[inaudible conversations] so. and here's just a little bit of the book festival as you can see here right there on the campus. well, our next call-in guest is going to be larry willmore. he's the senior black rrespondent on the daily show.

and we wanted to show you a little clip from the daily show and we'll be back to take your calls. >> how much of a game changer is this barack obam i'm joined by larry our senior black correspondent. [applause] [applause] >> it's unbelievable. obama is not only popular he at home but around the world. andt's not his rhetor. it's not even his smile. it and it is not his rhetoric. in is n even his smile. is something a little more basic. >> in that regard my younger son is eight, and he now says that he would like to be black. [laughter] i am not kidding. there are a lot of advantages to being black. black is in. [laughter] >> two things, john o'leary king has an 8-year-old son.

[laughter] also, secondly, the black is in. that hasn't happened in a long time. >> i didn't know you kept track of that. >> oh yeah, but we have had their moments. during t 60's we had several riots. divas the lot of buzz, 30's and joe louis gave us a little heat but who is going to compete? the last time we were in was way back when build the pyramids. [laughter] >> i don't want to, but i believe you made us build the pyramids. >> like i said, we were in. >> and the book is "i'd rather we got casinos." the other is larry wilmore. mr. willmar, howong will this like it then period last? >> probably about 42 years would guess.

it is than that seven year cycle. so, six or seven year cycle, black will be and then then we will move onto mexan, chinese, as. >> host: where did y get the title of your book? >> guest: the title came from a piece i did on "the daily show talking about black histy month. john could not understand why wasn'trazy about it. john, i would rather we g casinos and i always like that wind and thought of making it a title for a book. >> host: in your book you spent quite a bit of time writing to the naacp. why is that? >> guest: the book is like a fake collection of op-eds and fake radio interviews and that sort of thing and the first op-eds i suggested changing the name othe afrin-american to chocolate. drought the bo are a series of letters to theaacp where i am trying to convince them to get on the ponchartrain and change

it. and i wore chocolate in honor of that. >> host: what is the impetus behind that camign? >> well, my feeling is that african-americans was just finished, it was done and black people, we changed our names more than stars. it has been, black, afro-american. it was afro-american. we were named after a hairstyle. that is how far it has gone. amicans of african descent. the feeling is that, when i think of africa all i think of is hot. doesn't really do, there is no romanticism but hot i might get malaria and something might eat me. and brothers to speak french. if i want to be around brothers i can understand and an unbearably hot fireman where my ancestors once roamed, i will go to theead check cashing place. i figured let's move on to the 21st century and that is where i

came up with chocolate. >> host: how did you come up with your title and the daily show, senior black correspondent. guest: actually the head writer the time who is now an executive producer we were trying to think of what would be the right ankle. and any time you are on "the daily show" the first tng in your head is steve colbert who is the best ever and you don't want to imitate that and you are tryingo find your own thing. i didn't want to be the opposite of something, and we thought it was funny that i thought it was funny too, i was going to do with it where i was chiding jon that finally you have a b correspondent in d.j. that it would be funny to be the senior black correspondent and zero at title and took off from there. "the daily show" marked a return to performing. beforehat iad been known as a writer and producer in hollywood for a number of years. the thing that probly was the

most well-known was the bernie mac show which i created and i had just come from doing for years on the office, writing on that and i started as a stand-up comic. i thought maybe not the time to start performing again in kind of stumbled into "the daily show" i guess you could say. >> host: how often dyou appear? >> guest: really only once or twice a month but because of rebounds and cable in the internet, it feels like i am on a lot more than i actually m. i give the illusion i am on the shore more than i am. >> host: by the way we are going to put the numbers on the screen if you would like to chat with larry wilmore. if you live in the eastern central timezones, (202)585-3886 for the mountain and pacific timezones. you are watching bookt live from the los angeles times festival books. from african-amecans, what kind of reaction do youet to yo book? >> guest: well, the thing

about, i've got a great reactions from people that know about it because most of the people who know me and know my work from "the daily show." i have always insisted only three black people in total watch "the dai show" so is a small audiencbut i think there, in all seriousness there hasn't been much what we call black satire out there so this is kind of a lot of black say this is a refreshing take on lot of issues that we don't always cecil that makes you feel od. >> host: text messages from a birmingham jail. what are you walki on sacred ground here? >> gst: i don't think so. that was one of the first titles that came to my head when i was inking of doing the piece it was one of the hardest ones to write but i felt it was really kind of they hit right in the middle of the target zone in terms of some of these satirical title. >> host: larry wilmore is our guest and we are on the c-spa boss. the first call for him comes

from buffalo, new york. goeth had buflo. >> cler: hi larry, how are you pusan afternoon? listen, i saw that bark obama was probably going to become president i got pretty ser about calling c-span exclusively, requesting that he had addressed the issue of reparations for slave descendants. bacally, and i got to follow up on that somehow youeel about that persolly? >> guest: in the book, i have a chapter called give us the superdome, where i iist that hinote, a lot of people want reparations and the argument is slavy happens so long ago and i understand tha argument. many peopltoday have nothing to do with slavery and we were supposed to get 40 acres and we didn't get a statute of limitations, i get that. in the book i argue there have been more recent transgressions that you could give reparations

for like hurricane katrina, give us the superdome so you connects things that you feel you can get reparations for and then go for it. >> host: jackson, wyomi. coal coburn hi, larry. and i always like to see you on "the jon stewart show." you e a real kic do you know that it has been estimated thathen michael jordan-- at the end of his career where every time theall went to the basket,e made 60,000. and a teacher who makes about $40,000 a year. i think o priorities arkind of screwed up. they go out, they get together and y a business or they share in the rent. the people who thrive because they are so-- because of the

black-- having a black woman be the mother and iust think that stars like you would or other famous black people should be helping out the black community by loaning people money for businesses and such. i think it would be an excellent way to return t the community. thank you. >> host: larry wilmore. >> guest: apparentlhe wants me to be fannie mae or freddie mac. i'm not sure that is the right thing, but it sounded like you are making a point of that kind of what a loof sociologists may refer to as kind of the destruction of some of the black male ego through slavery and jim crow and some of those things and some other reasons why the black female had to kind of be a dominant in the household and some of that-- some of at is still around today.

some of the things that pop up and especially in impoverished areas and those are real concerns and tt sort of thing but i think the best thing i can do personally i've always felt this to be role models my own kids. i think everybody was that then we would be a lot better off. >> host: what you think when the white-colr from jackson, wyoming says that black people? >> guest: the black people? that's oy. i am not mad at the white people. i think dick cheney is from wyoming. >> host: dhe caller also talked about the black community. is there such a thing? >> guest: iis a planned community actuly, kind of like the irvine california and there is a waiting list to get into a black community, now that obama is president. who but it is very nice. >> host: stanley town, virginia, go ahead. >> caller: i am a big fan of larry pots and a big fan o c-span. would like o ask you your

previous career and the concept of the idea and the wall came up with because they were so revolutionary anif i could see your show i would still watch it. because it is just great. >> guest: i really apprecte it. thank you for that call. all the credit goes to keenan ivory wayans. he did a movie called-- or you did a lot of parodying and satire, kind of the hor that i reallyoved and i felt the kind of brought the hip-hop culture into america's living rooms. before we had black humoand that's sort of thing but we didn't have the sairical edge it had with the hip-hop culture, the dancing and the fly girls and all that stuff. there is an excitement about the show that i felt that the time and i loved watching the reruns and that kind of thing but i do miss in living color life. >> host: are you married? he. >> guest: yes i am and he two children, jon and lauren.

they are 12 and ten. plus argue base donnelly? >> guest: i live in the pasadena area. hifi into new york when into "the daily show." >> host: nextall, moab utah. >> caller: i am enjoying so much hearing the conversation and all the people's perceptions. i am a transplant and there are three or four chocolate people in the poll found and i think a lot of the white people-- you all have it gether and we are so disconnected from each other. but i want to thank you for your body of work, for your humor, for the way you aroach things. you are a beautul human being. thank you very much. >> guest: i want to be on c-span every day of the week from now on an like i said vanilla is a very underrated flavor, goes with chocolate ry well in fact.

>> host: y have been behind the scenes a lot in your work and all of audden you are not behind the scenes the more and you have got a book out there. you come across as rather shy. >> guest: yes. >> host: are you? >> guest: i was very shy, extremely shy so i sll have some of that in me. when i did stand-up comedy i started as a performer. after the sho i would usually be in the back of the room and that sort of thing so i still have been, i am sure there is still some of that in their but i love performing live. >> host: what is a shetland be? >> guest: this is a very important issue. this is a person who, like gary coleman or webster, they don't roll past the certain point, muchike a shetland pony and in the book i argue that that is the way to save the sitcom, because america loves the shetland and could not get enough. thats probably one of the most

politically incorrecthings i have ever seen in the book. but ihink if we bring them back we will save the sitcom. >> host: philadelphia, you are on witlarry wilmore. please go ahead. >> caller:arry, i am a big fan. have a coue of questions. first ofll, in your-- europe, jewish are often referred to as french jewish or a german jewish, do you feel like africaamericans in the united states should be referred to as american african instead of this subcategory of american-- african-americans? >> guest: or you could have georgia blacks or florida african-americans. reonize that. caller:ou could do that to. >> guest: california job that. >> caller: my second question is clearly your involvement with "theaily show" here, you are a politically interested person. are you worried about barack

obama's presidency and? it has broug us a much closer to a coherent american identity of mulculturalism b if his presidency fails and he is forced into capitulation through special-intere and the financial mess, you know, what happens then, and what areour feelings about that? >> guest: well, on the comedy side i would s that, i would not worry too much aut change for barack. just keep giving me the hope and don't reduce the to glimmer of hope. i don't wanglimmer of hope, i want hope and on the serious si, i think the impact of barack obama will be felt more at on the younger generation. the won't be a question that a black man can lead in being a charge of the country. when i was a kid, black could not even be a quarterback in the nfl. you talk about image issues that

america had as blacks as leaders. it won't even be a question that a black cannot lead at that high a level. cosco heavy map president obama? >> guest: no come i never have but i was on a daily sw epode he was appearing on and i heard he was on satellite lathing. i ink i did a joke that may have come a little too close. i can remember what it is no but i read a blog about it where someone was watching the feed, someon with obama and said he was really laughing and then got a little quiet. i think i talked about his reference a something, but i heard he enjoyed it for the most part. >> host: it is coming up on 10 days, lot of media covege, what is your first impression of the first 100 days? >> guest: so far soood. he had that kind of scar amazon book moment with hugo chavez. he did not want to be in his

book club you know. but,t is a bit overwhelming. there is so much going on. i can remember in the first 100 days were there was such a big agenda of things to do. younow, so i don'tnow how he is handling it. i think michelle is little upset that she has to take care of that dog the. i don't think she is too happy about that. i want to see what is going to helping with the mother-in-law living with them. you get to president, and then you have your mother-in-law living with you. >> host:oca raton florida. >> cler: hi, i just want to say you are a very funny man and i enjoyed watching it. on a serious note, what do you think the position or the status of the jesse jackson right now, comped to the election of presidency. do you think jesse jackson is

envious of him, angry about him, or happy about him? because, and i am being respectful, jesse is still considered a chocolate leader. >> guest: i understand. it could be a combination of all three, you never know. i mean he was certainly, that shot ohim crying on election night was pretty powerful, but jesse, you know he is not so much your leadoff batter anymore. hes more like a base coach, giving signals and that kind of thing, wanting to still be in thgame but jesse's legacy will always be sovereign. he was the first viable black candidates to really excite the populist, more of a populist candidate than obama of course that he opened the door and pave the way for obama so i think his legacy is pretty solid in that regard for the why think it is that to be hard for anyone who is then at the front of the spotlight. keep in mind, jesse had martin

luther king's blood in him on that balcony and he has seen a lot in his lifetime. fled alone feeling lucky as close to the white house so i think there is a myriad of the motions but to give them credit i ink he is proud of the fact th there isn african-american in the whe house. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: i grew up in los angeles. my father's from chicago. >> host: what are your folks to? >> guest: my father was a probation officer growing up then my mom was a part-time teher, part-time mom and my father, in his late 30's and '40's went back to school to become a doctor. >> host: what you remember most about your child that? >> guest: where do we start? the thing i remember most is my brother and i just kind of making each other laugh all the time. my parents divorced when i was pretty young and they kind of thought aot too and i think my brother and i soften the blow by

