waste took a brief recess. he offended me, me mad. because i'm irish and start crossing out my nine m. oath his speech that i want to give anyone on the senate floor and window for the most part. i spent months saying why did i do that? wanted to stay something. my staff, some of whom are here cut so fed up with the jamaican saying that they printed it is beautiful per share, which is essentially the last closing argument that congress never again. they made up 5000 of these insanity here. quit complaining. you've been congress for a long time. wherever you go you can pass these things out and people would know what you want to say. when you are none of this site doesn't come a long makeup typhus and more. the problem is not long after that i was defeated for

reelection. i came up with 4950 of these things in the back of my car. those of you get a book tonight or order one from the foundation online not only will get a signed book, you will be the proud possessor of what i intended to save impeachment trial. i want to thank all of you for coming and i just appreciate your being here and i hope you enjoy the book. there will be a lot of stories in there at equal curl your hair. thank you, sandy. >> thank you. [applause] the congressman has agreed to answer some questions, so i will come to you with this microphone and ask you to stand if anybody has any. do i see any? somebody over here. let's see. raise your hand. good, there you are. i am going to hand it to you. >> you probably don't remember

me, but this is a thing that i will always err. there was a lawsuit against kerry ray ford and placentia. i won the first case and the thing they said is that they wouldn't be in the hearing today is my husband had not expired. so anyway, i won that case and they disagreed with it. so i called kerry ray ford to see how they wanted to make a note to me, that they could pay it to the court. the court could indeed hate me. they said, we will see you in court. luckily, you are my judges that second hearing. [laughter] >> how did i do? >> you did great.

>> that's i need to hear, man. >> i was 79 years old from yorba linda, a widow. they thought, that woman doesn't know anything. we will scare her. she won't show up in court a second time. as soon as you came in, took the bench. maybe you don't remember, but i said i remember you. my husband and i respect you from the hearing of clinton. i just changed my party. [laughter] >> well -- i'm not -- [applause] i guess the lesson from that, ladies and gentlemen, that if your future litigant in my courtroom, you know how to start. thank you, ma'am. >> i'm not sure what the question was, but --

[inaudible] >> the question is, have they ever talked to the president and mrs. clinton. well, my wife and i encountered mrs. clinton a year after impeachment, but that's a story for a different boat. president clinton and i have to both of us left washington for a period of a few years had a very private, very cordial correspondence and that ended during mrs. clinton's campaign because a reporter called and said they hear u2 write back and forth. that's true. he said they could see the notes and he said you can't see them. somebody in mrs. clinton's campaign started vehemently denying. he would never write to him in those words.

i think somebody come in pairs or he and i were corresponding. i have heard from incense, but there was a period were two old warriors or at lease in touch. i asked newt gingrich about it once and he told me he'll call me at 2:00 in the morning and want to talk about old times. i think you slake me. he misses the war. president clinton, if you are listening, feel to write an avalanche here. i hope you didn't hate the book too much. >> i want to ask a question. you've been in the legislative ranch. you've been in the executive branch. you've been in judiciary with your new appointments. if you were advising a young person who wanted to go into public service, where would you scare them out of your experience in all the branches? >> i would give them the same advice that attorney general of arkansas, bill clinton gave me

in 1978 when i met him. i was a young democrat come back for a conference. [laughter] [inaudible] [laughter] >> it's bill clinton. >> she knows how to make a germanic exit, doesn't she? so i meet bill clinton and i'm in college applying to law school. i walked up and said i know yours already. i read about shooting magazine. i've got the same background. i want to go into politics. bill clinton took about 15 minutes or so of his time. i wasn't even a constituent. he told me, go to law school. if you're going to be involved in the process in any way, it

involves riding along. who better to know about the legal process employer. i practical perspective you have something to fall back on if you're a political desires don't fall through. one of the great ironies of that meeting is that it was 20 years, not just to the very day, but to almost an hour that i was sitting in the house judiciary committee casting a vote on articles against president clinton. 20 years later a pass intercepted in a way that neither of us could ever imagine. the advice he gave me was first appreciated, second never forgotten and prove to be very good

i have no doubt there's a lot to lose in terms of pursuing the first scratch. the point i made before, our experience with big government policy has been no short of very

problematic. even if you could have a very efficient industrial policy you cannot match the resources of the chinese government. there is a very old saying, brazilian saying that the little guys like revelation. we have much better environment, international trade environment where those kinds of factors face intervention and subsidies not just from china or a lot of places as well but much more productive for the region and try to go for that strategy. thank you very much. [applause]

[silence] >> it is we're waiting for colleagues to get the mike up i have to tell you after those presentations i had 15 questions for you and after erica spoke i change those to different questions and after mauricio mesquita moreira spoke there are many things on the table to pursue. we don't have unlimited time but we want to jump into. mauricio cardenas spoke

eloquently about the changes going on internally in economics particularly in the commodity sector in south america and russia emphasize you weren't talking about mexico or the central american companies but the commodity export to china. let me broaden this out and talk about local trade negotiations. latin america, specifically brazil and other countries in south america have taken strong positions in the wto context about what they want to see advanced in those discussions and what they are not willing to come to agreement on at this point but based on your analysis of how these economies are changing for manufacturing are their implications in terms of global trade negotiations? would you anticipate more

emphasis on services as a negotiation platform for the brazilian bourse somebody else? how do you see that? >> i think the question that the manufacturing sector has been declining, it is a major concern, something that politicians talk about. something that worries people. the main point here is there are not enough employment opportunities. we talk a lot about the crisis, latin america is growing fast these days. if you look at the speaker's dais still show promise.

there's high unemployment, in colombia 10%. everything else in the economy looks good. the unemployment rate is 10%. the reason for this is these commodity sectors particularly in mineral and oil are not generating enough jobs so politicians need to respond to that. one response is policies that will expand the manufacturing sector, service sector to generate more jobs. and trade in those areas is important. that is why columbia or panama put so much emphasis on the need for a free-trade agreement with the united states. there's also another trade attempt in which these countries promote the idea of expanding

markets, using subsidies. the one sector that is the target of these negotiations is the agricultural sector where it is important for south america to be able to access the markets of europe and the united states with products such as ethanol but not just in that particular case. that is why this agenda is so important. at an end of the day the key concerns are more employment opportunities and more diversified trade not just in terms of the number of products exported but the number of countries they engage with. >> taking some of that and bring in the spotlight now domestically to these countries let america traditionally has done a relatively decent job of creating jobs but many of them

have been in the informal economy so you see a lot of service jobs but you don't see them with protection from the state for security or health care or any of that. do you see implications based on your analysis for changes for example in labour code which has been around for decades if not centuries, or government policy domestically that this new extern elector is encouraging changes in south america? >> it is not a coincidence that with the expansion of the primary sector, exports to china there has been -- if you look at the service sector some of it is the modern sector, financial services for example. minority of the expansion of services in an area where you

see things like personal service or retail where in formality is a big issue. that is one element of this expansion of the commodity sectors. a big share of the employment his informal services so you essentially have economy with a very modern facilities with one or two agricultural exports for oil. those resources are recycled into the entire economy and end up generating employment in sectors with very low value added. many of those jobs are in formal so this is not a balanced economic structure. >> thank you. i would love to explore that in greater detail. perhaps we can do that with some members of the audience.

erica. july want to ask a blue sky right question. you talk about the ward nation of strategic thinking of the chinese approach into the hemisphere. the optic is china doing what china perceived as doing in china's interest but there are implications for the region itself. let me ask you does china take note of some of the things that are occurring as a result of this engagement in the region? more to the point does it care? it is a bit of a loaded question no doubt. what does china sea -- see as happening as part of its engagement and do you see that change based on the political question of the chinese saying there are implications here?

