensifying, so we were surrounded by bombs going off really
09:37virtually non-stop, and there was very difficult decisions to be made about whether we should
09:43carry on with our planned departure, or whether we should turn around because it was getting
09:48too dangerous.
09:49But we did stay, and we managed to get out.
09:53You warned in March, actually, before the Rafah operation started, certainly before,
09:57that if a ground invasion happened, a ground incursion of some sort, it would be apocalyptic.
10:03And Gaza's health ministry said in a statement, now, particularly after the Sunday attack,
10:10there is no hospital in Rafah with enough capacity to take this number of killed and
10:15injured, causing confusion amongst ambulance teams on where to transfer them.
10:21Give us a layout of what hospitals remain, what don't, anywhere nearby these places that
10:28are under IDF attack.
10:31So Rafah is a small town.
10:33It has a population of 1,000 to 200,000 people normally.
10:36It has two hospitals, one government hospital, Al-Najjar Hospital, which normally has a capacity
10:42of about 60 beds, and a small hospital called the Kuwaiti Hospital, which has been in the
10:46news a lot in the last few days, which has a capacity normally of 15, one, five beds.
10:52So they have very limited beds there.
10:54They've got a bigger hospital between Rafah and Khan Yunis, called the European Gaza Hospital,
11:00which I've worked in a lot over the years, which is surrounded by the Israeli ground
11:05forces.
11:06So it's very difficult for patients to get to that.
11:07So effectively, there are no hospitals for these patients to go to.
11:13There are some field hospitals that have been set up, but the number of acute beds
11:17available to take these patients is very, very few.
11:21And have you been in touch with any colleagues in the medical profession or anybody in Rafah
11:26since you've left, particularly in the last few days?
11:29Yeah.
11:30I mean, I spoke yesterday to a dear friend of mine who's an operating theater nurse who
11:35almost to the day, a year ago, I was operating with in the theaters in European Gaza Hospital.
11:41She stayed in Rafah.
11:42Now she and her husband are living there.
11:43They don't want to leave.
11:44And she said to me yesterday she would rather die, and she expects to die, in her home,
11:49and she's not going to leave.
11:51I haven't been able to get hold of her today, and she hasn't answered any messages, so I
11:55don't know what's happened to her.
11:57Half her family have been killed in the last few months.
12:00I've got a close friend who's a doctor who's out there, and I've been speaking to them
12:03regularly.
12:04But the words we used a few weeks ago of this being apocalyptic, it absolutely is.
12:11There are many people being killed there.
12:13Those that have been evacuated have been forced to go to al-Mawassi, which is an area I know
12:18well.
12:19There are already hundreds of thousands of people there.
12:23They've had to accommodate nearly a million extra people.
12:27And there is nothing there.
12:28Al-Mawassi is a thin stretch of sand and wasteland divided by a road with no facilities at all.
12:36So the idea they can accommodate, in any sort of safe way, another million people is
12:43fanciful.
12:44You're a doctor, you're a surgeon, and you've worked in Gaza for some 10 years, you've been
12:49going back and forth, through other wars, presumably.
12:52I want to ask you this, because you saw in Jeremy Dimon's report there, they saw the
12:57weapons, they were described as slightly less huge and powerful, perhaps to try to mitigate
13:05civilian damage.
13:07These are American-made weapons.
13:10But from a doctor's point of view, particularly as he said, Jeremy, in a densely populated
13:14zone, a light bomb or heavy bomb is going to create a huge amount of civilian destruction.
13:22What can you say about the weapons that are used?
13:25So Gaza's got a population of 2.2 million.
13:28It is the most densely populated place in the world.
13:32I was there last May operating, I'm a cancer surgeon, I was operating on cancer patients
13:37as part of the MAP programme, and it was the last big bombardment before October 7th, the
13:43beginning of May.
13:45And I was stuck there, they closed the borders and we had to be evacuated eventually.
13:50But I witnessed for four days this non-stop bombardment.
13:54And it was an incredible demonstration of how precise the bombing can be when the Israeli
14:02Defence Force want to do that.
14:04They were targeting specific rooms in buildings, specific floors.
14:09And there was collateral damage, but minimal collateral damage at that time.
14:13So I've witnessed at first hand how precise their targeting can be.
14:18Move forward to post-October 7th, I was there over Christmas and New Year, and I witnessed,
14:24I watched the indiscriminate bombing of large populations in the surrounding camps in Deir
14:31al-Bala, where I was staying for two weeks.
14:33So I've witnessed two extremes.
14:36I've seen how precision, how precise their targeting can be, and I've seen how indiscriminate
14:42it can be.