making each other laugh and making fun of everybody. it seemed we had so many characters in our lives growing up, at everybo was a character in we had so much fun making fun of all that stuff and that is whai loved the most is spending time with my brother and laughing. >> host: on a more serious note to you remember racism in your view? >> guest: absolutely, very much so. it w so different backhe i do was born in 1961 so the watts ots haened when i was very young and their remember main luther king being shot as the first thing. i can remember being treated a certain way and not understanding why and tt sort of thing. i remembery mother-- and it put in n on it. things like that, you know. but, at the same time i fl ry, very fortunate that i had

a lot of good friends and white, black. i corrupt in a big mexican-- i guess you should say heavy latino area and i always had a lot of friends. i thoht thaalways kind of helped me. i didn't grow up and just one culture so i was treated, racm was axed by individuals more than seen at the big institutional thing on a personal level. >> host: do we in your view here in the state's subgroup ourselves to much? >> guest: i think so. personally i think so. some of it really makes me ugh. i love the fact that we have spent all these years trying to disaggregate and then you go to a college campus and you have here a black storms and your mexican dah abuttal lot of that is out of comfort. people go to where they fee comfortable so i understand bu it it's funn how you fight for those things and then, they say we likit like that. >> host: from where "i'd

rather we got casinos," they let me have the taser, sorry breault, i am teasing you. >> guest: i love the way you said brother. >> host: laguna beach, please go ahead. >> caller: it is a beautiful day. just killing time waiting for the dodgers game but first of all i want to say i amn absolute addict of booktv. and then it kind of goes to my original point, ralling asking larry, you have got good stuff out there. i have been watching it on "the daily show" and do you think there is a saturation point, like you can't sprint forever, right? when it comes to the other media outlets, say msnbc or fox on the dark side orhatever, its so darned predictablehat you are going to get, i find myself after the campaign of going to

the two years in the build up to it andinally the victory, you know what, i just get tired of, i t tired of the extreme right or the extreme left. i am tired of figing. now i just kind of want to let it ride. have a margarita, sit by the beach, you know? >> guest: sods goodo me. i don't have an issue with that. you know it is funny that the is, it feels very polarized a day, politics in a way tt it hasn't felt since the '60 but i think there's going to be a viablthird party coming up i think it is going to be right down the middle. i really do. i think it is going to be a party right on the metal that is going to have a lot of people who let issues on both sides but are passionate about being in the middle. >> host: what are your politics? >> guest: i am passionate abou being on the middle of the

fence. when you-maghame forhe metal, for thhigh school. >> host: washington d.c., please go ahead. >> caller: i am a big fan of your program, "the daily show." i wondered if you knew that the original name of the egypt was kibbet then they never enslaved anybody. they were the most advanced people on the planet. ank you. >> gst: okay, great. thank you. i love history. that is fantastic. >> host: angry black church guy. >> guestof the angry black church that was written because i felt the whole reverand wright thing, i felt people were upset because obama didn't seem as angry as his church. is lev of tanker did not match it to the anchor of the urch and it is newtons lauper cow the level of anger in the

church should loot matched the level of a anchor of the brother attending church so i delays daggett died,. >> host: dms bernie mac? >> guest: very much so. during the bernie mac show, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. shooting that pilot in by the way i never imagined bernie book would be the azi after that it was. when i saw his stand-up it was one ofhe funniest this i have ever seen, and spending time with him or getting t know him and e kind of character he was, very devilish sense of humor, but vy human, and tha is the stuff we really wanted to dramatize, human stories. when i pitch the shoto bernie and said, bernie this is the children in terrorist, i don't negotiate with terrorists and he gathered immediately and he said absolutely.

>> ht: that was based a lot on his own life. >> guest: it was based on the joke from his life where he talked about taking care of the kids. it was one of the funniest things i saw and i that boy that would make a good basis for a television show to dramatize these feelings and that is basically what i pitched to bernie. >> host: it is probably a good segue into political correctness. what are your thoughts on that? >> guest: hopefully it is on its way out, you know. i don't understand it to be honest with you. i think it is a movement that started on the left actually, where i think they lot of political correctness was just the way society was until the '60s and then a lot of barriers went down and then it felt like he came back becse people needed some barricades are something for you have to be raid of offending people. i want to bring offending people back. >> host: here is the book,

"i'd rather we got casinos." do you have another one ready? >> guest: no, but i may do a black thoughts calendar, something like that. hadley random black thoughts today. >> host: larry wilmore has been our gue for the last half-hour. r conversation on books continues in a moment.

the let and antidote ims patrick robinson for galay actually did the writing of the book. i am a ghostwriter sometimes. i usually wri novels, but i have posted about four books and they have all been pretty successful. this is the fif. and, it happened in a way that was really extraordinary. valeri lived in new york and i was in england, and my son and larry were friends.

but james was back in our house and larry w far away across the ocean. ends james said one day, would you write larry mcdonald's book and i said i d't know what he wants to write a book about. he said you know he worked for lehman and i actually didn't. i knew larry worked on wall street but i didn't know where he worked. and i said, this do you want, he wants a book about lehman brothers? and james said yeah, he wants to blow the lid off of lehman brothers and clary have read "lone survivor" which is another thriller and i said if he really wants to blow the lid off lehman brothers and he really wants, no punches pulled, i don't want to deal with someon who is pussyfooting around andaking excuses for people. i said if he really wants to let representative i am probably his manser to lmi what if that is what he wants to do so weot him on the telephone and larry said he did indeed want to tell

the whole, unvarnished tail of how lehman brothersollapse, the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the universe. i said, thei would like that but you had better get over here. he said, when? said now, so heeft the following morning and was in england for dinner, which is a pretty good faith of the activity. and we started there. it was difficult, because what i don't know about finance and ll streetould probably fill fenway park. i just had no idea about the subject and now that i'd ner done a book about finance, but one thing that i have discovered is that ghostwriters need to know as lite as possible. experts write for other expts. historians write for other historians and the first time this happened to me was a few

years back, when jon bertrand had asked me to wre his book about winning the america's cup in 1983 for australia. i remember i said to him, you have written a couple of books and i said to him, john i don't know enough about raising a big boat to be able to do a story like that. and he is a big kind of the iconic aussie and he sa come on mike, you havgot the wrong idea. i don't need an expert. i am an expt. need a bond with a pen. and that was actually, i'd never heard anyone say anything like that. i thought it was really cool, so anyway, we walked fareway thugh that and did the book and it was the biggest selling card back in the history of australia. when i came to do my next book, that i was going to ghost for woodward who won the btle of

the falkland islands in 1982, i told him that exact story he said i can actually understand tha and, he said it is beer that you don't know. >> subi don'tant a historian. first of all his going to argue it's me and tell me what i did wrong esad i loss 159 people employed for warships on the floor of the atlantic. [laughter] and he said, so any way we did this but i actually had to ask him everything because i just don't knowhat much about firing guided missiles and knocking planes out of this guy. shut down 79 fighter-bombers. woodward and ianage to do this sent when h rode his little author's note in the front of it, the forward he said, i have tried to tell my story is that i

was recounting it to an old friend and for this task, i chose patrick robinson who was obliged to said very quietly, ry patiently into a great deal of listening, none of which are his long suits. [laughter] it was the first sentence in the book. i said, but any way we d this d i really did not know about, who does unless they have sailed in the worip. yodon't really know anything about it. it was the first war fought on computers, firing missiles and all of that. it was very high-tech stuff. since then he has been my advise writing these navy thrillersnd submarine books. finally, when i goto talking to larry about doing this and realizing i knew even less about finance, i did not know at the bond was. i thought it had something to do

with roger moore. hand, i called the admiral, and i said sandy, i am abo to bark on a book on the subject about which i know absolutely nothing. he said, so far as i can tell it has never stop you before. [laughter] sill larry and i set sail on this adventure and he came over, and it was, it was the hardest project i have ever done cause not only did i not know anything about it, i didn't know what his story was. i didn't know how we were going to get from a to z. i di't know the story. i knew this bank had gone bust but i really didn't know anything else about it d it was very difficult. he had to come ove to england for times, for about nine days.

and, left me when he went back to n york, left me to write four chapters, and that was really very difficult. behead-mike maysan stepp in as a researcher and they had a computer almost every day and he sent over masses of magazines, journals, books. the office lookedike a mine field. and, i was constantl lefwith 45,000 words to write and him in new york. i have a question on every line about it. most people uld have had a question every five pages but i didn't know anything about it, and he was amazingly patient and he kw what he wanted to do. he did have a story that took an incredible courage to write because obviously line by line heas making monstrous and the mes not of people who just

workedhereby people who r the place. men who had 100 million in the bank and who werout there just taking money from the orgazation, all the time making fast decisions that was bringing the company very slowly to its knees. and of course larry as much about writing a book of this kind as i knew about submarine warfare. we had to kind of the tackett from, i was always ting to write it for him. but it was difficult. for instance, it quicklyecame apparent that we had three major themes and they were that lehman brothers weren't all stupid. the two men that ran the place where spectacully stupid. that comes out is the book comes

along. three times the cleverist people in the company, all of them really worked with larry. was one of them. there were abo ten. they were actually in the board room, not the boardroom, the exute committee saying, you up to stop this. this cannot be allowed to go on. his ) saying out there is an iceberg and we are goi straight at it. even the titanics worked. anagain and again they were boowing money, losing money and i knew they had these three meetings. larry have the documents were they wer we are going to go down with $600 billion in debt. you can buy scandinavia with that and they couldn't possibly have paid it back. there were these three warnings in front of me and when i came to write it, this was my part. i had to make it jump. i remember saying three tngs,

three times they were ignored. it was probably the worst trled since st. peter denied christ's but that is what a ghostwriter is supposed to do. we are supposed to gather tse things together and make them kind of come alive. now, the book made the "n york times" list after five days. i hope it will continue. it is a good book. larry was unbelievably brave. i mean, he really slled the beans. i was always sayi to him, are you sure you want to say that? he would say that is what happened and that is what we are going to say. at the end of it and i suppose it is a testimony to the book and in a senset is a testimony to the bk, he picked five of the most important people and lehman broers, the biggest brains ithe corporation who had helped him and you he had

verified things with and each one of them read the book from cover to cover and not one of them made one serious change. notne. and he had told a story that was not only spectacularly truthful, but it was, it took a lot of courage to do it, and he did it and god knows i was really proud of him. he never once flanged. eyes did this guy should be put in a straight jacket. [laughter] he is talking about people who ruined thousands of people. they all had to leave their bonuses behind in a lot oft kind of thing, which was terrible. people who had worked a lifetime at lehman's walked out in their $1 million shares or half a million shares at at 75 bucks were suddenly worth nothing.