>> you promised me easy questions. to answer your question i will take the case of venezuela. one thing that struck me and made the activities in venezuela among the most interesting, the bank is as i mentioned in rye remarks this my remarks very concerned about getting paid back. even though the bank's total $32.6 billion the biggest loan was a $26 billion loan that was extended last summer. it seems to me it was a very careful -- thinking about how that loan was going to be dispersed and what projects the loan was going to be sent on. the fact the bank was aware of this loan had a ten year term

and hugo chavez may not be in office, he may leave office when the loan was repaid. of big effort on the part of the bank to make sure that the project alone was supported are ones that are perceived as helping the country as a whole and not just the administration of hugo chavez. there is an effort to make sure projects were chosen as benefiting the country as a whole building paras -- power plants that are helping the country and the big housing crisis, my colleagues know more about the country. so i think there is the recognition by virtue of making these big loans some of which have long terms that they are in there for the long haul. there is an effort, more attention to how those loans are being received in the country and what can they do to be perceived in a way that if

there's a change in administration and government before the term is up that whoever succeeds hugo chavez will be as willing as he is to pay the loan and there haven't been repayment problems with payments from caracas on the loans. >> based on that and based on the analysis you gave in the presentation it was interesting to me. a coordinated approach but each of the actors has their own interests and those interests -- do you see over time that those interests might diverge? the bank with some of its private-sector clients internally and much -- this is another easy question. this is tremendously interesting to me because as a student of latin america and u.s. policy it

is difficult to ascertain or to view a strategic approach to this region but the chinese are changing that model. do you see that over time? >> the term of will interests diverge is an interesting one. if you look at the background even though there are a lot of interests that overlap sometimes there are one that are not. it seems to me if there are not these deals but a repayment problem you see interests diverging and i will go outside the region to make the point as i mentioned in the introduction one of the case studies i looked at in my volume were loans to russia in 2009 around the time the bank made its loans to brazil and venezuela, $25 billion to russian energy companies and the big prize from the chinese government's

perspective that they are finally going to get the oil pipeline they spent 15 years negotiating. what has been going on is the chinese oil company involved in the loans for the oil deal for russia which is international petroleum corp has been involved in a multi month squabble with russian oil companies over the transportation of oil pricing formula that underpin the loans and the chinese are no longer happy with the transportation coefficient they agreed to in 2009 so they are taking action to pay the russians rather than make the russians and happy. the oil company is unhappy because once again they are in a battle over oil pricing formula. there are things like that. the other thing that is interesting about the loans with venezuela and ecuador is these

did not go to national oil company but to foreign governments. my suspicion is these are loans where you had senior chinese leaders involved in the deal and these might have been loans that the government said you are going to do this and they made the best of the cards it was dealt. at least in the case of venezuela these loans were kicked back but if there are repayment problems, that is probably why these deals occur within the government. it is probably expectation that the administration will think twice about this but you never know. >> that is probably true. your analysis was interesting. the whole idea that china was structuring the loans almost the way in new york bank would structure, they are worried about repayment, access to

natural resources, but they want to get repaid. this isn't charity. it is different from the model one would have seen with other countries during the cold war where it was politics versus economics. correct me if you disagree but it is almost the reverse of that. economics and access to natural resources first and we want to maintain relations with venezuela and brazil and canada and the united states. is that an accurate summation? >> it is accurate. one thing worth noting about these deals is these were not deals structured on the back of an envelope. the bank had hired top tier international law firms to advise it on all of the transactions but the deal also included in the case of venezuela and ecuador, they are binding third-party arbitration.

if something goes wrong it is the courts in the u.k. that will settle that it won't be venezuelan or chinese law. it looks like a lot was done to do as much as it could to mitigate the risks involved in these deals and a number of ways in terms of who they hire and to advise them and all the loans were structured. in the case of venezuela they're doing this in ecuador now too with the most recent loan and being careful to make sure the loans are sent, it is one that indicates they are there for the benefit of the people level not to support any one. >> mauricio please review commented on both presentations.

one of the panelists, i can remember who, mentioned resources coming into the country being spent on current needs, housing and some of these things, supporting the political agenda of recipient questions. we talked a lot about sustainability. you talk about sustainability and commodities prices. the question would be if you want to use these resources that are coming from china, the one that are not already locked in to purchases of chinese products, how could those resources be used in a domestic latin america context to get to the next stage of development? you have a pile of money from china, what could those governments use fleet be doing to in short that they are

developing innovations, research and development. you just said manufacturing is not the direction to go. where should they invest those resources easily? >> good question. i definitely believe there are a lot of risks in the discussion about natural resources. just have to walk around the region. there are a lot of challenges in ensuring this does not corrupt the system. it is a precondition. if you can have a working democratic society government accountable, you have a lot of problems with this money coming in. if you don't have that you won't

have anything anyway. my concern, let me clarify, i am not saying manufacturing will disappear in the region. is going to remain an important sector. the regional market is big enough to have natural protection and proximity to the united states. it is going to remain -- what i am saying is this is not going to be asia 2 or asia 3. the resources are not there. you can't compete with wages that are one eighth of your wages or look at india -- it is fine to lean against the wings but to lean against the hurricane doesn't make any

sense. to use those resources with money that is coming, food -- subsidize the manufacturing sector or in export manufacturing is a waste of money. this can lead to a lot of corruption as well. it is easy to do that in the italian regime but democracy drive to be selective. you target the this start with two sectors and a week later you have five sectors and a month later you have u.s. emphasizing the whole economy. the best thing they could do using that as an example, try to channel those resources. one of the biggest weaknesses of the region which is education, technology, then you are going to be able not just to be stuck

in exports but to add value to those exports. that is a clear opportunity we have. i keep thinking not just trying to challenge u.s. interests but the wealth of resources the region has and companies where you look at natural resources and add sophistication to it, that is a more sensible way of investing this money although it will just be wasted one more time. >> gerri willis said. thank you very much. we don't have a lot of time but i want to go to the audience and bring you in. let's take a round of three questions. keep statements to a minimum. let's go right to the questions.

identify yourself by name and organization. of the question is directed to a specific panelists feel free to direct it to them. otherwise we will assume it is for the panel. we will go to this gentleman. >> thanks. i am matt schuler from inside u.s. trade. question for the panel. kind of polluted to in mauricio's remarks. in the past couple weeks brazil came out with its own new industrial policy and i am wondering, it seems this policy is aimed at supporting these industries that have been impacted by cheap chinese imports. i want to begin an assessment from the panel as to whether you thought this policy would be a good idea and the second part would be whether you think we will see more policies like this

in latin america, either aimed at supporting domestic industry or using a trade policy as a way to protect their markets from china. >> there is a gentleman here on the aisle -- the gentleman behind you. >> this question might have been asked but the panelists could comment on the environmental impact of these policies from china. >> there was a gentleman right in front. right here. >> i am from the department of energy. my question is for dr. downs. given these latin american crew streams are inefficient for

chinese planners do you see going forward in terms of the disposition toward this relationship? >> let's take those. let's see how many we can get done. if you could keep your remarks substantive and answer the questions and try to get another round of questions. very interesting questions on policy and environmental implications to erica. >> let me deal with the industrial policy question. we talked about industrial policy but when we think of industrial policy we think of the policies of the 1950s. we created very inefficient operations, white elephants. investor policies have changed. and also learned from past experience, brazil is a good

example of industrial policy, think of the case of the production of aircraft. the idea behind this is investment in science and technology leader and a research and development that can generate sectors where there is a competitive edge. the policies you mentioned that were announced two weeks ago, in response to competition from china and employment consequences of that related to a reduction for some sectors

by lowering taxation and sector half of the rate of the commercial bank and in choosing which industries benefit from these subsidized loans there can be mistakes in choosing the wrong industry. we have all kinds of industrial policies that are not necessarily bad or good but what we have learned is more horizontal. they are not selected a specific firms or industries that benefit

the growth range of industrial sectors, the more effective ones. countries in the region are aware of that. legislation of environmental regulations are becoming much more -- there are limitations. to mention one example which is decision by the brazilian government not to allow particular land in the amazon -- a message in that direction in the sense that there's a concern and the region is very aware of the importance of protecting the environment. >> any comments on either of those questions? >> i think that brazil's policy

is very much concerns me. a lot of things that are being done are very much like things we used to do in the 70s or 80s. it will have the same problems. even the tax reductions, the treasury has to pay for that. at the same time i don't see much action on foreign policy surge is very much a decision to go for that. the assumption that states compete, need to have the big state and at the same time very soft on emphasizing

international trade. either you criticize and try to rein in -- otherwise you try to intervene -- i don't think it is the right direction. >> erica. >> the question about venezuela and china. as i mentioned earlier china does not have a lot of refining capacity that handles venezuela's heavy crude. that is why there's a gap between what china is importing from venezuela and what they're delivering to china oil to cure the loans. what explains the difference is this oil is being sold or stored

in the americas because it can't be processed in china. china national petroleum corp. an agreement to build a joint venture refinery in southeast china to handle the venezuelan crude to 4,000 barrels a day refinery. the project is progressing very slowly. there have been some differences between the chinese and venezuelans as far as how much oil can be upgraded in venezuela and how much will be done in china. if project gets off the ground we will have 400,000 barrels a day going to china because it is a very inflexible krutch stream. they will want to run it. but until that happens we will see chinese companies taking delivery of venezuelan crude and selling it or storing it in the region. the same is going on with ecuador.