14:43And there's no doubt in my mind that what we've seen since October 7th is indiscriminate
14:48killing of large population civilians.
14:52You know they deny that every time, and they say over and over again that we are doing
14:56our best to minimise civilians.
14:58And they say, what do you expect if the Hamas terrorist organisation, as they say they're
15:04fighting, is using human shields, is using Gazans to shield themselves from any kind
15:11of retaliation or action?
15:13What do you say about that?
15:14Well, I've not witnessed that.
15:18I think it's difficult for me to understand how anyone can claim that killing 35 civilians
15:24is a proportionate response to events earlier.
15:29But you mean 35,000?
15:3135,000 people.
15:32I've not witnessed what they're describing.
15:35And perhaps more importantly than that, my friends and colleagues who I have spoken to
15:41daily since October 7th, have lived out there with them for several weeks since then, do
15:46not provide any evidence to support that.
15:50They would say that they're there.
15:52They live in these, whatever, the underground or in buildings or whatever.
15:55That's what they would say.
15:56But it's interesting what you said about witnessing very targeted and witnessing something that's
16:02much less targeted.
16:03I want to ask you specifically in your domain about the health system.
16:09I mean I can just read you and you'll tell me much more.
16:12I mean Kamal Adwan Hospital, dozens of medical staffers taken to an undisclosed location.
16:19That was in December last year.
16:21The IDF says it takes all feasible precautions to mitigate harm, et cetera.
16:25Nasser Hospital, February of this year, 70 healthcare workers in the medical complex
16:30arrested by Israeli forces, 80 patients transferred out.
16:33They said they had apprehended hundreds of Hamas militants.
16:36Al Shifa Hospital, well we know what's happened there, it's completely a ruin.
16:40They said they were going after Hamas targets underneath in tunnels.
16:46Did you ever come across anything suspicious?
16:48Did you ever ask any of your, actually the directors of the hospitals, the people who
16:52would be there when you're not there, whether there was any threat from a militant group
16:58using their premises?
17:00I did and I can only really for vouch for what I have witnessed and what close friends
17:05and colleagues have said.
17:06I've been in these hospitals on many occasions, before October 7th but also since then.
17:12I have never witnessed, I've never seen any evidence of Hamas militants in these hospitals
17:17and my close friends and colleagues, some of whom I've known for nearly 15 years,
17:22I've asked them repeatedly and they've never witnessed any of this.
17:25Now clearly I cannot provide any evidence for what goes on in any tunnels underneath,
17:30I've never seen them but if you take Shifa Hospital as an example, which I know very well,
17:35I've been to every square inch of that hospital, I have never seen any restricted access at all
17:42to any parts of the hospital so I've seen no evidence of what they describe.
17:46Meantime, what injuries were you seeing?
17:48I mean, as you say, you've been there many, many times, you're a cancer surgeon,
17:53you're not necessarily, your profession is not to do traumatic surgeries.
17:58No, absolutely.
17:59So what have you been doing since you've been there and what have you seen?
18:03So when I was there for two weeks over Christmas and New Year, we saw a huge amount of trauma
18:08and that was really major blast injuries from bombs affecting the abdomen and the chest
18:15with severe shrapnel injuries so we spent the whole time operating on major chest injuries,
18:19major abdominal injuries with the local surgeons.
18:23My most recent trip, from which I returned just three weeks ago,
18:26we saw a different pattern of illnesses.
18:29We did see some blast injuries but the amount of bombings were much less
18:33but what we did see and what kept us really busy in the operating theatre
18:37were the problems with malnutrition and we highlighted this when we were there
18:43over Christmas and New Year and it's got much, much worse.
18:45We know the IPC has designated northern Gaza as a famine area.
18:50The malnutrition in middle Gaza and southern Gaza is now extreme
18:57and we saw the consequences of that and it's not just that they're losing weight
19:02but they become immunosuppressed if they're malnourished and they don't heal.
19:06So we saw many patients who'd had surgery for war injuries, for blast injuries, for gunshot wounds
19:13whose wounds were falling to pieces and their internal organ repairs,
19:18the bowel repairs, the liver repairs, the pancreas repairs,
19:21they were all disintegrating, falling to pieces and the consequences of that are devastating
19:27and I had patients, I'll talk about two patients in particular,
19:3116-year-old Tala and 18-year-old Lama, both young ladies,
19:36both of whom had blast injuries from bombs, both of whom had major surgery to repair,
19:42both of whom were severely malnourished before they came
19:45and both of whom died under our care as a direct result of malnutrition.
19:50So the effects of malnutrition now are going to cause far, far more excess deaths than we have seen so far.
19:59And how do you live with this? How do you sleep at night?
