NewYorkNewYork

Addressing Economic Challenges

An Interview with Leo Hindery, Jr., Managing Partner, InterMedia Partners

EDITORS’ NOTE Leo Hindery, formerly City, where meaningful recovery has re- fact that, today, we have only about 8 percent of CEO of AT&T Broadband and its pre- ally come only to the wealthy. the nation’s employees working in manufacturing; decessors, Tele-Communications, Do fi nancial institutions need and fourth is our unprecedented income inequal- Inc. (TCI) and Liberty Media, chairs to be a certain size and scale to com- ity. Combined, these conditions make our current the Smart Globalization Initiative pete globally and, if so, what about economic primacy unsustainable. at the New America Foundation. In the “too-big-to-fail” issue? Addressing any one of these issues would 2005, he resumed his role as Managing Big banks that are comfortable just be daunting; the diffi culty of addressing all four Partner of InterMedia Partners, LP, being banks – that is, with taking deposits with a fractured and dysfunctional Congress which he founded in 1988. He is a and making loans – are not the concern explains my lack of optimism. member of the Council on Foreign behind the “too-big-to-fail” issue. Big With all of the support given to educa- Relations, and the author of It Takes a banks that proprietarily trade in massive tion, why does the system remain broken? CEO: It’s Time to Lead with Integrity amounts, however, should never be al- One thing that’s stopping real reform is that, too (Free Press, 2005). In 2008, Hindery Leo Hindery, Jr. lowed to become too-big-to-fail and thus frequently, it’s relatively wealthy women and men, was an economic and trade advisor they need to be responsibly regulated. often fi scal conservatives and very often educated in to presidential candidate , after ear- What we haven’t done yet under Dodd-Frank private schools, who are the ones held responsible lier serving as Senior Economic Policy Advisor for is suffi ciently rein in this proprietary trading. And in for fi xing our public school system, where fully 93 presidential candidate ; in 2012, he failing to do so, we’ve actually further embedded, percent of our nation’s children are being educated. again served as an economic policy surrogate for not addressed, the so-called big bank failure issue. Without genuine sensitivity to the real needs of President Obama. He has an M.B.A. from Stanford There is a growing concern that lower- and middle-class students, we will never fi x University’s Graduate School of Business and an Washington is broken. Are you optimistic our broken public education system. undergraduate degree from Seattle University. it can change? There also can’t be an almost knee-jerk ad- I can’t be optimistic as long as two conditions versarial relationship between school boards and COMPANY BRIEF New York City-based persist; the fi rst is the largely unbridled anonymous teachers, yet that is too often the case in many InterMedia Partners is a fi rm that campaign fi nance system that the Supreme Court cities, including here in New York City. Who can makes control investments in media companies. has saddled us with which, in the 2012 federal cy- possibly say with a straight face that teachers aren’t Currently investing its seventh fund, InterMedia cle – presidential, Senate, and House – aggregated among society’s most dedicated public servants? (www.intermediaadvisors.com) is focused on me- an almost unbelievable $8.5 billion of spending. Yet, the current ills of public education are almost dia content catering to underserved audiences. The second is the pernicious embedding of invariably blamed on teachers and their unions. fundamental social issues into the political pro- When going into a relationship that you Where do you believe we are on the road cess to such a degree that, in many races today, presume will be adversarial, it almost always to solid economic recovery? you can more easily lose for being on the wrong becomes such. And if you think teaching in an We still haven’t really begun to address up- side of a core social issue that doesn’t even belong urban public school is a cakewalk, you should grading the aging infrastructure of New York in politics than being on the wrong sides, so to try doing it some time. City, a challenge which has been compounded speak, of economic and foreign relations issues, How are we going to make a material by the fi nancial crisis, nor have we yet regained which absolutely do belong there. impact on our stagnant unemployment rate? appropriate balance in our local economy. As long as civil rights and civil liberties is- There are actually some very good solutions Concerning our infrastructure, there very sues fi gure so prominently within our political out there and they wouldn’t be that hard to put quickly needs to be a partnership between the fed- system, and as long as the money in politics into effect. But as long as people in power are eral government and our municipal government, so remains obscene in amount and is contributed comfortable with the economic “law of averages,” that our bridges, roadways and airports keep pace largely anonymously, I’m not at all optimistic. which penalizes all but the extremely wealthy, and with the international cities with which we compete. Where do you see the U.S. as a global don’t particularly care that today we have a nearly More fundamentally, however, we too of- leader going forward? unprecedented real unemployment rate then, as a ten forget that we’re fi ve boroughs in one city, There are four conditions that currently defi ne nation, we will continue to offshore jobs, over- each of which is entitled to recovery, not just the U.S. economy, which if they persist will make emphasize low-paying service jobs compared to Manhattan. Yet today in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten the U.S. ultimately a second-rank and perhaps higher-paying manufacturing jobs, and not “bal- Island, and the Bronx – and even in several parts eventually even a third-rank superpower. The fi rst ance” our education system with the jobs currently of Manhattan – we remain far behind where we is the fact that we now have an almost unmanage- required and those that are potentially available. need to be. Nationally, since 2009 when the U.S. able federal defi cit, made such by the combination We need to quickly get back as close as economy began its tepid recovery, the wealthiest of our massive global defense obligation – greater possible to full real employment, and not accept 10 percent of Americans have been the benefi cia- than the next 13 countries combined – and by the 14 percent real unemployment rate we have ries of 149 percent of the recovery, while the bot- Social Security and Medicare assumptions that are today, fully four years after economic recovery tom 90 percent have actually seen their incomes terribly out of date; second is our seemingly per- is alleged to have begun. Otherwise, I foresee and real net worths shrink further. Unfortunately, petual trade defi cit in manufactured goods, on the eventual social upheaval of the sort that Europe this ratio is roughly the same here in New York order of around $400 billion a year; third is the and Brazil are currently experiencing.• 146 LEADERS POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2013 LEADERS MAGAZINE, INC. VOLUME 36, NUMBER 4