q&a, sunday night at 8:00 on c-span. yuca knoll solis non-xm satellite radio or download the c-span podcasts >> former investment banker john talbott analyzes the current financial crisis in his newest book, "the 86 biggest lies on wall street." we cost the global banking system insolvent and blames the recession on the lack of

financial regulations. this is about an hour. >> thank you all for coming. it is a raney out there is they found out the hard way. i am going to give you some short opening remarks and leave plenty of time for questions. i would like to thank the folks from c-span for being here today, and filming us. i just returned from an economics conference in italy. one of the sessions was a mock trial in which the economists of the world were put on trial, accused of completely missing the warning signs of the current crisis. not predicting it, doing nothing to prevent it, and thus far, doing little to help in that smart reforms to end it. i had to give a talk on my book at the same time as the mock trial across town in italy, but i didn't want to miss it so i

sent roberta lakaredy, the chief prosecutor of the trial and himself a top economist the following memo. it was entitled with this for the prosecution, and it read as follows. roberto, i see you are speaking at noon today as the prosecutor asking whether economists are to blame for the current financial crisis. i wanted to attend but i am speaking at the same time across town on my new book. i wish you success with their prosecution and although i generally am against the death penalty, i think i would make an exception in this case. your prosecution reminds me of a story i heard about john mccain, the first coach of the tampa bay buccaneers, when fortunately went the zero wins and 16 losses in their first season of pro-football. in the locker room after the last game, coach mccain was asked by a journalist what he thought about the execution of this team on the field and he

said he was all in favor of it. [laughter] i did have one question roberto. i wish you had asked during your prosecution. could you ask whether the defense believes that professors of finance, economics, option, theory and derivatives were conflicted in writing in discussing about the potential for a crisis given that the same professors were earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from our biggest banks and hedge funds in the form of speaking engagement fees, honorariums, expert witness fees and trials and consulting and business partnerships with some of the worst offenders on wall street. today, i want to address the real causes of this crisis, because of the don't get that

right, there's little chance obama's suggested reforms will be effective in either ending the crisis or preventing something like this from occurring in the future. and to those of you who believe the crisis is over, i have some swampland in florida i would like to sell you. first, i would like to caution you against believing those with very simple, easy to understand explanations. this crisis is very complicated and unfortunately some of our brightest are saying some of the stupidest of about what caused this mess. you have alan greenspan and other defenders of completely and regulating markets, suggesting such a downturn is normal, that it is part of a normal business cycle, that it was completely unavoidable, arguing that it was almost like an act of god as random and unpredictable and natural as a 100 year flood to use greenspan's language. there is nothing normal about what the world is experiencing

today. to suggest otherwise smacks of a let them eat cake deleted some that shows that alan greenspan is far removed from the actual pain and suffering the crisis is causing the average american family. similarly, be suspicious of those who try to blame capitalism generally for this crisis. capitalism has done more to create growth and reduce poverty and inequality in the world than any economic system in the history of the world. let's be careful not to throw out our baby capitalism, with the bathwater. global capitalism knows no country borders and recognizes no national boundaries, so it is not surprising that it has helped-- is this working? it is not surprising it does help the poorest of the world in china and india and asia the most in escaping poverty even if it meant greater hardship to the

middle class in the u.s. and europe. but, if you look past nationality, what is wrong with helping the poorest of the world first? finally, always hold last as an explanation of the situation you don't completely understand an accusation that those who participate in or caused the crisis were somehow irrational or even stupid. i worked with these folks on wall street for ten years and i can promise you there are many things, but they are not stupid. similarly, to blame the crisis on wall street by calling while streeters greedy to me seems to miss the point. greed is what wall street does, and is always done. there is no wall street without greed. why else would someone watch his life disappear as he watched a 19-inch computer screen only to grab a morsel or crumb of profit and try to get rich off of it.

greed has been in our genes for hundreds of thousands of years. the genes have not mutated so they in the last 30 years to make is more greedy. entin does behavioral economists out there who were quick to accuse others of irrational behavior, i can think of no greater public pronouncement on your own inability to identify the true causes of this problem than trying to label all those around you as a rational. it is a very dangerous game you are playing because it lays the seeds of an argument that says what we need is greater protection from our irrational cells and hugh is always there to offer this service? an elite class of bureaucrats to pretend to know more about what makes me happy and i know myself if behaviorist are ever able to prove that markets or most of their participants are irrational, it will be a very sad day for those of us who love

and holder are individual freedom, our individual choice and our basic rights as humans. if the key participants in the current financial crisis for irrational, please help me identify to is a rational, who are we talking about? was it the homebuyers real estate agent who was earning 20 to 50,000-dollar commissions with no risk, but only if his or her client was the winning by year? do you see why it was in their interest to get their buyers to bid more, not less? certainly unethical and unprofessional, but not irrational from their perspective. where the vast number of financial middlemen irrational from the appraisers putting out crazy high appraisals for a fee, to the mooradian sees the word-- raid agencies were paid to call junk securities aaa, to the congressman who took bribes to listen industry regulation, to the investment bankers were paid hundreds of billions to peddle

this stuff come into the mortgage brokers who falsified mortgage applications to guarantee approval. again, highly unethical and in some cases completely criminal but not irrational. what about the homebuyer himself? certainly he was irrational to pay 50 to 60% premiums more than the home's true worth but what if i told you that most of these homebuyers for playing with other people's money? that they had borrowed all the money they needed at two to 3% with no down payment of their own funds? certainly a terrible way to a ride that the fair price for a home but such a buyer would be motivated to buy the biggest, he could as you would want to maximize his upside profit in the booming market. he would be insensitive to price as he knew he would enjoy it all of the up sides, but the market turns out he could avoid any laws by allowing the bank to take the property back in foreclosure.

sounds pretty rational to me. if the bar where is getting such a sweet deal, surely that lender is a commercial banker was acting rationally and giving him alone. but the world of commercial banking has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. finks today don't sit on most loans they make. they securitize them and sell them upstream dubik principal investors. like pension funds, sovereign governments, municipalities and insurance companies. the commercial banker has few rational reasons to care about the quality of the loan he has created. if it defaults, he won't lose anything. we now know that some of these banks didn't position some of this toxic waste on their own balance sheets and their losses turned out to be huge. large enough to bankrupt many of these firms. sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it? but what if i told the the same

banks are making tensive not hundreds of billions of dollars in profit from the mortgage operations and their bank managers had seen their bonuses increase from less than $1 million a year to something sometimes more than $50 million per year? now it does not sound so crazy or stupid, does it? so let the end of this on ethical, fraudulent, most likely criminal food chain stands the principal investor, the pension fund or insurance company that got stuck holding this worthless paper. certainly, he or she has to be stupid or irrational to have made such a poor investment. actually, no. while many of these institutional type investors are not the sharpest knife in the drawer, they did do what modern finance very told them to do. they diversify their holdings but they did it so well that they held so many different investments, spread all over the

world, that they couldn't possibly find time to properly evaluate them or analyze their value and certainly did not have time to supervise the individual managers of each of the underlying companies and assets they held. in addition, their most trusted advisers were telling them that these were safe investments and all three of the rating agencies were giving these investments their highest rating, aaa. to call a victim of such a fraudulent attempt to deceive irrational would be like calling the victim of a home burglary or at the victim of a car theft irrational. we may not approve of such behavior but that doesn't make the victim irrational or necessarily stupid. so, maybe there are reasons why this crisis occurred that have not as yet been discovered and will prevent us from throwing out our beloved baby are calling those involved either stupid or

irrational. maybe there's something about the banking industry itself that makes it different from other industries and makes it feel suited for the type of competitive capitalism that seems to create long-term sustainable values in other industries in which competition is encouraged and allowed to foster. bank deposit insurance guarantees for instituted in the 1930's to stop runs on banks during the great depression but they may have created the very moral hazard that is causing today's financial crisis, quite ironic, isn't it? bankston they can dramatically increase their leverage, shift into riskier assets such as derivatives and businesses like investment banking and they won't lose depositors and they won't even see the cost of their debt funding increase because of the guarantee provided by the federal government to the depositors. in the 30's, when the path of

their insurance would-- was introduced everyone understood banks would therefore have to be aggressively regulated by the government since the market no longer could. unfortunately overtime this lesson was lost or forgotten. the banks over the last 30 years have used their increased lobbying and political strength to undo and eliminate most of the original legislation meant to effectively regulate them. in 1999, they got glass-steagall removed so they could get into the investment banking business. in 2000, they were successful in ensuring that the derivatives business would remain unregulated. in 2004, they lobbied successfully to remove restrictions on how high their leverage might go. and, as we have seen their leverage over the last 30 years has increased from about 821 to something like 32421.

over the years, banks have used their size, power and political muscle to rewrite the rules of the game to benefit themselves but at the same time threaten the entire financial system with collapse. did i mention that these same all powerful banks also own and control the federal reserve system, and its board? the group that is supposed to be regulating it. and these banks are so large as to be "too big to fail" which violates the first premise of capitalism that badly performing businesses must be allowed to fail. because of their heavy involvement in the credit default swap markets these banks are also to enter connected to fail. the credit default swap market makes everybody important and too big to fail because of its huge complex network of default guarantees. it also violates the precept that markets must allow phil

years for creative destruction. to occur and because of this the credit default swap market needs to be shut down immediately. banks as we have said are also highly leveraged, that it becomes when you are so highly leveraged rational for their management teams in shareholders to begin to act like option holders worry only about the upside. rather than equity investors who must also be concerned with the downside scenarios and the risk of insolvency. i believe if we made just one change, if we limited leverage of the banks in the world to just 8-1 we would eliminate the major cause of most dunes and menez and thus avoid almost all future busts, recessions, crises in depressions. we have new leadership in washington of course and they were elected on a promise and platform dedicated to change.

radicals like me will never be happy with the pace of change especially as innocent families suffer as a result of this crisis. if it were me i would attack the biggest problem first, at the corrosive impact of money and lobbyists and corporate power has in our nation's capitol. but i would most likely fail. the powers that be, congressional incumbents of both parties, the big banks and big corporations and their lobbyists and corporate owned, sponsored and controlled media would swat me away like the annoying pests, authors and true investigative journalist candy barack obama has a different approach. his years of community organizing experience tell him to accomplish real, meaningful change especially against an entrenched and powerful opponent, you take small steps first. and you move gradually, you move incrementally.

nothing builds a group's confidence like success. you can build a new powerful majority of rhiann bald citizens by winning small battles first, before taking on the big battle against the machine, against the system. then once you have real power, and there is no power greater than the people united, then and only then do you accomplish real reform and bring real change to a corrupt system. thank so much for listing. i would like to open the floor for questions and please remember there is no such thing as a stupid question, especially given how complex this all is. if any of the listing would like to get involved in how we can organize ordinary americans to clean up their government and fro the corporate lobbyists out of washington, please contact me at john talbott at hotmail.com. i have got some ideas but i would very much like to hear

yours. i will open the floor up to questions now. >> i don't think it is working. >> i will talk louder. >> he says it is working. >> okay, i am sorry. my question is twofold and maybe disparate. one is obviously you think glass-steagall should be reinstated number one. number two what is your concern about inflation in light of all of the deficits that we are incurring? thank you. >> i absolutely think glass-steagall awe to be reinstituted, something even stronger than glass-steagall because the world is changed in 70 years. it makes no sense for you to

pause that your money in a bank come expecting you can get it back and find out that the managers of the bank of beckett on derivatives and investment banking and hedge funds type activities, so absolutely something even stronger than glass-steagall needs to be instituted. the second half of the question is a very good question. i am a big supporter of the theory that you cannot spend $4 trillion in guarantees some $13 trillion of assets and not have significant, significant government costs and going forward. and if the government has significant cost going forward is not clear where they will get the money. by their own projections they are showing 2 trillion-dollar deficit each year and that forecast allows for 4% growth from 2011 and on. i just don't see how we are going to get back on the growth record so we are going to fund the basic operations of the country, we will be putting out $2 trillion a year of new debt

borrowings and then we have all these guarantees that might come back to haunt us, so it looks to me like, and the banks have not finished with all of their losses yet so it is clear the government is going to come up with a lot of money. it is not crazy to think they are going to print some of that rather than barwick and at the start turning on the printing presses were going to have inflation. warren buffett said when treasuries were yielding 2% it was the next boom that was crazy for the countries of the world to let the u.s. government-- and now the greatest jump considerably and i think it is going to jump considerably more alamitos u.s. investor is be careful if a bond salesman tries to move you out of the stock market any into corporate come along corporate bonds or long treasuries. they have the real price oris to them that inflation comes back. >> i think it could be easily argue that the majority of the

populace of our nation don't even slightly understand the complexity of the economic situations, wall street, what have you, and that the way the media presents it come richistan subscary more and more people into believing whatever it is the scariest so how you propose going forward, we handle the media's effect on the populations of the one the economy and how the proposed i guess, at least educating the majority of the people on a basic level, the understanding of where their money goes and what happens to it? >> you know, we are not so different than other countries of the world right now. unfortunately they countries were most similar to or the developing poor countries. we have become argentina instead of argentina becoming more like us. if there 100 advanced countries

in 54 countries and what almost all 50 countries share in common is a dictator or somebody military controls the legislature so it's very hard for the people to write reform legislation and control the media. i don't mean to suggest there is some dictator in the united states that controls both of those but there is a broad class of the very wealthy in the most powerful corporations to do it very good job controlling those entities and they don't do it as if they meet late night with their secret commissions. they have the same motivations to make profit, and so when you turn on annie cable news or network news program, other than pbs, it is corporate sponsored. they can't say anticorporate messages because the corporations are funding their entire programming and they are corporate bonds, and their corporations are some of the biggest lobbyists in washington. not necessarily on the finance front that clearly the issues important to them with regard to media concentration in the

market, whether they have to pay for free airtime, etc. etc. so it is a very difficult battle. if you think of the corporations in america being very strong and government being very strong and i think almost equal third leg of that tough triangle is the media, again very powerful and the individual is sort of stuck in the middle of this triangle. how do we get out? we can have endless the elections on and on and on in which republicans take the side of big business and democrats they decided the government and nothing changes. so we have to break out of this triangle and the good news is we have the methodologies to do it and that i believe is the internet. >> internet so far has not been taken over by corporations although they tried three different times, and it allows for individuals to communicate with each other and organize. the question you have to ask yourself is why haven't individuals organized today?