if you look at chinese customs with their getting from ecuador, there is a big gap. it is worth noting ecuador and petro china climbed barcelona agreement to the $1 billion loan there was a lot of anger because reportedly it did not include a clause that said petro china cannot sell the oil in the americas and the concern was petro ecuador would turn petro china into a competitor and petro china would sell crude in the same places as ecuador. until the refining capacity is on line we will continue to see the chinese oil companies as major sellers of oil. >> here's an example of the refinery -- if it is built, it would seem to be one example where politics supersedes

economics. >> the other issue. one question -- i don't know the answer but any volume of oil will be economic. i don't know what that is -- the other thing to keep in mind is what is going on domestically in china in the issue of competition for market share in china. the domestic rival is dominant and eager to increase its market share. building this refinery is the one way to do that. the domestic competition for market share is also coloring what is happening in this particular case and covers other things companies do overseas as well. that is another part of the refinery story. >> i think we have got time for another -- we will go here to the lady here and then this one right behind her. that might do it.

maybe we can sneak in three. >> lauren gilbert from american university. my question would presumably be mostly to this mauricio. fundamentally assuming we take your thesis that latin american trade cannot be based on the model that won't compete what would you say to other models such as service models, the service model such as india or israel? they seem to have a little bit of a better analogy to the situation of the latin american countries? >> very good. the question behind her as well. >> my question is to any

panelist who wants to speak on the future of chinese overseas investment. do we see an expansion of private sector actors invest in latin america? to protect market share in latin america in terms of exports do you see chinese companies creating factories or buying out latin american competitors in order to provide employment and market share? >> an important question. let's go to barbara. >> thanks for sneaking me in. great panel. i wonder if you see any implications other than exports for china of the denominated loans to latin america? you have a greater picture for the international role? >> how much time does everybody

have? three important questions. why don't we start with this mauricio. or that mauricio. we start with what is the model of latin america in 30 seconds or less and our other models out there like others? >> very difficult question. there are several latin americas. small countries and big countries. it is good to be clear that india is not a development that all. you look and see there's a lot of hype, important source of foreign exchange for india or 40%, if you try to look at the gdp, india's growth and the

contribution is pretty small so it is hard to label the type of development in the ahead. you will see agriculture and a huge contribution and they have very repressed economy benefiting from the reformers of latin america in the 60s and 70s. i am not sure you can see much in india in the sense of a model for latin america. for the smaller countries of chili or bolivia or central america, israel could be a good example.

for the bigger countries there is an issue of where are you going to find employment that people need? we are going to have to find other options, reducing from services, particularly by reducing taxation, encourage those factors and use all of those for social programs that are already in place. we have to be creative. it would be wonderful if we could have a chinese/asian way of reducing poverty but it is not there. >> we talked a lot about trade. we have not talked a lot about

investment. time is very short in this panel but would you have any thoughts or comments about how chinese investment in latin america are progressing and do you see that changing to a private sector led emphasis over time? >> i will answer that and take the question on loans. these particular projects of china's development, pretty extensive to persuade their borrowers to accept loans from chinese currency. they are more than happy to do that for the reasons i mentioned in my presentation. it ties the borrower into hiring from china and helps to fulfill the mission to create business opportunities overseas for chinese companies. there is probably some resistance to bar a winged -- some governments or companies accepting loans and a lot of oil

companies sending money to those companies with reference to the dollar. they are less interested in having a loan and another currency. in the course of doing research for the paper a stumbled across an article about negotiations and they wanted to take the loan and the burmese wanted the loan in euros. it will depend on how much of an upper hand they have or the borrower -- that is my take on that. they can extend loans and be able to do so. on the investment issue most of my -- we worked on overseas investment focusing on the activities of major state-owned companies especially oil companies. i am not in position to comment on what the chinese private sector firms are doing in latin america. it is a great question. when it comes to what the oil

companies are doing there has been an uptick in activity in the past years. a lot of it has to do with other companies but if you look at the investments chinese oil companies made in brazil it is because assets are for sale in chinese companies to take those and a lot of investments in argentina and these investments are a way to help get a foothold on the region. >> are they taking a majority stake or are they comfortable with minority stakes as long as they have guaranteed access to product or have you noticed any particular structure? >> allotted depends on what they do, determined by what is available. of 40% stake. at least initially. >> they don't insist on majority

control. mauricio, we come to you for the last word. any of these questions on the table feel free. >> if we were to characterize the economic relationship between latin america and china, these investment deals have been marginal. very few examples. most of them in the oil sector. nothing to compare with trade secrets. we have seen new elements in this landscape which is financing a through china's development of bank. still the financing is very concentrated in a few countries and a few deals. venezuela, ecuador, brazil, argentina. if we talk about the whole

region, it is great. these have had tremendous implications for the region, the fact that the growth rates were high in the global recession related to the fact commodity prices were high and overall positive news. this side effect which is the economic structure, expansion of informal services that latin america needs to address. for that it is necessary to look at the right policies but also to think about increasing interaction with other parts of the world where the economic relationship is balanced between trade and not particularly concentrated in one sector of the economy. it is important and something

that the u.s. should take note of. >> it has been a terrific panel with one primary exception. this panel has gone beyond time. i apologize for that. that is a failing of the moderator. the panelists were fantastic. i hope that there is sufficient interest to come back and continue the conversation because there are many additional avenues we could take this conversation in for discussion and research. until next time which i hope will be soon, thank you for coming and join me in thanking the panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> every weekend it is american history tv on c-span3 starting saturday mornings. 48 hours of people and events filling the americans for. watch personal interviews about historic events of world history. our history bookshelf features the best known history writers. visit key figures, battles and the events in the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms during lectures in history. go behind the scene that museums and historic sites on american artifacts. and the presidency looks at the policy and legacies of past

american presidents. get our complete schedule at c-span.org/history and sign up to have its e-mail to you by pressing the c-span alert button. >> the july 20th you and declaration of famine in somalia was not made lightly and reflects the dire conditions of the people in somalia. it is based on nutrition and mortality surveys, data verified by the cdc and on the basis of that we estimate in the last 90 days, 29,000 somali children have died. this is nearly 4% of the children in southern somalian. our fear and the fear of the international community and governments in the horn of africa is the famine conditions in those two regions of somalia will spread to encompass the entire eight regions of southern somalia. the next rains are in september and october and even if they are

good we could bear witness to another wave of mortality to waterborne diseases. >> watch more from this senate hearing on light at the c-span video library. >> in his book "pinched" don peck looks at the social change brought on by the current recession and compares it past economic downturns. he recently spoke of politics and prose bookstore in washington d.c.. this is an hour. >> welcome to politics and prose bookstore. i am like giarratano and welcome you on behalf of our owners who we are excited to have on board here.

