he describes how thomas edison described overhauling the monetary system tying the value of the dollar to farm commodities rather than gold. this event is an hour. >> thom edison was -- thomas edison was born in 1847 and died in 1931, so he lived long enough not only to participate in most important u.s. events, but to be a very, of course, important participant given his development, inventions, manufacturing and all the various things that he did. edison was involved in not only the entertainment life of the nation through movies, but, of course, electrifies the country, was good friends with the rich and famous as well as the common

man. he and his buddies, henry ford and harvey 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 fabric of the country. .. neil baldwin, joseph zen

mentioned his later in life and chest in money and the financial system in the u.s., they tend to be very, very small off the top certifier consists. the story of intense research you put into the monetary system in the early 1920 was willow still keep all day about the detail in the contact and the people you spoke to, of course in person that story i don't think people know or appreciate what he had to say. it is only interesting of course the very famous people when we stumble across away from these famous people, famous for being very smart, creative, inventive, hard-working genius is 99%

perspiration, 1% inspiration. what if i offended that we don't know, we could achieve, i wonder if there's something in it that speaks to us today. something that applies to the 1920s or is there something in it that sheds light on our current situation? the interesting thing about the 20s is all of you will think of the roaring 20s, the s. fitzgerald chronicle life, the growing wealth of the country post-world war i and the liberation and a lot of sense from household treachery with the invention of laborsaving machine to the liberation of people, a lot of the soldiers having gone to europe, come back and staying on the farm

figuratively speaking his heart for them to do. but just after the war, the u.s. economy from europe of course is in a shambles. the u.s. economy was facing the equivalent of what today we'd call a fiscal cliff. u.s. government had expanded from 3% to the nation's economy to 25% in the war effort was feeling back. they put into place in media cutbacks that were finished. immediate cutbacks to federal spending on all sorts of projects. the view of the federal government prior to world war i in terms of what their responsibilities to the average person with the national defense, which is a post office and we have to watch the flow of good conservatives, especially goods across the borders because one of the major tax sources

were of course interested in goods that went in and out. but after that company pretty much looked after yourself. so if people thought about the federal government terms of an economic engine command the way they would tend to think about their role vis-à-vis the individual or even the state was well, if were a notion, a fur on the portrait the federal government may have a president. there is supposed is an daily life. the federal government was really quite small. the following world war i, the attempt was to return to government, in fact the platform was a return to normalcy. the plan was to return the federal government back to it's almost invisible role in the economy. with the federal government

spending eating up that, unemployment which are the word following through 1% and 2% and the work really is federal agencies actually calculating these numbers spelled out-of-state figures, unemployment had fallen to almost zero during the war effort. if 12, 13, 14%. so in today's families say what was the federal government doing? well, they were doing typically with it before, which was nothing. if you're unemployed amnesia set in the far northwest. they were home setbacks issue could do 168. you'd be fully employed for the rest of your life and probably your kid play, find a farm out of the countryside. and there is a lot of lot of land available. but there is a new mover and

shaker in the heart of the administration. hoover had chosen to become the secretary of commerce and he convinced harding to strike and unemployment commission brought together a lot of people to show the federal government was happening in the economy. i was the first evidence, even though with large financial crises in the 1870s, and 1970s, that was the first instance of the u.s. federal government even showing any and chest and large-scale unemployment is a federal problem. they usually considered it to be a vocal municipal or state issue. so there are hints of what is going on today with the early 1920 and that recession, the larger session the country went

into postwar, something we mess with the warring 25 boroughs, speakeasy view that we have. well, who is happening with prices was that during the war there was a huge inflation. prices virtually doubled from 1916 to 19th line. then there is a large deflation. what that did to the purchase price of a dollar. the purchase price of a dollar is falling. you've taken out a loan when prices are going up coming probably borrowed thinking prices will continue to go up in the stats you sell will be easy to sell and pay back the loan. and subsequently if it turns out the price has befallen them you're having trouble selling your stuff and you got to lower your price valid.