i mean it was the most terrible thing you could imagine. now that really is about as much as i can tell you because all i did was sit and write the story but i will read you a couple of bits if you would like. which will sho you what it was like to write this stuff for larry. notnowing that much about it in trying to make it all spring to life. it was still very difficult. let me take a look a this. hang on. this is a bit about wendell tough went bust. they had an analyst in that firm calledane castle, who hadeen saying that delta could not survive and that is a pretty big thing to say about an airline that has got 145 boeing's hanging around the parking lot. she said it could not hpen. i will tell you a bit about this. jane had been telling us for

several months the delta was a candidate for bankruptcy and 11 minutes after 5:00 in the afternoon of september the 1h 2005 she was proved right. it flashed on to mcreen, delta airlines filed for bankruptcy protection. and i swr to god the collective heart of lehman brothers skipped about 6 feet. larry mccarthy was not being and is the principal velta coertible bond trader i had markets to make. i was on my feet in an instant. big joe was next to me harnden ready to trade. felt's nonconvertible bonds. alex was walking directly towards as. opened up a line to larry and i could see je making a beeline for my desk just when i needed her. fearing any time of crisis she waslways there. for the next hour there was going to be pandemonium as millions of tilts the bonds crashing through the floor were going to be launched on to the

market by people trying to get the hell out of them. many of those bondholrs were best clients. we were du bound to purchase them and t hits wuld be flying like cannonballs, millions and millions of dollars worth of delta airlines bonds that no one wanted any longer. my blood was pumping. just for a few moments the floor s very quiet and alex kirk standing at my shoulders that quietly, steady larry, we are ready for this. i looked ed jane, stay focus she reminded me. there were 52 cents each no matter how many came up for sale. wet larry had once said about her, flashed through my md, jane can tell you what delta airlines is serving for lunch in fit class on the morning flight from jfk to berlin and what it costs them. there is nothing she doesn't know about the company. i enders the the position of mo of the bondholders. they would do darnton near anything to get out but i have

the make the mart in what would be an avalanche of seing millions of dollars depended my decision which i guess w like every eye in the entire librar was, on the entire flor was trained on u everyone waitingor my firs call on the price i would buy at and the price that would sell. to whom god only knew. vidly remember the phones ringing and around-- northwest airlines also declared bankruptcy. ther was one of those audible gasps, the noisy here in a big ballpark with a fastball over its past the better in the night. i thought the roo was going to fall i because we could also get hit by northst by all of this bailing out. but it was too late fo strategy. the sales might hold its right arm into the air and slapped larry, i have aign the wire and what you know, the aires

zeller. give me a bit on 5 million. i need a bit right now. for a split-second i hesitated and mike yelled, they got 5 million to go. that is when i called, 16, 18 and the moment these words route of my mouth, lehman brothers was committed to an 800,000-llar rchase, a 5 million bonds at 16 cents on the dollar. you are done i said, snapping up the traders no going back phrase in cfirming our first trading in delta was cast i marble. i heard mike fire out his own confirmation to the customer. okay you are done, 20 seconds late we got hit again. terrence tucker on the line, where are you one dealt that? 5 million knapik of these people were desperate trying to get rid of their holdings in the bank. i called the samerice, 16 but the words are hardly out of my mouth when we got hit again for another 5 million again

instantly had dropp the price, 15, 17 and our client did it. maybe they would settle at 15 i thought at they never did. our best dressed bond sales in divaalled out, i've t a silverpoint, where are you on delta righ now? five up. three more orders came flashing in beside me. joe was talking in all directions. hitch, bi, live, 10 million up. he was a trading machine and on that day he was at his best. everyone was shouting now, the salesman, the traders, millions of dolrs changing hds. all of them in same direction, our. i dropped to 13 and still the stellar came in. i guess the ratio of sellers to buyers with ten to one. i got hit immediately for 7 million for hillary on the phone got $5 million worth. then terrence the best salesman i had beller debt me i've g it by ear at 15.

it was the only buy so far. sitting next me jane sack wiley and larry was stealing them for the stay focused, they are still worth 52 cents. trust me. any way that is the kind of thing this book is full of. and, that was being run reall by larry's vau and i was going to read you a bit about him that i think he is a-- fellow and i think i he talked for a long enough. but that is what it was lik trying to create that from someone who wasn't really in the room, who was across the atlantic ocean and i am going to turn it over to him now and he can tell you all about this book. [applause] >> he is a tough act to follow. i just wanted thank everybody for coming in spending a

beautiful sunday with us. when i saw t whether focus i ought it was-- i was a little leery but it is nice to have everyone here. we came up o friday evening. we made the trip up from manhattan and it is always worth the trip. we love coming back to the cape and loved being with our family. i grew up here, and the story of lehman brothers around that weekend of september 15th really was a day that capitalism changed forever. our world really changed forever. it was a tough weekend, not only for the lehman employees that for so many people around the country that didn't really realize that their lives would change. businees, credit lines had been cut on credit cards. 401(k)'s at become 201(k)'s in most of the problems emanate from one of the most mysterious places on wall street, that 31st

floor of lehman brothers. it was a tragedy that never shouldave happened. i was sitting there on that weekend, september5th, and i wasn't really sittinghere. ha i was down on the map. ifill ke mohammed ali was standing uon top of me, and the referee is giving me the account and there were sany of us that were down but i was really down, but i just wanted to dig deep down inside into the reserve that we all have. and to try to make lemonade out of lemons so to speak, and i reacd out to james and patck and they were nice enough to hear me out, give me the time and patrick's the agent was also extremely helpful in articulating the project in helping me uerstand what w were about to endeavor upon. and i will never forget the slam siing there, the next day on

the tarmac at jfk and i think it was a delta flight actually, and you know you were sitting there among the tarmac and you hear of thehrottle up, you hear the engines and were racing down, racing down the way, and i just realized as the plan is taking off that my life is going to change foreer. i really wted to do this, like we said earlier, to expose th few that heard so many. there were so many wonderful people at hman brothers, so many people in the middle of the ship that not only recallingut warnings. not everybody thatorks on wall street is an investment banker that is calling in-- pulling in $10 million the year dotus truett he made tohe executive committee it was the collective heading the new york state

lottery. we used to say that there was a group of their of yes men and yes wen that were extremely loyal to richard fuld and extremely silent to richard fuld. but, the beginning of the story is really what i'm most proud about of the story, if you walk into any bookstore in our country today you see piles and piles of financial books, a lot of them read about the crisis but a lot of them are fro academs and patrick and i really wanted to make this a human story, to help people understa finance, to bring main street ep inside of wall street had really help people understand what actually happens in an investment bank, how would actually works. amina if you remember lehman brothers is a 158-year-old investment bank, 158 years. lehman brothers survived the civil war, survive the great depression, survived world war

i, world war ii, the korean war, the nixon impeachment lehman brothers survive so much and survive 9/11 but what she could not survive with e change, the very genetic change in i business philosophy and an investment bank, the reason lehman brothers suived 158 years was it was in the moving business. campbell's soup corp., 80 years ago whent to build the first plant. they wanted to make that first investment and create some jobs. they came to lehn brothers and they needed $10 million lehman brothers did traditional investment banking. lehman brothers was a black-tie investment bank and they raised that $10 million, they gave it to campbl's soup and they sold bond and stocks over here to do it. they made a fee, and that fee is the traditional gehsmann thanking f, araditional business creates jobs.

that is the moving business and what we started to see on the trading floor in 2004, 2005 and 2006, you could clearly see was bloodcurdling scare through the years going forward, lehman was getting deeper and deeper into what is called the storage business. they were taking bigger bets. they were getting long assets, commcial real estate, residential real estate that they could not sl and they were trying to chase phe big boys. they were trying to chase goldman sachs, tryingo chase blackstone. they wanted to roll the dice and give to be that top infesent bank. we were right inhe middle of the paprika lehman brothers was the fourth largest investment banks as we had smaller banks the lowest that we had much bigger investment banks above us and after t glass-steagall act was taken apart in 2000 and we-- patrick did a wonderful job explaining what happened, that

allmwed the gramm-leach-blile act that took apart the glass-steagall act allow these big commercial banks to compete againstehman sipa lehman brothers and a very, very dangerous position because now lehman brothers is a sll to mid-sized investment bank and now we have, bank of america, all these large peanuts of commercial banks wh massive posits. you he remember annvestment bank like lehman brothers does not taking deposits. eight invest money around the world and sell stocks and bonds but itoesn't have pple's money in a bank the way does, the way bankamerica does. and bankamerica have over a trillion dolla in real money in that bank, and those banks and those are savings accounts, checking accounts, those are paychecks from hard-working people and what we started to see in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 on the trading floorf lehman brothers was a very clear

increase in leverage. lehman brothers with increasing that debt, increasing our dt to try to compete with the big boys and we get deeper and deeper and deeper involved and into businesses and to investments, that wer very, very difficult to move as the years went on. lean got deeper and deeper and deeper into the storage business. in writing this book, i reached out to so many people. 150 people up and down the firm and i will never forget in those days in september, october and november, and espially in december when people found out i was writing this book with the hall of fame goes to names patrick robinson my phone rang off the hook. exhibitive committee members re calling me, people that i knew someone distantly that all of a suddebecame my very good

allies. people on the risk committee reached out to me. people were so upset that this wonderful, wonderful institution had been destroyed and as they peel back the onion, thone horrifying, just a horrifying thing that i learned was those men up on the 31st floor had a deep, dark secret. they didn't want to b eosed for all they didn't understand. the 21st century brought a lot of-- but o of the most dangerous chang that it brought us old was the 21st century financial products, securitizations a the risk that were taking place in the marketplace were so much greater. the dominoes were getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer and closerogether. lehman brothers essence was one big domino nsa peel back the onion and i spoke to many people roughout the firm i realized

that it sn't just me that never saw richard fuld. we articulate this very well in the book. we never saw the man on the trading floor, we never saw any members of the board or the executive committee on the floor but it wasn't just us. it was high level, risktakers in the bank, people that knew thoroughly understood the risks in the system, people that thoroughly understood credit derivatives, people that thoroughly understood what warren buffett calls financial weapons of mass dtruction. we have experts in these areas and they were not being consulted. we had a brilliant, brilliant financial talent that was not being consulted becse those men upstairs, like i said did not want to be exposed for all they didn't understand. then 30,006 through 200 we started to see people stand up, brave people, courageous people

starting to stand up. i will never forget june 6, 2005, michael gil band, we are in a meeting with all the traders and the risk-takers, a lot of the research analyst and michael started to do something which is very unusual most people in these big meetgs are very politically correct but they are also very financially correct in terms of not wanting to upset the people up on the 31st floor and michael gil band, along with others but michael i will never forget how he started touestion these evil financial products that were in the ystem, the mortgages that started off the 2% and then twor three, maybe a year-and-a-half later, two years later were up at eight, nine, ten and 11% resetting and commissions that the mortgage people around our country, the incentives to sell the most el products and michael and others

were concerned that the gdp in the united states in 2007 and 2008 would be plunged right in the gut as tse mortge resets, as these resets started to hurt families and as he said really asome point you have to pay the pip. therwere so many of these products, i will never forget that day the warning and a warning about sub-prime, the warnings that i had never heard of really. i didn't know much about sub-prime in 2005 and this was the first time i've exposed to these words, sub-prime, these mortgage resets, words tt are all over the american vernacular today. i was hearing one of phe best, bravest and smartest peoe starting to call those warnings. the real tragedy of lehman brothers is that one by one by one warnings were ignored in these wonderful people really silence. ..

accounble. if you think about it, lehman brothers at top of the market was a 750 billion-dollar vestmentank, $750 billion of

risk and we only had 18 billion net tangible equity so we have $750 billion worth of stocks and bonds, commercial real-estate, all of the world but we only had 18illion of real money that is 44-1 leverage and the boa of directors who never once complained or said a thing or qestion to this dangerous levera. our report was fild with inexperienced people, not financial experts d i think going forward we have to have boards of directors. if you have systematically risky banks of innocences a giant domino you have to hav financial experts on the board, people that underand credit derivatives and commeial real estate, securitizations. you have to have expebts on the boards and another thin i was couraged on friday i noticed that aig made a move

permanently d touch their chairman and ceo of roles in other words wall street, 2007 you had a proliferation of ceos also chairman of the board and i was writing the book he really said he didn't understand much about finance. he said larry, that is the fox looking after the chicken coop, wouldn't you say? and i couldn't agree more. you're talking about a situation where lehman brothers had actually become a malarkey. you had one man in incredible position of power to the pont the appointed a cfo in late 2007 and had no experience ever as a cfo on wall street, and just because our president and chief exceeded officer wanted this new cfo they havbeen fe range to put lehman bthers in very

dangerous positionr. going forward the last thing i would say we can do to help make this country a better place is the regulators that accessed exist that are supposed to be protecting us l, predicting a loss fromome o these sysmi dangers in the system. we had in 2007 the sec, the fdic, we had the office of thrift supervision, t fis in europe and the fisa in asia and the comptroller. all of these hundreds of thousands of people working but working in silos and now working as a crt made a group, complete lack of coordination and that is complete lack of risk management when you have l of these regulators supposed to be overseeing these -- supposed to beverseeing these terrible and global risks

growing through007. and the reason -- this isn't all richard fold's problem it was also the problem of the regulators and the fact they were so horribly on coordinated that i think going forward if we are going to he pple in these rules and regulation, we should have people that have a global system eckert manager, one or two or three, maybe a coittee of people that look at the picture, to leverage all around wall street and the different banks and have there be accountability because capitalism cannot work without transparency and we have to have transparen othe risk. we can't have investment banks that are black boxes anymore. from the bottom of my heart i wrote this book because we never, ever nt this to happen again. and all i still live six blocks

from, and occasionally once or twice a week i will apy and promised myself i'm not going to look up a see wre we had such a wonderful time. such a gre peoplsilenced but such a great group of people that worked so hard each and every day i promised myself i won't look up. but in the and i always look up and i am so proud i worked at such a great place. thank you veryuch. [applause] >> questioned? >> sure. [laughter] who is it that represents the state treasury department? they are supposed to overs.