on behalf of the booksellers, welcome to politics and prose and thank you for being here and supporting this bookstore and our defense series. if you are new here to the bookstore out side of august and december we do events every night. follow us, our events include groups on facebook and read e-mail or our web site. as i mentioned it would be a good time to tell you to silence your phones and gadgets so we get started this evening. tonight we welcome don peck to discuss his new "pinched: how the great recession has narrowed our futures and what we can do about it". don is here in washington d.c. and it is a pleasure to welcome

a local author especially for a debut. so we welcome don. we also welcome the c-span booktv audience. the format tonight is at the 11 will speak at the podium and present the book and tell us why he wrote it and we will open up in the second half of the hour to you for questions and what we ask is get to our microphone in the center aisle. it is the one microphone we have this evening. it can be getting there -- difficult getting there with a crowd this size but since we are taping it will keep the talk hon. we will field questions from the microphone. but we do encourage your questions and your input after the q&a. don peck will sign books at this table. his books are for sale in front of the store. that is how we will go.

we really want to welcome you and say thank you for being here and for don peck. don peck is a national award winning writer and editor at the atlantic. he covers the economy and american society. the september issue of "the atlantic" which is available here features a cover story by don, can the middle class the saved? and a quick thank you to the "the atlantic" for promoting this event and supporting and 11 -- don peck and his work. "pinched" is about the effect of the recession on american life. economic, societal and cultural norms have been impacted and are being altered, transformed.

family dynamics, personal identities turned on their heads and will say that way. the scars of the past several years in the near and distant future. the chasm between the wealthy and the rest widens and concentration of wealth hauling out the middle class. cities and communities suffer the same risk. certain cities have recovered and others remain shuttered. our national identity is shifting. with historical context by comparing this recession with classes of years past don calls for renewed civic duty and public action. thank you for joining us. it is a pleasure to welcome to politics and prose to discuss this book, don peck. [applause] >> great introduction. i feel like i should just take questions after that. i live ten minutes away from

politics and prose and are have been to countless book talks but this is my first book and my first side -- time on this side of the microphone. is mildly surreal for me but i will do my best. thank you for coming. i will talk about how this book came about. have a features editor at "the atlantic" and i spend a lot of time trying to find big stories and if you note "the atlantic" at all one of the features is we right very long stories and they take a long time to incubate. one of the pleasures and challenges of the job is trying to look for pieces that won't appear for six or nine months that will feel deeply considered battle so timely and relevant. i cover the economy among other things. when we had the initial financial crash in 2008 it

wasn't even possible to predict what the next nine month would look like. things were -- next week. by the time the spring of 2009 arrived after the first stimulus the economy stopped its free fall. the market was rebounding. all of us breathe a sigh of relief. i was trying to think ahead to stories for the fall and the winter so i was talking a lot to labor economists and economic historians and students of other major financial crashes and what i found was really all of them were sounding the same note. they were saying we were prematurely breathing a sigh of relief and that actually were things had been fluid the next six or nine or 12 months or 24 months more were likely to be quite predictable.

the labor market was likely to recover incredibly slowly. the economy was likely to take years to man. when i started reading histories of other long slump speaker into american history and talking to sociologists about them it became apparent to me that as societies stew in longer periods like this one they change in many profound ways. i decided rather than assigning pieces are wanted to start writing about it struck me as important to try to identify them as quickly as possible so we could understand them and to think more intelligently about recovery. two years later after a two cover stories and a book i am sorry to say in my opinion the next year or two or more are still quite predictable at least

if we don't significantly shift our public actions and public policies, we are not in my opinion near the end of this period and if we stay in such a period of weakness for and other two or three years or more we will begin to see many of the social changes that we can see now. we will see them become much more pronounced. so what is "pinched"? in part it is a history. i look in some detail at the 1970s and 1890s and different periods that in some ways recall our own and how life changed and how we got out of them which holds important lessons for us. in part it is quite a lot of reporting from around the country, different people and places and classes because this

recession and recovery have been felt differently in parts of the country by different people. that holds important lessons in thinking about how to recover. part of the generational study. one thing that is clear from past slumps is up and coming generations change profoundly in periods like this one. i spent a lot of time among the millennial generation and people behind them talking to them about how they were changing and how their life prospects for changing and political beliefs were changing. overall it is an attempt at how this period is changing the places we live, the work we do, our family ties, our marriages, our politics. for some of us even who we are.

that is what the book sets out to do. in addition importantly it sets out to try to begin to make recommendations about how we can recover from this period faster and stand the u. s economy up more strongly for the future. that is a lot of things and i can't talk about all of them tonight. we can cover some in q&a. i would like to try to distill things down to three main messages from the book with a few illustrations and we will take some questions. three messages from the book. one is slumps that are deep and long do have enduring consequences. we think of recessions as temporary. jobs go away and come back, housing values go down and back up the deep recession leave

society in some ways permanently changed. not entirely for the worse. a change generations. they change communities. they change families in ways that are not quickly or easily reversed. because of that, many of the changes we are beginning to experience will last decades, many of the most significant consequences of the great recession are still ahead of us. the second main message from the book is this recession has temporarily accelerated some very deep economic forces that were already transforming our society, most significantly the hollowing of the middle class. in that sense in some ways it has given us a preview of where our society is heading anyway and who is leaving behind the understanding that is critical to thinking about not just how to bring unemployment down but how we can build a stronger

society in the decades to come. my final message in the book is we can recover faster. we are seeing a disturbing amount of fatalism among many members of the media and congress and we should not be fatalistic about this period. we probably have a long slog but there's a lot we can do to recover faster but we're not doing it. let me go back through my messages and provide more detail. on the enduring consequences of periods like this one, life changes intel was and surprising ways during slumps. people sleep more and date less and spend more time at home, they drive less and drive more slowly which tends to reduce traffic fatalities and overall

mortality. skirts famously wang and lady gaga notwithstanding pop songs become more honest or complex or romantic and less sexual. almost every aspect of life, people become more personally conservative. many things i talk about art is femoral. they go away as strong growth returns and the economy recovers but deep slumps leave more enduring marks on communities and places we lived. i talk about all of that in the book. our talk a lot about how the former middle class meccas of the u.s. like phoenix and tampa are changing profoundly and permanently in the wake of this recession. let me focus on how millennials are changing. one of the most important changes from this period we will

continue to see. when i began reporting for the magazine story that led to "pinched" i expected young people to bear the latest cars from this recession. they are younger on the labour market but don't have a lot of personal responsibilities so a few bad years are a few bad years. .. >> according to good research by the yale economist, lisa kahn, 10, 20, 30 years later they have

not caught up to where they would have been if they came out in more bountiful times. they get stuck in low prestige jobs and professions, um, and they cling more tightly to their jobs. they don't switch jobs as often which is really how one increases earnings, lahrly early in -- particularly early in the one's career. about two-thirds of lifetime growth usually occurs in the first ten years of a career. so this recession stretches, you know, three, four more years, a lot of people are losing that opportunity and acquiring a stigma of underachievement that's going to be really difficult to shed. now, those economic conditions and that kind of lifetime economic problem is, is made complex particularly when thinking about the millennial

generation. on the eve of the recession, the millennial generation had the highest self-esteem, had higher material expectations than any other generation at a similar age. and, you know, this is a generation of people who as children were told they're special, they can do anything they want to. and the collision of that attitude and outlook with this economy has been painful to watch. you know, when the recession began, a lot of millennials, quite understandably, didn't really realize what was happening to them. um, many moved back in with their parents after graduation -- many had to do that. many couldn't leave home. but many did it because they thought they could simply wait the recession out. the term funemployment required currency particularly among 20-something college graduates.

but as i reported on millennials over the past couple of years, aye found, not surprisingly, those attitudes are changing, millennials are beginning to profoundly change as a result of this period. economically we are seeing, um, some of the same career conservativism now that lisa kahn described in past generations; job tenure among millennials has spiked far more than it has for older workers. um, in a recent survey asked whether they would prefer to switch employers throughout their careers or stay for the same employer throughout their career an overwhelming majority said they wanted to stay with the same employer for their careers. and more than that, you know, millennials are beginning to -- well, they're not beginning to feel, they are, um, they're seeing their entire lives really

put on hold. you know, i spoke to a young attorney in the d.c., um, who had graduated from law school in 2009, hadn't been able to find work as a lawyer. after months and months, he was working at barnes & noble. he finally found a job with the federal government that didn't make use of his law degree, and he was worried he would ever be able to use it. he was living in an efficiency with a roommate. his parents with a machinist and secretary, and he said, you know, by the time my dad was 23 years old he had a house, he had a wife, he had kids. these things have been pushed back so far for me, you know, i can't even see them. and that attitude, i think, has become more and more pervasive with 20-somethings. they feel trapped increasingly, i think n a perpetual adolescence from which they simply can't escape. it's interesting, when you look at the political beliefs of