it's very hard to pay off that loan and those dollars that are harder to get. so farmers to join the war had rationally brought to expand farms, take on bigger loans, were hit in the early 1920s with deflation. they are defaulting on the votes come what it upside down or underwater on their loans. in the big switch i've examined the phones are going broke. the holiday, going to encrypt. so that helped deepen the recession. and i thought point, for it and not a sinner talking says, i'm just kind of extrapolating from a sincere smart guy. can he do something to help the farmer? that has been added since i make an effort to study this money and try to invent or change the monetary system so that a dollar

vote cast what he said the variable lot of money so we can stabilize the purchasing power when people make a deal and 1 dollar is the same deal a few years later in terms of the dollar so that the variable purchasing power of money doesn't create all this problem. at this issue is also tied in with an interesting episode in ford's experience and that is just after the war. the harding administration was trying to get rid of a lot of wartime asset and so they were selling them. one of the assets they were trying to sell was the wilson team on the tennessee river in the muscle shoals area of alabama. and ford made an offer. it was almost completed from it being built to produce ammonium nitrate for munitions. ammonium nitrate is also good for fertilizer.

ford offers to build the dam in his famous for developing its electricity from ibm to produce ammonium nitrate for fertilizer for farms. and he took addison down to alabama to view this site and on the way down and forced private rail car, the privately, he discovered what his plan is. and the plan is to pay the government $5 million for the, which is a complete. had the government complete for another $8 million have been financed in with the typical extended financing, with the government would bar the money and repaid over time, but to finance it by issuing cash, currency. i'm not extra $8 million worth would be retired as the electricity generated by the dam

generated income, or generated the payment, which would then be used to retire the dollars that were created. this is kind of people is a funny steam, so when ford and madison got out of the rail car and best of the site in alabama, of course there were reporters they are, and they asked at us and what he thought about the whole team. he thought he was smart and the government should sell assets to fort i'm especially ones quickly turned into producing more munitions because that would send a signal to the outside world. hey, if you mess up the u.s., datascope ways of producing massive arms grow quickly. so just the use of the dam and even that was going to fertilizer, other countries

could be a could be diverted to munitions, so they would be less likely to possess. so why not have ford do it. and thirdly, at a certain type of financing an interest in the invention of safety. he had his run-ins with the financiers. he needed them because generally speaking when he was developing something he didn't have enough money to develop it commercially. so he had an uneasy alliance with different financiers of different times, but he also thought the new york banks were squeezing the main street banks or the country bangs and thought then that put the squeeze on the farmer and forced the farmer off the land. so it's large banks asking small banks for their money. the smaller banks would ask farmers for their loan.

the farmers couldn't repay because prices had tanked and farmers were pushed up the land. wanting to help the farmer, decided to spend time invested in the system. also he gave his highly reported comments was posted by henry hathaway, an economic journalist based in new york city who was widely read, who said that this scheme, before it seemed that edison should know better sound of the greenback has them, highly inflationary and highly impractical and i think edison was a bit chastened by this, so also wanted to do with due diligence and not the way keywords ignorant. from mid-december to late january, ford studied what he called the money complex.

whether in the archives is a lot of correspondence between edison where he explains his burning the midnight oil. as a test subject, but i'm going to stick. i'm going to hope the farmer. generally speaking, you know, it's an altruistic urge, but you also get the impression it's easier for a ford or edison to maine's -- maintain sales that they have purchasing power. the farmers struggle is not due to wall street are to speculators coming are the bankers. it is due to a bad system of money. everything eastern man do will be done by the farmer himself if he could. we are all campers by nature. if a system of checks could be worked out and i think he can come in the farmer will get

justice. later on come it's the money broker, the private banker that i oppose. they gain power through thick tissues and cause value dipped into gold, gold is a relic of julius caesar and interest as an invention of state. so edison wants to stabilize the purchasing power not by fixing prices up by developing a system, a money system where gold isn't the only anchor for the value of the currency. now he's not alone. during the years the federal reserve act was being debated and pretend, 1910, 11, 12, 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.

