America's downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the country's eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance.

Here's the teaching point if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

During my nearly five years as director-general of WHO high-level policymakers have increasingly recognized that health is central to sustainable development.