20-somethings today, those too are changing radically. i shouldn't say radically, they're changing significantly. there was already a liberal generation, but what we see in data now is 20-somethings are becoming more liberal in principle, more supportive of support for the poor, for cognizant of the role luck plays in life. but at the same time they're becoming more skeptical that the government can actually be trusted to competently carry out good policy. this, too, is not a surprise. it's exactly what's happened to prior generations who came out in deep slumps in the 1980s and '70s and before. and those characteristics in the past have stayed with those cohorts for decades afterwards. um, i write a bit about the millennials who had to move home and spend extended time with

their families. um, there's been some good news from this, you know? i think both parents and their adult children have at times said that they've grown closer, they've appreciated spending the time together. but it's been a pretty complex relationship, to say the least. [laughter] you know, psychological research shows that, um, while parents are more than willing to give financial support to struggling adult children, they actually prefer to spend their time with children who are already succeeding. perhaps because it flatters the parents more. when we look, when we look at japan which is a very interesting case, um, 20-somethings began to live at home quite a lot more than they had used to beginning in the late '80s and early '90s, just before japan's two

decadelong slump began. and at first people were doing that by choice, they were doing that because they had autistic ambitions frequently, they were rejecting the kind of salary man lifestyle that had characterized their participants. -- parents. and there was a lot of criticism at the time, but in many ways they were glamourized for doing that. but what we see is as more and more 20-somethings had to move home and as they couldn't move out because the economy remained weak for years and years, social attitudes towards 20-somethings changed markedly. all traces of glamour went away. one term is parasite singles. and 20-somethings today are blamed widely in japan for everything from low birthrates to low economic growth. so i think it will be interesting to watch how, um,

social views of millennials change over the next few years and how our attitudes towards youth change as well, again, if we don't recover more quickly. i do want to stress that not all of the changes underway for millennials are bad. i mean, some are merely transformations. i don't think that the political change, you know, the changes in political views are necessarily bad, of course, for 20-somethings. i do certainly sense a return to thrift in this generation. you know, we saw a generation of thrift after the depression that was only undone by the long inflation of the 1970s and the lessons that young boomers drew from that. i think we are likely to see a turning towards generational thrift again after this period, and i think that will stand millennials in good stead. i think it's also interesting to look at adolescents. in the depression adolescents were shaped very differently

than 20-somethings. they couldn't be blamed for the economic struggles their families were having. and at the same time, they were counted on for more during the depression and pampered less. and they became the greatest generation after that. they, and were renowned, um, for their ability to pone gratification, for their -- for their ability to postpone gratification and a can do, very practical attitude. now, the greatest generation had world war ii which was a horrific event but provided uplift to the economy at the beginning of their careers. but if we can get out of this period quickly, i think we may see some benefits for people that are currently in their teens. so that's a little taste of one, um, how this period will probably leave enduring marks on the u.s., how our culture, our politics, the character of our

society will likely be changed for decades, um, even after we fully recover. um, part two is the way that this period is accelerating deep economic forces that were already, um, underway in society and that were kind of changing our classes and changing life in america anyway. let me just ask a question to everyone here. um, how many people -- just raise your hand, how many people feel personally in your own life, your own career, your own close social circles that you're still living in a bad slump? yeah, not too many people, you know? i would say less than one in five people just raised their hands. and that's not surprising because we're in northwest washington d.c.

and america's power cities and creative enclaves, the places to which the most highly educated, highest potential people flocked before, you know, over the past 20 years have felt this recession much more lightly than most of america. housing values didn't decline as much, and they've rebounded more. wage growth has been remarkably rapid in the last year or so particularly in place like manhattan and silicon valley. it's a very different environment than characterizes much of the country now, and i think in part it explains why politically we have been less focused on job growth than we really should be today. david artour, an economist at mit, looked carefully at the structure of job losses in this recession. and what he found was that overwhelmingly the jobs lost on that were what economists called

mid-skill job. these are jobs in manufacturing, in nonmanagerial office work like clerks, like administrative assistants that have typically been taken by people with a high school degree but not a four-year college degree which is about 60% of the adult population. it's that group of jobs overwhelmingly that have disappeared in this recession. now, jobs throughout the economy should have been growing and weren't, but if you look at high-skill jobs in management, in professional work, there was no net job loss. the unemployment rate among people with a professional degree is 2% today. and if you look at the bottom of the economy, jobs in security, food preparation, minimum wage jobs are just a little bit better. there's been no net loss in those job either. all of it has been in the middle. and companies, as a result of the recession and because the recession gave them license to do this, have largely pulled

forward restructuring and offshoring decisions that they otherwise would have taken years to do, um, and an enormous number of people are falling out of the middle class as a result. the job growth that we've had, such as it is, has tended to be towards the bottom of the economy. economic data aren't great here but it looks like, you know, jobs that are at the $15 an hour level and less that have been growing, not jobs in the middle. and i don't think that there's any good reason to believe that many of those middle skill jobs are likely to come back unless we do something to change it, and there are no quick fixes in this particular case. i think we're looking at a large chunk of the middle class that is going to be working if they can find work at all at much lower wages than they had in the pals. this has been called the mancession, and it's true, about

three-quarters of all pink slips delivered during the recession were to men. and that has consequences too. manufacturing declined -- before the recession it was declining. it declined in about a third. the construction bubble hid that for a time, but now that's gone too, and men without a college degree are really, really struggling. in fact, men have not adapted well to the postindustrial economy as a group. college graduation rates among men have not risen substantially since 1980. men have not successfully transitioned into the services either. growing fields like education and health care remain just as lopsided in employment towards women today as they were at the beginning of the decade. what men have done is they've exited the work force. they've been doing it for years, they've been doing it more quickly since the recession. in 1967 among men with a high

school degree in their prime working careers, 90% were working, today 76% are working. now, what does that mean? it has more -- the consequences are more than one might initially suppose, and they have more to -- it's not just about paychecks and bank accounts. family life is changing really significantly in many parts of the country that are characterized by blue collar work and communities where people overwhelmingly do not have college education. women don't marry men who don't have jobs or who are economically insecure. but they do have children with them. and those children tend to struggle when, as usually happens, their parents don't stay together. so what are we seeing kind of as far as an acceleration of the trends that were already existing in the u.s.? well, we're seeing recover among the rich, continuing

concentration of wealth among the top 1%, 10% of society, and we're seeing not just the hollowing of the nonprofessional middle class, but we're seeing changes to family structure and community character, um, that i fear unaddressed will change the future of children in those communities and possibly make class divides much harder to bridge in the future. i've been running on a bit, so i'll go more quickly. i was going to tell a story of one of the many struggling men that i met. i won't. [laughter] so, um, so how do we -- well, just quickly. okay, i met this guy outside reading, pennsylvania, and, you know, he's a great guy. onoptimistic guy, caring guy. when he and his wife were still together before he had lost his job in the recession, he and she had adopted eight children.