there was a woman appointed years ago and she started pointing at alof these loopholes where this money was disappearing within the government and s was silenced. she was removed because she was finding out where it was going and our government doesn't want -- didn't want her to find, didn't want us to know and still doesn't want us to know. and that was a woman put in a position of gat power and was silenced. >> well, you know, theres actually state attorney general's and ery one of the states has an attorney general and those attorney general's are the chief financial regulator almost like the secretary of the treasury. they are the most important person in that state's that's in charge of regulation. so there have been a lot of state attorney genal's that have tried to get involved. we have had very active ste

attorney geral's that try to point out the horrible business practices of country wide. one of the crazy things we are sitting ilate 2006 hearing about the genesis of the problem, thetate attorney general's even back in 2006 starting to question these business practices. i will never forget being they're talking to pe hammocks, one of the best and brightest and he would say t state of south carolina isoing this. the state attorney general of massachusetts is doing that and a lot of those pple were ignored, and i think one of the othetragedies the failure of lehman brothers is to invite -- tim geithner was the head in september when all of these bailouts werhappening in all of these things were taking place but in that last weekend when we had the best and

brightest finally on the 31st floor, sunday, september 14th, we had our executive committee taking the government for help because they had helped andy fannie mae and freddie mac. tigeithner was the head of the new york fed and mysteriously, fox news recently reported on this mysteriously his cellphone was turned off that evening around 7:00 when it lehman brothe was reaching out for assistance and lehman brothers i just want you to remember one thing. i hate bailouts. iespise them lehman brothers was put to sleep. they took the pilw and put it overhe face of lehman brothers. they really did. >> why? >> because i guess a lot o people say it was a moral hazard moment. you know, there are some people that wanted to make a stand.

i think there is a long history of tension between richard fuld and hank paulson, the secretary of the treasury at that time. weld lifelong but many years ceo head of goldman sachs and these were arch competitors and in essence goldman sachs has become an oligopoly bause merrill lynch is gone,ehman brothers is gone and bear stearnss gone and some of these other surviving banks are making more money than ever. >> do you mean bank of america, citigroup, the wells? >> thehave been -- >> [inaudible] >> bank america, citigroup, goldman and jpmorgan. those are the four -- >> who just took him morgan stanle >: morgan stanley would be like the fifth. >> how has writing this book changed yourancial courier? >> a lot in the sense i am t we to be on the south side any time soon and that means i will

not be working on a trading desk with richard fuld or any of these guys. [laughter] but i find it interesting a week ago friday i got a call from a shall act in the book one of the best -- he is of the call in the los alamos type nuclear physicist that deeply are understood credit derivatives and he was so happy about the book and about his role he wanted to thank patrick for the portrayal of credit analysts and he felt proud to be. he said once you come up on the trading floor. so i went there, about 5:30 on a friday. now this is a friday afternoon. it is 5:30. bark&ey's bought the remnants of lehman brothers. so this is lehman brothers 745,

seven avenue. back at the scene of the crime but back at the scene, the same floor i used to work and i noticed in the corner office i said who is that man in the coer office and he said to me that is bob dimonand said bob dimond, the ceo of berkeley's capital? he said yes. and how things have changed. things have changed in the sen that you have lessons being learned. you now he the ceo of barclays' captal right there on the trading floor with the best and brightest paying close attention to what is going on. not up in the 31st floor completely away from the battlefield. >> i have one question. >> sure. >> you made a comment at the beginning that this was the end of capitalism in america. w did you make that? >> not the end, but capitalism

has been changed forever because first and foremost you have the fed window, federal government has now been assisting banks through the primary field of the credit facility in other words you have iestment bas having access, getting helfrom the vement and that started with the essentially there stearns and then you have the t.a.r.p. and the talf passed in september, these initiatives to help securitization and lending start up again and because you see all these programs and so much of the help and the talf and t.a.r.p. and also goldman sachs and morgan stanle are now nkholding companies. lehman brothers requested to become a bank holding company in the days before the bankruptcy tim geithner said no and morgan stanley have become big holding companies so i think going forward especially in the short termou will have a pendulum swing where you wi have a

period of over regulation in terms of a minute regulation of capitalism. less leverage and less real freedom because the problem is things got so opaq and dark capitalism doesn't work without transparency so so many of the risks were so difficult to see that i think the regulators are going to force more visility and that will change capitism for ever. >> i mean, why -- y beginng in 2005? what happened before 2005 that brought this change? >> in terms of the problems? >> was set derulation? >> it was deregulation is fine and if you have good meters watching risk and i think what happened is you had the

deregulation and that started -- that started everything moving but you have to remember before the mart cracked in 2007, the summer of 2007 we had a 48 month period were the s&p 500 didn't decline more than 8% so this incredible period tranquility and what that brought was this proliferation ofhat i call peacetime generals that started to head up major iestment banks and commercial banks. chaka prints was hitting citigroup and he really isn't a risk taker. he is kind of a lawyer so you have kind of a lawyer running eir and ourumber two guy at lehman brothers, mr. gregory. these guys were consumed on the 31st floor with wonderful things like philanthropy, diversity efforts and richard fuld's 200 million-dollar art

collection. so lehman brodhers y have the top -- $750 billion of risk and all across the street you had peop consume with bizarre things that had nothing to do wi all of the ris grong day by day. >> did they lose their wealth? >> the did of lehman brothers but -- >> [inaudible] >> lehman brothers the work in isolated. theyost lot of their wealth. but everybody else didn't. >> i follow you on twittered. [laughter] >> what is your handle? >> [inaudible] aughter] i noticed recently comment he made in an editorial you are rried about current financial conditions. would you care to comment on that? >> i just think that the patient was on the operating table, getting white support a couple of months ago.

we gave the patient experimental drugs. this quantitative easing we have never done quantitative easing in the united states before. we've always cut interest rates to try to revive the economy and that is what we've done in this country. we've never done quantitative easing. it is an experimental drug and the economy right now is on a sugar high because of all of e liquidity pumped in but we can't expect a patient on life pport on experimental drugs to be able to get up and run it thats at some people are saying so i am advising caution we have had a wonderful rally as you have in most marke this incredible officious short-covering rally which turn into people chasing the next bull market. i don't think we're going back to the old lowbut we could have a natural progression of

this. >> if lehman brothers just to go back have been bailed out do you have any sense how it would look today and what the impact would have been on the economy has bottomed out and seemed to be a response to the lehman brothers failure? >> i'm glad you asked that. as i said earlier i despise these bailouts. but one thing -- i have done my best to mathematicay figure out with the help of great people when they let lehman brothers fail remember aig failed three days later, merrill lynch -- that made the other bailout's incredibly, incredibly re expensive because they let lehman brothers go on that sunday night and then aig had all of these complicat cds contras and risk that became incredibly more expensive after

lehman brothers failed, aig's, the initial estimates on the bailout were 30 to 40 billion within a month and a half the government is telling it is going to be $200 billion bail out aig and some of that money is going over to goldman sachs because they were all the other side of the trade so a lot of bizarre stuff was going on. i think that the failure of lehman brothers cost the u.s. taxpayers about 120 to $140 billion. now if they had saved lehman brothers what he wld have seen is a natural on lined ri in other words what should have happened is you could have brought in a u.s. bank corporation for example. kenneth lewis of bank of america when bank of america saved merrill lynch tim geithner but can lewis and a head lock and ordered him to be allowed

merrl lynch. if you're going to put people in headlocks you could put the ceo of u.s. bancorp in a head lock and say bailout lehman brothers and the reason is after lehn brothers failed to close to $700 billion worth of commercial real-estate, residenti real-estate, stocks bonds oil, gold, everything. lehman had tons and tons of assets and when you have a mpany in bankruptcy you hate a bankruptcy reorganizing come in and day just are interested in selling assets and on winding risk and thiwas the most rrifying unwinding in the history of bankruptcy. there was no preparation. the documents for the lead in bankruptcy, the initial document i talke to one of the lawyers there is on the 15 pages long. this is almost a 700 billion-dollar bankruptcy, and the initial document they presented to judge peck of the

accord was only 15 pages long. this document suld have been 300 pages long to articulate h they were going to unwind this risk so what happened was after lehman failed you had some winding that was so nasty. that's why when you were sitting in home in october, november and the stock market was going down every daat 2:00 another00, 400 points that is because lehman was in theron winding and other hedge funds -- lehman brothers was bringing down dominoes. literally you are watching dominoes fall and that hurt so many people. so if lehman had been saved, you could have had a situation where these assets were sold in a much more orderly a controlled wa instead of as crazy and haphazard and irresponsibly sold the way they were. >> how long do you think it will be before the marketecovers? >> honest to god, warren buffett doesn't even know the answer to that question. but all i know is --

>> you thi like ten years? >> it isn't going to be a v shape recovery. a lot of people have been trying to say it will. it's going to be more like a w. and i could take five years. >> or ten? >> it could. i mean, the s&p 500 in 72 was eight, ten -- 1982 it was eight, ten. so you have periods where, you know, you have periods of slow to negative growth,. >> if you think, you know, having these board of directors, this is so important yet our 01 u.s. treasurer can't folw the money our government is spending i mean how does it all -- >> you've got to start somewhere. these board of directors -- i mean, lehman had -- when i explained this to patrick, he

stared at me quarter till six in the morning. he is scratching his head, his ha is all over t place. he cannot believe -- [laughter] he says you are telling me that dena merril -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> on the board of directors -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> we can start there. it's obvious what. they had a steamroller, a good thing going and want as many silent -- the average age of the lehm board was 74. thes are people from different era. we had aadmirable in the navy. >> that ur dog ran ahone company. >> the biggest and south america. i think that going forward if saying jon retires from mgan

stany, ceo of morgan stanley. he should be since he has all of this maestro over the years he should have the requirement after he retires he has to on say a lehman brothers board for three years so you could hav financial experts on these boards and i would stack these boards wit financial experts because in essence lehman was a 750 billion-dollar domino with probably the most irresponsible board in the world. the next question would be if the had gotten the bailout would the sa people be working there? [inaudible] >> that is a problem have with merrill lynch. >> yes, i do, to act. >> it's disgusting. merrill lynch was destroyed because kenneth lewis -- i'm sorry, bank of america was destroyed because kneth lewis didn't understand the dangers of sivs, th bank of america, one of the largest banks with tons

of innocent monday, innocent people's money, they were insting in products and very dangerous things come and now kenneth lewis is still the ceo of bank america even though he lost all that money. so that is the moral hazard and that is why i hate bailouts. but i also el if you le people go like lehman brothers it can hurt lot of people the way it has. i am writing this book not jt for fsa employees, but we -- we wrote this book with intention of bringing main street an helping -- i am getting a wonderful e-mails and twitter from people that -- that are in construction saying r the first time i understand finance. and that makes me feel really good. >> when is it going to be a moe? [laughter] >> patrick is working on that one. [laughter] >> are you going to do ad? we have the audio books,es.

