Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series Real Time with Bill Maugh.

Thank you.

You must have been good.

Farid, have we finally reached the post-American world you wrote about a decade ago?

Well, you know what I was writing about in that book was the post-American world because

you had China rising.

You had India rising.

I had Europe that had come together.

The point I was trying to make was we're in a kind of historical shift of power where these other

countries, often that had long been mired in poverty, rising in economic growth, political power,

cultural confidence.

And so that world has been going on, you know.

The emerging markets were 5% of global GDP 25 years ago.

They're now 50% of global GDP.

But what I did not predict was that the United States would sort of abdicate leadership of its position.

Because I argued the United States would still be incredibly powerful.

It would set the agenda.

It represented, you know, the values.

It had a way of being able to be the leader.

And this shift where the United States has decided to literally just walk away from its own creation.

I mean, people forget this was the world that FDR and Harry Truman built after World War II.

And to see, you know, the Europeans, as I said, are sort of surprised because they don't quite understand it.

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