every weekend we bring you 48 ogy puai bks on hi notiut. y97as lldgppio to carter and what she saw as carterrism, that appeasement. and particularly crucial in this respect in 1979 she saw the fall of the shah and the fall of simosaicgu aco o cengpecerer

and people like her. >> the political woman behind the reagan cold war doctrine, sunday night at 9. d at 10, maureen sniper on author since leg - ne srnd ori leaving the military. >> david hammes talks about a plan put forth by thomas edison after world war i at would gove dinkedhe ll from . esoo "harvesting gold," and this presentation is a little over an hour. >> thomas edison was born in 1847 and died in 1931, so he paip most important u.s. events, but to be a very, of course, important participant given his development, inventions, manufacturi and

all the various things that h on ivenno o etenmtif the nation through movies, um, but, of crse, electrifies the country, was good friends with the rich and famous as well the comn. auenornd ey firestone with the poet john burrows, went on nature trips which later got rather heavily covered so they almost became caricatures. but edison was woven in the fiinor heme. dealt with the vanderbilts, with j.p. gould, with morgan. there wasn't anyone especially on the financial side that he hadn't had some runin wh fl nth oisof course, we think of the great

inventions, the over thousand patents whether it be for movies or the lightbulb or motion pictures. veooiohi b prasan israel, neil baldwin, josephson mention his later-in-life terests in money and the financial system of thu.s. renchefrt o and the story of edison and the intense research he put into the monetary system of the early a pe bayhano the detail and the contac and the summits and the -- and the subjects and the people he spoke to either in correspondence or in person, that story i don't think peopleno or appria

athatoay co, he very famous people when we stumble across or we find -- and also these famous people famous for beingery smt, creative, inventive, hard iniu pion 1% inspiration, when we find something out about them we don't know, we go, gee, i wonder if there's something in there that speaks to us today. is it just something that applied, perps, to the s,risthomng re sheds lht on our current situation? the interesting thing about the '20s is if i say20s, all of you are going to speak of the roaring '20s, the flapper the growing wealth in the country post-world war i and the

liberation in a lot of sense from householdrudge erieas the invention of labor-sang a of sie hg gone to europe come back and staying on the farm, figure figureatively speakingis hard justfthe th.so. wa a slee u economy was facing the equivalent of what today we call a fiscal cliff. the u.s. gernment which had expanded from about 3 of the nation's economy to about 25% in the war effort was scalingack and w pinut on the war finished, immediate cutbacks to heavy federal spending on all sorts of projects. the view of the federal government prior to world war i in termsf whe

ave on w well, we do national defen, we do the post office, and we try to watch the now of goods and services, especially goods,crosshe rdbecae ofjo sceorussees and duties. so, of course, they were interested in goods that went in and out. but after that you pretty much looked after yourself. so people thought abouthe wotethkutheyrnment in trmsf role vis-a-vis the individual or each this space was, well, if we're on an ocean, if we're on a border, the federal government may have a presence. thers tpoi i y , ohaat feler really quite small. so following world war i the attempt was to return the

government, in fact, harding' platform was return to noalcy, thelan w ur eert, ra rn btos almost invisible role in the economy. well, with all the soldiers coming back and with the federal government spending being cut back, unemployment which during the war had faln tlo o--nd tewe really major agencies, federal agencies actually each calculating it, these are numbers kind of built out of state figures -- unemployment, zeurth et. had ento a llaled3, 14%. so in today's kind of frame we'd say, well, what was the federal government doing? well, they were typically doing just what they did bore which was nothing. if you weemployed y j dn m fent.

ereomad acts that said you could go out and farm 160 acres, you just had to find it. you'd be fully employed for the rest of your life and probly your kids' lives tryingo carve avbls t lhecoys t e a ernd akn harding administration, somebody that they had to keep their eye on, and that was herbert hoover. and hoover had chosen to become the secretary of commerce, and he convinced haing t ke an unemployment commission, brought together a lot of people to show that the federal government was interested in what was happening in the economy. that was the first evidence even though wd had large financial cres in the 18s, i07 atwae t ist o ued government even showing any interest in large-scale unemployment as a

federal problem. th usually considered ito be ll,unipal s su still, there are hints of what's going on today with the early 920s -- 1920s, and in that recession, that large recession the country went into postwar someing ind of th althar ap speakeasy view that we have of the decade. well, what was happening with prices was that during the war there was a huge inflation, ic viua doued fm 1920, and then there was a large deflation. prices were cut in half. and what that did to the purchasing power of the dollar was swing it all over. it was totally unpredictable. as prices rose, the purchasing power of the dollar is falling poofolrssifl,urin ifu'keut loan