um, you know, he really is salt of the earth. he lost his job as a construction foreman, he'd worked most of his life outside, started out in a factory, then was in construction. he's in his mid 40s, an italian-american outside reading. he just didn't know what to do. he'd struggled in school, and that was 20 years in the past, he knew retraining efforts were available for him, but he was 20 years outside of the classroom, and he wasser the -- he was terrified. an interviewing coach that was provided by a local church group told him, you know, with the style of conversation that you're, you know, that you're used to, you're not going to get a job outside of construction. his response, by the way, he told me was you can kiss my ass. [laughter] you know? he felt like he was a good worker, and that was what was

important. and this is, in many ways, like, he does represent, though, there are a lot of men, they're good guys, they work hard. their work has been devalued. they're being forced now into parts of the economy that require very different social skills and skill set, and they just don't know how to react to that. this guy, who i call frank in the book -- he asked for a pseudonym -- he got by by rooting through his neighbor's trash for about a year and a half. he learned the garbage collection schedule for his neighborhood, then his town, then towns within about 30 miles of his town, and he would drive his pickup truck, um, through much of the night looking for appliances that he could, um, salvage for scrap, sometimes with his children in the cab. um, so not, not an easy problem to fix, um, and one that i think we're going to see more and more

in society even as the economy recovers. it's a fundamental change in the nature of work that is really harming men, their families and their communities in blue collar areas. the last thing that i want to talk about before taking questions, um, the third message of the book is -- and it's important. you know, we can get out of this period more quickly, and we can build a more robust society, but it's going to take a wide array of actions, and we need to start now. um, and i will mention three things. in the short run, the most important problem facing the economy is fundamentally a lack of consumer demand. the housing bubble masked a lot of problems. it allowed middle class consumers to feel like they were getting ahead by taking on more and more debt and expecting

housing wealth to make up the difference. that fig leaf has blown away, and it's going to take at least another couple of years if you just kind of look at debt levels for consumers to finish deleveraging, to get back to sustainable debt levels and to be able to spend again. now, when that happens and unemployment is high, it is appropriate and necessary for the government to step in and provide support for the economy and direct job growth. we need to worry about the debt in the long run, we need to pass binding measures today to reduce the debt once the economy is healthy again, but it is dead wrong to be moving towards austerity today. and it is, it is something we as citizens, i think, need to struggle against. um, what we should be doing is, um, investing much more in infrastructure, for instance, which is deteriorating and decaying. it's an investment, and we could bring, you know, hundreds of

thousands of unemployed construction workers, manufacturing workers, um, back into the economy, keep them working. so we need, um, you know, i describe in the book, you know, it's more than simple stimulus. i describe in the book the ways i think the government can, in the short run, create jobs, support the economy and help carry us through this period where consumer demand is still recovering. but that is the most important thing in the short run, and we're just not doing it today. the second thing, um, and this is really important and much neglected today, i think, in the longer run a lot of this story is about technology, and it's not just about, um, the kinds of innovations that have been eliminating work for american workers. it's been a slowdown throughout the aughts in the sorts that

create new services, whole new industries. i don't have time to get into kind of why that's happened, but it quite clearly has. and it's happened at the same time that innovations defuse globally -- diffuse globally more quickly so that the work leaves our borders more quickly. so in "pinched "i call for a sort of manhattan project. part of that involves, um, more investment in scientific advance, in the r&d, part of it involves a really different way of thinking about regulation, especially regulation of young industries that have real growth potential and can provide the next generation of products and services for america. the last thing, um, that i -- set of thing that i recommend, um, in the book have to do with filling the hole in the meddle class.

um, if our government is willing to intelligently and creatively expand its support for the economy today, and if we start taking measures -- some of which cost money and some of which don't -- to raise the rate of innovation in the u.s. economy, a lot will go right over time, and jobs will come back. and particularly for people with college degrees who are struggling badly today, things will get a lot better. but it's not clear that things will get entirely better for people who don't have college degrees. the forces that are hold hollowing the middle class appear inexorable. so what do we need to do to mitigate these trends, to allow for a good middle class life for people who don't have a college degree? we should encourage college, but only 30% of the population even among young adults are college graduates.

it's been growing very slowly, about one percentage point every four years. college, while we need to widen access to it, is simply not the answer over the next decade or two to the problems facing the middle class. um, in the book i look to different educational models in high school, vocational programs, apprenticeships which research has shown do not foreclose postsecondary opportunities, but which do provide, um, young men in particular who might not go to college a better sense of real careers that are available to them and how they can reach them. um, i think this is going to be critical for the u.s. the last thing within kind of filling the hole in the middle class, and then i will stop is, to some extent, i do believe that the answers to the problems that we're seeing today must be political. um, a lot of middle class, formerly middle class americans

will not recover the wages they had, a lot of middle skill jobs that were available will not come back. and i think we really need to think about more aggressive subsidization of work for people at the bottom end of the economy. you know, economists on the left and the right have always advocated a social compact with americans who are working. you know, over time the problem in the u.s. is going to shift from, um, unemployment itself to the pay that many people are getting. and when we're seeing such explosive rates of growth among b the wealthy and still good incomes among the professional middle class, i think we owe it to ourselves as a society, i think we need to think about more aggressively subsidizing the low-skill, low-income work that many people are going to need to take who are now falling out of the middle class. so, um, so let me stop there,

and thank you very much for your attention for a very long presentation. [applause]ñi >> we have 20 minutes for questions from this mic. >> okay. thank you. that was very interesting, and i also listened to you yesterday on on point. you're talking about the effect of the recession on us. um, my question is about the politics, um, that have affected the recession and our response to it. i graduated from college in 1969, my parents graduated from college in 1943. so the response this time is so different from the kind of response of people to the depression. roosevelt was not afraid to say that the problem was the bankers, um, and he immediately put in regulation -- which was popular. um, in the '60s it was just assumed that social security and

progressive income tax and labor unions were the source of our prosperity. um, this time when the government went to bail out gm and chrysler, the response of people like frank, um, middle class workers was why should they get $40 an hour when to toa only pays $20? they should be getting 20 like the rest of us. the response of some people in wisconsin was the same, why should public employees have good pensions if we don't have good pensions? it was exactly the opposite. and i wonder why that's happened. >> with well, it's a great question, and when you look at the depression, the depression, especially, really stands out from other long slumps in american history and in european history as well. and i think in part the very depth of that period, um, which of course was much deeper than what we're in today, um, did pull society together. the middle class came to

identify with the poor more than with the rich which is unusual in american history, and, you know, the iconic images of the period included bankers selling apples on street corners. so there was a sense that everyone was in it together and needed to get out of it together. that patently is not the case today. the images of bankers do not involve apples -- [laughter] and the recession has been felt very differently by people. and i think that has something to do with the response. as i mentioned in the talk, you know, part of what's going on is many of the most influential people in the u.s. and the most influential places in the u.s. feel like the recovery is well advanced. um, washington, d.c. a recent gallup poll showed is the most optimistic city in the country as to the state and future of the economy. so we've had this kind of geographic separation in the u.s. that i think has contributed to, um, an

inattention on the part of many american elites. but there's also something else that goes on in periods like this typically, and that is, you know, bust psychology takes over. and what we see again and again in periods like this is people become much more jealous of their status relative to others, they engage in zero sum thinking, politics grow meaner, and support for the poor generally diminishes. so among a lot of middle class people who aren't employed but who have seen their housing values decline, their career prospects decline, you know, to them a lot of the benefits they see, a lot of the government programs that they see are benefiting people unlike them m and they don't support that. national debt in particular takes on an oversized importance again and again in periods like

this. in the early 1980s when the debt was much smaller than it is today, a large majority of americans were intensely concerned that the debt was going to choke off the recovery. reagan didn't listen. in 1936 as the economy was improving but still very, very bad, a majority of americans came to belief that the federal budget absolutely had to be balanced that year, and in 197 the government tried to do that. it cut spending radically, it raised taxes, stock market crashed, unemployment skyrocketed back up to 19%. it took five years and world war ii, too, to fully get us out of the depression. so in some ways i think that, you know, the push towards austerity, um, the reluctance to do more is actually understandable today. it's a psychological and emotional reaction. and it's happened before. but we really, really need to

struggle against it because it is, ultimately, an emotional reaction, and it's leading us towards very bad policies. >> thank you. >> hi. thank you very much for a most compelling discussion. um, i wanted to address more the situation of professionals. you talked about the lawyer who can't find a job. what we're seeing is a shrinkage of options for professionals, not the least of this, of course, is the fact that in india there are many college-educated people who are assuming jobs in engineering and other fields, even law can be outsourced at certain levels. and some law firms are actually doing that for the more pedestrian kinds of things. i think that we're seeing shrinkage of state goths that are going to -- state governments that are going to continue no matter who the president becomes and, of course, perry will certainly be influencing that discussion. in new york city teachers are being laid off in huge numbers.