20:02It's very difficult. I mean, I say to my friends and family that part of my therapy
20:07is actually coming to talk about it to people like you
20:11because this is not being reported adequately.
20:15We need, those of us that are witnesses, need to tell everyone what's going on,
20:18need to make sure our governments understand the appalling consequences
20:24of the ongoing military assault in Gaza.
20:28Dr Nick Maynard, thank you very much indeed for being with us.
20:31Thank you very much for asking me.
20:33And we turn now to another tragic war ravaged place and that is Afghanistan.
20:37The Taliban controls everything again since the U.S. pulled out three years ago,
20:41even snuffing out the joys of music.
20:44A far cry from the early 2000s when the Taliban was driven out
20:48and a TV talent show gripped the nation.
20:51It was Afghan star Kabul's equivalent of American Idol.
20:55Superstar John Legend is making it the focus of his new podcast.
20:59And I saw it close up myself back in 2009.
21:08Eight years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan,
21:12what this young woman is doing might have cost her her life.
21:20But now she's one of the top contenders on the country's most popular TV show.
21:38Are you surprised that you can actually sing?
21:42You're a woman and you can sing pop rock here in Afghanistan.
21:48I'm happy things have changed for the better and that a woman like me can finally perform.
21:56Afghan star is this country's version of American Idol.
22:00It's a mad fusion of traditional Afghan culture and Western style pop.
22:06Backstage, I watched the procession of talent, drummers, dancers,
22:12acrobats, child jugglers.
22:17The audience and the country loved it.
22:20The show's producers say 80 percent of TV viewers tuned in
22:24and cast their votes by mobile phone.
22:28It seems a lifetime ago, there was so much hope then.
22:32And things like Afghan star pointed people to believe and hope
22:35that things would eventually change in Afghanistan.
22:38No longer, as I said, since 2021, when the United States pulled out
22:43and the Taliban took over again.
22:44Now, John Legend is no stranger to the TV talent show format.
22:49He's been a coach on the popular American program The Voice,
22:53and he's one of the world's few EGOT winners,
22:55having brought home an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award.
22:59He tells me why he was drawn to this project.
23:03John Legend, welcome to our program.
23:05Great to see you, Christiane.
23:07Listen, we are really pleased to be doing this with you
23:09because it's amazing that you've decided to take on in a new audio series
23:14something that happened in Afghanistan.
23:17And I really want to know why.
23:19What was it about Afghan star that moved you to explain it
23:24and rekindle it in your in your podcast?
23:27Well, I think it's just a beautiful story of the power of music,
23:32the power of the people's resilience and and really remarkable show
23:38that was pretty revolutionary for its time.
23:41People in Afghanistan at that time, as you very well know,
23:45were coming out of years of the Taliban being in charge.
23:49And and during the Taliban's reign
23:52prior to the US and the allies invasion,
23:57music was banned.
23:59So there were instruments being burned on the streets.
24:03Records were contraband.
24:05CDs were contraband.
24:07Cassette tapes were contraband.
24:09Any musical instruments were contraband.
24:11So all of that stuff, if you got caught with them,
24:14would get destroyed, burned and you may get in trouble
24:18during the rule of the Taliban prior to the ally invasion.
24:23And so
24:26there was a lot of pent up demand and desire
24:29for people to engage with music again.
24:32And when they were able to in Afghanistan,
24:36Afghan star eventually was developed as a show
24:40very similar to American Idol or The Voice, which I'm a coach on.
24:44And people were able to vote on their favorite singer.
24:49They were so engaged.
24:51It really captured the attention of the nation.
24:54And it was quite a remarkable show.
24:56And we thought it was a great story to talk about it.
24:59What happened during that time?
25:01And and I find the story inspiring, but also, you know,
25:06it really shows you the power of music
25:10and and the power of the human spirit.
25:13Yeah. And I think now, of course, with the Taliban back
25:16since the US pulled out in 21, of course, it's gone.
25:19I mean, they don't allow that anymore.
25:21Women aren't even allowed to work.
25:22And on Afghanistan and when I was there and you mentioned it as well,
25:26I think one of the main judges was a woman.
25:29There was there was a lot of women being able to do things in public
25:33that they hadn't been allowed to.
25:34But did you know anything about music?
25:38Because it's quite a musical, lyrical country.
25:40They have their own instruments and things just in general.
25:43Did Afghan music grip you or grab you in any way?
25:48Well, I learned more about Afghan music
25:50during the making of this podcast.
25:53I was able to listen to some of the iconic artists
25:57in Afghan musical history.
25:59And and some of those artists were the artists
26:02that the Afghan star artists were covering.
26:05And of course, Ariana Saeed, who you mentioned, is
26:09one of the judges who was on Afghan star.