when prices are going up, you've probably borrowed thinking pres will continue to go up, and the stuff you sell will be easy to sell and p back the loan. and subsequentlyif it tus out yo hgoueghavefall and s aoto lower your price to sell it, it's very hard to pay off that loan in those dollars that are harder to get. so farmers who during the war had rationally borrowed to expand their farms take on biggeroans, we're h in the deiows eydetin r loans, they're what we would say upside down or underwater on their loans, and their banks which have extended these loans are going, are going broke, they're insolvent, they' going bankrupt. reiohahelpseehe and at that point henry ford and thomas edison are talking, and fordays -- in this part i'm

just kind of extrapolang -- saysou're a smart g,an shio t fr? att p edison said i will make, you know, i'll make an effort to study this money complex and try to invent or change the monetary system so that a dollar's a dollar, i'll vale omone athaidhe stize pas r the dollar, and when people make a deal in one dollar, it's the same deal a few years later in terms of dollars so that the variable purchasin power ofmodoest cate th pem hisu soin with a kind of interesting episode in ford's experience, ands that is just after the war. the harding administration was segth doy t rid of a lot one of the assets that they were trying to sell was the wilson

dam on the tennessee river in the muscle shoals area of alabama. and ford made an offer, this dam nie r munitions. wa g ammonium nitrate is also good for fertilizer. and so ford offered to build the dam, and his plan was to develop and use the electricity from the foerizmemo nat and he took edison down to alabama to view the site. and on the way downn ford's private rail car, the fairlane, he'siscsing ordt s i th p ito pth government $5 million for the dam which isn't complete, have the government complete the dam for another $8 million and have them finance it not with a whtherouond-extend financin

rrheey aenre oe,ut finance it by issuing cash, currency. and that extra currency, $8 million worth, would be retired through time as the electcity generated by da generated income which, or generated the payments which would then be used to retire the dollars that were created. suceos kind of a funny scheme. so when ford and edison got out of the rail car and investigated the site down in alabama, of course, there were reporters there. and th asked edison what he thought about the whole seme. we, hethght itasrt as t f eiaes could be quickly turned into producing more munitions because that would send a signal

to the outside world hey, if you mess wit the u.s., they've got ways of poducing mve ar reaquy. tus the use of the dam to make ammonium nitrate, en though it was going to fertilizer, other countries could see it could be diverted to munitions, so they'd be less wagrsiman, which he was, so why not have ford do it? and thirdly, edison thought the financing scheme was brilliant. he thought interest was the invention of satan. he'd had his run-ins withhe nanc ys. nhec gal ea whe developing something, he didn't have enough money to develop it commercially. so he had an uneasy alliance wi dferent nanceiers, lsuthw

seree tma street banks or the country banks, and he thought then that puts a squeeze on the farmer and forced the farmer off the land. so if thlarge banks asked the sm bousknks for tmone th farmers couldn't repay because prices had tanked, and farmers were pushed off the land. and wanting to help the farmer, edison decided to snd se sy.stiheony ls ae gave his highly-reported comments was roasted by henry haslet, an ecomic journalistasne scnd l saihad greenbackism, highly inflationary and highly impractical, and i think edison was a bit chastened by this so

also wanted to do his due dill yens and not - diligence and t lhe wgnant. so from mid december to late january, ford studied what he called the money comple whethein thehi at correspondence between edison and others where he explains i'm burning the midnight oil. it's a tough subject, but i'm going to stick. i want to help the farmer. generally sakin youkn, arucpch,but you also get the impression it's easier for a ford or an edison to maintain sales if customers have currency of stable rchasing power. as he wrote one esen t fr'

bl not due to wall street, nor to speculators, nor to bankers. it is due to a bad system of money. everything that eastern men do would be done by the faer himself if he could. we are all gamblers nre. a sm ecan thrmil get justice. later on, it's the money broker, the money profiteer, the private nker that i oppose. theyainethrer tough it aseueiv gold. gold is a relic of julius caesar, and interest is an invention of satan. so edison wants to try to stabilize the purchasing power of money not by fixing prices, moyhego it asy, a the only anchor for the value of the currency. now, he's not alone. during the years that the

federal reserve act was being debated a written,91 d1 irving fisher had made quite a name for himself in the search for stable money, had written books on the topic and had devised a scheme of his own. fisher wasrobably the bt knowernomi o t t othnt d fisher got wind that edison was working on something, they met a few times and discussed the issue. what's kindof an interesting side light there is that they both were interested in vegetarian diets a were very refuwitht a eyed speaking possibly as much on diet as economics and moy. but fisher gave one of his books to edison, edison wrote hi he sa, i've read your book. yo w itsle i likt, ink veke -- it all up.