>> you do? cd's >> we do. >> where are they? >> it is a little bit more of a traditional -- [laughter] you get one -- i would say that. [laughter] >> what is the nature of the head like the governmt officials put lewis and? how do they compel such a private fifure t take on such -- >> isn't itmazing? you could see -- i don't know if you solve this, but darrell issa, chairman of the house oversight committee, he had these hearings over the last month and a half and prop up kenneth lewis and ben bernanke and hank paulson, and you could see the attention because now he is out of the head lock and has already made these purchases of country wide. kenneth lewis, ceo of bank americae bought countrywide first, and i think under orders and i think he bought merrill

lynch second under orders and the nature is de needed what we joke around bank of america beca the fourth branch of the u.s. government, and i think he felt it was a patriotic thing. he felt long term he was making good investment but h was making horrific investments. they paid $50 billion for merrill lynch. if they wait a week and have the could have gotten it for 12. so i can't explain it. >> that would defeat the ppose because that would convince the markets they are not worth that much. >> it was a poker game. the whole goal of it was to put everybody at ease and they were going to let lehman brothers go but nobody else and we are going to -- we are going to solv this crisis. another theory and this is a deep, dark pherae a lot of people feel they let lehman go because they were sure that the t.a.r.p. would be passed and the t.a.p. changed capitalism. and i don't think that the

t.a.r.p. would have passed if lehman hadn't failed. remember lehman phill and a.r.p didn't pass the first vote and in two days later it passed. >> will the little banks survive or will we be gobbled up and have three banks we are going to be controlled by? >> i hope they do. that's one of the problems - >> [inaudible] >> that is one of my great allies in the book. there is a scene where alex kirker says at a meeting when some of the great people pushed and of lehman brothers, some of the people that were silenced after the coup in june of 2008 they were asked to come back an there was a meeting in alex kirker's apartment with the new leadership of lehman. and there is a scene in the book wherehey are talking about that very problem that, you have all these big banks and there are not enough creativity. the banks have gotten bigger and

bigger and the dominoes have gotten bigger and bigger and alex lns back and says you know, the banks are not too big to fail, they are too big to succeed. and i hope -- in other words citigroup, all these banks, if become so big it can't have a ceo analyze all the rest and that is one of the dangershy i hope they force a lot of the bank's to break into smaller banks and you can compartmentalize risk. >> whoever that woman was she said because we are supporting, ani am guilty, chase, citigroup and jpmorgan because weave their credit cards, becauswe support them, we ar part of the problem we should be having credit unions and supporting themall banks. >> thas one of the great

things patrick does in this book. he articulates so beautifully and simply this 21st century securitization process and lending. in other words when my dad bought our first home he sat face-to-face with a banker and that a banker was a member of the comnity, that banker was involved in sports and charity and things like that, and the 21st century brought w securitization so you had a lender lending money tough lehman brothers to a mortgage broker and lending monei to some bus driver at newport beach living in a $300,000 home that had no income verified on s mortgage application. so we do need to go back to smaller banks and hopefully they will have the sense to break these big banks up. >> thais one of the classics is the ninja mortgage went to people with no job and no assets. [laughter]

it's the 400,000-dollar a year bus driver because he didn't have to put his and come down. so occupation, bus driver, income, 0,000. to hundred 50,000 check out all with massive mortgages of 350,000 they couldn't possibly pay back. and it was glorious the people that landed to them, the brokerage house didn't care because they ld it to lehman. and lehman didn't care either because they sold it to iceland. it is some kind of a walrus or something to read doesn't know who he is. [laughter] >> i was listening to patrick on xtk, and he was very informative, education presentation. there was a part you talked about stock in california and in the country we had these, we had

a lot of crazy lending all over but youadocts where it was extremely concentrated and one of those crazy pockets was stockton and you were telling donnie about a scenehen things arted to break into thousand eight you had people leaving homes and stocks and taking the coppeb wires, taking everything possible, refrigerars putting them in the back of the truck and you had literally traffic lights, trafficams at two in the morning and these people try to get out of stockton. [laughter] ..

do we were hring these stories on the trading floor. we are hearing these stories and teufel suncom lolita falzone-- like the first quaer of 2007 vallese 30 kierley 2006 eastood tahir what is called the early payment defaults had we were watching these because after aminophylline, i promised

myself, had omised have della i'm going to watch for these warning signs and there was an early piece of the fault and that is if, east and measurement of him all the people that are even making that first mortgage one-half one-half was spiking up in late 2006 and that is pretty crazy. th is trouble. >> yeah,hat is big trouble. [laughter] very strange how there were people who very clever people in lehman who blew their whistle very quickly. it was only a little bit and somebody was saying at is going on here? and then anher week or so they are saying it is gone up a bit more, what is happening here? he wouldn't say it but hwas right in the thick of the warning group of the people who were aually blowing the whistle in saying this is lunacy and he was, he had a front row

seat at this and he was one of theather dogs tryin to stop this raging bull and failed. >> thank you so much. we will have an opportunity now for you to sign books. >> i just want to thank c-span for taking the time to come down here all the way to the cape. i hope you enjoyed it lobster after we are done. [applause]

the coming up next, booktv presents after words, an hourlong program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week, harry stein author of how i fou in a piece discusses his latt book, "i can't believe i'm sitting next to a

publican". mr. stein uses humor to explore the partisan divisions he sees in many aspects of u.s. society. mr. sign discusses his book with author and former "time magazine" writer and editor, stefananfer. >> host: welcome to after words. i am stefan kanfer and normally i am an author but today i am an interviewer an i'm going to interview my fellow writer and a ighbor who lives about a football field away from me named harry stein. harry and died live in a suburb, you shou remember that all authors like mac and all commuters really like mac but really is about half an hour from new york, 40 minutes at the most. it is a green leafy suburb with ponds, sometimes in the summer frog's leap underfoot. there is little league team. it is a very, and pleasant place but it has the strange side that

people don't acknowledge very much and it is revealed in harry stein's tle, so why don't you tell us the title and we will go from there. >> guest: the titlef th book is "i can't believe i'm sitting next to a republican," which is what somebody said to me at a dinner party. i have been searching for a title for this book which is really about being a red states type conservative miranda in a blue state, and it was the book about those kinds of people, people like us who are despised by our neighbors. cosco we ha encounted this because everyone assumes youre a fellow liberal and that you have received the wisdom that you get from where? >> guest: from the "new york times" principally but these things are handed down. and, i am assume to be given. i started out in the liberal movement and was the liberal most of my life and when i made

that transition i found a lot of people i knew not only could not understand it but were quite appalled. and i wanted to write about that situation being really out of syncith once milieu. d i wanted to write about ose envments, places like new york, san francis, los angeles but also professors, where on is totally out of sync with everyone else. >> host: such as what profesons? >> guest: journism, hollywood, social work, psychiatry. >> host: tell me what happened. you said you were a libera but you change or did i cnge, environmenin the social condition change? >> guest: i don't thi i've changed terribly much. take something le affirmative action. i grew up believing what martin luther king said that a person should be judged by the content of his character, not the the

color of hiscan. sadly we found people being judged aost exclusively by the color of their scan. they were getting prerogaves, they were getting into schools, they were getting jobs on the basis ale and it is quite appalling. so, i would argue that this was the unjust to other liberaland regarded as the word they use, as a fascist. >> host: is this sort of promgated by the academy as well as bite journalism? where do you turn in a place like this? is everyoneho believes a you do a pariah pretty much or not? >> guest: certainly in the academy eveone who believes this is but let me get back to the start of this book. the start of this question. i decided i wanted to write a book in my initial thought was to call it red manhattan, to be a red state title an a place like manhattan.

there were too mactual rats and manhattan was the problem and i was really searching for a title. i considered for a time behind enemy lines, which is how we think of ourselves. i thought of, i deepest, darkest, among the saves in the deepest darkest blue amica. and i was really stricken with this and i happen to be at this dinner party. it was ear on in the campaign, the obama hillary campaign, and of course everyone at the party loved either obama or hillary. i made the mistake, and it is a mistake when you live in the kind of place that we do, of very tentatively rsing some questions about obama as experience and was he really qualified, several years out of the illinois state senate to be the leader of the free world? this guy turned on me, a not-m

guy i had known allf 15 minutes and explained, i can't belie i'm sitting next to a republican. i am technically ot a republican. i still registered as a decrat, but one finds that when you are a conservative in a blue milieu people lake make assumptiofs. they don't know much about us. all they knnw about this is what they have learned from their media for do we know everything abt them because we are watched in the "new york times." we can avoid an pr. we can avoid the network news. they don't know anything about us. what they know about us are the ricatures that are put forth in their media. >> host: there is something else i've noticed in that it is almost impossible to have a reasonable debate and en i was in college on the debating team, i made my statement in u.s. the opposition would make your stement. i would rebut in you would rebut. notice all the shoutingown.

>> guest: you are absolutely right. thiss the second book of this kind i have written. the first one was called how white accidently joined the vast right wing conspiracy and found inner peace. i wrote that book to have a dialogue with people on the other side and to try to explain why i had changed the issues that motivated that change, and i expected the book, the book was very successful. i expect it to be read by a lot of liberals. i don't think a single liberal, and i am not exaggerating, i don't think a single liberal read that book. i think they saw the title, i was identified as the bad guy andhat was it and when i say not a single person i am including friends, family people who i am very close to would not read the book. >> host: do you suppose it is like that on the other side as well? >> guest i think to a certain degree that isbsolutely for

sure. was not about to buy al franken. i'm not going to buy various bu bashing books. i know what those people think. i thought i had something to impart that they weren't familiar with. also i thought the book was funny, as i think this one is funny. >> host: now with this book you abandoned that idea of trying to change minds. >> guest: that is very true. i writing this book that this book is for people only agree with me already and you know, there are a lot of us out there who feel very isolated, to whether we are living in communities like ours, our new york suburbs, which you describe so beautifully, although i've never stepped on a fraud and apparently you have. >> host: we are talking about middle america where it is not that easy to find a then comfort if you are on the right.

>> gue: that is true but talkg about people, end is areas like we live in. cosco san francisco come abuttal so i think to some extent big citieshere you won't find many conservatives. >> guest: no, you don't. one of the interesting things is there are a lot more buzz that is generated knowledge. or the past election, the numbers. th fact that even cambridge massachuses you up five or 6,000 people who voted for mccain. esumably every single one of these people has been called a fascist at least wants but there are a lot of them out there. >> host: in san francisco you expect to find no republicans. >> guest: absolutely. i put together a roundtable of san francisco conrvatives and it was actually hosted by a vely guy, a couple who were talking about very amusingly about how much harder it is to

be conservative, in a place like san francisco then to be. >> host: it wonderful story in th bookbout a guy who wears t-shirt and the t-shirt is in san francisco and says war h nevesolved anything, except fascism, communism, slavery, and people see the t-shirt and they stay right on, because they don't read it. he said they can process it and that i think it's an interesng mindset. it is like a foreign language. if you say to them i conservative, it is as if you are from-- >> guest: they can't process it but it is also a maer i think of ignorance. they don't know who we are. they really-- all those things they tell one another about us. somebody said to me very

recently, you know, talking about affirmative action, you haveot to hate black people. i mean, it is so, it is deeply upsetting if you take it seriously and allow yourself to be defined by those people. actually one of the things i mentioned in the book, i actually look it up to get it right, i quoted-- about what liberalism has visited upon the nation, the reason so many of us acally move to t right. >> host: we can talk about dennis for a minute because he is a guy that di't live here but did. heived, i get to broadcast om the coast but he was on t dio in new york. >> guest: yes and he broadcast from l.a.ut he was indicated in new york for a while. any case, i think he is very good. he alsorites. anyway, yes-- he is very

conservativend very jewish. he wrote, the cadillac of disters that liberalism is visited upon the culture basically. rerictions on ee and on a speech in the name of sensitivity. the remaking of american history is tt there be f minorities and women. a general decline in civility. the actions of fathers d countleshomes througthe welfare state. the stigmatization of men as potential predators are visited upon us and all the other mischaracterizations of men by a you know radical femism. th corruption of childhood to an aggressively sexualized culture. and that is just the start. there's one thing he points out early on and that is the absence of debate. the sence of civilized commerce of ideas. >> guest: that is rht. >> ht: i would lay that on the left, when you? >> guest: absolutely and i

would lay that specificay on academia where the left flourishes and where ideas, which they consider apathetical to a left liberal agenda for simply not allowed in many cases. i mean they are either literally criminalize by speech codes where people are kicked out of school. >> host: a spokesman for the minutemen came into talk about why they are, why they feel fred none wide they are trying to guard the borde between mexico in the u.s., and he started talking and was shouted down by the sdents. obviously ry well organized, some of them not sdents, so there was never any date, that would be okay if somebody said alright this is your program, i am anti-gun and here is the way i feel about it. but they don't want to hear anything like an opinion that is

outside theainstream. >> guest: and of course it carries overo classroom activity as well. you know, if one voice is an opinion in class with many prsors they are the definition of the liberal. they don't want to heart and they were penalized-- penalize studts for voicing it. cosco where else to get aid cko like-- >> guest look at harvard. is a prime example. larry summers voice in opinion, which is widely held in this country about why women are less successful in science or less present in finance than men. aunt it feels like engineering. he essentily lost his job at harvard on that in cases. he was voted out of academia. one of the things i do in this book, in the vious professio

where, which a particularly obnoxious in this regard-- but the point i was making was i track wn people who were trying to survive and make their way and who are really quite heroic. >> host: we get to that in a minute. >> guest: sial work i call i think the dregs of all professions. there's a shown tcalled the dirty jobs. this is like the dirty job he could possiblyave. i don't know if i can find it. >> host: it was a requirement that they had and you pretty much had to believe in redistribution of wealth. >> guest: exactly right. i called that the sum of all professions. because there is indeed a code of ethics th has been issued by the council the social worker educatn which is the exclusive credit of schools of social work