irving fisher was the best-known american economist at the first half of the 20th century and once fisher got wind that edison is working on something, they met a few times and discussed the issue. what is an interesting sidelight there is that they both were interested in vegetarian diets and were very careful with what they ate and i ended up speaking possibly as much on the diet as economics and money. but they sure gave one of his books to edison. edison said i read your book. i think you're wrong in spots and i marked all up, so they were also vitally interested in the currency problem. fischer invited edison to go to congress and present his plan. edison demerit. don't know why. and maybe by that time, which was late 1922, he was kind of

finished with the issue. so does this have anything to say to us today? is a totally impractical and how did it go about doing this research? let me take the last one first. he was by that i am trained in a research method, which had rod tam access. and that was to study an issue as much as they could himself, but also turnovers the heavy work to research. and on this issue there wasn't an in-house research team. the battery shot, going to the machine shop, what were they going to tell them? so once he studied and studied and to protect themselves against looking like he was ignorant, you read the sources to justify henry hazlitt, a book about paper money and elation in france. he had lived through the

greenback. in south after the civil war. he was now on the train, an up-and-coming businessman, investor and it into the crisis crisis of 1907. so a lot of this is personal knowledge to him. he didn't have to be told, watch out for wild inflationary schemes. so what that means if he knew the dollar had to be back or he felt that it had to be backed by something real. no gold with the backing of the dollar, so we started by learning about the gold standard in the gold system. but dropped it onto that in the modern day as the banking system, retail banks, commercial banks. and then overseeing non-since 1913, really 1914, only has pair six, seven years before as the federal reserve system created to be a bank for banks. yet they really hadn't had time

to operate in a non-war. to know how they were going to act or for markets to know how they were going to act. within the structure of the federal reserve itself was the evidence of the long-standing distrust of centralized private power in the new europe bangs or centralized public power in washington d.c. so when the federal reserve was created, it was created as this kind of an attempt to compromise and diffuse power and spread out power across the country. so 12 federal reserve districts are created, each with its own fed reserve headquarters district bank, which is owned technically by his private commercial banks and then aboard public interest served by a board in washington d.c., today the board of governors to

oversee the system and to harmonize its operation. in the early days the individual federal reserve district thanks for looking to the board to harmonize their interests. they could act somewhat autonomously and has even made iran twice in a battle within the fad to bring more power from the federal reserve district thanks to the board in d.c. but that's a different story, a later story. a lot of this information told very where in history, but the federal reserve from alan not dirt to many others. so the federal reserve is a relatively new institution and the reserve district banks are finding their way. the new europe bank is shocking for position itself. more power because of where it's

located. that ran counter to what the framers of the federal reserve act were hoping for, but reality being what it is with the financial markets of new york. now back to edison. he starts layering it, looking at it, realizing it's very complicated in understanding the ticket into practical support for major change, he's not going to be able to cast federal dollars. using cold and gold that money is a mistake, but he also realizes he's got all of the business and all the international business community running uncle. you can't just have to wake up one day and say regime change coming in now, we're going to something different. so his attempt is to draft on a plan to help farmers to stabilize their income and hope that through time it grows evolutionary and becomes kind of

pushes gold out. so rather than throw pulled overboard, he is going to grab onto other commodities in order to help those producers in the same way the government implicitly helped the gold producer. euro gold miner you can pull out the government admits, have it ventured into coins. the farmer goes to the ground, called the cops come to burn it to the government and go home with money. i identified 36 props and recommended that the government build warehouse says starting with 12 to 14 across the country at the farmers could bring their crops to and receive an upfront

payment of the crowd saw you determined by an average of his 25 -- average it is pervasive the last 25 years. and was even equity certificate of ownership, so the farmers put in a thousand bushels of an average price of dollar. i'd be would be a thousand dollars. a farmer now can go pay off his or her the. the farmers got something for searching. if the price of wheat goes up, the wheat from the warehouse, so it on the open market and make the difference. it makes the money cost as well. so edison devices a plan that

says i to am i going to bounce this off quite risen every search team? there's a questionnaire, insurance company owners, federal reserve officials and economists, including william scott at the them. kemmer at princeton, sprague at harvard. these are pretty well known called money.reset their day. patterson at pennsylvania. and of course kind of sending them. so you want them to take a look and say my right or wrong? this is going to fly or is it a flop? >> these folks open up the envelopes same ascot is 2026

questionnaires sent out in early february of 1921. could you take a look at it? answered the questions and send the answers back. you get some polite inclinations of a few people. he doesn't hear from some others. they remember the questionnaire i sent you. it's fairly expensive answers to many people. it's fairly expensive answers to many people. it's fairly expensive answers to many people pretty good cross-section of bankers and businessmen and the economies. after the letters saying, and being fairly rude and impolite, edison writes, this is scott as wisconsin. edison price to the president at the university and says, you know, the guy basically called me senile. maybe i don't understand money but i'm trying to, believe me, i'm not past it.