so they were also vitally interested in the currency problem. fisher iited edison to go to congress and presenthislan. doknhy aye by that time, which was late 1922, he was kind of finished with the issue. so what's this scheme, does it have anything to say to us today? is it totay impraical and dhe gbo dis se? mee lant first. edison was very, by that time, trained in a research method which had brought him success. and that was to study an issue as much as he could hself, but rech tms wto and on this issue, though, there wasn't an in-house research team. you go to the battery shop, what were those guys going to tell him?

you go to the machine , wh rey gog em? ano protect himself against looking like he was ig narpt, he read the sours suggested by henry haslet, a book about pper money and inflation in france. he had livedhrough the grnbacsm piodse ter iv war. he was a up and coming businessman and inventer, and he'd been through the crisis of 1907. so a lot of this was personal knowledge to him. he didn't have to bto wtch oufodinio me haatnssn that the dollar had to be backed, or he felt that it had to be backed by something real. now, gold was the backing of the dollar of the day. so he arted by learningbo the gold standard and the gold syem. t tetoha t deay banking system like your corner banks, your retail banks, your commercial

banks. and then overseeing them since 13, really 1914 -- on amere fel rvst te by the federal government to kind of be a bank for bank yet they really hadn't had time to operate in aon-war period to really know how they were going to act foraso anthetrre creation of the federal reserve itself was the evidence of the longstanding distrust of centrazed power, whether it centralized private power in the pu wer iaston c.r centred nde rveas ea i created as this kind of an attempt to compromise and to diffuse power and to spread that power across the country. 12 fedal rveists

feee huashi iwn district bank which is owned technically by its private commercial banks. and en a board, public interest served by a board in washington, d.c., today the thstomo itss,to oee operation. well, in the early days, the individual federal reserve district banks weren't looking to the board to harmonize their interests. they could act somewhat aumo, there v ba within the fed to bring more power from the federal reserve district banks to the board in d.c. but that's a different sty, later story. a lot of th ima, of se, ldy sts heed rve from alan met el to many others. so the federal reserve is a

relatively new institution, and the reserve district banks are finding their y. foosn. yk oin it's got more power because of where it's located. that counter to what the framers of the federal reserve act were hoping for, but reality being webao edison. now, edison starts studying this complex kind of layering it, looking at it, realizing it's very comely candidate. and -- mplid. unrstag tet picppor m ane' oiob to cast gold out. he thinks gold and gold-backed money is a mistake, but he also realizes you've got all of the business and all of the international business community running old. yocan' sthath w

y,ging you know? we're going to something different. so his attempt is to graft be on a plan to help farmers to stabilize their incomes and hope thathr time itro olna a beces kind of pushes gold out. so rather than throw gold overboard, he's going to graft on other commodities to bac ney inrderheos ucin s wth the government implicitly helps the gold producer. you're aold miner, you can go down in the ground, pull out gold, bring it to a government mint, have it minted into coins, and you've got money. gr,l ohe crops, bring it to the government and go home with money? that was, basically, ford's idea.

they identified 36 crops, big ones being wheat,cotton,n thgomeui warehouses starting with 12-14 across the country that the farmers could bring their crops to and receive an up-front payment of 50% of anra price over theeiny last 25 years and receive an equity certificate, like a pawn ticket, of ownership. so the farmer leas, let's say the farmers i a thousan el wch agice was a dollar, the farmer makes $500 right up front. the farmer canpay off his or her loans. the farmer's got something for certain. the farmer's also got the tiet. if the pri of w g earr cthaw the

wheat from the warehouse, sell it on the market and make the difference. got to pay the gornment back the $500, but makes theoney on sc ahe says, but who am i going to bounce this off, where's my resrch team? the guys in the battery shop are no good at this stuff. so he sends a questionnaire of fel rv officials andusinessmen, economists including william scott at the university of wisconsin, prescriptionton dos t day, pattersonhesere at pennsylvania and, of course, not common householdames today, but kind of sending them

to the drug matches, ifou bee asm takgma y w look at this and tell him, hey, am i right or wrong? so these folks open up these envelopes fromhomas edis saying i'vego tse tiirthween tafery of 1921. would you take a look at it, answer the questions and send the answers back to me? you get some polite declinations from a few people. he doesn't hear fr some hedsic nin rbeh qiore i sent you? could you answer? and he gets fairly extensive answers from eight people. a pretty good cross-section of bankers and businessmen and the economists. one economist writesback a in t tickler letter being fairly rude and impolite, edison