these are good, middle class, maybe you could call them middle middle class jobs, some of the professional jobs such as engineering can be almost upper middle class depending on income. so i think this effect is not so totally focused on folks who are blue collar workers sometimes hikes of the blue collar pay scale. and i think again the whole globalization, the fact that engineers in china are turning out in huge numbers, many of these people are learning how to speak english, so there is an international dimension here that is not going to go away, and with government cutbacks and support for training and other programs, the situation is in some ways kind of dire, i would think. i'd be interested in your comments. >> sure, sure. well, no, you make a lot of good points, and it's certainly true especially for college graduates, you know, that -- and professionals as well, people with professional degrees as well -- that life is less certain than it used to be.

a college degrees, a bachelor's degree is no longer a protection against job loss. it's, you know, people still have to retrain sometimes later in life, and we've seen that in this recession. you know, at the same time, um, the unemployment rate for people with a professional degree is 2%. for people with a bachelor's degree, it's 4.5%. it's over 9% overall, and when you start talking about high school graduates and high school dropouts, you're into the teens and 20s. so, i mean, it's true that life is less certain today, and that's not going to change for just about everyone, but it is also true that people with more be education have been much better insulated than everyone else. you know, it's funny, in the depression people began to question the value of a college degree quite widely and, of course, they were wrong. i, i think people who are doing that today are also wrong. i mean, the return on a college

degree remains near historical high, and while there is more competition from overseas, there's also more demand overseas now. i mean, this period is kind of about the rise of the middle class globally, just not our middle class. and for people with strong skills, strong generalizebl skills and a good education and some ability, you know, while there's going to be more competition, there's really also more opportunity because markets have expanded so much. so it's not so much a kind of one-way street with globalization and particularly for people with strong skills. i think over time, you know, the benefits are going to outweigh the costs. >> let's hope so. >> yes. >> there was quite a lot of violent labor unrest in the late 19th century, and i noted that you talked about japan but not any of the unemployed unrest in

london, so what's your sense of what it's going to take for there to be blood on the streets in america? >> well, violence is very unpredictable, but we do know from history that as periods like this have extended, we've tended to see more incidents of it. you know, more rioting and so forth. as you mentioned, the 1890s, the end of the 19th century in general was a violent, violent period in the u.s. and we didn't see anything comparable in the depression, but we did see, um, a substantial increase in lynchings and in mob violence in that era as well. we saw it to some extent in the '70s. you know, what's interesting is even when we recover, reactionary sentiments once they come out of the bottle aren't easily stuffed back in. so when you look at the '70s, for instance, the oklahoma city bombing occurred in 1994, 1995

as the economy was just beginning a period of incredible growth. but when you actually look at the specific ideology, um, and kind of the origins of that ideology of the bomber, you know, they can clearly be traced to the '70s and to things that were written in the '70s, you know? when the economy was really in bad shape and a lot of, um, you know, white men were losing faith in the country. so i don't know what's going to happen as to violence. um, japan hasn't had a lot of violence, very much in its culture unlike the u.s. it's very hard to predict, but i do think that we are going to be vulnerable, certainly, to reaction and extremism, um, much more than we have been in the last decade or two, probably for the next decade or two.

>> yeah. like others i really think this was an excellent presentation. um, a lot of times people of culture can't see the forest for the trees, and you're sort of putting a little bit of the forest out there. but i think possibly, and we heard with earlier questioners there's a bigger forest than even you're presenting. and what we're going to experience as you describe may only be a prelude to a greater reconfiguration of human existence and human history, and be i'm saying that because we're not geared up institutionally and politically and be -- and be psychologically. if you put another layer, for example, of the environment on top of what you're describing, that's even going to make it more complex. so i just wanted to hear your response to that, that this may be even a greater turning point

in history than you're describing because we're accelerating, and that's the difference. we've changed over, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years, but now we're accelerating to where we're being compressed into a smaller time period with greater stress. >> yeah, no, i mean, a lot that is changing profoundly in the world, and that is kind of accelerating a lot, you know, a lot of changes in american life. um, and i think that e w been kind of politically unprepared -- i think we've been kind of politically unprepared for many of the changes that have been occurring, actually, for 15 or 20 years and have been hidden by credit and by the housing bubble. um, so i mean, that is why, you know, in "pinched" i think we really need the look very, very broadly at how we need to change

our economic policy, our industrial policy, our technological policies. um, and our kind of taxation and redistribution systems to try to accommodate ourselves to a new world that is likely to continue to change very, very quickly. you know, the one source of -- it's not the one source, but one source of hope i have is speaking very broadly, i talked about the rise of the global middle class. wages in china and india are rising rapidly, and over the course of, you know, a couple of decades or more, you know, we'll begin to see, you know, wage disparities, um, being eliminated, um, and we'll see a lot more demand globally if u.s. can get out of it own way, you know, continue to increase education, provide a fertile environment for innovation. i think the country will be fine, you know? in the long run.

you know, my worry is more what's happening to specific classes within the country. >> the world can't even afford the level of pollution that you're describing. >> we have time for two more. >> okay. all right. i've got a question about job creation, and this is partly an outgrowth of just what we've seen the last few weeks with the political polarization. and what your thoughts are on how we can get, um, a situation where we really are as a country creating more jobs for these people that you're describing. um, in the face of, it seems, a very uninformed electorate that has put in place elected officials who are almost taking positions against people's better economic interest. and so what we saw the last few weeks was impeding job creation, not helping it. and one other side point is i

know you made a comment about northwest d.c., but my guess is most people in northwest d.c. just by example would be in favor of some of the, you know, governmental programs that would encourage job creation. >> is right, right, right. i wish i -- an intractable problem, and i wish i had a good answer for you. i mean, this is a, this is a tough period politically, and you're right. i mean, the political forces today are really pushing against what we need to do, not towards it. i guess i have two answers. you know, one is, um, you know, ultimately, it's incumbent upon all of us to speak with a loud voice, to be politically active, you know, when we really believe in things, and i kind of feel like to some extent the people who have been loudest and most active are the people that are pushing against, um, government support and further stimulus and job creation.

so, i mean, i think all we can do as citizens is talk about these issues and write and call our elected officials and make a stink about it. and, you know, i don't think that, um, i don't think that's happened as much, actually, on kind of the pro-government support side as it has on the anti. the other thing that we, well, it's not really another thing, i guess. even if that doesn't, um, push the government towards a wholesale change in strategy, there's a lot that we can be doing right now that doesn't actually cost money. we're just not doing it because, frankly, our elected officials aren't really focused on job growth. so let me give you one small example of that. there's a bill before congress now. it's called the start-up visa act, and it was supported by american venture capitalists,

and what it would do is it would more or less automatically grant a visa to any foreign entrepreneur who wanted to settle in the u.s. and could -- and had already secured american venture capital funding. there are a large number of highly-skilled entrepreneurs who would love to move to the u.s. they could create jobs immediately, and the bill is languishing. this wouldn't cost any money. um, we're not doing it. um, i describe that and other tactics. there are a host of measures that we could be pursuing, you know, without any impact on the deficit. um, collectively they at least add up to something, and we're not doing them. >> we'll get one last, quick question. >> um, putting bad government policies aside for the moment, um, a lot of people who talk about economics and who write

economic books and talk about this problem seem to believe in something that i guess i could call the business cycle. that, you know, there's the dips, the troughs and be peaks and stuff like that. and i'm wondering whether business cycles is really something that we're still dealing with. i mean, we have, i mean, cheaper labor offshore is a phenomenon. i mean, if you want to get a job, go to india or go to china. not a problem. i mean, that's certainly one solution. but we have the internet is a phenomenal that has only existed 10 or 15 years. that certainly makes mincemeat of a lot of brick and mortar jobs. computers, automation, artificial intelligence, robotics. they're all the future. what business cycle, i mean, what kind of solutions do we have for these things that i personally don't believe are,

you know, every business cycle has had these kind of thing thrown at society. what kind of hope might there actually be for people given these ugly realities? >> well, i think there are two things going on in the economy, and one is, essentially, a business cycle although an extended one. i mean, we've, um, we've spent years overspending, you know, consumers were taking on debt more and more, and what we're seeing is kind of a hangover now from that period. the fallout from the financial crises is -- big ones, is almost always very slow. um, and recovery usually does take a number of years. so, i mean, part of what's happening, um, today is kind of cyclical, and the problems will mitigate and go away once consumers deleverage and can spend be again. but that is a very long process, and it will be all the longer if

government hinders rather than helps. but, you know, you're right, the other thing that's going on and that i've tried to describe in this talk is much more than business cycles. it's, um, it's an acceleration of the hollowing of the middle class driven by technology and offshoring. that may slow down again a little bit, um, you know, once we come out of this period for a time. but it's certainly going to continue, and that's why i think that in addition to short-term measures to stimulate the economy, we really need to, um, think broadly as a nation about how for the next generations and for people who are currently falling out of the middle class, you know, how we can build a broad and sustainable middle class country again because the one we have is falling apart. >> thank you very much. [applause] thank you to don for a great talk. thank you all for being here.