i'm not seeing. scott writes that very humble apology. that hits the newspapers, cause this kind of a statewide upset. there are very many supporters of scott. trina gets a letter saying forget those guys, this academics never know what they're talking about. now edison starts getting these answers back. he hasn't really outlined his scheme totally to his experts. he's just kind of thrown different parts of questions out there, but variable to kind of infer what the basics of the plan are. with that creates sound money to farmers could bring their crops to the warehouse to get immediate payment. that would be pretty

inflationary. it would have a couple of problems. number one, you don't know how many crops might show up at your warehouse. this kind of ischemic injuries a lot of crops. they might even go across the border. secondly, in any lasting fashion it takes money out of circulation and puts money into circulation when you don't. it was actually kind of exacerbate cycles, not moderate them. thirdly, it would lead to political manipulation. by those 36? could and might crop be put on? pineapples weren't on. why couldn't we have might crop on? or is it conceivable doctors who say we have services, not crops, but why couldn't you put more crop on?

so the fairways before the gold manipulation would cause more inflation and the cost of building and maintaining warehouse is interest-free storage to the farmers. so at us and got a lot of negative, and from the people he considered to be the professionals and spoke with fisher, spoke with regard farouk who would today be called a technical analyst were chartist, statisticians market oriented. he predicted the 1929 crash. of course that was later on. so in the end, there was a lot of support for edison's planned, but edison said, you know, support was for the gold standard, the people said it's not perfect, but it's what we know, what is god and what we've had.

edison wrote to a few people, subsequently said it better get back to my day job. i spent a couple months intensively at this. i better get back to what i do well. you said you'd wait in 30 years time my scheme will look much more attractive. economists from john maynard keynes to friedrich hayek to john nash of all the pros some sort of commodity backed money. it certainly opens the the purview that addison was that just kooky guy stumbling around in the dark, but with his inventive genius he may have had something to say about trying to stabilize, perhaps it's not price is, just it less farmers income. of the federal government ultimately ended up doing a and so his lobbying efforts in

congress were really taken up further because the federal government ended up allowing the federal reserve to extend loans to banks based on farm credit and loans for businesses. and that was the first of the federal reserve act become a more expand she hairy or quantitative easing and allowing the federal reserve to extend loans based on difference collateral than they had in the founding document. the federal government went to price support programs and other programs that supported farmers much more directly and much more the farmer could see them consequently the order. and so, things take addison's commotion may have put the farmers somewhat indirectly and got a relatively high cost word

but just more directly by helping farmers direct way. in a day they were helping farmers directly, probably with a more efficient in terms of both ways to go about it. so in terms of what edison's views this as today, number one, he was right about the gold standard. he was working in 1921. in 1933 the franklin delano roosevelt administration eliminated monetary golden circulation. for all intents and purposes for the average guy in the that was the end of the gold standard. they also for international transactions valued gold for just under $21 an ounce of gold to $35 an ounce of gold. there is an almost 70% inflation

instantaneously. so is the gold standard just rocksteady guarantee of a stable currency? the answer is of course that. he can be politically manipulated. it has to it will continue to be. the only saving grace when they say is it's pretty obvious to me change goals price for the price of gold changes. but edison was right. what was put in its place? reliance on the federal reserve to manage money relatively stably. and if you look at what is happening to the price level, the average price level through time since 1913, 1 dollar purchasing power in 1913 is roughly 10 cents today. that might be a little bit high. and so, how is the fed done?