writes -- this was scott at wisconsin -- edison writes to the president of the university and sys, u kw, this guy basically called me ni e dndan y, i' ng,uli me, i'm not, i'm not past it, i'm not senile. scott writes back a very humble apology. that newshits twsrs seki o statewide upset. there aren't very many supporters of scott. ison gets a lot of letters saying forget those pointy-headed academics, they never know whathey're talking about,quen t. w,dist tting these answers back. he hasn't really outlined his scheme totally to his expert he just has kind of thrown different parts of it questions out there. but they're able to kindf

plrean basics of the plan are would it create sound money if farmers could bring their crops to the warehouse and get immediate payment. and the general answer from most of the experts is th wou be et itiy. wd apl ob. mb one u you don't know how many -- you don't know how many crops might show up at your warehouse. this kind of a scheme might induce a lot of crops. you don't even know, they might flow across the boer. nditks an inelastic fashion. it takes money out of circulation when you need it, it puts money into circulation when you don't. it would actually kind of exerbate cycles, not moderate them. dlt d o wh crops? why those 36? what if i've go a crop, and it's not on the list?

couldn't my crop be put on in pineapples weren't on. why couldn't we havey crop on? theni'e t eie drsld, lluowwe have services, not crops, but why couldn't you put our crop on? so the fear was that political manipulationould cause mo inflion. d fnallhe cf ilainihe ho w interest-free loans, storage costs to the farmer. so generally edison got lot of negative comment from the people he considered to be the profsional and he okewith erokthed ak and roger batson who today would be called a technical analyst or chartist. he was a saw decision, he predicted the 1929 crash. ofpoor edison's plan,n.

but edison said, well, you know, the support was for the gold standard but somewhat -- people said it's n perfect, but it's what we know, it's wha we've t, is wte' isroo f pe, subsequently said i'd better get back to my day job. i've spent a couple months intensively at this. i'd better get back to what i do well. but he said, youait. in 30 years'time, my sche llkch m aac. thh tye economists from friedrich hayek to john nash have all proposed some sort of commodity-backed monies. now, that doesn't necessarily make them right, make edison right, b it certainlypens e pewthissn is kooky guy stumblg around in the dark, that with his inventive genius he may have

had something to say about trying to stabilize perhaps if fas' iesl now, the federal government ultimately ended up doing that, and so his lobbying effos in congress and behind scenes weren't really taken up further because the federal government ended up alowingthede setotelo b based on farm credit as well as industrial loans or loans for businesses. and that was the first example of the federal reserve act becoming a littleore expaionary or yigy tiveinlo e federal reserve district banks to extend loans based on different collateral than they had in the founding document. and then, of course, the federal government went into pice support programs ander muor directly and much more

visibly that the farmer could see and consequently vote for. and so schemes like edison's which may have assisted the farmer but someat indirectly webvdr addressed more directly by helping farmers directly. and in a day when farmers were still a very strong voting blo helping farmers directly politically probably was aore ficit inerf -gngs tut so many terms of what edison's view says to usoday, well, number onehe was right about the goldstan. he wog i . 33 the franklin delano roosevelt administration eliminated monetary gold in circulation. for all intents and purposes for

the avere guy on the street, that was the end of the ld standard. they alsoorntti sansvaldr just under $21 an ounce of gold to $35 an ounce of gold. there's an almost 70% inflatn instantaneously. rotey gnt of adahi stable currency, and the answer is, of course, not. it can be politically manipulated. and has been. and will continue to be. the only saving gce one might thha gspr's prett obvious whe t efldhanges. but edison was right, gold was passed out. what was put in its place? reliance on the federal reserve an yt wse money relatively enoicer vehe average price level

through time since 1913, a dollar of purchasing power in 1913 is roughlyllou ntsdahaige a little bit high. and so how has the fed done? well, money has depreciateed but maybe aore stable fashion. sot's o ed i k lahgthat's really interesting about edison's scheme is ifou look at what the federal reserve is buying today, for example, in the recent financial crisis, buying toxic financial asse financial fmsnd anoney a basically, the question is how many of those mortgage-backed securities would fit in a bushel basket that the fed is paying cash for? did they determine the price by

we'tw. theast 2ye t fas opened up the array of assets it purchases under quantitative easing to include a lot of aets while crofne s otarmcr a od bon firm or industry or another, and they've done this in order to bolster the financial system. this isn't aeinn wreedi if you look at this a particular way, it looks a little edisonian. and again to give the old inventor his view, maybe his prediction wasn't that far of now, all of the corsponnce baone t thomas edison national historical park