and this is a quote, the social work, education programs must ingrate social and economic justice content grounded in understanding of distributive justice, human and civil rights in the global interconnections of oppression. host: it is as if it was written as a tax. >> guest: there was an example i cited of one bush moteou actually tried to go it alone at a school in rhodesland. he and his fellowtudents were obliged to sit through a farenheit 9/11, the michael moore film and empathize wit that point of view. an he found this objectionable and had the temerity to say something about it. esseially was poundedut of the school andt was true he admitted heould not made much of a social worker because he would have got in trouble qanta go tre are people identify, and i actually creat icons. >> host: for showing bravery

behind the lines. >> guest: and by the way i also created, or encnter books has created a web site on my behalf called, let me see now, i actually wrote it down. it is called the blue state resistan.com. in which i am welcoming people to tell their own stories, both in terms of social pblems, getting a date, meeting a woman, or a man. i have friendsho actuay moved to different parts of the country in order to meet somebody. i have a very good friend who move from upstate new york to sanford north carolina. you will know fouhy i >> host: it was done just an order to getut ofike minds. >> guest: exactly. it can be very difficult to particularly he was on mary, w divorced and he had gone on

match.com and oer deeding serves and it alys ended up with the problem, and he was thinking of putting on his tch.com profile, you know i am a raging faschists, the use to it. if you can get past that maybe we can have a conversation, and he still could not find anyone. actually it is one of the chapters i most enjoyed writing, talking to people, trying to make social connections with the opposite sex when they come regarded as not e politics. >> host: there is something deep down that is very melancholy about that. it is set to think that country founded on liberal principles, that you can't even date somebody who might be outse your own viewpoint. >> gue: there is mary madaleine carville so maybe it can happen. i think if you care deeply about these issues, as i do and many of the people i know do, it is

very hard to be with someone, politicized and angry and wide as the culture has been and what is the gulf has been. >> host: let me ask you iour book to some extent address this. why do people who have everything they want, they have the candidate they want elected, they have the senate and congress, where they still angry? where they still so angry when seems to me that paradise has the right? >>uest: that is a very interesting question a you know, it has been, people have wondered why they keep hanging on to george bush in dick chey. i think they need them. they need to be angry. i think liberalism is in large part motivated by that anger, driven by that anger. they areot happy people by and large. they need something to complain about, and in their minds the culture is seriously flawed. and they need people to blame.

>> host: but, on the right i would sayost people on the right believe in the culture seriously, saying we can't talk anymore. fatherhood is under fire, marriage is under fire and so on so i don't think either side feel copacetic. >> guest: i think yo are probably right about that. pelen the right tended be bett adjusted and happi as far as i can tell. i haven't staed out on the left, i had a very distoed image of people on the right as well. back in the mid '80s, i did piec in "the new york times" magazine which was a very important sep in my transitio to the right. and the piece i was doing was about why we on the left had surrounded the values issues to the right, and becaus it was the "new york times" magazine i haaccess to everyone. i went to washington and met a

lot of people in the reagan administration hill, t my amazement, were not only reasonable and incredibly likeable but agreed with the my degreed far more than i agreed with the people who i thought were on my side. they tend to be very wl adjusted and happier in their lives. they are unhappy now course because the culture is getting away from us and the culture, there are a lot of distressing things happening but in the privacy of our lives we tend to be pretty well adjusted and happy. host: speaking of privacy of our lives, did you start out in a liberal family? >> guest: very much so and actually yes, my parents were both very left. my father to this day identifies himself very proudly in public forum as a m of the left. >> host: 96 years old. >> guest: well, yes. he is incredible. he is much more alert and active and professionall driven and

successf then i am. my father writes broadway musicals, among them fiddler on the roof, and it has been a problem for us. this is my father in haiti. a uple of years back, he and my stepmother, a lovely woman who takes wonderful care of him, work on rooted connecticut for a workroject, when he started feeling a little ill and when they, so she called ahead and when theyot to the finn youth there were some ems workers waiting for him and one of them said to him, how do you feel? he said i don't feel so good. he said, what hurts you? he said iturts me that bush is president. [laughter] that is my father. my father is an incredibly funny man and iwas a problem for us for a while. particularly my first book was published, and it was very

public, and he had to deal with his friends. i think it was very hard for him but in a way it was very good for us i think, because although conversation was difficult for a whil we overcame it and are probably closer now than we have never been. >> host: you were out of the closet at that point. tell the story of the friend. >> guest: i was making the point and i think this is a very important point, t people on the left tnk of themselves as incredibly liberated and incredibly open and in fact they live in absolute abject terror of being seen as a liberal, as having imp your thoughts, improper thoughts. they live this kind of mentally straightjacketed existence and this was story told by a soman i know who lives iooyn hdights, which is a very liberal area. she was at a dinner party and they were talking about marriage and of course everyone w in

favor of it, including her. she said, but would it bother you if one of your own children said he was and, i think sheurther explain, becse it created a distance and the matters that are most important to you, their experience would not be your experience in she said this ominous, didley science fell over the table. no one knew what to say. they all of course agreed with her and finally someone said i would be a lot more worried if my son was the republican,nd they all laughed and agreed and i felt okay abou it. that afterwards, one of these ople came up to her and whispered, i would be really disturbed. >> host: it is all subsa whispering. >> guest: and you cannot have an honest conversation in all

kinds of ways. if you are a victim of that kind self-imposed political correctness. it really is a weight on your shoulders. ..

on the other side they may have to socialize with them and they can be genuine friends i suppose. >> host: whereas the assution in new york and other places is we all think ali and if we don'think alike we are not weome in certain places. >> guest: right. one of the things i tried to do -- i wanted to find the bigge conservative beriah i could find and i did a kind of search. i started with the murdoch people, that work that i think it is 12116 avenue where fox is located. they are heated and tn i looked at some of the people who are the catholics very involved in the antabortion movement. god knows they are despised and hated but i finally decided the most loathed despised people even by "the new york post" which is a conservative paper our landlords and i try to get a bunch of landlords to talk to me and a few what kind of start and

then back away beuse their lives are miserable enough as it is and then i found the perfect person. he was the guy even by landlord standards a pariah. a lawyer who only represents landlords and was happy to talk. >> host: he was outspok. wonderful quotes. >> guest: this is a guy, whose parents was a holocst survivors and he said how much worse can this be. he was totally fearless. he knows what he is dealing with d i was very worri for him. i said are you sure y want to go on the record with this and i'll let him read e chapter which is something i didn't let anyone else in the book do and he said fine with me. >> host: well, why don't you read a passage from what he said because i think the g is so strong in his opinions -- >> guest: let me see if i can find it quickly. well, before i do that because i've already marked this and i

will get back to him, another field where to be conservate is to be really out of step is psychiatry. and i actually my vorite quote in the whole book, this is something this guy wrote, a guy named dr. lyle, a very respected psychotherapist who wrote a book about liberalism as a mental illness andhis is quoted from that. the conditions major defects and autonomy and mutuality must be addressed. prominent among them are basic mistrust of cooperation. false perceptions of vicdimization, intense in the and underlining shame, need to vilify andlea mothers, deficits in self-reliance and direction, marked fear and avoidance of responsibility,

fantile demand a mess, often paranoid hostility and need to manipulate, control and depend on others, lack of courage, rdsilience an@ frustration tolerance and defect of the ideals, conscience d an imlse control. therapy must also address liberals self pathology especially as a majority self-centered this and grandiosity. the lack of sympathy for recognition of others. his marked sense of entlement and impaired self-esteem and identity, educational programs to cure the liberals of ignorance of the free market economics libertarian prgcess, constitutional democracy and psychology of cooperation rank high among therapeut priority. what a great -- >> host: what happened to him and sure they tried write him out on a real. >> guest: speaking of happiness this guy was the most contented guy you will speak to in your life, a lovely man on moderate, it is wonderful. >> host: i think that is in itself in michelle is both a

symbol of courage and ample of clarity. he wastes no words at all. we are going to take a small break now and then pick thi up where we left off. i want to talk about that land lord and his quotes. >> @ost: welcome back. on stefan kanfer talking with harry stein, the author oa remarkable book and he's been elaborating on it called "i can't believe i'm sitting next to a republican." one of the things we were talking about just before hand was a rather courageous man w was a lawyer for landlords and i

recall this passage in the book is not only eertaining but brav he is the son of a holocaust survivor obviously not afraid of anything, how much worse cant be and this is what he had to say out the sittion. >> guest: i will read a couple of brief quotes. by the way, when i spoke to th it was amazing like they turned on the tape recorder an he just went. so many stories it was brimming with the anguish and bemused frustration of deang wh new york city and new york city residents. >> host: no one cared ttalk to him this week. >> guest: the first thing everyone learns as a landlord situation as he is presumed the bad guy, the evil dahari and everyone with he feels the city of quartz is a pottial e. i work with one guy, honest as they come who wrote family business of small-company and i fear for him a he elaborates

about the indigniti, and it's quite a lengthy thing. and to cite one small thing he says try finding a lousy employee ofhe wrong ethnicity in new york city. one land or had an alcoholic who never showed up for work, hispanic guy after hearing bitration he had to pay to put the do man in a rehab and rehire him so the m goes back to work and a couple of weeks the same tng starts happening so there's another set of heargs and mor rehab out of his pocket. no exaggeration. it took four years before he could get rid of him with a year's severance. >> hos that was a happy ending and yet i am sure it is a daily occurrence where you hire somebody because you are a landlord you are the bad guy. >> guest: to complain about it you are a racist. that's the aumption. these peoplin new yor city, liberals anywhere are not in general this is obviously

genelization not well acquainted with pity it is on meone else's back. my frid, bernie goldberg used to say allf these people who are in favor of affirmative action at the broadcast networks because he worked at cbs, one day they should quit. the head of the new division on the condition they would be replaced by a minority. let ibidem who suffers for once. >> host: it will never happen. we know that. speaking of suffering for your believes there is an incident that happened to you, and i thinke suld tell about it bec@use it's no longer something on per theoretical. this is an actual even to. >> guest: right, i talked about this in the book at length and it was a painful experience. i wagiving a speech after the

publication of the vast right-wing conspiracy book. i was giving speech recounting my own journey to the right and among t episodes i recounted in the speech, which i had done many times before was something that happened to my son. in tenth grade he was taking a class at his very progressive teacher, inglis teacher had assigned huckleberry finn and she announced she was sor s had to teach it but thereas a part of the curculum. and she regretted it because it was a racisbook. my son was familiar. he listened to the book tape and raised his a racist book, it is antiracist. there was back-and-rth between them and she was increasingly insulting to him. finally saying well, charlie has to work on his racial

sensitivity. and charlie, who was an indifferent student, came home from school that day with a big smile on his face. he said well, i starting out with the sea in the class and working down from there. and i was very proud of charlie for having the guts to stand up. so i told ts speech, i told the story in the speech but i made the mistake of putting in the detail of the reason s regarded the word as racist because he was the n-word accept li mark twain or usehe real work, and what happened was somebody in the crowd i was speaking to what i thought was the federal reserve of dalla but it was also the federal reserve of san francisco and one of the people from san francco at the endf the speech stood up and told me he was deeply offended by what i had said and was really quite baffled and i

remember thinking am i going t let myselfe bullied into silence by this guy or stand up and i said i understand this is probably shockintoou. you don hear conservatives very often but i suggest you investigate other points of view on all questions including the race question. you might read shelby steele, you might read ward connolly or any number of other people. and i felt i had answered adequately. the guy drove me to the airport after the speech in dallas. arrived home and one of the people from the organization that sponsored the speech called and said we are getting calls from reporters, calls from reporters at the fort worth star-telegram who says you gave a racist speech and made racist remarks, and i got the guy on the pho, e reporter, and explained the context and told

him the story about my son and he seemed very disappointed for one thing that he wasn't going to be able to mail me but also satisfied with my explanation in and he said he would call me before he ran anythin he never called me back. he r this piece accusing me of being racist, took what i said and twisted the context. it was a very ugly thinand then i saw this piece of picked up by a bunch nf other paper a bunch of other liberal papers i must say all throughout texas and it was extreme upsetting. i marched forivil rights. i as i say still believe in everything martin luther king preached and fought for and to be called racist by the people with impunit because they were untouchable, was infuriating and frightening.