they have had lots of opportunities. ieds to think they were stupid. i used to think they did understand the issues. i no longer believe that. i have traveled the country. my family is from kentucky. i talked to people all over the country like my good friend in kentucky who is the tenth grade education and he can explain this better to you than i just did. they know they are getting ripped off. they know credit card companies are ripping them off, they know the banks are ripping them off than they know their government as ripping them off. i think there at this stage asking themselves, what can we do? how to reorganize and that is what i would like to get that next. >> we have another question here. >> john, you mentioned in your buck, "the 86 biggest lies on wall street," and i'm curious for you out of the 86 biggest lies which ones are the biggest and what you think so? >> it is so funny because you try to anticipate questions to

get when you do things like this in your talks and i unfortunately never anticipated that question. i did not write the book with number one, a lie being the most are worst offensive. the way i wrote the book is the first chapters i explained the current crisis and the lies that got us into the crisis. the second chapter tries to identify lies preventing us from getting out of the crisis and then i take a much bigger, broader view of general lies on wall street that prevent us from doing what we want to do which is investing money, so i look at stock investing lies and bond investing lies and lies about investing. i will tell you about lie 21 because i think it is a big one and that is diversification has been held up by modern finance theory and all of wall street as the reason why, and how you want to invest, how assets are valued, how risky is valued. it is the foundation of all

modern finance. i think it is wrong. i think it is wrong. i don't think you end up saving money by diversifying and i will tell you why. the german pension fund it tries to diversify in germany and supped holding three or 5% of his assets in california mortgages. he has never been to california. he is never read the mortgage. after the crash to try to find a mortgage to read it and nobody has it. nobody knows where it is filed. the judge threw out his lean case. he said he don't have the lee nicki can't find the security. so what happened was this german pension fund who thought he could hold 3% of 33 different assets around the world and be protected, those assets were much more correlated then he thought they were and he did not know whether he paid a fair price for any of them because you never had time to do the analysis. he depended on middle men who themselves were conflicted to decide the price is paid in finally if you wonder why it may

be american and businesses and other businesses around the world are not-- as you would hope they would be it is because they are sure holders are just like this german pension fund manager. >> each have hundreds of investments and they don't have the time to monitor any of them come as of this theory of diversification sets up beautifully for middle men to come in and tell this ignorant pension fund manager what is best for him except they don't. they say what is best for themselves and their own cash flows so it turns very quickly into a very corrupt system. yes. >> we have seen some major reductions in the stock market, it is down 30, 40%. a lot of bonds, these people

came up with the sub-prime mortgages. obviously if you have a sub-prime mortgage with 3% or 4% backing you have a slight change in the value of the property you are under water very quickly. the first question is, do you think the market here has reached a level that the asset values are attractive and why? >> it is a funny time to be giving this talk because we are in the middle of this oppose it recovery and it is their funny recovery. citibank stock went from 57 to one and it is back up to 2.5 or three but it is true just in the last three months the stock markets have rallied sum, 25% from their lows. they are still off considerably, off 40% from their highs. but, i don't believe it is sustainable and i will tell you why. there was something like $60 trillion of wealth out there in the world between homes and office buildings and the stock

market values of companies, and that's decreased to $30 trillion over the last three years ago there was about 65 trillion of debt just in the united states and that has not declined hardly at all. the bang separate knopf a trillionth. i am sure there have been other write-offs we don't know about. ..

and the san francisco and the los angeles would come down some 30 to 50% and the country as a whole would come down some 25% and there are towns in california off 55, 60% so there is a chance certain towns are starting to reach a bottom but not all of them are and the reason is in these banks used to land about seven to 910 hartness the combined income of both spouses to buy a home. they realize now that is a mistake and going back to lending 3.5 to four times your combined income. unless you want to put a substantial down payment it's hard for that bank credit evaporation to support the types of housing problems we've seen. and it's funny the poor neighborhoods in each of these cities or the middle class neighborhoods are the ones that adjusted quickest because they

had the most foreclosures. middle income people don't have other assets to sell. they don't have other income when the bank comes calling to foreclose the mortgage. the wealthier areas along the coast of san francisco, ca ago and l.a. at the adjusted somewhat, maybe 20%, but they have not seen the full decline because they haven't had this for closure wave but it doesn't mean they won't adjust. when they had the largest depreciation, the of these neighborhoods saw 500% appreciation of the last 15 years so they, too, will adjust downward and the way the adjustment will work as you will walk out of your million-dollar home in la hoya and look down the street at five similar homes with for sale signs and one of them will tell you he just sold for 500,000 your not going to keep paying your million dollar mortgage, i don't care what interest rate they charge you if you know your house is worth

500,000. >> mr. talbott, it's a pleasure to read a comment and then a question. i am a real estate broker and everything you said was spot on. especially the appraisal. if they didn't like the appraisal they went and got a new one but the bank did land on an interesting thing called projected income. the income was never there but you could come in and say i will buy this and a year from now it will be selling for much more and why you happen is in new york to see it did not materialize and most people did run after it and the other thing is the concept of short selling. i know some people who were short sellers who feel they've got a very bad rap for what's going on today and the holding is very confusing. are they to blame for this or is it part of the market forces? thank you. >> i don't believe so. short sellers, they were the only ones that were right in this. they knew the market was overvalued and they made money.

you can't accuse somebody of elbe plea for that. no, the reason people get the wrong idea that these commercial bankers and real estate players were ignorant or stupid is because as all of us know, if you go to an individual and don't ask him to verify his income, don't ask to verify his job, don't get phone call to his employer, if you don't ask him to the mulken application you know who that's when to attract as a client base and all of us know that person is likely to default. so we must immediately conclude my god the person who extended on these terms may be an idiot but when you don't see is what he did with lender sold it and who is crazy enough to buy it? they created this instrument called cbo, collateralized debt obligation in which they put these papers in the pool and operating agencies convinced

that if the worst offenders and biggest defaults went to the lowest strong first that the approach haunches maybe as much as 65 or 75% of this paper would be rated aaa. so you know, it's a question of mathematics and you have to ask yourself questions how bad the world can get and what the default rate is going to be but let me tell you the people pushing this paper and taking out the enormous fees i know their worst case scenario. their risk analysis guys ran a case scenario and the worst case scenario they could imagine was what if realistic only increased 5% a year the next 40 years? not one of them and i have a friend who investigated six of the biggest banks, not one of the asked the question but if real-estate prices declined at all 1%? and never asked question of the decline 30 or 50%. and you see that's the important question when you deal with mortgages because when house

prices are going up and somebody has a medical emergency or loss of a job and have to default on the mortgage they don't. because the home price increase every year has created equity in the property so what they do rather of in putting the home back to the bank is the cellhouse, take the profits and pay off the note. but now imagine that same person has a job loss and declining real-estate environment, now he's under water. now he has no incentive to sell the house in the private market because he will be working for the bank because the proceeds are going to go to the bank. he isn't going to claim any equity so what does he do? what's rational, he mails the keys to the bank and says it's been negative renting from you the last two years. >> i wanted to ask a follow-up on the german example the use of his question. does that -- does that mean global investments are -- >> are what? >> global investments, does that mean they are just not good

ideas on the whole? >> will position has been pushed on of as a great idea. you have to examine to see what are the shortcomings of it. one of the clear shortcomings, which nobody analyzed in advance is for whatever value was created from increased trade there was going to be a huge cost to the working poor and middle class of advanced countries who were going to be put in competition for jobs with indians, low-wage chinese, low wage south americans and mexicans. and so, i don't care how hard you worked in america people in these countries were going to work for a dollar or less per hour and was going to hurt your lifestyle. so an aggregate the total wealth of the united states might have increased over the last 30 years but i can assure you the lower 50% of americans declined so that's one problem with globalization. the other problem with globalization we are seeing now is when there are these unanticipated crises we don't predict which are highly

correlated a lot of different glasses and countries they hit everything. they can't be contained. it's as if a virus broke out in africa and rather than continuing to a small village in treating it because of globalization and widespread use of air fare it spreads around the world. look at this most recent, it started in mexico but almost two days it was in every country of the world. so globalization is dangerous in this regard but if our economists don't understand the economics, if our politicians don't know how to plan the future perfectly, if there is always uncertainty and risk we are no longer exposing it to one state or city or country. we are exposing it to thep>x gll economy and that's dangerous. >> a few questions. number one. if the debt overhang issue -- is

in the only possible solution to the inflate brigade inflation in order to decrease the real value of the debt? >> yeah. that's the conclusion i came to and how disturbing to read in the paper today that ben bernanke went to congress and promised them the one thing he wouldl

cents on the dollar. the other thing -- the other way to get rid of this debt and it ought to be happening and is not as these companies and banks getting in trouble, we ought to be restructuring them. fannie mae and freddie mac over the weekend basically went bankrupt without claiming it and basically came out of bankruptcy on monday morning without ever going in and of their creditors got paid the 100 cents on the dollar. while the creditors, $1.6 trillion of creditors, 500 billion held in china got paid off whole. how did they get paid off whole? the government tax payer came in and gave $400 million the clock is still ticking. it could even chile and up being a trillion dollars but it makes no sense to me. so all these bills, the wall street bailout, the auto bailout's etc., as long as they are happening and they are not punishing certainly the shareholders but the debt investors and just writing checks from the tax payer it's not fair. it's not fair. >> and that's actually my second

question. i read about the debate about why the banks were nationalized. while the bond holders of the banks were protected. what, in your opinion, is the reason for that? why did that happen -- >> in a complex world this is an easy answer because the lobby your government. and what's amazing is they lobbied your government when they had market valuations of 100 billion to $200 million. well, for a while when citibank stock was one or $2 the it market capitalization south 10 billion. i would have thought that would have taken some of their mosul away but they were lost to the of the market capitalization and money they took from the government. they didn't come back on the effort said the continued to lobby very strongly in washington and i think it is a simple explanation for why they are getting away with it. >> it seems like there are so many other lobbies. why would bondholders and bonds and banks be special as opposed

to holders and bonds in any other type of corporation? aren't the bonds held by the mutual-fund and pensions? >> there's lots of lobbyists in washington but as far as i can see none of them are having problems right now. they killed the global warming initiative. they have set back any alternative discussion for health care. they basically emasculated the credit card reform and had a vote in the senate of 70 to 25 to the cap of 15% on credit cards because the credit card companies are charging 33%. so it's hard to imagine enough hours in the day for the congressman to meet with all these lobbyists. i lived in washington negative six kissell and 9-years-old and it was a small town. i'd say less than 300,000 people. now the greater maryland virginia washington area there's 4 million people. the two largest suburbs are but suburbs of washington, d.c.. there is no industry there. they don't make anything, the

only people there supporting themselves are lobbyists and it's become a very big business. it's the answer to all of this. i could also write a book about the pharmaceutical industry, the hospital industry, people have the same final chapter. it's about lobbyists and getting control of the lobby. >> thank you. welcome, mr. talbott. do you feel obama will have success against the three headed monster lobbyists and the thing the clinton administration went up against them and was part of the scandal in the administration, an effort by using an old word military industrial complex to quash that type of activity? >> you won't hear this very

often because most people are democratic and republican, i happen to be independent. people on the liberal side as on im are slow to say anything negative about the democrats but there is one democrat i have to mention and that is bill clinton. bill clinton was a very capable and smart man. he tried to accomplish good, but what he was most interested in was raising money for campaign commercials. he understood because he was smart that's the way that you get elected and to his credit we may never heard his name if we don't figure this out but as a result the end up selling the party to corporations because back then they were 90% of the money contributed to a campaign. the republican her party was already controlled by corporate money and so the world after 1992 became republican corporate money versus democratic corporate money. and if you think since then there hasn't been any debate between the parties.