26:12And she was a pop star herself.
26:14And it was quite revolutionary that she was a judge
26:18because she was the only woman judge.
26:20And then it took a while for women to actually win Afghan star.
26:26But the fact that they were even competing on the show,
26:29that they were singing, that they were dancing,
26:31that they may even show a little bit of their hair on the show.
26:35All of that was quite revolutionary for women in Afghanistan at the time.
26:39And and your podcast does talk a lot about your show
26:43delves into the creator of Afghan star.
26:45His name is Dawood Siddiqui.
26:48And he had he has a remarkable story.
26:50Tell us a little bit about him.
26:52Well, he was the creator and the host of the show.
26:56And then Saddam Husseini was the founder of Tolo TV
27:00and was an important, you know, broadcaster and and founder of,
27:05you know, really groundbreaking entertainment for Afghanistan
27:10during this time of increased freedom.
27:13He was there to, you know, provide the entertainment
27:16and the connection to the rest of the world.
27:18And, you know, all of that had to be gotten rid of
27:23once the Taliban came back into power.
27:25But what I find is interesting, and I've gotten to speak with Saad
27:29since we made the podcast,
27:32is that even though the Taliban is back in charge,
27:36it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle
27:38once people have access to music and access to all of this entertainment.
27:44They find a way to get to it.
27:45Especially with the Internet and mobile devices and all these other things.
27:49Music is not dead in Afghanistan right now,
27:54even though the Taliban is back in charge.
27:56I think the spirit that was awakened and revived in Afghanistan
28:01by shows like Afghan Star and other connections
28:07with music and entertainment, it's hard to put that back in the bottle.
28:11You know, it's great that you just bring that up,
28:13because we're going to play a little clip from one of the episodes.
28:15When Dawood Siddiqui is talking exactly about that,
28:18listening to music even under the first Taliban reign.
28:21We have this area in Kabul called Makrooriyan.
28:25There are apartment buildings.
28:28Sixth floor, seventh floor, eighth floor.
28:30A lot of these apartments are empty
28:32since residents fled the country to escape the Mujahideen.
28:35So it's a good spot for a clubhouse.
28:38Plus, the apartments are so high up
28:40that you can blast music without fear of getting caught.
28:43I listen to live music a lot.
28:45I partied a lot.
28:49We went to this building and we have live music.
28:52We have preparing food for us.
28:54That was party.
28:56If I tell you that I listen to more live music during the Taliban
29:01than my entire life, you will laugh.
29:05I mean, it is funny and I can see you laughing.
29:07The idea that they listen to more music in sort of underground cells
29:13so to speak, is quite indicative of the resistance that Afghans have.
29:20Like I said before, I really think it shows the power of the human spirit
29:23and the power of music.
29:24And people will find a way to connect to music,
29:28no matter what the regime might say.
29:31You have, as you mentioned, you're a coach on The Voice.
29:34You've worked alongside people like Ariana Grande, Christina Aguilera,
29:39Reba McEntire, Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani.
29:42I mean, just so many, many people.
29:44Translate that or transpose what you've learned there and what you know there
29:49and what that kind of show gives to people and can do for people
29:54and was probably doing the same in Afghanistan while it was allowed.
29:58Well, I think people love the idea that that these artists
30:03who have a dream of being heard and being seen, artists who are unknown
30:08and become known to the public, that they can come on these kinds of shows
30:13on our show, The Voice, or on a show like Afghan Star or like American Idol.
30:17They can come on The Voice because of their talent and be heard and seen
30:23and get an opportunity to amplify their dreams
30:27and their desires to make music.
30:31And it's a powerful concept.
30:33People love that concept.
30:34And that's why these kinds of shows do so well all around the world.
30:38And what made it particularly interesting in Afghanistan
30:42was there were folks in Afghanistan, most of them didn't grow up
30:46voting for anything.
30:48So the idea of them being able to vote for their favorite singer on this show
30:52was quite invigorating for the people of Afghanistan.
30:55And it really captured the intention of the whole nation.
31:00You know, at a time when there was so much division, tribal conflict
31:06and and, you know, conflicts between different regions and ethnicities.
31:12But Afghan Star brought everyone together.
31:15And of course, you know, as much fun as we have on The Voice,
31:19as much inspiration as we get from the artists on The Voice,
31:22the stakes were much higher in Afghan Star
31:26because not only were were these performances groundbreaking
31:32and the fact that women were involved groundbreaking.
31:34But, you know, at a certain point, it started to become risky
31:39for the show to even happen because the Taliban was starting to regain
31:43some power, particularly outside of the cities.
31:46And so there was some risk involved in even putting on the show
31:50as long as they did.