in west orange, new jersey. and they were incredibly helpful. there's anher group at rutgers headed up by paul isel, the an participated, co-authored four academic papers on this with douglaswills at the univsity of washington atta coma. and one of the papers with a couthornd cage. ues pl t d n'ad all four of those papers. so when -- and i wanted to tell this story, i wand to tell this story in a way that would appeal to the intelligent reader who's not a train economist. so if you're looking at th and yil,too ob omyd, probably isn't. but i think it's kind of a fun tale, it's a lively episode in edison's life, and what i think also givess u an appriati

ruedhe va oe toy hiniv genius to help solve not just the problems of lighting or electricity which, of course, those were huge, but in mini sphes of people's lives. the lasthing i think- and alofus shld pble a toiti hewwh if something looked ultimately as if it was interesting and still maybe worth pushing but you were pushing against a lot of resistance, give it up, let somebo else pick it up. u t tilyve hayou can get too lost in one idea. so i think ithows edison being edison in a context where we'd say thomas edison, money. solpeitto qio ms. --

[applause] d, inst t i was struck by the apparent similaty of some of edison's ideas withome to have populist whereas the lteth nt aimdeio ise that people were struggling with. the farmers were very much baers of populism, very much against the banks of new york, a bit of anti-semitism, all thi pira t yond acoti postve? t populist movement? >> well, there are. and it's probably one of those things edison had a bit of ab idea of - a bit of an idea of because he was living thugh the time inhe87nd 1,

ut alliance which was a farmers' group, proposed what they called subtreary plan which was a warehouse commodity storage plant. i n't think edison knew about that. he never kind of referred to it d sa, wll i'ijng thlarrgr and we first learned about that thanks to a tip from my son stephen who was reading about in high school. but that also feeds into what was going on in, asousuggt, th pil men of these different money movements of the time. and the free silver movement kind of taking off, and it's kind of william jennings bryant, you know, you will not prosecution down upon - prs crofth. l to w,mapasing, at the 1896 democratic convention. but the free-silver movement was all about the rising political

power of the west. as these territories became states and got two senators they suddenly becme ry pocaweyadu and so the mining interests especially in nevada actually by williamdoar thther pushing for the movement to basically guarantee the price of silver. so edison's kind of coming out of -- not that he knows all of this, but this incredible ferment and turmoil driven b monetary questions, political question wi h smein way it's almost -- and they found this with the federal reserve act -- it was almost like people didn't want to revisit and refight the fights they fought in the 1860s, 1870s,880 t e t his

other plans, and but just all these different currents and cross-cuts that he kind of lands on not even realizing all of this suff that's hapd because, o cour, he hhi hin k er lbu and electrification and the movies and the vick troll la. so he comes at it without the great background- reading a mode w h said but you didn't even look at all this stuff. but, so there is this huge story out there and some very nice accounts of it. and theffshoot of th, t rali to help was a combination sometimes of moneta acts, the bland-ellison gold act as oppos to, you

know, bimetallism. but also what theye doin wi ff caif edolp oup, well, you could put tariff on imports on their competitors. it was easier to put tariff on mechanized goods than it was on farm goods. so the farmer sometimes was ca in edd ul g hrce ot,ut hto p higher prices for the protected machinery. so it just go so many different ways, but, i mean, that's, you know, that question would keep people biness is si for a long time. --busy for a longe. >> sir. somebody else? >> [inaudible] >> edison and-- [inaib ialc pbl e'rilryg.

and when we look at the short run, it's a rather disappointing result. prices flip all over. and sometimes weon't even wegoopodyi 'rdeowsbi deflation. paul krugman, for example. the fed should be more activist, more quantitative easing. other people think, well, now, wait a minute. if they set up a situation where there may beyou kw, asi atin fe. 'r really debating, hey, we don't think theurchasing power of the dollar's going to be stable. some of them thinkt's going to be falling, some of them think it's going to be rising depending on if they think there's gown to be la fln. ed's aogat when you buy a poker chip at the table for a dollar, that when you cash it back in, you get a dollar for it? he loved this poker chip analogy. that way i think the ansr is,

no. yo have to put yr aus cron oonand the fractional reserve banking system. being able in a sense to get where people's -- guess where people's desire to hold money are going to go,nd in the [iibn is a u'rytooet atcat be done. in the longer run, there's probably hope for a stable current -- currency. but that may rely on different stdards or different prinples, orati pci r ntlafo a tautrity or for a move towards competing private monies with some totally differen standards. and, again, that's, you know, a ry hequon gomerovid money as the only alternative, and it may in the end not be. but i'm not here to, you know,

