114 Time December 2–9, 2019
8 Questions‘
WE’VE STOPPED
ADEQUATELY
PREPARING OUR
POPULATION
FOR THE WORLD
THAT WE’RE
LIVING IN
’
Given the record heights of the
market, what do you worry about
now? I think the biggest risks are
political and geopolitical. They’re
not economic. Those are the things
I worry about.Alan Greenspan famously tracked
cardboard boxes as economic
indicators. What do you monitor? We
each have our own favorite things. In
the non statistical variety, I have a few
signs of when you are at a top. One of
them is when your not-so-gifted friends
start getting very rich.You’ve known the President for
30 years, and he selected you to
head the now disbanded Strategic
and Policy Forum. Do you think
he’s doing a good job of leading the
country? Everybody’s got their own
view. Mine is not going to help the
sum total of knowledge. I think that in
the areas where I’ve been more active,
which are economic, that I think we’re
making actually good progress in the
trade area with China.You’ve recently been given a
high honor by the President of
Mexico for your work on the
trade deal. Do you worry about
walls and a less hospitable
environment to global trade?
The world generally is moving to
more populism, more nationalism.
Part of this has to do with the
Internet and social media. If
you talk to the people running
governments around the world,
they’ll tell you it’s increasingly hard
to run a liberal democracy. There’s
almost no issue today where very
small groups of people aren’t
basically attacking the majority.
And defeating what a majority
wants to get their own way.Do you think that’s happening in
this country now? Of course it is.
—eben shapiroY
our book What It Takes:
Lessons in the Pursuit of
Excellence has 13 pages
of acknowledgments. But I was
most struck that you included
your therapist. How long have you
been in therapy, and how has that
helped you? My internist referred
me to a therapist in 1990 when I was
considering getting divorced, but I
didn’t know anything about how you
got divorced. I’m still seeing that
individual. He is a terrific coach and
observer of the scene and a brilliant
tactician in terms of understanding
small-group interactions.
Income inequality is one of the
defining issues of the upcoming
election. You’re the CEO of
Blackstone—with an estimated net
worth of more than $18 billion. Are
you worried about a revolution or at
least a wealth tax? There are a lot of
people now who are starting to, with
a very developed knowledge basis,
respond to a lot of these issues. Steve
[Rattner] wrote a very perceptive op-ed
about why these proposals don’t work,
or worse. They can destroy potentially
some major aspects of the American
economic system. On the other hand,
the reason that you have populism
increasing is because at least 25% of
Americans are in a disadvantageous
position economically, and I don’t
refer to it as income inequality.
I refer to it as—because there’s
always been wealthy people in
America—income insufficiency.
How did we get here? It doesn’t
have anything to do with
capitalism, per se. It has to do with
the fact that the world changed.
What’s happened is that we’ve
stopped adequately preparing our
population for the world that we’re
living in, let alone the world of the
future in the information age. This
is a political problem. This is not a
capitalism problem.
Stephen A. Schwarzman The Blackstone
CEO on his new book, income inequality,
President Trump and the benefits of therapy