31:51And so the stakes were incredibly high.
31:54And just the fact that this show was made for this many years
31:56was quite remarkable.
31:58John Legend, you know, you obviously known very much also
32:00for your social activism through your music in many, many areas.
32:04And we're going to talk about them.
32:06If Afghanistan is now emblematic of anything, it is of the absolute abuse
32:11and restrictions they put on women.
32:13And I want to ask you about looking inside for a little bit
32:18back in the United States.
32:20There seems to be a lot now in your industry
32:23trying to look inwards to how women are treated.
32:26And I'm talking specifically about the latest about Sean Diddy Coombs,
32:30you were on his last album.
32:33Are you also feeling that the idea of the,
32:37you know, the abuse of women, domestic partner abuse,
32:42it needs to be really handled once and for all and not swept under the carpet
32:47as it has been for so long, let's just say in your industry.
32:51Oh, well, you know, I was horrified by the allegations
32:56that I heard about Mr.
32:58Combs and of course, horrified by the video evidence
33:03that was released after that.
33:04But I was horrified by the descriptions that I read before the video
33:08evidence came out.
33:09And absolutely, it's something that
33:13needs to be brought to light when it happens.
33:16And my default stance is to believe women when they make these accusations
33:21and to make sure that we do whatever we can to support
33:26women who are making these allegations and make sure that they're heard
33:30and that any kind of accountability
33:34and reparations can be made to make these women whole again.
33:39It's shameful what Mr.
33:41Combs has been accused of.
33:43And, you know, I only want the best for Cassie,
33:47but also for all the other victims that have alleged that he's abused them.
33:52It's really tough to see those descriptions
33:57and to see those videos.
33:59It's quite a shame.
34:01And and I really just want accountability
34:04and hopefully some healing for all of his victims.
34:09You know, as I said, you're very vocal about a lot of things
34:12about prison reform in the United States.
34:14You wrote the song Glory for Selma,
34:17the film about Martin Luther King, the March for Civil Rights.
34:20You and you're an EGOT.
34:22You know, you won an Oscar for that.
34:24And you said in your acceptance speech, the struggle for justice is right now.
34:29Nearly a decade later, with such
34:32contentious election on the, you know, on the horizon,
34:36with, you know, in many in many ways, step backwards for justice,
34:40for voting rights, for for women's rights in the United States.
34:44How do you feel about the struggle?
34:47Well, I when I stood on the stage
34:51accepting the Academy Award and talking about mass incarceration
34:55and the struggle for justice,
34:57we were just in the beginning of thinking about the kind of work
35:01we wanted to do and organize around ending mass incarceration.
35:06And we founded Free America 10 years ago.
35:10And I'm really proud of the work we've been able to do.
35:13We've worked with organizers all around the country, with activists
35:16all around the country.
35:17And we've reduced significantly
35:21through all all of these efforts, the level of incarceration
35:26in the United States.
35:27We've helped get some more progressive district attorneys elected.
35:31And we've changed a lot of laws that affect a lot of people
35:35all around the country, including
35:39getting voting rights restored for a lot of folks
35:41and making sure that the punishments and sentences
35:46were more just and more fitting for the crimes that people were committing.
35:51And so a lot of that work has been kind of in the trenches,
35:55working with activists, working with organizers,
35:57working with state legislators all around the country.
36:00But it's really paid off in actually affecting a lot of people's lives
36:05and having and getting more freedom for more people.
36:08And so I'm pleased to have been involved with that.
36:10And I'm going to continue to work on those issues.
36:13And I want to take you all the way back to the beginning
36:15for our final question.
36:16Your very first music credit was on the miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
36:21And it's back in the news.
36:23Yeah. Yes.
36:24And I just wanted it's back in the news.
36:26And I just wondered, you know, how did that all come about?
36:29How did you how did you get to work on that?
36:32And what are your reflections now all these years later?
36:35Well, you know, I was a student.
36:37I was at the University of Pennsylvania at the time.
36:40And on the weekends, I would drive up to a place called Scranton, Pennsylvania,
36:44which which is where the president is from, actually.
36:46And so I would drive up there and I would play at a church on the weekend.
36:50And one of my choir members had gone to high school with Lauryn Hill.
36:55And she was like, you got to meet Lauren.
36:57She's working on her solo album.
36:59And so I would be driving back and forth to Scranton from Philadelphia.
37:03But this weekend, I drove over with her to New Jersey to see Lauryn Hill
37:08working on this iconic, you know, groundbreaking album,
37:12The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
37:14And I got to sit in on a session where they were working on a song
37:18called Everything is Everything.