i think the falsely create the debate on issues some people carry great deal about but they aren't important to the world economy with the u.s. economy or to our livelihood and welfare on a daily basis. and it allows these corporations to basically steal money from us. the average wage in america has been flattened down in real terms about two years. union should has gone from 35% to 9%. i've already discussed the great majority of americans have been asked to be put in competition to not only low-wage workers around the world but most of them from a communist nation that if you mention the word labor union at your daily job and the communist china they will take you out back and shoot you. and that's not an exaggeration. so we've changed what utter moral balance we had between money and the people that we developed from the 30's and 50's and the eisenhower years. we changed radically toward the corporation.

and now we need to take it back. whether obama will be successful, he hasn't indicated that he will to date, so our only hope is that he is being stealth. that he's building momentum. that he's trying to build a collection of all of the people because it is going to take all of the people to accomplish this, and we hope and another year in his second term at some point he then turns and puts the pressure on. it would fit his modus operandi because this is exactly how to community organizer, you organize the people first before you take on the big issues, and so i am hopeful that is what his plan is. he certainly is much smarter than i am so i know he has a plan. >> we are going to take two more questions. >> good evening. i am not sure if anybody ask you this question, but obama passed a law recently come i'm not sure if he did pass or it will be passed, it will be effective in february, 2010 and make it hard for young people to get credit

cards and i'm kind of confused for the young people like myself responsible with the little credit they do have, how do they expect us to establish credit cards once this bill is passed, once its effective february, 2010 for the ones that are responsible with their credit? it's kind of confusing. i wonder, like, do you have suggestions or, like, what's going on with that? i don't understand it. >> i haven't read the bills i don't understand the details but i can tell you the problem he was trying to address is the credit card companies had been invited onto the campus is about the world, around the country and the reason they were invited on to the campuses is they made big donations to the universities and the universities and the up putting their emblem on the credit card letting them set up outside the bookstore and getting credit cards to these students. well again, you might think bankers are stupid, right? when i tell you that they were giving 3,000, 5,000-dollar credit lines to students who by

definition had no jobs, no means of repayment. be careful, bankers aren't stupid. what they did is like a student not only charge the 5,000, they let them continue to charge 7,000, 9,000, $10,000. some of these students had better stereo's than i ever saw in my days and then graduation day came and the students said i don't really have any money. i don't know why you gave me this credit card. i don't have any income and credit card company wrote back and said that's okay, our next letter is sent to you, it's to your parents and they wrote to the parents say your son or daughter has run up $10,000 of credit and if they don't pay us back, we will destroy their credit for the next eight years and did i tell you credit rating is the first thing an employer looks at during an interview and so i think it was a massive game, massive fraud and that is what obama is trying to shut down. i you he didn't go far enough and i wouldn't worry if i were you. i'm sure the credit card

companies are going to protect you and allow you to get credit. >> [inaudible] >> i'm wondering if maybe is a bit unfair to put so much blame on lobbyists. >> that's a fair question. i first identified this problem 15 years ago if you go back and look at my six or seven prior books regardless of the title i always have a chapter about lobbying. it seems to influence everything, either that or i'm obsessive about it. but until about two years ago i focus my attention on cleaning up government. i thought governor was the problem for having taken this money and then i realized and thought it through something my sister would teach me. where is the power? follow the money. it's not these congressmen. these congressmen and senators seem powerful and are inconsequential compared to the money behind the lobbyists,

behind these corporations and so, if you were going to change washington you can try to accomplish it through the vote but i believe that you will be on successful. i believe not only if you run for office thinking you'll clean up your congressional district will you run into an incumbent with ten to $15 million of money to run campaign ads. some strikingly against you, some you wouldn't recognize yourself when they get through and if you run for senate the of 25 to $30 million but in addition to that did i tell you they gerrymander, they reorganized their untie your congressional districts of the district is all republicans now and who allowed that, the democratic across town who redrew his district so his district is democrat so the re-election is inevitable. so i don't think there is any beating incumbents, i don't think our vote means anything now so i'm going upstream, following the money and i'm going after the corporations and the question is how can we get corporations to see it's in their interest to get out of the

lobbying business and quit giving money to our government? >> john, do you want to take one more? one more question. >> what about asian liquidity? underpriced asian currencies relative to the u.s. dollar, could any of this have been possible if the liquidity from asia had not been available for it to be put to use in the united states and europe? >> this is one of the great warning signs economists missed. for ten, 15 years we had this great inflow of money from china into the united states. where was it coming from? the average chinese was making $1,200 a year and saving 40% of it. the average american was making $45,000 a year and had negative

savings. didn't save a dollar. this is the first time in the history of the world that i know where the poorest country on earth was lending 40% of its income to the richest country on earth. that should have set off alarms and the story that nobody would tell and the media because the sponsors supported is that it's clear the americans were on a consumption binge bonding anything that moved because they were not spending their money so the chinese were making this product cheaply. a lot of the product to go into wal-mart and body would cost ten times as much if not for the chinese buy you not only bought the product, you bought a lot of the product because you're buying at with their money so they gave you the financing and low-cost product. who could avoid that deal? so i think it is a huge warning signal. i am not sure it was causal but it was clearly indicative of this status seeking consumption binge the u.s. and europe were on the last 15 years.

>> this is the last one. >> it looks like we have taken a big standard of living hit in this country and its continuing here. we have roughly 1 million college graduates a year. how are these guys, college graduates being absorbed into the economy and what can the federal government or corporations do to help this major problem? >> it is a big problem. i mean, i wish i were 30 years younger. if you remember back in the 60's they said don't trust anybody over 30. well, i'm not quite 60 yet but i am well over 30 and i don't know if i can lead the revolt of the young people, but they need to get in the streets because when you look what we have done to them on every front, i mean, we have caused the collapse of this financial system by ignoring its warnings. we haven't repaired adequately because we have allowed unfettered access to our congress. we have borrowed 13 trillion

from these young people to guarantee our problems and we have spent 4 trillion of their money. we are running 2 trillion-dollar deficits which they all have to pay and in addition social security is 30 or $25 trillion in deficit and medicare is $72 trillion in deficit. again, we are passing the cost of the care of our elderly not to us but our children and grandchildren. so, you know we know why they get stuck with these things because they are too young to vote but even now for the first time they have come out in big support of barack obama. the average stood a vote in big numbers but they still are not in the streets and still haven't been part of this discussion as to what to do with this collapse. it doesn't make any sense to me that we would spend $15 trillion of our children's money so that our style of living and status level doesn't have to decline two or 3%. we have already said it is that

on sustainable levels because it's supported by phony debt and lending from the chinese. so, i would love to be 29 again and trustworthy because i think i could lead that revolution. thank you so much for coming. [applause] roi

and coming up next, book tv presents a "after words," an hourlong program where we invite guests to interview authors. this week long time talk-radio program brian jennings discusses his latest book censorship the threat to silence talk radio. mr. jennings explains what he believes will be the back door past to reinstating the fairness doctrine and silencing conservative talk radio. mr. jennings discusses his book with a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host malkoff

crowley. >> host: im monica crowley the host of the nationally syndicated radio program the monica crowley shop. also a panelist on the mug laughlin growth and political and foreign affairs analyst for the fox news channel. i'm delighted to welcome to the program today brian jennings. brough and is one of the nation's top talk radio programmers. he served more than a decade as the national vice president of talk programming for citadel broadcasting. he is an authority on talk radio. everybody in the industry knows him and respect him. according to a talkers magazine he's one of the founding fathers of conservative talk radio. brian, welcome. >> guest: thank you. >> host: we are here to talk about your outstanding book, censorship the threat to silence talk radio, the new fairness doctrine exposed and here it is. brian, let me begin with just a personal bit of background on

myself. i am a nationally syndicated radio host, sallai -- >> guest: and a good one. >> host: thank you very much, i will take the compliment. i am increasingly alarmed as i know people are. people in the industry, people who listen to talk radio. but what you would write about and that is the first amendment right to free speech. >> guest: it's been going on more than two decades actually, even before president reagan lifted the fairness doctrine in 1987. but when he did, conservative talk radio came out of the gates like wildfire. it was amazing to watch. i was there at that time. i worked 20 years under the fairness doctrine and 20 years outside of the fairness doctrine and i can tell you that there was a night and day difference in what we could do on the nation's airwaves. for the first time we had stations accepting talk radio as a true format. proof of the putting so to speak

is that and 1987 there were only 125 radio stations doing talk radio in america. now there are over 2,000 so you can't tell me that lifting the fairness doctrine was the wrong thing to do. >> host: let's get into the fairness doctrine. it's right here in the subtitle, the fairness doctrine exposed. let's go back in time. till exactly what the fairness doctrine a buzz. >> guest: the fairness doctrine was an fcc, federal communications relation. 1949 and was established. it was established to force broadcasters to reach out, to seek out opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. back then in 1949 there were only 2,000 radio stations in america. there were only a few television stations in america, and a glimmer of hope for television network or two. there wasn't so much media back then of course we didn't have the internet, we didn't have the diversity of media that we have

today so it could be argued to some degree the fairness doctrine was a fair thing back then because if you overloaded one media with a political ideologies it could sway opinion, no question with the lack of media we had back then. but today there are 14,000 radio stations in america. there is the internet. we have dozens of cable news channels. we have networks, tv stations, many more newspapers and magazines. there can be no argument for need of diversity of viewpoints in america. we have it at the drop of a hat. >> host: given the contemporary context the phrase fairness doctrine is a misnomer. >> host: >> guest: that is it is so disguised and unfair in this day and age that it should never be used for some democrats to hide behind and use it is absolutely

disingenuous today. >> host: you mentioned was dropped in 1987 that president reagan was a leading force in the doctrine. why did that come about? >> guest: the supreme court in 1968 evaluated a case against a radio station and suggested at that time that the fairness doctrine might very well be unconstitutional. and as a result of that several federal communications commission chairman looked at it and commissioners looked at it over the years but it blossomed on told reagan that they took it seriously and president reagan of course was a broadcaster from his early days at who radio in des moines on the y and he knew what the free market placement to free speech. therefore his fcc repeals it by four to one and it was the best thing that ever happened to free speech in america. for the first time broadcasters work on an equal playing with

our print brethren. >> host: after the end of the fairness doctrine, 1987 what happened to the radio airwaves, what kind of metamorphosis' did you see? >> guest: it was instant. i was involved in a talk-radio station in seattle washington back in 1988. a very liberal radio station i might add. and we can get into that story later. >> host: absolutely. >> guest: but immediately the first out of the gate was rush limbaugh and he fully understood what it was to be able to opinion eight on the air waves when he does in sacramento california he had to live under the fairness doctrine guidelines. when he located in sacramento, he told me that it was amazing that was nobody doing political talk and he said this is a cakewalk. what fun this is going to be. then he had to succumb to the fairness doctrine by giving an hour of a program to somebody in

this community concerned about what he said so he had to move over and he says it was the most boring hour of radio i've ever done in my life and that's what was happening back then. there was no question about it. we saw immediately was all of a sudden we could put commentators on the radio and have three opinions on the radio. we didn't have to act as moderator's anymore. talk radio was so boring in the 1980's you could report you were lost dog or do could report any kind of a matter like that. but it was share your favorite recipes. there were some good programs. i don't want to denigrate talk radio. there was bruce williams and sally jessy raphael, non-political. we stayed away from politics like the plague back then. >> host: it is amazing when you think back to 87 these were

pre-cable days, and essentially pre-cnn although they were on the air but they didn't have the wide audience the have today. before fox news certainly, pre-intranet, pre-blogs and so when rush limbaugh can on the scene right after the lifting of the fairness doctrine, what he did, but he was able to pioneer and then all of the fellow conservative talk-show hosts like me, we were able to see the conservative point of view was now being expressed in any other media outlet. not newspapers, broadcast television and so it gave the conservative voice a place to be expressed. and the reason it turned into a commercial success and i want to get into that with you momentarily is because half of the country you could argue half of the country may be a little bit more because we still are a center-right nation felt their views were not being expressed in the mainstream media and all of a sudden here comes this new form of media where their views are being expressed articulately