beat the band for yet another, buf ceo ny'rogram. ettharon and we have all these historical examples of failures from the chinese in 1100 to the germans in the 1920s to zabn, un, 2002-2008, you know, hyperinflation. >> what -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> yeah. >> hi. i wanted to mention that i really enjod yo bk,n rtarheto at t deree h i wt fully aware of. my question is, what is the link between monetary policy and economic policy, and is it different today than it was back in edison's me oka

fi pyor falcal policy? >> yes, exactly. >> yeah. well, the connection usually they seem a bit divorced. fiscal policy is technically the latin root word meang purse. so it's the governms manamef s p. thanne i uly ugx ruend m out through expenditure programs. and typically that's handled by the legislative and eecutive branches through a budget process and wrangling that we see go on a so on. netary pic iwy anatball ur e purview of the federal reserve system which is while it's crted by a congressional act, it's an independent agency independent of the fiscal authorities. poes bifennicall those beth br tha they be coordinated. for example, in some theories if

there's high unemployment and you believe the government could do something about it, well, they should try to do something about it with both plici ri w, if yo bvehn' ainouhe ldtr do anything about it, but they should at least coordinate. but they're not always coordinated. and sometimes, and i would say today is one of those concerns, that fiscal policy -- and you hear this echoed or, you know, thai oherdanno ves he federal reserve system -- when he goes to congress and he says you guys have to come up with a credible fiscal plan going forward that is credible sohat people can e yohala bhe nu edieams into balance. because right now the expenditures are, say, 1.1 trillion greater than receipts. he says that for the following wato y gure

stinking up the fiscal policy, he's saying that because if they continue to run these larg deficits, the only way they can get financed is by borrowg. because the deficit by viue o e fa ixiay, eax egh t cer it. so what do we do to cover it? we'll borrow. when we borrow, we're going to issue ious for bonds. bernanke and the fed are concerned that the dayis going pe ltouyosdn they a tn d forces their hand. they're being put into a tighter and tighter corner. and if the day comes that except at very low pris people will buy thosebond meangry ieste, kn run against having any ability to fight a recession or weakening recovery, so if the

day comes that the fed's the last buyer of the fedal governnt bonds -- nth k, kth's ,ut bnkte to send the message don't rely on us because the way they buy those bonds is they print money. that then becomes edison's warehous scheme, right? now m buying the bonds from the u.s. government, how many fit in a busl basket, and here ane ehs nd don out there floating, you know, floating around. and what the federal reserve i worried about and ihink probably rightly so is that they basically becomeubsidiary to theiscaanheed vent whhe don't see as a credible fiscal pn. at least, you know, listening to bernanke'sords. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> yes. qutie, udo inom edison's proximity

in new jersey where his manufacturing and home was to new york city which is the financial world, wall street, etc.,fluenced -- a the f hidayt na fis production, do you think this is a possible reason of his interest in another financial system or to the gold necessa? >> i don't know if the lat s,rtythis experiences with the finance financiers, the vanrbilts, jpmorgan, jay gould. he felt he'd gotten burned a few s. hlsewh w, anyou had to give something up to get something. but what he didn' like and what a lot of people don't li going back to istotle and then that

got transferred tgh eveeinothsuiano e necessarily, you know, all great thinkers, but big thinkers and big name was the idea of paying interest. he just couldn't see it. why did you have to pay interest with the view being toward tt le -atoat ping interest on is just sitting there. it's not doing anything. he could see why you had to pay for a vick toe la. but what is gold in a vlt doing? be it's just sitting ere. br, reet t ton geerfo it? why should vanderbilt? so he wanted to design not a non-financial system, but he wanted to get, he really thought interest was the inntion of n, hnto se thfa from the interest terror. now, that's like going to a car

rental agency and saying, hey, you know, that car is just sitting there. [laughter] why don't you lend it to me for nothing. we, what does e care en s . da t sse a great idea. here are the keys. they say the problem is, dave, the guy standing behind you. he might pay us to rent that car. and that's where edison and the anti-interesople, you know, kindof msed the b. be yhu sy it's just sitting there, but the guy standing behind you might want to use it. so you've got to bid it away from him or her. in the came say that -- in the same w that's why wedon'get rentaoree g'e b somebody might walk up in three hours' time and rent that car. if they've got it, you can't rent it out. so i think edison missed the boat little, but he also -- and ford wouldn't represent or