copies of "pinched" are in the front of the sign. come back, have one signed, ask questions, say hello. thank you very much, have a great evening. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> in a city that averages 250 murders a year, former baltimore homicide detective and be an investigateive reporter take on the tough questions, "why do we kill?" a book launch party for armstrong williams and his latest, "reawakening virtues, "and how unlikely allies got together to try to change our nation's school system.

get the complete booktv schedule at booktv.org where you can also watch nearly all of our 9,000 programs online. >> the july 20 u.n. declaration of famine in the two regions of somalia was not made lightly and truly reflects the dire conditions of the people in somalia. it's based on nutrition and mortality surveys, data that's been verified by the cdc and on the basis of that we estimate that in the last 90 days 29,000 somali children have died. s this is nearly 4% of the children in southern somalia. our fear and the fear of the international community and the governments in the horn of africa is that the famine conditions in this those two regions of somalia will spread to encompass the entire eight regions of southern somalia. the next rains are september/october, and even if they're good, we could bear

witness to another wave of mortality in the south due to water-born diseases. >> watch more from this senate hearing online at the c-span video library. >> next, a discussion about emerging nonviolent movements around the world. speakers include jack duvall, president of the international center on nonviolent conflict, and william zartman, former conflict management program director at johns hopkins university. the international peace and security institute in collaboration with the johns hopkins university hosted this discussion in washington d.c. it's an hour and 40 minutes. >> good evening. my name is cameron chisholm, and i'm the president of the national peace and security institute, and i'd like to welcome you all to why here, not there: investigating emerging nonviolent movements. this is an event brought to you by the international peace and security institute and the johns hopkins university school of advanced conflict management

program. the connection between us is a natural one because we have a lot of shared values. first, the pragmatic solutions exist to all violent conflicts irrespective of complexity or scale. second, that the next generation of global peace and security leaders must be educated in the arts of negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution to address violent conflict at all levels of society. and third, that the most effective way to educate future leaders to tackle the momentous global issues on the horizon is through intensive trainings in course here theory and practiced by the peace and security field's current leaders. the first is the italy symposium on reconciliation that we just finished up the second annual program of in bologna, italy. it's a monthlong intensive training on the practical skills needed to bring violent conflict to an end. we have some of the alumni in the room on the, so if you have

questions about that program, you can ask them as well as we have a table out there with some materials. so this is the actual second outcome of the association between sis and ipsi, this is the first of three yearly panel discussions that we believe are pertinent to the time. i think we can all agree that 2011 has been a year defined by tremendous social upheaval across the globe. some of the upheaval has been successful in its aims, and some has had tragic consequences for those involved. some of the upheaval has been extremely violent, and some has come to a close with little or no bloodshed. from tunisia to thailand, egypt to chile, syria to london and our very own wisconsin, normal citizens are struggling to change the systems that govern their lives. tonight we have four top experts with us that have a blend of

deep knowledge in nonviolent action. why here, not there: why does nonviolent action successfully take root and sprig transformation in some situations and not in others? you have the speakers' why owes -- bios in the front of you. you can also find them online at www.isis.org. first, jack duvall who's a well known producer and author, his book "a force more powerful," and i know some of you drabbed copies, they disappeared very, very quickly, is one of the cornerstone texts on strategic nonviolence and is a must-read for anyone interested in the topic. his documentary, there's also some copies he's sharing with us, outlines the history of strategic nonviolent conflict around the world, and it's been

translated in over ten languages. second, dr. cynthia irmer, she leads interagency teams from the u.s. government to prevent violent conflict, mitigate it effects and transform societies after peace is signed. she has worked all over the world with significant time spent in southeast ease ya and africa. >> third, gimena -- [inaudible] she is a leading expert on internally-displaced persons, refugees and human rights. she has fought tirelessly for the rights of over four million internally displaced persons in colombia as well as the rights of indigenous communities. she's also a sys graduate and worked on the brookings institution's project on internal displacement. and last but not least, dr. zartman who's professor

emeritus at johns hopkins, and he was the founder of the conflict management department here. he is one of the most influential and well respected academics in the world in the conflict management field, and his mind has shaped much of the vernacular used in classrooms and on the ground by pretty much everybody else. we have, we can thank mr. zartman for concepts like mutually hurting stalemates which have governed the thinking of how the world approaches situations. dr. zartman also happens to be the chairman of the board of the international peace and security institute which is why i made him come today. [laughter] each one of our speakers is going to have 10-15 minutes to give their opinions on the stated topic. we're going to hold questions until the end, and then we will do a 30-minute q&a. so with that i'm going to head on over to jack duvall and start this panel. thank you. >> thanks, cameron, very much. it's a pleasure to be here to see everyone here enthusiastic about this summit. some of us in this field of

endeavor intellectually as well as the practitioners around the world, um, had to, um, beg and beseech audiences to gather and hear a little bit about this subject only really ten year ago, so the time of the relevance of this has never been more acute than it is now. what i'd like to do in my remarks is set the table, if i may, for the be -- for the discussion by surveying what's happened historically with respect to the use of nonviolent resistance as a method of political and social change, then define for you what we believe, what i believe to be the inherent dynamic in what impels movements in campaigns when they are successful. and then give you a little rundown on some of the lesser known nonviolent struggles that are occurring today that are not as conspicuous and, in fact, perhaps even to some extent less

conspicuous in the last several months because of all of the general media attention on the arab spring. the record of the success of nonviolent resistance as a way to struggle for rights, freedom and justice is really quite stunning when you look at it, um, from the level of orbit, if you will. within the last 100 years, there have been dozens of successful movements. all of us know about the ones that are usually mentioned in the first few minutes of a general media report about this, but just to survey that again for you. obviously, the indian independence struggle led in the 1920s and 1930s particularly by gandhi. then in 1934 a much less well known struggle against a dictator in el salvador which was extremely successful through

a popular general strike that lasts only 30 days. then the 0 year long, 40 year long violent struggle of african-americans under the leadership of eventually dr. martin luther king jr. in the united states. there was also then in the 1970s an extraordinary struggle that unfolded in argentina launched, many believe, by the famous mothers of the disappeared in the square in bemost aries -- buenos aires existence the millty junta which began a series of events that led to the dissolution of that regime. the movement against the dictatorship of by nope in chile which ended in 1988 of his having to step down as president. the long-running movements in if eastern europe and in be the former soviet union against one party authoritarian control in

that region, perhaps best represented by the solidarity movement and the nonviolet transition to democracy in poland. the people power revolution by filipinos in 1986, the so-called velvet revolution in czech slovakia, the leader was one of the century's greatest theorists in nonviolent struggles. the very notable and not well explored nonviolent transition from authoritarianism to democracy in mongolia in 19 89 and 1990. the african country of mali in 19 91. the attempted coup against gorbachev and yeltsin in 1991. the long-running struggle which

was also successful about that time to publish, truly, a regime change in south africa led by the national congress and the democratic front in the 1980s, particularly n that country. then the so-called color revolutions in serbia, georgia, and ukraine each much different from the other but all of which ended up in a transition to a more democratic state than existed before. the so-called orange revolution in ukraine which was really a defense of an election more than it was a fully nation-changing democratic movement. there are lots of ways of summing all these up. one was done this a study in 2005 by freedom house which noted that in the 35 years between 1970 and 2005 there were a total of 67 transitions around the