by russia and others so all of a sudden you had half the country be able bit more thinking we are not alone. our viewpoint are all crazy. we're not isolated and we are validated. >> guest: no question i was one of those conservatives who through the 80's was told i should not think the way i think and i certainly shouldn't speak the way i spoke. and when he came out of the gates of i remember thinking to myself he is saying what i think and what i feel and yet he is brave enough to say it. what's wrong with that picture? the fairness doctrine was lifted and all of a sudden we could do exactly that. it was an amazing time to watch conservative growth so quickly than because you're absolutely right and there were many research projects that back this up that most media is so liberal that conservatives felt for years they had no validation in the media and that is why they

are still loyal to talk radio today. it's the only avenue. that's why they are still loyal to fox news to read the few it's the only avenue for their validation so they support and that's why it is so strong in america today. but you can go to many research projects, but you research center, this last election clearly showed that the press favored obama. the media research center over years has shown through many studies that white house correspondents, over 80% of them have been democrats. this last fall even the woman for the "washington post" wrote in her paper that her paper favored obama clearly over mccain and there were so many instances of media bias talk radio is the only opposition to that bias and that's why it's done so well. if it hadn't been for talk

radio, we wouldn't have known the other side of the iraqi war. we wouldn't have exposed the perils of national health care. we would have most likely had an emigration bill passing through our congress and senate. and without conservative talk-radio there would be no opposition to this. and clearly that is what the obama administration wants, no opposition. >> host: the ideological and was part of the equation. the other part is the commercial part because what the liberals don't want to deal with and what they don't want to see is conservative talk radio when it came on the scene and even to this day is a huge commercial success in terms of ratings and revenue. conservative talk radio makes money. so in a private sector economy if that is still what we have, which is arguable, but one of the things they want to tap down is this private-sector success. >> guest: absolutely and that is what is scary about this.

there is a statement made by the acting fcc chairman michael copps, stalled with two p's by the "washington post" didn't get that. if he cannot produce what the market was in terms of the diversity of that market, then government has a legitimate role to play in regulation of speech. this, from the federal communications commission. to me that is one of the most arrogant statements about the free marketplace and the public determining for what it wants to hear, reid, and see what, and for major bureaucrats do not understand that the free-market place determines free-speech in america is absolutely incredulous in my opinion. >> host: how do they score that circle, braun and? there are certain limited limitations on free speech for example you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, you can't

incite violence and even now there are hate speech lobbies on books but it is a very limited circumscription of free speech, so how are they getting away with in modern times when we have so many of these other outlets for liberal speech, conservative speech and various other forms? >> it's very subtle. i think we have to go back into the history of why they absolutely hate conservative talk radio. and they do. there's no question about it. they felt the conservative talk radio was too powerful they helped usher in the republican revolution in the early 90's for congress. >> host: which it did. >> guest: absolutely did. it helped defeat democrats and 2000 and 2004 but they hated that. they absolutely hated that. when george bush won his second election, they found that they would take talk-radio down and

when the white house back in 2008 and at that time, 2004 there were many organizations formed. media matters is one, media matters, far left organization that has won intend to take conservative talk down. the use of statements, take our statements completely out of context, they misrepresent them and in abolishing them with what they think is the truth. that organization is unbelievable. i have been a target of that organization. >> host: as have i.. >> guest: as most conservative radio hosts have. i was on a radio station in nevada, citadel. this station has been number one for eight years plus. phenomenal radio station. the afternoon host bill meanders gets into the immigration issue in a major way and when he uses the word illegal media matters' gets all over it. the illegal immigration, they even went as far as sending an

e-mail blast which is one of their tactics as you know, to their constituents to protest the radio stations, so we have a few protesters on the sidewalk and we have other people calling the radio station and calling advertisers to try to get those advertisers off the radio station. now here's the irony of the whole thing. most of those people haven't even heard the program, don't know what it is and they are like sheep. and i think media matters is an organization they have their right to free speech, but so do we. >> host: this is what is disturbing when you described in the united states and 2009 in the 21st century we have this kind of intimidation tactics and strong arm tactics legitimate points of view. in nobody is going on the air yelling fire in a crowded room. we are simply expressing a legitimate political point of view and what we have now is this fought police going on

coming from the left, thought police, that's exactly what it is, where you feel like you have to weigh every word if you come out with the joke. those of us who do three hours on the day every day sometimes six days a week, you find yourself waiting every word, maybe restraining yourself holding your tongue because you're afraid the thought police might come at you or work when you have to say, put it in some form of pro first contant, miss characterize it, plastered all over the place and then you are going to lose revenue or the radio stations might get hurt. >> i have given up on that. i don't care anymore. i state life deal and i have been attacked over so many years i received literally hundreds and hundreds of hate letters from the far left when i program a radio station in seattle washington that perhaps is the first all conservative radio station in america. i would take those letters and put them on the bulletin board for everybody to read.

they were so incredulous and was like a coach in football team at halftime. here is what your opposition is saying. let's go beat them. we went from number 23 to number one in the market at the radio station in less than three years. but the far left absolutely comes out of conservative talk radio and isn't it interesting that we don't advocate the same kind of intimidation on the left. we believe in free speech rights but they come after us and try to show some through intimidation, through regulation and that is exactly what they are trying to do through the sec. at the center of this whole debate is the center for american progress, the cap report offered by john podesta, the transition chief for president obama. the report is basically the playbook right now for the federal communications commission and the regulation of

radio and they are going to regulate the media. they have stated in the 2008 platform that they need to clarify the public interest obligations. and president obama favors two distinct means of doing that. one is diversity of media ownership. beneteau was localism and under the localism banner that is where we need to be very, very careful about this. >> host: each one of those and break them down. first talk about localism and tell what that means. >> guest: localism is a requirement and a regulation that the fcc has had and it's a good name. radio stations should reach out and be local. about what the fcc is contemplating doing is requiring a certain amount of programming requiring, not voluntary by the radio station. in other words a radio station in a small community that cannot afford to pay for a local personality, they cannot afford

to be say 50% local or whenever the requirement might be for the radio station would be put out of business because they can't afford that. they just cannot afford it. the market may not barrett and so i think the fcc has to be sensitive to this. again, that is a form ofsñ censorship because it pushes the ability of that station to syndicate a program and forces it into localism and the fcc is singing that isn't any kind of censorship whatsoever. i don't understand how they don't understand that or they just deny it, but it is definitely a way that moving over a syndicated conservative talk-show host such as yourself in favor of more localism. i agree east asian and needs to be local as a program director absolutely required that of the station's vice supervised. but it has to be something that is voluntary and is done by the

free-market place in america. >> host: and what about the concept of being commercially viable? you mentioned earlier in the interview that there were many times local programming that was boring as can be and everybody would just turn off their radio because somebody was talking about a tenantry and nobody cared about that. so isn't it -- it strikes me as inappropriate that the federal government would come into some of these stations, especially the smaller ones but even the bigger ones like tebeau adc in new york, kabc in los angeles and tell them x amount of time needs to be devoted to local programming when perhaps for those stations or for any station that might not be commercially viable. >> guest: commercially viable and interesting like to say. number one it is hard to find good local talent in many communities in america. there is no question about it. but again, i stressed that the fcc should back out of this area because its regulation of speech, and for them not to

admit or understand that is incredulous to me. i just -- again, i think this is an effort by the far left to now say that we are going to advocate a new fairness doctrine but they are going through the backdoor basically with fairness doctrine like requirements. same thing. >> host: do you think that this is part of an orchestrated attempt by the obama administration and democrats at large because they have supermajorities in the congress because when i look at the landscape, and we are talking commercial liability here in the private sector, but i see is massive government intervention into every nook and cranny of our lives and the government intervention in the private sector is unprecedented. we saw the government takeover general motors. the government orchestration of the chrysler bankruptcy. we have the government intervening in the financial sector with the banks and shaking them down over the

t.a.r.p. money and they can't pay off when they want to. next is the healthcare sector and the list goes on and on so is this what we are talking about here, part of a multipronged approach that none of this is random, none of this is off the cuff, that it was all orchestrated to go at one time so that all of our rights and abilities to succeed or achieve the private sector are being attacked down. >> guest: i have no question about it. i think you have mailed it. i think that what this administration does is it tries to act so quickly with so many things that we don't have time to discuss what's going on. we don't have time to measure the consequences adequately and this is going on right under our noses and i will tell you how important this is to me and i hope to many americans is that if we regulate speech in america what other rights to we have at

that point? what other rights matter at that point because all rights we have as americans come from one thing and that is our ability to speak and if we regulate radio speech or a television speech or any way regulate speech at all, we are giving up our most important plight in america, we are giving up our heart, giving up our seóul at that point and that's why the book documents so many efforts that are intimidation factors that i have a hard time wondering why these people can even call themselves americans. i really wonder and i've come to the conclusion, monaco, that these people hit conservative values so much they want to destroy them and the way they can destroy them is to destroy conservative talk in america. they cut the head of the snake off so to speak. and i am very afraid that we are

giving our rights that's happening under our noses and we are in peril, at the edge of tierney. we really are. >> host: one of the ironies is the left like to pride itself on the concept of tolerance. that they are tolerant and expect everyone else to be tolerant and what that is what the nation was built on. yes, the nation was built on a concept of tolerance but with the left actually exercises and practices is intolerance. >> guest: it's hypocritical. when i was attacked in the 80's and 90's even by my employer back then, you know, i looked up the word liberal. what does it mean? a liberal is a person who is open-minded about things. at least that's the definition of always been told and used. there's nothing open-minded about going after a conservative viewpoint with intimidation.

that's not open-minded. >> host: does that strike you as a fundamental insecurity on the part of the left that they believe their ideas are so weak or so vulnerable or perhaps this country is center-right and their ideas will not be supported that because they cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas they feel they need to put the first amendment in a size and try to shut down conservative thoughts and expression? >> guest: i have no doubt about it because i truly believe that most americans when it comes down to the core values have some conservative values and predominantly conservative values. i saw this in seattle when i program there. i was told by many people conservative talk would never work there, that it's berkeley north. and one of the most liberal areas of the united states and it is. but you get outside the core area of downtown seattle, core metropolitan area and immediately it turns more conservative because people are

entrepreneurs, they understand what their tax dollars are doing and they have to make payroll and as soon as the outer edges of the city started to listen the ratings skyrocketed. i'm certainly convinced most americans have core principles and i think that's why another reason why the format works so well is because it resonates with meaningful things in their lives. i was attacked viciously in seattle in fact i remember a distinct telephone call coming from a friend of mine who was the bureau chief of the associated press when we first went all talk on tbi yet he said you can't do that. that's not allowed. you can't possibly do that in america. i said to him you're misinformed. the fairness doctrine was repealed about two years ago or three years ago. but for the time frame was back

then. but they couldn't believe in america we could have absolute free speech. and it's a very scary thing to the left i believe. they don't feel secure at all and because we are successful in talk radio they don't have a piece of that. they have all other media of the failed to recognize by the way interestingly enough. absolutely failed to recognize the they have not been able to compete well in the talk radio circles and it's an interesting point. >> host: you mentioned the station in seattle that you programs and that in the immediate vicinity the immediate urban neighborhoods people thought there is no way that conservative radio could thrive your singing in the suburbs once the signal got out beyond that immediate liberal core of the urban center those suburban areas really started listening and that is where you work ratings were centrally driven. do you think that holds true for

most of the big city conservative stations? >> i really do. >> host: that is like a doughnut shape. >> guest: i absolutely do. i think the court power structure of and an urban area is predominantly democratic controlled but once you get out of that i think it turns in america. and as the heartland of fact and away, and i see that happening in most cities, i have seen it happened last two decades that way. and i think that is why conservative talk radio does so well is it reaches people where people are real people. >> host: the signals and some of these big city stations, 50,000 watts, extremely strong so it can go over the heads of the liberals so to speak and reach the people you're talking about. that must also drive the liberals in knots. >> guest: it does. number one these are powerful stations. there's a reason these stations are running this type of programming. it works. simple as that.

they don't want to admit its success because they have not been successful in talk radio. they hate this because conservative talk is listened to and successful. so for liberal talk radio has not been. and you know on the book on a encourage all of my liberal friends keep talking. keep earning your way. i'm a champion of free speech. why don't they say the same thing to us? >> host: again if they honestly believe in the marketplace of ideas and the strength of their ideas, then certainly they might, they might take you on your offer and they have tried on the airwaves and when we come back from the break i want to get into why you think liberal or progressive talk has not succeeded in america and i also want to delve a little bit more deeply into some of these back to work initiatives that the left is trying to push through and now i suspect with a democratic president and these big democratic majorities in the

congress that perhaps they are armed and certainly dangerous. >> guest: they are locked and loaded. >> host: they are locked and loaded. the have their resources and also, brian, they understand the political momentum is going to be with them so long. the politics in america moves in cycles and they are not going to have this kind of political capital to do this much longer. that's why we have to watch. we are going to take a quick break and have more with brian jennings and his book, censorship the threat to silence talk radio. back with more right after this.