well, money has depreciated, one, but maybe in a more stable fashion so as a kind of is to a story. the last thing that's interesting about edison be is when you look at what the federal reserve is trying to date, for example, in the recent financial crisis, by and toxic financial asset from financial firms and insurance companies at the time and so on, the question is how many of those mortgage-backed securities was said in a bushel back at that the fed is paying cash for. did they determine the price by average of the last 25 years? we don't know, but the fed has opened a right of asset purchases under quantitative easing to include a lot of assets while their nonfarm crop

are crops of one sort or another produced by one firm of industry or another and they've done this in order to holster the financial system. this is in a disposition on as the fed right or wrong. it is if you look at this in a particular way, it looks a little abyssinian. and to give the old adventure his view, maybe his prediction wasn't that far off. now all of the correspondence and materials that the book is based on com from the thomas santa fe national, historical part in west orange, new jersey. they were incredibly helpful. there's another group of rockers headed by paul israel, the thomas edison papers project. i participated, co-authored for academic papers on ms. with

douglas wills at the university of washington of tacoma and one of the papers was the co-author and college here come the eric kim. my guess is 10 people in the world haven't read all four of those papers. and i wanted to tell this story in a way that would appeal to the intelligent reader is not a trained economist. so after looking at this insane well, that book is probably over my head, it probably isn't. what i think is kind of a fun tale, a lively episode of edison life and also gives us an appreciation for the issue and the militarization of demand to try to use his inventive genius to help solve matches the problems of lighting or electricity, which of course those are huge, but in many spheres of people's lives. the last thing you think and all

that should probably take a lesson from this. he knew when to quit. it's something that ultimately affect that was interesting and still may be worth pushing, which are pushing against a lot of resistance, give it up. let somebody else take it out. you might be ultimately proven right, but she can work too hard. you can get too lost in one idea. so i think it shows edison been edison in a context where we say thomas edison, money. who knew? so i will open it up to questions. [applause] >> david, very interesting talk. i was struck by the apparent similarity of some of his ideas

and some of the populist ideas of the late 18th century, similar deflationary episode that people were struggling with it the farmers are very much the backers of populism in the very much the banks of new york. a bit of anti-semitism, all this conspiracy talk to you to define any connection between addison's ideas in the populist group? >> well, there are and is probably one of those things edison had a bit of an idea because he's living proof of the time. and the 1870s 1980s, the southern alliance, which was a farmers group proposed that they called sub treasury plan, which was a warehouse commodity storage plan. i don't think edison knew about that. he never referred to it instead i'm borrowing from this plant.

and we first learned about that thanks to a tip from my sons teacher who was reading about it in high school. but that also feeds into what was going on, just the whole populist movement and the money would've been at the time. kind of taking off in and assertive apogee. this crown of thorns in the 1896 democratic convention. but the pre-silver movement was all about the rising political power of the west. as the territories became stiff and got two senators, they had as much political power. and so, the interest, especially in nevada, just five william

randel, her spotted was one of the first senators from nevada, it was pushing very much for a pre-silver movement to guarantee the price of silver. so edison is kind of coming out of, not that he knows all this, but the incredible fermented turmoil triggered by monetary questions, political questions. and so by this time he comes up with this scheme, and they found this at the federal reserve act is almost like people didn't want to revisit and we fight the fight a fight in 1860s, 1870s, 1880s. but there are these plans, but just saw this different current prospects that he kind of lands on, not even realizing all this stuff is because he's had the

stock figure and a light bulb and zinman movies under the troll. so he comes that without the grape background reading a little bit, thinking it's a fair bit of study. most academics were the same, they didn't even look at all this staff. so there is this huge story out there and some very nice accounts of it. and the offshoot of that, too this federal policy to help with the combination sometimes of monetary act as opposed to, you know, bimetallism, but also what they were doing the terrace because if you money to help a group, put terrifying imports on their competitors is easy to put tariffs on mechanized to his family's farm goods.