dn r oldtl cars in the installment plan until he was forced into it. ford didn't want the farmer, typicay the buyer, to get in over his head. now, also tue where two-thirds of your populatn lion thhe eropak payments on? where do you even find the car in a 1600 acre farm? oh, it's around. good luck. reman just doesn't work as well on the farm as does in buckhitasmo t rean t i was located close to new york city because the harbor facilities, the work force. and he lov writing to people, got some evidence of this in the book, hey, if you're in , s w, wly aew yo k, e'ive you directions. >> i think edison and ford were trying to be more pragmatic than

these people on wall street. >> well, i think we're all pragmatists, and that's one thing th edison actually wrote that was inhat litquote, ? tarr wdexy t ber dhe could. it isn't the intent that's bad, it's the system that's bad. so i'm thomas edison, i'm going to invent the system that makes us act good. because we know people a just people, theyl follow lese w e a stite ks a la t makes them act in a wa where they don't profiteer and so on. >> yeah. i'm kind of curious about gel,cilleenin vent today you have sort of paul krugman on one side, very pro-fiscal spending and pro-government intervention using government spending and, actually, government going and building highways, you know, doing ings in the economy phicallyand can on the other pas son rand paul sort

of against that saying there's no role for government, we don't need the roads, we'll do it all ourselves, y know, if there was sort of an ultimate fiscal championship, you know, y-peviewevru e a yw, r p he other, where would he fall in his general viewpoint of what the role of government is? >> well, probably more for political scientist but let me kind of give you a couple of view isonas o ofhe g, uknhe diton asaid, he was born in 1847. and because he was such a well known, you know, and famous -- you know, they'd do these surveys, he'd be america's most famous guy. he was, th reporters would go tois houor l is hdn uavear d weyo , what's the big thing that happened over your, you know, in the last year: and in 1914 in february he

said, you know, the biggest thing that happened was this federal reserve act that w just passed in december of 1913. ree em g body really knew what it was going to be, what it might turn into, what it is now is much different than what it was designed at. but he didn't say, hey, congress ought to keep their hands off of this dea waeein o to curbust what private power which i think in getting back to that previous question which ity he thought that the mt be -- which i think he thought that the money brokers, the profiteers had too muchf. did wthe vernnt to iveti? buhink he saw this as a regulatory move, you know, he really had hopes for it. to t point where, you know, that was the thing he mentioned. and i think most people in early 1914 wouldn't have been thinking federa rerve. now, onhe fp side matit caut

1, he thought that was just a debacle because he thought it was written by a bunch of lawyers that knew nothing about business. and, again, i don't think his angle was they should just get outf ntirelee 'r kots, ink his angle was they should have consulted with some business people to craft a better act. because he thought the sherman antitrust act was -- so i think edison would come down the ki ofhardg/idie w g of recessions one person at a time locally, municipally, state wise, and that we don't look to the federal government for, you know,ob cio t ookt f stable -- look to it for stable, rational rule of the game that assists everyone, thatren't

loaded against, let's say the farmer or even loaded for the faer ith rpe tt puts in straggling, if you will, in the sense that he recoizes there's a role, he recognizes there's a federal role but that in terms ofdas onivi would think he would just be astounded. yeah. he's going to have to speak for himself, and there's probably a stack documents somewhere ateoneisrg,ma on fl federalism. or it may be in one of the edison project volumes. and -- go ahead. . out iv a --

well, you know, certainly want to thank everyone for coming. if you got the book and enjoyed it, thank you. if you don't have the book, for those of you not here, w.on, rs a pe or www.harvestinggold.com, all one word. and so to viewers everywhere, thank you and, please, feel free to-mai me wit acots thomas@hawaii.edu. >> halo. ms. idstnihiia

for the federal government examines the clandestine conflict between the united states and iran. a secret history of america's 30 year conflict with iran. w thciam roato antietam. retithen a p conflicts that led to the battle of antietam. lopez ramon chricles his life from the second sudanese civil u.lyicck field fiti at kenya and etngor mfe one loss journey from the killing fields of sudan to the

of the big games. and the new industrial revolution consumers globalization and the end of mass production. peter msh,aufring or tci t exines changes to manufacturers to adapt to the current global market place. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the oktvrguture onv a t h been a hostility to poverty since the war on poverty. lyndon johnson was the first president to look at perty issue to spend money on and talk about it and the social service progm. hao shibuch nixon is the father of minority distance development. inside his minority busiess established small-busine admistration, used super economic justice

chdic ju >> julianne malmo regularly writes and comments on politics, education and african-american history and live sunday, august 5th that noon eastern the personal questiond calls be able e-mails and twor ivang:ts in economic history. julianne malveaux on booktv. and what are you reading ts summ? botv wants to kw. >>re a wdeul political books. what i do, i am interested in looking at the history and things that have happened. lb isthread.e thirdn it is a big read.