>> host: im monica crowley baquet brian jennings whose new book is outstanding. it's called censorship the threat to silence talk radio the new fairness doctrine exposed. blonden, when we left we were talking about the marketplace of ideas and how the left seems to think at least based on their behavior that their ideas cannot compete. that their ideas might be weak or tolerable or perhaps because we still remain a center white nation could not survive without all of the protection they are trying to build into the system, one of which is to try to silence conservative points of view. what has been the track record of liberal or progressive talk

in america? >> guest: from an organized standpoint, dismal. there are successful liberal >> kuhl shows. air america for instance was a dismal failure its first time around. they are trying to reorganize -- >> host: it went into bankruptcy didn't it? >> guest: they are trying to recover now. it has been absolute disaster. i tried as a programmer to establish the doubletalk on a half dozen stations in my career all failed and it wasn't just a failure, it was total failure. >> host: is that when those liberal voices were alone or how does that compare if you. liberal voice with a conservative voice and i know because i was part of that kind of experiment on conservative talk stations and on cable networks, and it doesn't seem to

work >> guest: it doesn't work that way at all when you combine the two back and forth. it's because liberals don't want to hear conservatives, and conservatives don't want to hear liberals. the reason that we have all conservative stations, and or all of liberal stations is because that is the formula that seems to work best for the ratings in america and we have to generate ratings because so far we are the free market economy in america. we have to generate ratings for advertising revenue. ..

on the stations that i have tried liberal talk on, we have created the same environment but up against the conservative station it paled, it wasn't even close. part of my job as a national program director is to keep tabs on radio ratings nationwide. i look at markets where there is liberal talk, air america or other avenues of talk coming in the stations are oftentimes rated 28, 29, 30, 34th in the marketplace. you can't exist that way. that really drives liberals nuts. they can't admit that their

ideas failed in the free marketplace. therefore, what do they do? they run to daddy, the government and want regulation. >> host: big daddy come a very big daddy. >> guest: give us, we can't believe that in all the verse america that our point of view of the work. we don't accept that. that is even contained in the capped report, the center for american progress headed by john podesta of. that is stated in that report. the fact of the matter is the free marketplaces where ideas germinate, where they succeed or they fail, and we have to value that. >> host: now, if these liberal point of view does not succeed in talk radio that is just one medium and that is what they are focused on because it fails there. however, the left's cnn, msnbc, "the washington post," "the new york times," pretty much every newspaper with the exception of very few in america plus time

and "newsweek" and the list goes on and on. so, they are so focused on this one medium without taking a step back and looking at the whole of ray of other media outlets where their point of view is multifold and expressed in every single out late. you cannot go to a new stand without seeing one of these liberal newspapers or news weeklies, said their focus on the one medium where they cannot succeed when they have advantage everywhere else. >> guest: they wanted all and they have wanted it all for years. they can't stand to not have it all and that is why we have to protect conservative talk radio because it is the only opposition out there left. if we marginalized conservative talk radio through regulation, through the airwaves, we have given up our freedom. we have become homogenized as americans and at that point we are just puppets on the stage. it is orwellian again. there's a country trying to do

this right now. if you read it is the country of argentina. the criticism she wants to force more diversity of media ownership and that is exactly what our government is trying to do it the same time. >> host: in fact you read about this in the book "censorship" any talks about these examples of what is happening in america. you do write about candidate and it says what it looks like candidate is doing is leading the way for the left in this country in the movement against free speech. >> guest: my word. the canadian situation scares me to death. the canadian human rights tribunals, they even call them that. very powerful. our friend, mark stein, in his book america alone when he road through who cleans magazine in the canadian islamic council protested and went to petition to the human rights tribunals, costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars in court and legal fees.

i am not sure how much it cost him but it certainly did cost. it was an absolute affront to free speech in canada. it took months to clear that out and it wasn't just one human rights tribunal. it was british columbia, it was alberta, it was the others, saskatchewan i believe as well, and the national canadian human rights tribunal. that tribunal, those tribunals have censored pastors, have censored canadian citizens, find them for what they deemed to be hate speech, speaking out against homosexuality endgame marriage and so forth and we are seeing the same thing creeping into the united states, absolutely we are. >> host: do we have any evidence brian that the obama administration and the democrats in congress are really looking towards these international examples? do we have concrete evidence that they are watching what is

happening in canada or argentina, western europe and they are literally taking that as a model for what they want to do? >> guest: i absolutely believe that is to be the case. the recent example of the united kingdom banning michael savage for his bombastic speech against radical islam. it is incredulous that a country that reports to the value of free speech would even consider that. in fact i defend michael savage in several instances in the book so i would presume that the u.k. should ban the book. if they really follow consistency, you would think that would be hate speech as well. we are seeing many examples of other organizations and assaults on free speech not just through the fcc but other organizations such as hispanic organizations and especially in los angeles working with the chicanos

studies grouper at ucla, where they have allegedly isolated and 80 minute tape with three different shows, michael savage, and who works with your network and also lou dobbs. in that 80 minutes of tape they claim to have 334 instances of hate speech. first of all, who defines hate? you know, there is a saying that one man's cup of tea is another man's poison or something like that. who defines that? who defines what is hateful and what is not? i found it really interesting, the hispanic groups that are suggesting this stated that they value free speech, but, but-- >> host: there is always a but. >> guest: whenever you see that or hear it be very, very careful. free speech can only be free without that but.

>> host: talking about political correctness and when it runs amok like this, it does turn into a form of and i think to the example of don imus, who made that now infamous crack on the air. he was broadcast on msnbc while doing his nationally syndicated radio program and that kind of pulled a-- political correctness came down on him. the let got him out of there as fast as possible. the advertisers were scalise and that is just one example of exactly what you are talking about in this gets into the backdoor approach that the lathed is having to try to silence voices that they disagree with. >> guest: there than many of those examples of america and don imus is probably the leading example. yes it was a stupid comment, absolutely. he apologized profusely for it. i think it was hard felt that his apology. he is back talking where he should be. he does have this free speech rights. there is common sense and i

think most conservative talkers understand what that common sense is all about. their liberal talkers out there who are vehement and hateful themselves and if we wanted to be the same as liberals and charge that, we would do that but we are not. we believe in free speech. >> host: what about this idea of double standards? don amos does make a misguided and stupid remark and he does apologize employed as he paid the ultimate prize, loses his job. somebody like wanda sykes, an african-american comedian can stand up at the white house correspondence dinner and wish rush limbaugh the dead and she gets left. she does not lose any gigs and even the president laughs at that so that is the environment we are dealing with. >> guest: exactly the environment, it is very hypocritical and as you notice rush did not comment on that because he did not need to. it tells the full story of what

the far left really wants for america and they don't want conservative views. they hate conservative views and they want to absolutely kill conservative views the rum america, therefore they go after our talk show host. >> host: let's talk about this card censorship that you write about. do you think this democratic president with these big majorities in congress will go at a full frontal reinstitution of the fairness doctrine or will they approach it from a different angle? >> guest: if they do, they can expect the tea party that is incredulous. it will be the biggest tea party this nation has ever seen. >> host: you ain't seen nothing yet. >> guest: no, they are not going to go through the front door on this because a lot of tribal ruins were put up about the fairness doctrine especially as the new president was coming into office and power earlier this year. former president bill clinton for example expressed his desire to see some kind of balance and

fairness on talk radio and many other democrats launched into it other been many efforts over the past couple of years to do the same thing. it has been going on basically since the early '90s when they wanted to return the fairness doctrine but they knew all the time that it would be found unconstitutional in our court system. at least we would hope it would be found unconstitutional, because if it is and then we are not the nation we thought we were. therefore, they want to go through the backdoor and address the fairness doctrine in new clothes and that is what they are doing. >> host: why would the fairness doctrine only apply to talk radio and not to broadcast television or cable television? >> guest: it would have to apply to television. >> host: broadcast television and cable television? >> guest: not cable television. cable television is self regulated although there are many democrats would like to take a-- no question about it.

they are the speech centers of america, so what they have done, they are going into the backdoor to these two measures called localism and diversity of media ownership. the did the city of ownership is intended to do one thing, forced liberal viewpoints into conservative talk america. it is absolutely for that purpose and then intention. again democrats will not admit that. they will not be truthful in their goals, and but it has already started. it started in may with hearings that are organized by the acting fcc chairman michael cox. they have a group of 31 advisers who were there to try to figure out a way in which they can take media licenses from one group and give them to minorities and women. i think that is fine to have diversity in america but it has to be earned through the free marketplace. i am a free marketplace person and you cannot tell me that

taking a license away from one group and giving it to another does not impact speech. it absolutely does. they cannot come and maybe they can come a claim that it does not impact free speech in america. >> host: this is a form of affirmative action. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: let me ask you, with the new fairness doctrine in the form you are talking about apply to national public radio? which is taxpayer funded and quite liberal as we know. so, npr is exempt from all of this? why? >> guest: because it is their own bailiwick, their own turf. it would not apply to them. of course it would apply to them in the legal sense. they could not pass a law or regulation that would impact just conservative talk radio without impacting in the air. >> host: maybe you and i can get a gig on npr. >> guest: i will be there with your shoulder to shoulder.

>> host: doesn't this strike you as an absolute upside down alice-in-wonderland craziness were npr which is a government run entity on talk radio which is very far to the left paid for by taxpayer dollars, that they would essentially be protected from this kind of imposition of fairness and whatever euphemism that want to stifle free speech. >> guest: our dear friend allen coal has nailed it. he says we have to be careful for what we ask and he is absolutely true, because and write because it would impact national public radio potentially and all other liberal media potentially. and, let's face it, again they have control over most of the mainstream media. their thoughts permeate most mainstream media so i think they are on slippery, slippery slope and then the ice. >> guest: you mentioned president obama and he is that a track record in talking about these issues and certainly he is a smart politician to the extent

he will put people in place who will do the heavy lifting in the dirty work for him so he can look like good cup as opposed to john podesta or the head of the fcc who will be the bad cops in these situations. first of all, is there a public statement on the record by president obama on the fairness doctrine? >> guest: yes there is, two times that i am aware of. he says he does not favor the fairness doctrine however he does favor diversity of media ownership and viewpoints on our airwaves, which we already have and he favors localism in radio and tv, which by the way we already have and a free marketplace determines that. he is very much on record for these two new fairness doctrine like regulations, without having to come out for the fairness doctrine. let me say this too. i think this is very important. i have been accused of paranoia.