so the farmer sometimes was caught in the middle. couldn't get a higher price for his output in the had to pay higher prices for the protected machinery. so it just goes so many different ways. that question will keep people busy for a long time. >> edison another quest for dollar, perfectly stable purchasing power. >> well, it's still charming and when we look at the short run, it's a rather disappointing price. sometimes we don't even know. we've got people today saying we're headed to is a big

deflation. the fed should be more act of this, more quantitative. other people say no wait a minute, they set up a situation where there may be a rising inflation in the future. what they are really debating is hey, we don't think the purchasing power of the dollar is going to be stable. some of them think it's going to be rising depending if they think there's an inflation or deflation. can you guarantee that end addison's analogy when you buy a poker chip at the table for a dollar when you cash it back in there is an analogy? >> the answer is no, you have to put your faith and trust in the federal reserve's creation of money and the fractional reserve banking system. being able in a sense to guess where people's desire to hold money is going to go, what the rates of production about public

go and you're trying to do something that can be done. and the longer run, there's probably hope. that may ribeye on different standards for different principles, cooperating principles for central bank my scary authorities or for a move towards competing private money or some totally different standard. again, that is a huge question. do we get there used to give government divided not lay money is the only alternative. and it may be and not be, but i'm not here to beat the band for yet another program. but if it can be done, nobody has done it yet with paper money. i would have bought this

historical examples of failure from the chinese of 1100 to the germans in the 1920s, the zimbabwe of 2002 to 2008 to argentina and the hyperinflation [inaudible] [laughter] >> yeah. >> i wanted to mention that i really ensure your boat. in particular come to history about the federal reserve, which i wasn't fully aware of. my question is, what is the length between monetary policy and economic policy and is it different today than it was back and edison time quick >> economic oc to me federal fiscal policy? >> exactly. >> the connections usually seem a bit divorce. fiscal policy is the last group were meeting first. so the governments management for managing money and for tax

revenue and money up to expenditure programs and typically that is handled in the legislative and executive branches and wrangling the ec co-mod and so on. monetary policy is how many dollars are out there. and that is basically under the purview of the federal reserve system, which is file created by a congressional act, it is an independent agency independent of the fiscal authorities. is it technically those policies can be different, but for an economy of course it's better they be coordinated. for example, in some theories that there's high unemployment and you believe that government should do something about it, they should try to do something about it with both. if you play they can't, they shouldn't try to do something about it with both policies, but they should coordinate here but they're not always court made it

and sometimes an essay today is one of those concerns that fiscal policy, and you hear this at the with ben bernanke now, the chairman of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. when he goes to congress and says he does have to come up with a credible fiscal plan going forward that is credible so people can see you have a plan to bring the revenue and expenditure streams into balance because right now the expenditures are 1.1 trillion greater than the receipts. he says that for the following reasons, not because he was just a save richard monetary policy were doing well and you guys are stinking up the fiscal policy. he is saying that because if they continue to run these large deficits, the only way they predict finances by burrowing because the deficit by virtue of the fact is they were not taxing enough to cover.

when we borrow, we're going to issue ious or bonds. bernanke and the fed are concerned that the day is going to come when they are the only people left to buy those and that forces their hand. they've been put into a tighter and tighter corner and if that day comes that accepts vary the prices people will bonds with higher interest rates. and of course high interest rate, you know, ran against having any ability to a recession orbiting recovery. so the day comes that the fed's last buyer of the federal government bonds, not that i think that day is near, but bernanke wanted to send a message to the lioness because the way they buy bonds is a print money. that then becomes's warehouse.

here the cash in the fed's warehouse is the bond. and it's out there floating around. and what the federal reserve is worried about anything probably rightly so is they basically just become subsidiaries to the plan of the government in what they don't see is a credible fiscal plan, at least listening to bernanke's word. no, thank you. >> yes, a question here. you think tom is addison's proximity new jersey with manufacturing and home ice to new york city, which was the financial world, wall street, et cetera and the fact that he didn't always get financed for his production.