37:19And eventually, after they had been writing for a while,
37:24they were taking a break and I got to sit down at the piano and play
37:27and sing a couple of songs for Lauryn and the rest of the folks
37:30who were gathered there.
37:31And she invited me to play piano on the track they were working on at the time.
37:35Everything is everything.
37:36And so I got to be part of this groundbreaking,
37:40influential, iconic album,
37:42which has now been named the greatest album of all time.
37:45Yeah. And I'm happy that that was my first chance
37:49to be a part of any album was being on that album.
37:53That's pretty cool.
38:10John Legend, thank you so much.
38:11And your new podcast series about Afghan star, thanks a lot for joining us.
38:16Thank you, Christy.
38:17I'm great to speak with you.
38:18Lots going on there now, as Americans prepare for the presidential election
38:23in November, the economy is the biggest driver for voters,
38:26but there still appears to be a disconnect between how people feel
38:30and the actual facts.
38:32Austan Goolsbee is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve,
38:36Austan Goolsbee is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
38:41It's part of the United States Central Bank, and it's responsible
38:44for managing monetary policy and regulating the financial system
38:48from the labor market to the housing market.
38:50He updates Walter Isaacson on the actual state of America's finances.
38:55Thank you, Christian.
38:57And Austan Goolsbee, welcome to the show.
38:59Thank you very much.
39:01You know, ever since 1977,
39:04the Federal Reserve has had a dual mandate, it's called,
39:08of keeping inflation low, but keeping employment high.
39:12It's sometimes seen as a tradeoff.
39:15To what extent?
39:16How do you see that tradeoff playing out over the rest of this year
39:19when it comes to figuring out should interest rates come down?
39:23Yeah, look, that's the hardest thing, and that's the rub.
39:26Sometimes it is a tradeoff.
39:28But other times, like last year in 2023, it wasn't a tradeoff at all.
39:33Inflation, the inflation rate fell almost as much as it's ever fallen.
39:38And for the really the first time in modern memory,
39:42there was no big recession when inflation was falling that much.
39:46I think what everybody's trying to wrap their head around now
39:49as we're finishing out this year and going into next year
39:53is the beneficial things that that we experience,
39:57the healing of the supply chain, the return of labor force participation
40:02and workers going back into their jobs.
40:07Is that going to continue or are we back to the traditional
40:12tradeoff between employment and inflation?
40:15For me, I still think there is some
40:19some benefit that's coming down the pipe,
40:22if only because those those improvements
40:26take some time to work their way through the economy.
40:28But that's the sort of the central question
40:32as we think about the macroeconomy.
40:35The Fed has always been considered independent, nonpartisan.
40:41And yet in an election year, if the Fed, for example,
40:44lowered interest rates right before the election,
40:47there'd probably be people accusing it of playing politics for Biden
40:51or the other way.
40:53To what extent can you assure people that, I mean, institutions
40:57like even the Supreme Court have become partisan?
41:01To what extent can you assure people that the Fed is not partisan
41:05in making such a decision?
41:07Yeah, look, the Fed is not in the elections business.
41:10And the most important thing is to just reiterate that commitment,
41:15that the thing that determines what the Fed chooses to do
41:20and what the individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee
41:24vote to do are these dual mandate goals
41:29that come from the Federal Reserve Act of stabilize the prices
41:33and maximize employment.
41:35And that's really what we're looking at.
41:37If you go back and look at the transcripts or the minutes
41:40from the meetings, they are recorded.
41:43Elections are not the subject of discussion.
41:46What the subject of discussion and decision making is the economy.
41:51And we just have to reiterate that at every juncture.
41:54And you saw Chair Powell
41:57give public interviews where he said where he said that. And.
42:02We've been saying that sufficiently, that now as we get up to the election,
42:08our data dependence and that we're just looking at the economic conditions
42:12to make the economic decisions, that's by far the
42:16the paramount thing on our minds.
42:18The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago reported on Donald Trump's inner circle,
42:24saying they want to change the Fed, that he wants to make it less independent.
42:28He wants to have presidential control over it.
42:31Is there a general consensus of people in the Fed and the economists
42:35that that's a bad thing?
42:36And will people push back on that?
42:38I mean, I read that article.
42:41I don't have any insight.
42:42And like I say, I'm out of the elections business.
42:46The it looked like there was pushback immediately, even within the article.
42:52All I know, as I say, is that a the Fed,
42:56my observation of how the Fed operates is
43:00they take the dual mandate extremely seriously.
43:03And the people that I know on the Federal Open Market Committee,
43:07it's not elections are not the subject of the FOMC decisions.
43:11It is absolutely the economy.
43:14And looking at unemployment and inflation
43:17and and trying to fulfill what the law requires us to do.