i have been accused of manufactured controversy. i have two words for manufactured controversy. global warming. and i think those are serious words to take into consideration but you bet i am paranoid about speech, absolutely i am. there's nothing better to be paranoid about then free speech in america. it is our most important right. i would not be as paranoid it house speaker nancy pelosi would allow it vote on the broadcaster freedom act which would forever banned the fairness doctrine, but she is not permitted a vote on that for two years and she is on record, quoted as saying our caucus, the interest of our caucus is in the rivers. nancy pelosi stands for regulation of speech on the airwaves. and, i think that america should turn the heat up on her office, call her out on this because if you are not for free speech and she is clearly not by resisting

this broadcaster freedom act, which is sponsored by congressman mike pence and greg walden, two former broadcasters who understand what is at stake here, if you are not for that than i don't know how she can look yourself in the mayor. >> host: are there republican members of congress who are speaking out on this and do we have legislation either in the hopper or being considered here for and against what we are talking about? >> guest: the two jones auman i just mentioned are the chief spokesman for the conservative talk radio side and that is congressman penson waldman. and there are others. is there regulations or legislation that would prevent it? s it would queue up legislation but it would be shot down by the democratic controlled majority in both houses, no question. the only thing that we really have here, we don't even have a filibuster. we won't have a filibuster in

this matter. the only thing we have is the court system and a court system is skewed up and there are many legal centers cued up ready to go if we get back to regulation of speech. one is the thomas moore law center in detroit. they are representing michael savage at this point on the u.k. controversy where he cannot travel to the u.k. because he is too hateful in his speech. by the way he is never advocated violence, and yes he is bombastic and many of us say tone it down michael a little bit but he has got free-speech rights. >> host: let me ask you, the general listening public, what should their ears be attuned to when they start seeing this kind of movement? are there radio stations who are already anticipating this might come down the pike pretty soon and you agree it is going to happen within a year or a year-and-a-half? because the democrats realize they don't have that much time

here, right? >> guest: certainly by that timeframe, yes but i think even sooner because the fcc is-several commissioners right now that obama must replace but it will soon have a 3-2 democratic majority on the fcc and when it does, and i expect that in the next at least two months, maybe more but i think in that timeframe. you will start to see at that point a movement toward redefining the public interest obligations and the new chairman will be julius genachowski, an old school harvard schom i believe of president obama. he led the digital effort for obama's election campaign, a very successful in what he did because he garnered, helped garner the youthful ." this man absolutely is in the mold of diversity of ownership, diversity of opinion and localism, no question about it

so those will be the two efforts led through the fcc so i think it is right around then. >> will this be a creeping kind of thing or will this be incent and do you see radio stations already starting to build an localism or put on liberal's in anticipation? >> guest: no, i don't see them putting on liberal hosts so to speak but there is one group which is the largest radio company in america, clear channels, which is trying to get out in front of this a bit by establishing program advisory boards, which the sec clearly wants to get done through their localism mandates. and, they want to be that there, doing it themselves rather than having government regulate it, and to me, the programming it buys reports are of very scary things in america. >> host: very early in. >> guest: sio ready 98 page rulemaking report from the sec

which was issued january 24th 2008 and in it i counted eight references to establishing programming or community advisory boards for stations. and, they leave language very, very gray and nebulous. they say should these members be appointed or should they be elected in what sense? and, then they state that stations that already have a formal it buys three board would be exempt from this. just by stating would be exempt means they are going to mandate it for anybody who does not do this right away. the free marketplace dictates what is popular and what is not. we already have our board of advisers as radio talk-show hosts. they are your listeners. they rate you through our arbitron services and if your ratings are bad, you are gone. that is just the way it is. and, to establish a board of

advisers at the very least is the year looking over the shoulder of a broadcaster for fear of what he may say, what you may say, at the very worst could be censorship because of who is on that board. who appoints those members? does the radio station or the government? >> host: there is potential conflict of interest all over the place. let's try to get proactive in our remaining minutes. what can any of us to to stop this attempt to putting the first amendment into-- >> guest: radio management needs to stand up for the first amendment, number one. they need to talk about the first amendment rights that we as americans have. that is what i did and finally got to me and said listen i have to say something about this. i am in a position now where i can say something about it. i can speak out loudly. we as americans have to realize this should not be a fight of conservatives against liberals. it should be a fight by

conservatives and liberals against anybody who favors regulation of speech in america. and, i would hope that number one, america would realize that. not allow it to happen under their noses because this administration act quickly in a stealth manner, in which it can happen and we don't even know it has happened. until it is too late, and we have to be very aware of this. the second thing is there many groups out there right now, which are leading the cause to protect our speech rights on the airwaves. one is the media research center. the media research center i have a lot of faith in. brent basal does a fabulous job on our behalf and has a petition drive which you can easily sign on line. they are going to deliver or have delivered at least 40,000 signatures on line. there are others. there is on fair erred dot org which is a great organization to resist any kind of regulation of

speech on the radio and there are others. don't touch my dial stock, believe it is. that is another organization which is representing our rights as americans of their appanoose that you can protest through with an online petition. the other thing that i would suggest is that we have to demand that the broadcaster freedom act received eight votes, a stand-up boat on the house floor and i think that we have to aim to our criticism and our desire for this boat to nancy pelosi who is not allowed this vote for the last two years. i think it is reprehensible she has not done this. it is a simple matter. if you believe in free speech rights on the air raids there's no reason whatsoever to get in front of this bill and not allow a vote on it. so those are some things we have to pay attention to. >> host: i can understand why people who are devoted to

conservative talk radio would be passionate about this. my audience, your audiences over the years. the general public, have you been hearing from liberals, moderates, independents as well as conservatives and you might expect? are you hearing a sense of outrage about what is going on or is there a general sense of apathy? >> guest: i think, by the mainstream public right now, there is a lack of awareness of what is going on in this regard. i think among conservative audiences there is a big awareness of what is going on. i have been at many rallies in america. i did a 20 market to more on this book, four of those rallies for absolutely huge. albuquerque, reno, boise in portland oregon, hundreds of hundreds of people turned out to talk about this issue and to hear about this issue. it was very gratifying to see their interest in their depth of

knowledge on this issue. liberals for the most part panda book, as we expected, and that is fine. but believe me, if we lose any free-speech rights in america through regulation in the public interest through the fcc, liberals are going to lose those rights as well. because what is good for one is good for the other. it has to be that way. >> host: final question for you fine. if we lose conservative talk radio, with you listen to it or not or whether you agree with the conservative point of view or not, what do we lose? >> guest: our hearts and our soul. we are no longer america, simple as that. >> host: one of the great ironies here is that the founding fathers began this great american democratic experiment based on two things, freedom of worship and freedom of speech. this is why it is so vital to protect talk radio and in particular conservative talk radio.

>> guest: government has no right to sit in the editor's chair or to control content regulation, period. >> host: this is about protecting the first amendment, that our bill of rights in constitution. reign jennings, thank you for joining us. the book is called "censorship," the threat to silence in talk radio. the author is brian jennings. i am monica crowley. thank you so much for being with us today.

>> how is c-span funded? >> publicly funded? >> donations maybe? i have no idea. >> government. >> c-span gets its funding through taxes. >> sort of a public funding thing. >> maybe, i don't know. >> 30 years ago america's cable companies created c-span is the public service, a private, no government mandate, no government money. >> journalist and author nicholas basbanes has written seven books about book culture, but people and places. his first work, and gentlemen is published in 1995, has said 20 printings. his most recent books are coming every book, it's reader and the world of letters, d.o. university press, 1908 to 2008. booktv visited the north massachusetts home of mr. basbanes to two or his

collection of books and to learn about his writing habits. he is currently writing a book on the history of paper. >> hi. >> how are you doing? >> good, come on in. welcome to the of this. >> thanks for allowing us into your home. >> thank you for having the courage and fortitude to come and take a look at some of our books here. >> i understand that you live books in almost every room in the house. >> we have books in every room of the house africa were surrounded by books. we are engulfed by them and surrounded by them and they are very much a part of our life. >> where should we start? >> well, we just came in. i guess we could start with the books over the fireplace year, because my very first book that i wrote, a gentle madness, was the book ostensibly about the

passion to collect books over 2,000 year period or so come and the books that kind of got me started as a writer of the bibliomania, are the books in my own collection so if you were to look at these books, it is a small selection of this particular subset of books and to look at them you would say what in the world do they have in common? there is a book by david halberstam and a book by isaac-- and a book by chuck yeager, a couple of books by tom wolf and david mccullough and sue miller, the novelist from boston. we could go on and on but if i were to open one of these books into just take one at random here, let's say the tom wolf and there are a number of them, but this is a great novel of the 1980's and if you open it, you will see it is inscribed.

it is to nick, great to see you again. i had to read some of this wonderful handwriting, but tom luff, november 2, 1980 in boston. every one of these books is inscribed by the author, and for a good number of years 22 years in fact, i wrote a weekly literary feature which at first appeared in western massachusetts not far from where i live here in massachusetts, but over a period of years syndicated and in his many as 30 newspapers nationwide. from the very beginning of this procedure i used to go out into these interviews in boston or new york or wherever these authors would be and always without exception at the end of the interview i would ask the author to inscribe my copy of their book, and so this was shaped and forms, this collection and as they say these

are some of the highest. there is no way you could put them on this little mantle. i think there are in excess of 1,000 copies of these books. that became kind of the incentive for me to begin research on a book that became a gentle madness, my first book which was published in 1995, and the subtitle was bibliophiles, people who love books, the people who are maniacal about them in the eternal passion for books. it was about a history and some journalism kuan, about 2,000 years of the passion to not only collect books but to gather them, preserve them and pass them on and in the process preserve the portion of our history and our culture. so, it all starts for me with these particular books ear bud as you will see, we go off into a number of other different areas. i will just briefly show you some of the pop-up books.

i love pop-up books. i am a shame liz devotee of what they call paper engineering. these are just recently-- recent arrivals and these are by roberts, who is regarded as the king of the pop-ups. they have the studio in new york city and they do some of the most remarkable pop-up books. it has become quite a collectible, and i would say that i just love them. i love everything about them. that brings up the kid in me, so be it. the dexterity, the work that goes into them, the imagination. look at that. these are all together for a peace i will be writing, an annual survey of what is new in pop-up books. i would say they are perhaps 300 or so, give or take, pop-up books throughout the house.

i am writing a book about paper now, and we will talk a little bit later about that but i found very interesting about this, it is a hand-painted and this is a book that is done entirely, the page has no printing on it but it is all court. the pages are made out of court, not paper and when i saw that, i said i have to have that. it is a lovely painting on there. i think it is greek, a creek scene, i am not sure. it has the instance of a bookcase, that is kind of dedicated i guess 22 subject areas. what you see here are all of the releases of the library of america which is now 26 years old and i guess there are 130 or so books. we are double shell tear so there are more library america's down below. so these are all library of

america books which i find essential. i think it is one of the most remarkable publishing programs in the history of the united states. absolutely wonderful. authoritative editions of what constitutes the canon of american literature and i find them so useful all the time. i never know when i'm going to need something by abraham lincoln or henry james or longfellow. i did a piece on longfellow last year for the smithsonian magazine. i quoted some abraham letters and a little piece i wrote on abraham lincoln's reading. they are marvelous books. the other books in this bookcase are largely, not entirely, but i would say most elite literary biography books about authors, about primarily books about their writing. their work, and i would say, however many there are here and i would say there are a couple

of hundred, there are at least three times as many additional volumes about the other writers in various sections of the house. so, here we are in the library, i guess for lack of another name. i do some of my riding out here. obviously there is a computer here and e-mail. i would say i write a book reviews here. hears the new pd james which i am reviewing for the "los angeles times." ida mae great t.d. jakes fan away and not reading i read for pleasure. this is just-- as he can see, i kind of devoured these things when i have them, but i just finished it, just turning to write that review but this little shelf right here is the nick basbain shelf. this is mind with an exception of with you over here. but there is the gentle madness paperback, general madness heart

keffer. this is, this thing weighs about 6 pounds but that is the korean edition of a gentle madness. here is a chinese edition in the works. my second book is patience and fortitude right here. behind these you will see eight or perhaps even ten copies of gentle madness. now i know that looks like, again, alito-- but it is really not. this books have a purpose. verret eight different editions of a gentle madness and an edition is different from a print because if you have a new addition there is a subtle change, it textual change where you have to go into the text to make a correction. put something else in so there were eight distinct editions of the gentle madness, so i have one of all the eight back there. there are two copies among the two editions. >> the monthly--

>> it went from patience, i think it went to a among the gently mad and then to a splendored-- every book its reader and why do i have brian lampasas booknotes here? brian did he nice interview with me shortly after general that this cannot. this was his first volume and i am just so thrilled when he decided to put various writers in different categories. of course i am trying to find a table of contents here. excuse me. he put me under storytellers. right there. i like that. c-span: on the cover of this book you've got what looks like some kind of a woodcutter. what is that? >> guest: it is and that the very famous would cut, five vetted years old that was executed by-- is called the book fool and it was in the original ship of fools, and the first

full of the whole navy, the fool at the helm was the bibliomania and i have always loved that particular engraving and shows it for the dust jacket. c-span: if someone buys this book which sells for $35, what would they get? >> guest: they get a book that i hope they will keep and enjoy, and pass on to others. at i think they will have a record of the passion for collecting books not only collecting books but preserving knowledge over 25 years. c-span: where did you get the idea for this? >> guest: i have been asked if i'm a biblio maniac myself and my star dancer is-- one reviewer suggest nick basbanes may not be of bibliomania but he is at risk. i have been committed to books all of my life. i'm a professional writer and i was a book review editor in massachusetts for 13 years.