this one documents his years as vice president when he was nnfoiond gains psi est edppim vice president and we all know that was a troubled time for lyndon johnson and president kennedy. stutryece certainly different in te ofri in lyndon johnson's life. has hes passing into the presidency, this isne of the ism ac.teresting times to s have to say robert caro does an incredible job. having looked at his other books and heard him talk about this bo and t other h is

non judgmental, he tells the good and bad and lets people decideor themselves what they think is important and he has captured and done so much rearch. enwn lun johnson city to see in the early growing up years what lyndon johnson's life would have been like and each time heas gone further he s done deiled rechaz rech he is an excellent writer and i was privileged to invite him to speak to a group of sir republican senators at one point. heame and we had a very instbandth use toer interested in the experiences lyndon johnson had as majority leader and the tactics he used

which are verdifferent from any kind of leadership tactics you would bee ttalk oruadoda it is a different world. he was very strong leadernd also very demanding. okd nois rhtalyecmend his oo enjoy reading that. another book that iave been beginning to read is a book by douglas brinkley about hawkeye. therwasn morekn anverinri news more than walter cronkite. we love him in texas. he went to the university of texas. he grew up in houston and tn heas aorgnnt foitprinl. go of real reporter

experience. he wasn't just the kind of a face guy but whenbs eng be -enhe orks had them walter cronkite started as the anchor in the 60s and was there for 20 years intthe early 80s and i idcoigpresidents and his time covering is certainly fascinating and he is a fascinating person because h was so thoughtful. i think douglas brinkley is s hfeora rice university and has also taught at the naval academy and princeton. he is a real historian who also

se is ng so t comprehensive biography of cronkite will be the definitive biography of walter cronkite and i think the fact that doug brinkley wrote it and my hh rd for fact that cronkite is so well known and loved in our country and having this kind of biography is an excellent thing cuatinta fortoril la book i have a chapter in this book, vital voices. it is a organizatn that w llcln aas the honorary cochairs and i

related this and put a chapter in as did secretary of ate clinton because i had been so rtar countries that men were in trouble and the women leaders emerged to create peace and honesty and integty or tghr hanht insentries where it is so lacking. all of us were taken with the treatment of women in afanistan andt re tatnt ivnd how some of them emerged even in the face of eate soctydigth to sa we can

for education for girls which the united states has done since we have been in afghanistan trying to help them be free of e tibnd infiltration. we have insisted that all the aid that america puts forward for girls and women a boys an men and this isorni th came from the experiences were vital voices hors each year the women who have led in these countries an me a ffce eea senator be personal now secretary of state clinched in and i have been honorary coach

fares we come to the award events at the kennedy center and atpsurheeoi countries. in some cases it is a woman building an economy, giving women micro opportunities for ousinesse and scait is just standing up. we have a rape victim in a villagepastan whoured turned back to create schools for boys and girls for her llage. she was a woman i will never e enhougshe w

illiterate. she had a spirit and a wisdom that was so far beyond her experience or her education. it was within her. okt hia wonderfulhat book for this summer that just came out, talk about some of these great stories, women coming together and horg thgrlersan d begin to bring an economy and and equality and friedman for the women who are in countries that don't have the luxury of freedom that whave in erica. thosare ree b wou lyom to the readers this summer and they are not

funny books that many times people read bu are very substaive and when you read a biph wteronke lyndon johnson or the stories of these women who have done so much, it does enrich everyone of us. i am k bailey hutcheson and i i.peoue t mer ore rmn th an odi lists visit booktv.org. >> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. on july 21st booktv will brin live coveragethe fourenth annu harm fr nw . heans acuio will talk about education, the 2012 presidential election and the 150th anniversary othe emancipation proclamation. july 27th belfast, mn hos the lfbostiv

releio writing and publishing. the atlanta journal constitution decatur book festival will take place august 31st through september 2nd highlighting inractive children's area, and author panels. st wbeit auin floor of the weekend of september 13th. let us know about book fares and festivals in your area ande will add them to our list. xtthri reports k@cpan. on the life of charles kikuchi, a japanese-american who was sent to internment camp along 100,000 other japanese-americans following the bombing ofearl r. rout lanca hime, d t this in the u.s. army and his career as a social worker in new york city.