43:22If you look at the economic research, as I say,
43:26it's quite clear across countries and across time, even in the United States,
43:32that where administrations put their thumb on the scale
43:36and try to order around the monetary policy decisions,
43:41the economic outcomes are worse.
43:42That's how the Fed and the other central banks around the world
43:47move to this independence position.
43:50It's not it's not to say the president appoints
43:55and the Senate confirms members to the board of governors
44:00and the chair and the and the other governors.
44:04So that there is oversight.
44:07But it just it's a bad idea for economic performance.
44:12If a sitting administration is in the business of the Fed,
44:17telling them how they want the monetary policy to be conducted.
44:21It's it's just not a good idea.
44:22And you can look in episodes of U.S.
44:26history where that happens is problematic, leads to higher inflation
44:30and more persistent inflation if you do that.
44:34When you measure inflation, you tend not to put in some things,
44:39including food and energy prices.
44:44And yet most of us, when we look at prices, it's like, OK,
44:48eggs and gas station.
44:50Why do you all do that?
44:52Yeah, look, that drives my mom crazy.
44:54She's like, what do you mean you don't pay attention to energy and food prices?
44:58The reason why we look at the so-called core inflation
45:02is because energy and food in particular are extremely noisy and variable.
45:09So they go up, they go way down.
45:11And the history suggests they don't give as fulsome
45:16a picture of what's the underlying core inflation rate in the economy.
45:22So that's why we kind of exclude those.
45:25And to get even more into the weeds,
45:29people are most familiar with the consumer price index
45:32as a measure of inflation.
45:33But actually, we use a different measure.
45:36The personal consumption expenditure measure is just a different measure
45:40of inflation that is a little bit better and more representative of the economy.
45:45But that's why we do that.
45:47We want the thing that is the most representative of what's the underlying
45:51trend. And and that's why we we don't think about
45:55the energy and the food in the short run.
45:59The unemployment rate is about what, three point nine percent now.
46:04And that seems pretty good.
46:07But we're in really weird times.
46:09And it would seem to me just from the sidelines
46:11that the things that are difficult to measure, people haven't really returned
46:15to work or people are working remotely or have jobs in the gig economy.
46:20Is there some fundamental changes in how employment is happening?
46:25And how do you factor that in when you're in the Fed?
46:29Yes, there have been fundamental changes,
46:32partly over time, longer trends, demographic trends,
46:36the aging of the workforce, labor force participation, and then the short run
46:41covid things went crazy.
46:43We'd never seen anything like that.
46:45Now we've rebounded to look something more like normal,
46:49but we still are grappling with these issues of working from home and hybrid work.
46:54And as you raise the gig economy,
46:57I'm struck by the resilience on the job market.
47:00The strongest part of the economy by far is the strength of the job market
47:06beyond what we even would have predicted before there ever was covid.
47:11They were making projections of what would be labor force participation in 2024.
47:17And we're above what they thought it would be here before covid ever came.
47:22So that's the strongest part.
47:25And the weakest part, everyone knows, is that the price level is higher
47:29and inflation got well up above what what we were comfortable with.
47:35And so we're we're just still trying to grapple with these issues.
47:40It's not just in the labor market where some weird things happened.
47:44It's also in different sectors of the economy.
47:47We had a we had a recession that was driven by a bunch of industries
47:52that we normally think of as being recession proof, like services
47:56and health care and and things like that.
47:58And now as we come out of covid,
48:02those services are in a way booming back and housing,
48:09consumer durables, the kind of cyclical industries
48:12that normally make up the bread and butter of the business cycle
48:16are in a way not in the driver's seat.
48:18And so we're still trying to grapple with that a little bit.
48:21Coming out of the pandemic and the post pandemic recession,
48:25U.S. growth has been like twice as good
48:28as a lot of its most of its peers.
48:32And inflation has been bad, but not nearly as bad as some other places.
48:38Our economy, is it fundamentally really in good shape now
48:42or are people right when they worry about the economy?
48:46Well, kind of both, but I think overall, for sure,
48:50normed by how the experience has been around the world,
48:55we've had a strong recovery post covid.
48:59And I think one of the lesser sung, I won't say unsung,
49:03but lesser sung elements of that has been an incredible increase
49:08of business dynamism of people starting new firms
49:12that that had been declining over some time.
49:14And you have really seen post covid a rebound of that entrepreneurial
49:20spirit, let's call it, of the American economy.
49:24I think that's been a big part of why the growth rate has been higher.
49:29But there's no question that there's it's not paradise.
49:34And there are definitely in both industries, geographies
49:38and individual people who are hurting.
49:42And the prices being as high as what what they have been.