i interviewed many authors, and i have just always loved books, read them and so it is just a natural kind of thing to want to write about this fashion. >> the interview on c-span did so much to help this book take off, the first printing was 5800 copies. it really was not expected to sell a lot. but it sold out within two days and by the end of the month we were in our third printing. the last i heard we were well over 20 printings and 120 or so thousand copies in print. i love this book because it is the kind of book i never thought anyone would want to publish of why someone would think that my literary journalism over a period of 20 years. i have been writing about books and literature and doing criticism since '78 but this particular volume covers 20

years of my literary journalism of various newspapers, magazines, "the new york times," "the washington post," the smithsonian, whatever and it is kind of fun and i edited it. i spent a lot of time bringing it up to date. this is my latest book,. i was approached and commissioned to write a centennial history of the young university press, and i have really enjoyed doing this because, and i say it kind of tongue in cheek but one of the factors that attracted me to doing it was the fact that everybody has such low and expectations of an interesting book. on the service you think of a history of university press over 100 years would be very boring but they have had freehling, a lively exciting history at yale and my view the outstanding university press and was really a lot of fun and i think it worthwhile but because we are in

a time, the early years of the 21st century, where the whole future of scholarly publishing is being discussed. fully 85% of the university press in north america outbreak year after year in the red. yell operates year after year in a black. how did they do it? i really believe that every book in this house, even if i have not read it, i may have owned it for 25 years and might not have read it yet but they pretty much know what i have here and i know where it is and how i can lay my hands on it. i may not be always able to do it right away. i kind of knew you were coming over today and i said i had better take a look at what is behind the shells. i got over here and here is body of secrets by james bamford. i have been looking for this book for two weeks. and there it was in front here. it was back there and i was so thrilled.

in fact i went to one of my libraries and boston and i bought this. i said i can't afford any longer. i know i have that here but instead of wasting time looking four, go barwick and i have always prepared myself for your arrival. this is a book about the national security agency and this book i'm writing about paper, which we will talk about a little bit later if you would like. i have little riff on the nsa in the cia. last year i went to fort meade, went to the national security agency. it took me four months to get clearance and approval to go in there. what in the world did you want to go to a national security agency for? writing a book about papermaking? the nsa has this enormous, unbelievable paper pulp and plant. this is pulp. they gave me a little bag of processed, highly-mag is still

moist because the kmart of the end. we never have, we never will, national security agency, so i-- that was my little memento come up but this is pulled, all of this is highly classified documents, which once pulled like this are declassified, and they do, i don't know how many hundreds of pounds a day of this, but then when it's completed, they sell it to wire houses which in turn makes pizza boxes and bathroom tissue out of it i am told so you never know what kind of a product it is. >> here we are and what you have called your library. >> for want of a more descriptive term. >> you told me that these books are all double shelf. my question is, how do you know,

double shelf means their books behind these books that you know what is behind the books in the front? >> well, this library has been here for 20 years, and i don't know if it is particularly related but someone once asked charles lamb who had a lot of, many books in his library and they were all bone similarily. they all had the same kind of uniform binding. how can you tell one from the other? he said how does the shepherd no his sheep? i kind of know where all of my sheep are especially the pull down this stack of books here. in this kind of reveals my little collection of tennessee williams. i love tennessee williams. i love rhama. i love to collect material that is written for the stage but as it appears on the page, so here

is, this is a really wonderful first edition of the glass menagerie. collectors will tell you this is really just a marble-- marvelous book. this is a superb copy of this book and first addition. it is arguably his best known play, outstanding. tennessee williams, then you go here and you will see absolutely it is the first printing right there, so that is a pretty nice copy of this book. a streetcar named desire. it is common for this particular title tuscon on this binder, so. >> what does that mean? bevis sun has hit this paper and the paper has stated a little bit on the spine so whoever owned this before me have it towards the sun and the kind of faded but most copies of this are much worse. i think any antiquarian bookseller will tell you this is an outstanding copy and far

better than most and it is a very good copy of a really wonderful condition. just a famous book shack of desire. this is all tennessee williams back here. "cat on a hot tin roof," a baby doll, the red devil, suddenly last summer. i love reading him and i love his work and we have everything that he did in first addition. one of the reasons this stuff is the kind. really i started putting them behind here mainly to protect the spine of this book. i did not want this done to get on it. it is not about to get any back here, so that we just put these other books up here, and then we will, they stay nice and safe back there. >> i see this scrapbook here on the table says government exhibit 12 on it. can you tell me about this book?

>> what you were looking at are the scrapbooks' maintained by the notorious booktv, stephen blumberg. i will show you a picture of stephen. this is my first book of gentle madness and here pictures of stephen that i took him when i was out attending his trial in 1991 in des moines, iowa. he was coming out of a dumpster down below. on the upper left he was in a room in ottumwa iowa house. stephen was quite an unbelievable extraordinary figure and in addition to having stolen something on the order of 25,000 rare books the valued at a conservative-- estimated to have been worth about $20 million over a 20 year period, he had collected, he had produced a collection within a collection and the collection within a collection were these bookplates.

these grantor into evidence at his trial. you are wondering how in the world did i get to these bookplates? i got them quite legitimately. i paid for them. after he was convicted, his defense of the trial by the way was not guilty by reason of insanity and they did not buy that and he went to prison. but after he went to prison, what had been the residue of what had been left of the library, they could not determine where all of the books that come from. these books were left over and a few of these artifacts were donated to krate university in omaha nebraska because they help the fbi determined to own these books. a lot of these acquired materials-- if there is any person in the world who should have them, it is nick basbanes so here they are. everywhere he went in the united states, here is-- these are all of the bookplates but everywhere

he went, he would remove come after you took books he would remove the bookplates and he kept them. >> a book plate is a common term for you but for the layperson, it is just a mark of ownership? >> it is a label as he can see. some of the, there are people who collect bookplates. i am sure there are book plate collectors who would go crazy over this particular, given what it is and what represents, so here is a book play-- he went to stanford university. these are books-- these are bookplates from books he stole from stanford and he removed the bookplates and put them in the scrap book. as you can see, he was a very famous collector who gave books to a number of institutions in arizona. ucla. there are two volumes.

really quite remarkable. you go through here and you really appreciate the kind of cultural felony he committed when he realized everyone of these plates represented a stolen vote. how he was actually removing something from society, from people who will have a need any desire to see these books and to use them, and-- it is pretty remarkable. >> how many of them have been recovered? >> they were all recover the day he was arrested. that is with the chapter was about. what was quite remarkable about stephen blomberg which made him interesting to me as a writer, is that not just the the stole the books. errett been a lot of books thieves and document these and manuscript these and maps thieves and they are certainly very worthwhile studies riding about but what was particularly interesting about steven blomberg is the the stole the books to keep them because they

love them. he built a collection of these books and he kept them in this house in ottumwa, iowa and he did this over a 20 year period. the day he was arrested 95% of the books that he had stolen were never known to be missing until the day he was arrested so it became a very interesting story for me. it was truly a story in bibliomania an examination of the book collector who literally falls off the cliff. this is kind of where i read over here. >> that is your reading chair? >> yes, my reading chair. appeaser the books i am working with them. the bottom one is a library book for the work of progress but these are books that have-- i'd like to read books in tandem. i am not a person who has to start one buchan go all the way to the end before i start another one. so there is this book by simon

winchester which i picked up in the strand bookstore, as you can see. it is about a great china scholar who i am writing in my book about paper, and so i am very interested in a winchester's take on him. this is a book both my wife and i are enjoying simultaneously. this is a remarkable book. this is kevin hayes's book about thomas jefferson and the reading of the books that shaped his life. this is a brand new book from gail, reading madness and a new book from knopf. i wrote about this fellow and one of my books, dave the potter in south carolina, supposedly and illiterate but actually a remarkable maker of pottery and he would write these messages on

the piece is then he made. it is a very interesting. these are kind of the books and we are playing with now, reading now. before we go downstairs, i would like to show you a couple of things just for fun. most of the books, 95% of the books in the house represents some aspect of my life with books as a writer about books and book culture but there are a few things here that become targets of opportunity when you see them. you have to have them, so when i saw this first huckleberry finn, i am not sure what i paid for it. but, this is the first edition of huckleberry finn. mark twain and there is hawk over there. what have we got here? this is the book that made me come to transform tommy into a book collector.

i have been writing about books and doing these interviews, but i think i really began to develop, to acquire an antiquarian sense when i found this book in a garage, martha's vineyard. my wife's parents acquired this house with contents and the kabash had a case of old books in it. so, i went out there one day and opened up. it is not in the best of shape i have to say, but you know, we have a first printing of arguably one of the three or four great american novels of all times, scarlett letter by nathaniel hawthorne. you have something pretty interesting. i don't want to repair this. i want to leave it just the way it is. is a little loose, but again that is not a bad book to start your book collection with.

then two others that i will show you briefly. gis also found in cape cod. my wife, god plesser. you have not met her here yet today but she is always very supportive of this. we were down at the cape, it has to be 22 or so years ago, we had their two young daughters in the back seat in their little chairs. i stopped off at a secondhand bookstore and i went inside. i came out and said you are not going to believe this but they have got the first uncle tom's cabin in there. again, this is totally first. all the points are here. look at the shape of this, 1852. we could go through a number of the bit bid gora these, just point by point but trust me, this is a first printing of on cults tums kevin in remarkably good shape. and then these three here i really like because what i was

researching gentle madness, i love to write, do my research from books that i own. i am eight about user of libraries. i have 12 library cards which i used all over the place and i borrow books and return them but when i see books i really want i feel i have to have them so it became important for me to own the books that i was using to build my bibliography. so, iran across what is known as the bibliographical cannon. he was the first decline the word bibliomania. this is a book that is a three volume book. i don't know what the limitation is. it is probably a couple hundred copies. 18178 bibliographical cannon of the ten days, pleasant discourse and subjects connected with early and grave typography by

the reverend cf thomas and i.t. think if you ask anybody in the world that these are all of the re original wood cuts. what he did after he printed this and had it published in 1817 he destroyed all of these cuts to really ensure that it would be very scarce. >> you did mention to me on the phone that you of books in so many places in the house but you actually have them in the bathroom. >> well, before we take a right to go downstairs let's take a right to go in here, and my wife was kindly enough to leave the door open. these are nice, nice size. this is what what happened to the floors if you were to become bold. look, a couple of nice pop-ups up there. >> is there a certain category that makes it into the bathroom? >> it fits.

they are big. we do, of necessity when you have this many books you shelf according to this space that is available. as i said you go into off site storage sites at harvard or yale, the day shelf strictly by size. and the trick is coming you know you are doing a good job when you eliminate most of the air and there is so little air left but i am afraid if we go any higher we will have a situation on our hands. alright, so we are going down into the abyss. i call the whole house the of this but this really is and of this. this is a good old new england cellared and i guess you could say i have not converted it. it is what it is. but, most of my working library is down here. i like to regard this. all of these books over here,

what they have in common is that they have all contributed in one way or another to several of my recent books. i would like to move them someplace else and make room for the books on paper but as you can see space is a consideration and these books still are relevant and a number of different ways. many ways i don't even know yet, but if there comes a moment when you know you need something in want to lay your hands on it, and there it is. this is the oxford english dictionary. ..

i called this the book warren because it just keeps going around. my wife, connie, actually put up these guerrilla shelves. we are in the basement which is reassuring because there are no issues about the possibility of a house collapsing which could happen i think if you have all of this week on an upper floor. these are kind of not all but many more literary biographies.

gentle madness, my first book. this file cabinet, this whole file cabinet, this whole file cabinet. these are transcripts. i did about 250 interviews for that book. and so these are these and up here are transcripts of the interviews. a lot of the archival information i pulled together, world history is for general madness. the book took eight years to write and you can see there was an awful lot of research that went into that and then a lot down here. these are my old fire line files from my days as a reporter. the newspaper used to clip files. i never really collected clippings the paper did it for me. they've been so helpful. you want to see what you wrote 1973, here's some of my ear earlier newspaper pieces from the fire line file. it is going to be hard to get your camera and here but there is some significance to this

book bookcase other than a few paperback copies. every one of the books and here is on a general madness. they were all useful to general madness and there were more but this is a nice place i could gather them together. my first book but these are all general magnus books. for the same over here and double shelves. i don't know if you can do this. reference books, a lot of reference books. i have hundreds of cassette tapes. >> is that how you do your interviews? >> i have hundreds, i am not exaggerating, hundreds, well over 1,000i sure because don't forget all the interviews with authors i did most of them were

taped and i have all those tapes and transcripts. women's history in terms of literature up here, very nice books, good books, reference books. books on new york, new york city architecture, history, all sorts of aspects of new york city and the books on library. library history, civilizations, archaeology and and another lifetime i think i could happily be an archaeologist. these are just reference books. i think the series of the oxford companions and oxford companion, american literature, the oxford classical dictionary, you can see every one of these represent a spot on have gone in and found it useful. and again, double shelves. every book on front there's another one behind. because where else are you going to put them. and the same applies over here.