and i was prevailed upon by my run magnus -- myron myron did persuade me and i am glad. i got to call this guy and eventually his editor even worse than he was coming and the first ing i said to him at once you never called me back. still waiting for you to call me ck. and he was scared. he had never been called to read these people are never confronted with their own perfidy and it was an absolute pleasure to be abl to write about, to make him squirm away he had done to me to and i got his editor. he scurried away and said to have to talk to my editor and i spoke to her and she had all of the demotion of a telephone dialtone. she said nobody likes the way

they are written about in print but we feel the story is strong. it w aolutely stomach turning. >> host: what happened after appeared in the city journal? >> guest: lot of people -- i heard from a lot of people including subscbers to the newspaper who canceled subscriptions. the piece was picked up by "the wall street journal"ho investigated the episode and road fortunately the tape of the speech was available. anyone can check it out eckert reporter checked out and has seen for himself there was nothing in the speech that justified the peace. than into any way. >> host: you mentioned in this bit of dialogue that people like board, lee and shelby steele are available to those who are either ignorant or might want to nd out or even those who are

fairly well informed me even emotionally on your side but they don't quite know how to figure it out yet. do you have a sort of reading list to help people who might wa to try to understand something in the received sdom of the left? >> guest: my owf feeling is one should read promiscuously. there e so many people i think a particularly good. i think the best political writer now, bar none is mark stein no relation, s-t-e-y-n. >> host: comedian. >> guest: brilliant essayi, he writes more than anyone i've seen. of course available on the web i think it is marksteyn.com. am not sure. jonah goldberg stuff if one looking to read on the right. i think mmentarys alys

interesting. john potter for its. the "national review" of course, the weekly standard. there are all kinds of very smart and better thoughtful conservative than use. >> host: it is interesting once upon a time there was none of that or vy little of it. even though the left is in the ascendant there ar a number of websites and magazines that went around, fox news being a good example and a very successful one. it was only "new yo times" and "chi tribune" and late "los angeles times" and we now know that newspapers are in big trouble and there will be an alternative of some kind. we don't know wh yet but the same thing is true in book publishing. something has happened in book publishing. there are few outstanding

usually media driven people like mark levin and so on who get on because radio shows but is there a conservative publisher other than -- >> guest: well, there is regnery which is the kind of powerhouse, the 800-pound goria published out of washington, d.c. and they've produced innumerable best sellers and because of regnery's success, and i hav a chapter on conservative publishing in the book, three of the mainstream uses created their own conservative in prince, and and schuster, pain when and crown and the art to varying degrees had they done very well. >> host: we know most ofhe books will not be reviewed by the times or most of the other mainstream how do they survive without the customary rgans? >> guest: as you indate

because there is a conservative media which canublicize the their thors do not have to get on the today show -- >>ost: oprah's. >> guest: or oprah. i interviewed a publicist for a conservative house and she said we don't try to get onprah. we can't and we are ot going to sell bks there. i would rather bon a fox and friends in the morning and the today show. there is a audience outhere that has been ill served by the mainstream media so and that of course all of that is now under assault by democrats and fairss doctre and all of that. >> host: if that passes but what is the mainstream media? how would you define the mainstream media? >> guest: it is weaker than it's ever been put its what it's always been and "the new york times" is the leader of the pack. the times sets the agenda for

the networks the rest of the liberal printedia. they are untouched by the flow of ideas that does not intrude on them in their personal lives and upper west side neighbors. my o experience of the times is complicated because i grew up and loved it and even now recognized in certain respects it's very good. the sciee coverage with the exception of a couple of feminist reporters will always ma their science about feminism and international verage is often exceptional. the problem with the times becomes the politics began to intrude in every section of the paper. it would be in the art section and certainly in the sports section. straw for me was the duke street scandal which was of course

fraudulent and recognized as such almost from the beginning these for lacrosse players accused of having raped this blackoman. the story just didn'hold and pele began raising questions. but the times because it fit the template personally the privileged white ks, the oppressed black victim, the femist angle and of course all of t academics, the 88 academics jumping on the bandwagon condemning these kids and the patriarchy and the kneal mentality and the times loved the story and on the sports page particularly selena rerts now in the book and in the complete passed from the mainstream media rhode the story until the end. what she did was quite

appalling. >> host: she didn't write to the end, she wrote almost to the end. >> guest: in any case that was the last straw f the tim. i felt picking it up everi morng upset me and depressed me so we canceled the subscriptionnd told them why. i now oy read the times when i go to the grand central station and find it scardein the trash can or sometimes a coffee staibut i will notay for it. and the odd thing is they kept sending solicitations and they were more and more desperate. first hey were offering $8 a week seven days a week home delivery. the net was $5, $4. finally, i wrote them back that i appreciated their wanting to get us back, but given economy and obvious deterioration in the quality of the newspaper, i wanted to make a counteroffer. i offered 1 dollar a week home

delivery seven days a week and enclosed check for $26 covering six months of home delivery. well, i think they were befuddled for a whe because the solicitation stopped. >> host: i don't think he looked at the name on the check frankly. uest: well, they d not cash the check. i was hoping they wld cash the check and i wouldhen be able to demand my seven days a week because than it would hurt them financially every time they delivered a newspaper. >> host: on the other hand here is a man of high iq so this is what they want for their audience. >> guest: i go out in the morning to pick up my new york post or wall street journal and i look up and down the stree and all icr blum wrappers of "new york times" subscribers so they are not hurting in our community. >> host: hear you talk about someone who readsromiscuously. do you read newspapers

promiscuously? >> guest: i read a lot -- it is unavoidable. i listen to a lot of ipuerto rico for example. they have awfully good shows. i actually quote the fit in the book about the average soft whea npr man who talks in a certain way and he says i don't want to be attacked again, but shut the f up. david couldn't take the left anymore and h come to our side. and actually identify him as one of the hero's. but it is unavoidable. you canno live where we live and avoid the standard issue left slant on everything. >> host: so you feel essentially be a car in which you ar breathi or open your gales is pretty muc left or left for a code liberal and if

you j sit still it will pour into yr years from npr, dinner parties, conversations on the train and the elevator and so on and you have to kind of work hard -- >> guest: i am oen surprised when i talk to people on the left they arall aware of things people on the right to know all about. for the simple, the duke case i one exale. conservatives do very early the case was bogus. people who i would speak to about it didn't know. they simply didn't know. just now there are -- there's all this talk about the chrysler dealerships at least on the conservative websites and maybe it will expand. i'm not sure and i take it with a grn of salt but the chrysler dealerships targeted for extinction were largely those who had been donors to mccain during the campaign and none of

the big donors to oba were shut down. now, i could not have that conversation whether it is true or not remains to be seen but no 1i know in my neighborhood has heard about this except me. ery conservative i know is aware of this. so conservatives tend to know about stuff that goes on in their world and stuff that goes on in the mainstream world. >> host:n the past conservative are largely satirists. almost every satirist because you had to have a set before you could make fun. that is whyhe brits -- george was a genius, need a britain that was where the sun never set in order to make his points but he w always witty enough to make them on both des for example arms and the man the gun manufacturer is a witty and intelligent person in superman.

the devil has all the great lines. this is what happed. what has happened now that there is simply no sadr riss i know of >> guest: once people on the right have been reduced to character to cartoon figures their ideas do not have to be enged. one of the most interesting things rush limbaugh cited the statistic and i have seen this elsewhere as well his listeners are better informed according to the ehud research thaaverage mainstream liberal readers, and by the way, something else liberals don't know is that conservatives are mobe digging, more charitable. >> host: that has been published a lot. >> gue: there was the body in syracuse that did a book about it that goto attention in the mainstream press bause it ran counter to the narrative.

>> host: there is something else carries and iuspect it is true of rush limbaugh's audience they are older than the average audience of liberals and that is people that a older have a better background in popular culture and they know all the time of the movies and t books they read. they came out of a culture that didn't have as much as a barrage of television and it wasn't as full eckert. >> guest: and if you are talking abou young people by and large, they came of age and a highly politicized educaonal system in which something else we deal with in the book is as one woman said in despair about the education of her o chdren it goes from exploitation american history, goes from exploitation of the indians to slavery. basically skips the founding fathers, it skips the great mass of their vision and what this

country has become, and that is -- i devote a whole chapter to this. how to deal with that if your kids are in public schools. there is one guy named dennis why quote some of the letters he wrote. do we have time for another quick thing here? nnis wte a letter, he wrote many letters on his kids' teachers and this one he wrote to a music teacher. dear mr. ai didn't give the name. i am troubled to learn he would use your music class as a form to impose a one-sided lecture on the children in your charge and i am especially troubled in a discussion after class with my son and the presence of several other students you eque republicans with nazis and then he offers -- >> host: the music teacher? >> guest: the music teacher and he goes on to say if he insists on having this kind of

political content to his class this is the seventh great music teacher, that if you are going to do this basic fairness and sound educional policy demand you bring another adult to reason the other side of the issues to the cldren. then the kids can i arrived at informed opinions of their own. that is the american way and that to me is the esselce of the kind conservatism i am talking about. the people that are interested in civility and honest dialogue and all sides of an issue and are doing on the basis o ideas. >> host: it reminds me of the great russian title what is to be done. i like having two sides of the opinion stated. it won't happen to the to happen in a music class but what is to be done in general to bring people around to an derstanding on whathe debate is, to drop the vulgarity and shouting and simply talk about

issu? is it possible? >> guest: as i say this book directed at people on our side so i havedvice for them, which is never stop taking to the extent they are in their boots. people like dennisave to engage these issues and stand up and be counted which is not easy to gond argue and be the only parent who argues with a teacher. it's not easy to be at a newsper and stand up for what you believe in as also some of the hers i talked about in this book did or to be an hollywood even more so where it is going to ct you work because although they are obsessed with the blklist and practice it themselves in a different way for their own end all the time. that is what we are dealing with, a culture which is very hostile and ignorant of who we are and we have to stand up and

present ourselves honestly as who we are and that is the only way. i think the american peop by and large are very decent and open to argument. the problem is we don't have cess to the forum as they do so we have to take advantage of all that we have. >> host: in that case this is more than a survivors' manual, this is a laudatory call to arms, don't be afraid. say what you know is right and stop feeling you better shut up at the dinner rty because of the social -- >> guest: i can tell from personal experience you will be invited to fewer dinner parties. >> host: maybe so. i don't know how important free dinners are the it's important to live with yourself. you talk about agassi in here who is a hollywood writer that says in e and i would rather say my mind and write some

cheesy -- >> guest: he is a line producer in hollywood and talks about the fact she is sure although he doesn't make an issue of it but when it comes up he says as a line oducer you get to hire a large number of people. he hires the best people at the best price he can get and he has been accused of the usual this of discriminating against people. he was working on a film which was recently a black fil and hired a crew equal number blac d white. he was told to hire an assisnt director who was black and he hired a white guy because he was better qualified and they got him at a better price so i asked him. i said this mu have cost you work and he said i am sure it has but at the end i have to live with myself and what i tell my children and if i don't get to work on spider-n seven that isn't the worst thing in the world. >>ost: that is a great

closing. the point of your book, the plight of his statement,he intf being a conservative today in a hostile climate is to try to restore i think some kind ofivility not only in the debate but also and dress and attitude a everything so that when it comes up around you feel you can live with yourself because you haven't been a trimmer all the time or haven't been somebody's compriser. you can do that and still be who you are. this is harry stein, whose book is i think mandatory reading. i don't think it is just for people on their white. i think people on the left would profit. it is a pole but, it isn't savage. it doesn't call names. it is written very cool pros and

it's funny anditty and a great book to take on a flight or in theathtub or to tell about at the dier tle. good luck to you. thank you for being on. >> guest: thanks, steve.