49:47You see that in in people's sentiments and in the vibes
49:51dissatisfaction with with some parts of the economy.
49:56One of the statistics that struck me is that the average wage
50:00now hourly wage in the U.S.
50:02after the pandemic is up 22 percent.
50:06Is that a large number?
50:07And is that a sense that maybe that'll ripple through
50:10and things are getting better?
50:11Or is that an inflationary problem?
50:13Yeah, some of all of that.
50:16I kind of think of the the question of if the inflation rate comes down,
50:22which is to say in the prices continue to grow, but they are growing
50:26at a slower rate than they were before.
50:29Is that enough or should the Fed be aiming to get the price
50:35level back down to what it was in 2019?
50:39Now, the one thing is that's not the Fed's target.
50:43The Fed's target is two percent inflation growth of prices.
50:48And if you were going to try to have deflation to get the price level target,
50:53you would really have to crush the economy
50:56to try to get that kind of deflation.
50:59Even in the depths of the Great Recession,
51:01we you don't see widespread deflation.
51:04It's really only in the Great Depression that you see that kind of deflation.
51:08So the normal way that we would be viewing a healthy economy
51:13would be to compare the wage growth, like you say, to how much the prices are up.
51:19And if we're seeing real wage growth, that is wage growth faster than prices.
51:25That's a positive.
51:26That's that's where real incomes are getting higher.
51:30And if you back through the chain, how much real income growth can you have
51:36without generating more inflation?
51:38The answer depends very much on the growth of productivity.
51:43And we have we we had for about a year, very robust productivity growth,
51:50which made a lot of people more optimistic.
51:53Maybe this is a scenario back like what we had at the in the late 90s
51:57or something like that.
51:59But it's a noisy series and the things go up and things go down.
52:04And in the last one, the productivity growth rate slowed a lot.
52:09So we're just going to have to keep an eye on that one to see how much it can go up
52:14when people look at inflation.
52:16It's there in the food prices, but it's also in housing.
52:20How do you get housing prices down?
52:23Yeah, look, there's two parts to the housing.
52:28It's not even a puzzle.
52:30There's two parts of the housing problem.
52:32That is. With the Fed has a two percent inflation target,
52:36but it's important to remember that didn't mean that the price
52:40and the inflation of everything was two percent before there was covid.
52:45Housing was about three and a half percent.
52:48Services were about two and a half percent.
52:50And physical goods were were about minus one percent.
52:54And combined, that was got us to two percent.
52:58We then go through a strange period of covid.
53:01All of those inflation rates go way up.
53:03And what we've seen is goods inflation back down to something
53:08like minus one percent as it was before services still elevated,
53:13but approaching the levels they were before.
53:17And the big outlier has been housing inflation
53:22as you raise and it's down from its peaks, but it's still well elevated
53:27compared to where it was pre covid.
53:30And I've been saying, I think if we don't get that inflation
53:36rate back down to something like what it was before,
53:39we're going to have a hard time getting to two percent.
53:43Now, there's a mechanical way in which market rents
53:48flow through with a lag into the official measures of inflation.
53:53And it hasn't done that as fast as we thought it would.
53:56I'm still optimistic that it's going to.
53:58But there's one in the mechanical.
54:01But then there's the deeper issue, which it sounded like
54:04is kind of the premise of your question, which if you raise rates.
54:10A lot in a short period of time and you had basically zero percent
54:15interest rates for a long period, people got mortgages very low
54:21and now mortgage rates are much higher.
54:24And so there is and it's not just demand
54:28that goes down when you raise the interest rate.
54:31It's also a bunch of people say, well, I don't want to sell my house
54:34because I have a I have a cheap mortgage.
54:37And if I move to a new house, I'm going to have an expensive mortgage.
54:40So I'm going to I'm going to just wait.
54:42And you have kind of seen over an extended period
54:47the willingness of existing homeowners to put their houses on the market.
54:52Having a strange impact on
54:56prices and on supply in the housing market.
54:58So the Fed is having to balance that that out a little bit as well.
55:05Austin Goldsby, thank you so much for joining.
55:08Great to see you again, Walter.
55:11And finally, tonight, there's one more happy humpback whale
55:15swimming in the wild, thanks to a rescue crew in Western Australia
55:19who successfully completed a complex two day mission to free the distressed whale,
55:24which was all tangled up in a fishing net wrapped around its body.
55:28The team managed to track the movements of the 12 meter long mammal
55:32before taking a small raft to its location and cutting through the net,
55:37leading the humpback safely to freedom.
55:40And that's it for our program tonight.
55:42If you want to know what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter
55:45at PBS.org slash Amanpour.
55:47Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.