and then this is kind of i don't know how many people in america can claim to have a complete run of the book collector. now this is really a great quarterly published in the u.k.. it was established by ian fleming back in the 1950's and i have a complete, four of than a year and just again, double shelf to starting we back. they have been so useful. there are wonderful essays, articles, reviews. you want to know what is going on in the book world these books have been indispensable. this shelf here is an assembling point, a gathering point for books that will have some relevance to the book on paper. you're looking at books i picked up at secondhand bookstores.

for markets, increasingly on line, but books i think will have some relevance to the book on paper. i have a chapter on paper in the creative process. of course you have to have i've got leonardo de vinci. paul revere's engraving said. this is from the sketchbooks of the great artist drawing of prints and people. and this is -- remember that old television commercial this is where we make the time to make the donuts, this is where i make the donuts. and i just -- we are in a basement. i know. we are in a new we went upstairs and a library. we have negative new england went across the street and a nice view outback. but i am very comfortable working down here. it reminds me of my old days on the aircraft carrier when i had

my office way down on the third deck and i just have a certain comfort level in here being amongst my stuff. >> you were telling me a story about this notebook here in your office before i started rolling. what is that, there are smudges on there. >> it's played. i've been working on a chapter of this book on paper. it is a trip i made to china in october, november 2007. and again, i was going to these remote villages we helped in the provinces down by the old road and a lot of these papermaking villages of course are in mountains or down in ravines and it is where the water is. and in any case one of these places we were going to visit was down a pretty good health. it had been raining like crazy, i even wrote a little bit about

it in this magazine. i was going down the hill and i even had my digital voice recorder running and as i was going and i felt right on my block to an isolated and you can hear a thing if we could find the spot. i had my notebook on the right-hand side and my record here and i slid all the way down and so what you see here is a red clay from that little experience in china. this is handmade paper samples i picked up, and this is a chapter that i am working on now for this book on paper. a typical day is to get down here as early as i can and have several cups of coffee, find out what's going on in the world but really try to get down here seven, 8:00, certainly before 8:00. and i like to go over what i did

it a before. i try to keep a log. i am an old newspaper man and i can't really work with any kind of -- i hate to say anxiety but i like a little tension. i guess tension is the right word and i get that from the deadline. so what i do is i keep a log and i feel that i have to produce a thousand publishable words a day, publishable that is a subjective judgment. i might write to thousand words a day, but come the next morning i might kill a thousand of those selected have an advance of about 2,000 which will come down here and go over what i worked on the day before and kind of pick up and what feels right i like to have -- i know a book is going nicely when all the chapters are in progress i guess i kind of like the same way i

like to read. use of a stack of books upstairs next to my chair eight or ten books there. i like to be going on a number of things simultaneously so what ever feels right on that particular day, today it feels like china, the last couple of days it's been china so i've been working on china. i take a lot of photographs. the digital camera has become an essential tool in but i do. i've got thousands, i will show you them later, but thousands of conventionally shot photographs are taken over the years. i do my own photography. these are the days i was doing the column at the use to send me photographs. these are pictures i have shot. here is this. this is like a casino st. benedict, the role of an

addict so this is the years before the digital camera became so important to me. but i still have all the pictures so i will file them up here. but with the digital camera now coming and you can get a memory card and put 15, 1700 images on one card and if you carry your laptop with you you can download a free night. i shot 3,000 pictures and china and you know, so i am working on this chapter here and so i've got my recordings. this is a gentleman i'm writing about right now. this 86-year-old man whose family has been making paper in this village in china near the border with burma in a place called jade spurring, that's how it translates, for 600 years. and his son makes paper, and when we were there in november

and was totally coincidental, but we learned that after 600 or so years the next month they were closing down the operation. they are making paper by hand commercially obviously commercial mechanized papermaking is 99.99% of all the paper that is made in the world. so, this is just the kind of fun when i'm writing about them and here it is, other than the tour of duty the boundaries of the old man's 85 years on earth were pretty much defined by the time he had spent as a maker of paper and a tiny hamlet not far from chinese border with burma the country knows today as myanmar. i don't know how to pronounce it but we all know it as burma. the name of this village and i have to put it in here because it is in my notebook, again, we are working on it, translates into english as jade spurring,

and that to the translucent mineral that has been mined in the region for centuries and the pure water that flows from the earth in such a satchel abundance for the immediate task ahead. xx, that's his name i have it that will go in there, spoke no english of all not even a phrase or two. our words translated by a professional botanist who led the way to this extraordinary edna put some in the heart of the province. a place where paper had been made commercially by successive generations of the same family for 600 years or so in the traditional manner one sheet at a time. so anyway i will be talking a little bit about this man and the decision to get of the people making business and the reason is china is now in the 21st century and progress is just taking over the country like a tidal wave. they have a grandson but he's not interested in making paper. when we were out there he was working on the highway. so it makes for an ice entry i

think into this segment on china and then we will be talking about handmade paper and paper is invented in china as one of their great inventions the chinese claim to be theirs from antiquity. gunpowder, the magnetic compass printing and paper. >> is that the first draft? do you start your first draft of the computer? >> yeah, however, well, on was traveling. i take notes. when an idea hits me, some ideas come. >> so some of that may have been in your notebook? >> i can't say the way it appears here, but the idea -- you know, we were there for 18 days. we were in two provinces and i probably met 30 or 40 or who knows how many paper makers. why did i choose this -- she was in the first person i met, but

it did strike me one morning i never really did adapt to the time changes. i would wake up early and i got a bunch of these notebooks i filled with ideas and i said this is where you start. you start with this man who was nice and couldn't speak a word of the english and has been making paper all his life of the than a tour in the army. >> right in this chapter what other things are you using now? >> this is a book >> -- the history of the technology in china and i can't get a copy of this. it's like a 300-dollar book. i have to justify do i want to spend $300 on a book i can get from the library? unfortunately most of the libraries down here in central massachusetts, of them i know of have it. thankfully in boston where i do a lot of reading they have a copy and so i borrowed it and i

copied on the xerox machine out there. >> so that's why that's sitting here now? >> yeah, i'm using it. it's stuff -- i'm talking about, you know, will vary for instance, mulberry paper is the principal fiber that they use in this particular province of china. i feel the reading is essential. you look around and say all of these books are not about paper but there are books about paper behind you and books about paper here, these two cabinets of material and paper related subjects are paper samples. this is on naxi paper, handmade paper. remarkable. look at this paper. not the text so much, but like the fibers. supposedly it is made from a plant that is poisonous to insectsaa) and i've got the namf

it in the chapter but it's a very complicated latin phrase. so one of the reasons this paper is prized by government bureaucracies for record-keeping because it's the insects can't damage the paper. these are all -- this is spelled mp3 per. this is also a spirit paper that you burned when he made offerings to your ancestors. this is what is known as schwinza paper, this is bamboo. these are all different samples of paper i gathered during the trip to china. upstairs is a bunch of japanese-made paper. i just got back from japan and i spent a week their interviewing papermakers and this is handmade paper. i will be opening this of course when it comes time to write a chapter about paper about japan.

this is on and really excited about this, one sheet of paper and here i haven't taken off yet. the person who made this paper is a living national treasure paper maker in japan. i spent a day with this gentleman talking through an interpreter about paper. his approach to paper, the meaning of paper, so it's gathering these will artifacts. this one is kind of cute. i got this in japan. this fellow is a conservator and you wonder what the heck this is. it opens like that with a piece of cardboard it opens and folds like that. it's called a paper hinglish and this is how the japanese and chinese and koreans use different forms, but it is a paper hinge that allowed for the making of screens and, you know, the glass window doesn't come into japan until the 19th century, and this is very strong paper with this dirty fiber and

it is actually made, what's wonderful i don't think a metal hinge could do this, it folds like this and he gave that to me. very decent of him to do that. >> so you're traveling basically all over the world now. >> basically. >> how are you able to do that you mentioned earlier? >> i have a contract from alfred knopf, so first it's a book that's been commissioned so i have an advance to do that, but in addition to that i was recently awarded a national endowment for the humanities research fellowship which is greatly assisted me this year and has allowed me to take this year to do -- to focus on the research. but you read a lot of books and i transcribe my own interviews. nobody does that for me. it's a very time consuming and that is kind of what i do when i'm tired. if i'm tired at night and i am

too tired to write i will transcribe an interview and i think i love having the actual recording because it can be a year since you did it, since you talk to these people but when you replete it is fresh and new and you have the pictures to kind of give you a visualization and it really does all come together and i think the narrative emerges from it. >> five years of research all of these different elements how do you keep track of it? how do you keep it organized so you can put your fingers on what you need? >> in the beginning it was impossible. i lost weeks some looking for stuff. i always prided myself having a good memory and running across the passage in a book that this is wonderful. this is fabulous. and just assuming i will know where to go back and find it it's so frustrating and so

upsetting that you can spend a day looking for something and you would swear it was in this book. so now i flag stuff. you know, i use these little post its and i try not to write and books that i think have value to them but i will come here and obviously there's something that's important to me and i will find it and remember what it is and if it's something important i will create a file and start writing down that little segment. i've got a nice little riff i use the musical term rests and then they really come out of the notebooks. i know it's a mess that a lot of these are on paper and they are kind of broken down by chapters that i'm working on. i really didn't do that with "a gentle madness." this room was piled with papers and i would spend two hours sometimes looking for stuff.

it was a really egregious waste time and when the book was on my feet it took me six weeks. it took forever to a footnote to the f-ing because i was in such a rush to write i wasn't making note of where i was getting the citations. i well remember where it was or it will be right here and then when you go back and feel i've got a footnote to this thing where did i get this piece of information, you know, and i am a stickler for citations and if i can't find the citation the passage comes out but it took forever and it now if i put it in the body of the text in little blankets will put it on the computer and he might break up the flow of what you're doing that as soon as you pull something out of a book or a source or article or whatever, journal articles over here, you cite and put in the full citation so when it comes time to gather your cetaceans

together it is a piece of cake. there's a chapter in "a gentle madness" that's on the history of book collecting in britain over a thousand year period and i wrote the beginning of that i would say 100, 150 times. what i found with that particular chapter by the way because i did have the first one, the one i finally capped was darn near the first one. so often what you feel the first shot i find is the best one. everything that i've learned has just been wonderful and i am in love with the research and so i do have to say enough it is time to sit down and write the book and so to go back earlier when you said how long have you been working on it the answer is probably longer than i should have, but there is a richness to the material and just to finish the original fought if i had 250 hours of tape for "a gentle

madness." i never used all of it. how could i? i became more efficient as each went on and finally with every book i would say which is my last trade book i used maybe 95% of everything i gathered. that's pretty good. for the yale book like i used everything i gathered and now for the paper book it's going to go back to "a gentle madness" and easily be three or four times the material i am gathering that won't get in there but that's okay because you have to have a critical mass of information and have to know i always felt as a journalist i need to know ten times as much as what i'm going to write in the article. i can't know just as much as as going in the article. i have to know ten times as much and i think i am approaching that with this book. >> finally one more time, you are busy writing this book now. how long are you going to be busy writing before it is

printed? >> it all depends on how much work it needs and i submit to a pretty clean copy. i am very proud of the fact that editors really don't have to spend a lot of time on my material. so the answer is should i submit to this in june, let's say of 2009, then we could expect to see it in either spring of 2010 or certainly no later than the fall of 2010 and that is my goal. >> nicholas basbanes, thank you. >> thank you. pleasure. >> to contact nicolas basbanes and learn more about his books and journalism, visit his web site at nicholasbasanes.com.

former investment banker john talbott analyzes the current financial crisis in his newest book, "the 86 biggest lies on wall street." he calls the global banking

system insolvent and blames the recession on a lack of financial regulations. this is about an hour. >> thank you for coming. it's a rainy night out there as i found out the hard way. i am going to give you some short opening remarks and leave plenty of time for questions. i would like to thank the folks from c-span for being here today. and for filming us. i just returned from an economics conference in italy. one of the sessions was a mock trial in which the economists of the world were put on trial accused of completely missing the warning signs of the current crisis. not predicting it, doing nothing to prevent it and thus far, doing little to help enact smart reforms to end it. i had to give a talk on my book at the same time as the mock trial across town and italy but

i didn't want to miss it so i sent roberto, the chief prosecutor of the trial and himself a top economist the following memo. it was entitled witness for the prosecution and it read as follows. roberto, i see you are speaking at noon today as the prosecutor asking whether economists are to blame for the current financial crisis. i wanted to attend but i'm speaking at the same time across town on my new book. i wish you success with your prosecution and all the white generally and against the death penalty, i think i will make an exception in this case. your prosecution reminds me of a story i heard about john mckay, the first coach of the tampa buccaneers 21 fortunately went zero wins and 16 losses in their first season of pro football. in the locker room after the last game, coach mckay was asked by a