today what we are doing is one of the final days of shooting documentary on the supreme urt. we have been there about two months or so in the different rooms and spaces of the court as well as talking with nine of the justices now about theip job to give an inside window into how the court operates. the processes of the court and humanizing get and what we are doing is grabbing a couple of final shots and we a going to add in tthe documentary. and now a ptagon briefing with defense secretary robert

gates and joint chiefs chairman michael mullen to talk about u.s. strategy in afghanistan including troop levels. this is about 35 minutes. >> i want to start tod with an update where we stand with general mckristol's assessment and then turned over to admiral mullen for his pspective. first some context. after taking office president obama approved the deployment of additional troops to afghanistan to help cope th the anticipated taliban spring offensive for the afghan elections last month. our allies and partners also sent snificant additional troops to provide for the election security. in late march the president announced a comprehensive civil military and diplomatic strategy for afghanistan and pakistan with the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al qaeda in order to prevent them

from launching another attack against our country. a new military commander, general mick mristol was appointed to the new strategy. whene took command in june i asked him to report back to me and about 60 days with his assessment of the security situation and his thinking on the implementation of the president's new strategy. i received that report to days ago forwd a copy to the president for initial reading i asked general petraeus the commander of central command, joint chiefs of staff and the chairman to provide me with the evaluation of the aessment and situation in afghanistan and we will send their views plus my own thoughts to the president early next week. i expect any request for additional resources would follow after this process and be similrly discussed by the president's national security

team. all of this is being done as part of a systematic deliberative process designed to make sure the president receives the best military information and a device on the way ahead in afghanistan. as i said earlier what prompted my reque for this assessment was the arrival of a new commander in afghanistan. not y new information or perceived change in the situation on the ground. mauney request and general mckristol's response ara intended to help effectively implement the preside's market strategy, not launch a new one. admiral? >> thank you. i would add a couple of thoughts. first on process. as the secretary indicated he has asked thehiefs and myself to review general mckristol's initial assessment and provide our thoughts and advice. the chief and i have already met twice in theank this week to discuss and are planning at least one more session later on.

my intention is to wrap up the review by friday. our job and what we take very seriously is to provide the secretary and the president our best military advice and we are going and our other security commitments around the globe. second it is clear to me general mckristol has done his job as well we need out for his chain of command the situation on the ground as he sees. and offering in a frank and ndid terms how he believes his forces can accomplish the mission the president has assigned to him. d that is whatthis whole thing is abt, the mission assigned, the strategy we have been tasked to implement. there has been enormous focus o troop numbers and time lines lately, lots of conjeure, lots of speculation. i understand the interest in those things and it is

legitimate. the numbers represent a real units and people and families. but the trapeze of this is just that, it is a piece, critical, but it's not total. what more important than the numbers of troops he ma or may not ask for is how he intends to use them. it should come as no surprise to anyone the intense to use the forces under t command to protect the afghan people t give them the security they need to reject the influence the taliban seeks. you've heard me talk the last two years about afghanistan. you know how much i remain concerned about the situation there. there is a sense of urgency. time is not on our side. i believe we understand that and we are going to regain the itiative. because we have strategy, we have a new approach to implenting the strategy and we have leaders on the grnd who know the nature of the fight they are in. leaders who know the other

people and the other families o matter just as much in this fight are the afghans themselves our missiois to defeat al qaeda and prevent afghanistan from becoming a safe haven again. we cannot accomplish that alone. will need help from other agencies and other countries but we will also need the support of the local population. so in my view the numbers that count most are the numbers of afghans we protect. as oneillager told a visiting law maker recently security is the mother of all progress. >> a question for both of you. the new polls show support for the war in ahanistan is eroding and coming as you prepare to go to the congress to ask for funding and to fulfill general mckristol's a his repeated resource request. how concerned are you the fading pport will make it harder for the requests to be fulfilled and how ncerd are you about this idea that the war is slipping

through the administration's figures ting hold of americans? >> welcome a first of all, i don't believe that the war is slipping through the administration's figures, and i think it is important first of all th nation has been at war for eight years. the facthat americans would be tired of having their sons and daughters at risk and in battle is not surprising. i think what is important is for us to be able to show over the months to come that the president's strategy is succeeding, and that is what general mckristol is putting in front of us how best we can at ast from the military standpoint ensure we can sw lines of progress alon those lines. but i think it is also -- there

is always a difference between the perspective in terms of timing in this country and certainly in this city and what going on in theountry, and i think what is important to remember hs the president's decisions were oy ma on this strategy were only made it the very end of march. our new commander appeared on the scene in june. we still do not have all of the forces the president has authorized and afghanistanet. ande still do not have all of the civilian surge the present has authorized and insisted upon afghanistan yet. so we are only now beginning to be in a position to have the assets in place and the strategy or the military approach in

ple to begin to implement this strategy and this is going to take some time by the same time no one is more aware than general mckristol and certainly the two of us that there is limited time to show this approach is working and certainly f the secretary of state and president owls well because there is this broad element of the strategy that goes beyond the military. but i would just say we are mindful of that and we understand the concerns on the part of many americans in this area and we think that we now have theesources and right approach to begin making headway turning around the situation that as many have indicated has been deteriorating.

>> the only thing i would add this has been a mission that isn't bell resources. it has been under resource t almost since its inception in the recent years a it has gotten more serious and has been tied to that. president obama has approved such troops, approved the civilians as the secretary indicated are literally in many casejust arriving on the scene. i talked about a sense of urgency and i do believe we have to start to turn this around from the security standpoint over the next 12 to 18 months. i think the strategy is right. we know how to do this. we have a combat force that is terrific and counter insurgency and to listento general mckristol he believes it is achievable ande can succeed. with that said it is complex and

tough. we are losing people as everybody knows and yet that is the mission the prasident has given the military and it is the one that we are fixed on carrying out. >> you don't fear, chris -- how do you feel congress will respond to the requests that may come? >> i mean, congress will respond as they see fit. i am very aware of the debate. i am a vietnam veteran. i am raised in a country that actually cherishes that debate and from that military perspective again we have a mission that we are doing the best we possibly can to carry out. >> sector a gates, you said repeatedly in the past you're concerned about the size of the footprint in afghanistan but amongst the talk of urgency we have to prove ourselves quickly

are you changing your view on the size of that footprinas it becomes clear general mckristol is to ask for more troops? >> i am not been to sculate about what resources he's going to ask for. i would just point out that the number of u.s. troops in afghanistan has nearly doubled inhe space of the last year, and i would say giving credit to the allies the number of partner troops has nearly doubled in the pa year to 18 months so there has been a significant increase, a major increase just in the last few months. i have expressed concern of the footprint and expressed concerns as the chairman referred to in his remarks about impact on the force@@ and other worldwide responsibilities. by the same token i take seriously general mckristol's point the size of the footprint

depends perhaps depends in significant measure on the nature of the footprint and the behavior of those troops and their attitudes and their interactions with the afgns, and if they interact with the afghans and a way that gives confidence to the afghans that were their partners and allies then the risks i have been concerned about the footprint becoming too big and the afghan seeing a loss and a whole other th partners i think is mitigated, but i am very open to the recommendations and certainly the perspective of general the mckristol. sprick general mckristol has placed great emphasis on reducing casualties and they have bn dramatically reduced. he has placed great emphasis on literally how we travel throughout the country in terms

of being mindful of those citizens that liv there and those kind things he considers strategic vulnerability is to our ability to focus on the people and partner as a secretary has described, he has made those ch@nges since he has arrived and those are significant steps in the right direction. >> can you talk about how this will work, general mckristol's request or a report and whether he wants a troop increase? will you be prested with options? because think in the end if general mckristol says i nee more troops, how can you turn him down? or just give a sense of that and how this will be presented in what way. >> assuming he makes some sort of requested would be expectation we would handle it very mh as we have had handled

every other reqst for resources previously in both iraq and afghanistan at least since i have become secretary. hi recommendations and alternative course of action would follow the chain of command. theyill go to general petraeus as the commander of central command who willffer his view. that will then be forwarded to the joint chiefs of staff and the chairman and they will evalte and a their point of vi and i will add a line and provide that to the president. there will be a discussion in the inner agency and the debate about the pros and cons of various things, and i will tell you, i will use the iraqi security situation as an example. of what happens in this dialogue up and down the chain of command and i do in flight chairman -- i

do inflight the chairman when i am done. when general odierno came with his original time lines where he felt the risk wascceptable to him in terms of whene would and the combat, the combat units in iraq there was dialogue back and forth between general odierno and general petraeus and between him and the chiefs, and they're emerged a consensus we probably could take somewhat more risk than general odierno ar originally had been comfortable with so that is how we move from general odierno's proposal of december, 2010 to august 2010. i expect if there is a recommendation from general mckristol there will be the same kind of dialogue that we have had repeatedly with respect to iraq in the cha of command and then as it moveso the inner agency. >> we saw this week the chiefs

and genal petraeus and general mckristol t have tt kind of alogue and to understand from his perspective, but at our level and general praeus's level he has the region is now just about afghanistan. we have got lot of troo in iraq and there are challenges and intentions between those two theaters in terms of troup distribution, and then the chiefs have a global responsibility but certain includeshe health of the force and so that doesn'tean that general mckristol don't consider that but it's r responsibility to focus on that and to weave into the overall discussion and then make a recommendation based on how we see where general mckristol ase and the overall mission and certainly it is going to include risks and risks associated with various options if we get to that point. we are just on there yet.

we are trying to understand bh the assessment,nd then there will be a resource piece of this which will follow. >> cannot follow on a footprint elizabeth was talking about? that was an argument general abizaid had in iraq and he's been widely criticized for that, that he didn't want a big footprint of american troops or he was worried about the footprint. have you thought about that? >> no because frankly i wasn't here for the discussion. but i will say this i think there is a real mistake. i think its a real mistake to compare iraq and afghanistan, and i see that a lot and i think that there are some -- there are mits to analogies between the two andumber of different ways. for example iraq has had a strong central government for a

very long time. that is not the case for afghanistan and that is a huge difference between the two. so, again, as i told elizabeth, i think thathe footprint issue can cut several different directions. i have been concerned about the size of it. and i would expect those concerns to be addressed. that's one of the things asked when we were in belgium tt i asked general mckristol specifically to address. >> specifically on afghanistan then, what i-- what is the genesis of your concern about the footprint? >> htory, and as a number of articles have pointed out, wre foren forces have had a large footprint and failed in no sll part has been because the afghans concluded they were there fo their own imperial

intere and not there for the interest of the afghan people. so,ow the footprint fits into this as general mckristol suggests i think it also has to take into account how the afghan people look at that presce, and this has been mine issue, something i have worried about ever since i took this job. first we were not paying enough attention to afghanistan. but second, tryingo figure out ishere a tippi point where the afghans begin to see us as part of the problem, part of their problems rather than part their solution. idp approach general mckristol has taken in terms of the civilian casualties and in terms of the way our troops interact with the afghans has bn us a

greater margin of error in that respect because it doe affect the way the afghans look at our troops. >> the new mission is to protect the afghan people. isn'that by its very definition very manpower intensive? >> and it is actually general mckristol's implementation of the new strategy that focuses so heavily on the people. and it is clearly a requirement to be distributed throughout the country obviously where the people are and then the meat as we build up the afghan security forces over time certainly to have that off to them, but it is very direct and face-to-face and i think we understand that. he has made that litally job one for the forces since he has

taken commd. >> -- response to george wells, where he said this week it is time for the u.s. to get out of afghanistan and should be using drones, air missiles and special forces and goes on to say we should focus on the 1500-mile border with pistan. is it time to get out of afghanistan given your concerns about footprint how do you respd to that? >> i have respect for him but in this case i disagree. i do not think it is time to get out of afghanistan and i think that theotion you can conduct a purely counter terrorist kind of campaign and do it from a distance simply doenot accord th reality. the reality is even if you want

to focus on counterterrorism you cannot do that sucssfully without local all enforcement without internal security, without intelligence. an the way generalckristol probly knows more about counterterrorism than anybody in or out of uniform and the way he has been so successful has been an iterative process and which we have killed or captured terrorists, ploited on the ground what we found and then use that for the next target. the notn that you can somehow have a campaign that focuses sole on the border and has no interaction with the local afghans all along that border or elsewhere in the country for that matter or assume that the status quo in afghanistan, that

there cannot be a status quo in kabulhat the situation there will not deteriorated i think is unrealistic. >> the only thing i would say about that ki of approach is there is nway to defeat al qaeda which is the mission wh just tt approach. you can do it remotely and you can't do it from oshore fo some of the rsons the cretary laid out. so again i certainly don't think it is time to leave. we've got new leadership, a new strategy resources moving in, and i think this approach has great potential but it's going to take some time to start to turn this. >> you talk about general mckristol's concerning how the u.s. forces are perceived by the afghans. in