do you think this is a possible reason of his interest in another financial system or to the gulf necessarily? >> i don't know the location, that is experiences with the financier and all the big banks, the big names, vanderbilt, jpmorgan, jade cooled. he felt that it got burned a few times. now he also knew they were the only ones they are and you have to give something up to get something. what he did mike and a lot of people don't like going back to aristotle and that then get transferred through st. thomas aquinas in march, these are not necessarily all great thinkers, the big thinkers was the idea gain interest. you just couldn't see it. why did you have to pay interest

with the view being towards that goal that i'm paying interest on is just sitting there. it's not doing anything. the victrola comes and does some thing, but what is he just sitting there? why should the banker -- the money broker, the profiteer get to charge interest for it? why should vanderbilt -- so she wanted to design not a nonfinancial system, but wanted to get the thought of what the invention is saying and he wanted to devise, which would save the farmer from the interest terror. now that is like going to a car rental agent being said hey, you know, that cars just sitting there. what are you wanted to to me for nothing. what does the car rental agency said? gee, dave, that sounds like a great idea.

they say the problem is the guy standing behind you. he may pay us to rent a car and that is where edison in the anti-interest people kind of missed the boat. the money sitting in the bank, the guys standing behind you might want to use it. so you've got to get away from him or her. and the same i definitely don't get rental cars for free. they're sitting on the lot. you can go see them. someone that will cut than three hours time in rent a car. if you've got it, they can print it out. so i think edison missed the boat a little, but he also wouldn't rent or wouldn't sell cars until he was finally forced into it by chevy in the mid-1920s. ford didn't want the farmer, typically the buyer, to get in over his head. it's also true probably in a heavily agrarian society, how do

you repossess a card that the farmers stopped making payments on? would you then find the car on a 1600-acre farm? >> is allowed, good luck. but the repo man does the work as well. in fact, i think it was more the interest of just being located. it was located close to new york city because the harbor facilities, the workforce and he loved writing to people, got some support. if your image were, come see me. really few minutes away. conman will get directions. >> edison and ford were trying to be more pragmatic than these people on wall street. >> well, that was in the quote. the farmer knows exactly what the bankers doing. it isn't the intent as bad. it's the system that's bad.

so i'm thomas edison. i'm going to make the system that makes this at good because we know people are just people. let's see if we can design the system of checks and balances that makes them happy in a way where they don't profiteer and so on. >> yeah, i am kind of curious about edison political viewpoints in general, specifically the role of government. you know, jay paul krugman, said his pro-fiscal spending and pro-government intervention from using government spending and government building highways commit doing things in the economy physically. on the other side you have ron paul started against that sanders so role for government and that we don't need any game. we'll do it ourselves. it's sort of an ultimate fiscal championship today. krugman on one side and ron paul on the other, where would he

fall in his general viewpoint over the role of government is? >> boy, that is probably more for a political scientist, but let me give you a couple of views. edison is one of these guys have it quite a lot time. he was born in 1847 and because he was such a well known and famous camino county be america's most famous guy, the orders with code to a house or lab on his birthday in february every year and say what's going to happen in the last year? and in 1914 and february he said the biggest thing that happened was the reserve act that was just passed in december of 1913. this is good for the reserve system that had a. nobody really knew what it was going to be, but it might turn into is different than what it was designed as.

but it didn't say hey, congress sought to keep their hands off of people. he thought that was just what was needed in order to curb private power, which i think in getting back to the previous question is i think he thought the money brokers, the profiteer is that too much of. did he want the government to take it over entirely? i highly doubt it. but i thought as a regulatory move, he really had hoped for it. so that was the thing he mentioned. adding those people in early 1914 wouldn't consent to the federal reserve. on the flip side than the sherman antitrust act cannot, he thought that was volatile because he thought it was written by a bunch of lawyers to nothing about business. and again, i don't interest angle was they should just of it entirely because they know nothing, but his angle is they should have consulted with some of those businesspeople to craft

a better act because he thought the sherman antitrust act. so i think edison would come down on the kind of partying coolidge view that we get out of recessions one person at a time locally coming municipally, states that and we don't look at federal government for job creation, but that we do look to it for a stable, rational rules of the game but assist everyone, but i voted against the farmer or even murdered for the farmer in that respect. so i think it puts in straggling, if you build come in the sense that he recognizes there's a role, recognizes there's a federal role, but in

terms of today's action and activism, i would think he would just be astounded. yeah, that is going to have to speak for himself. there's probably a stack of documents somewhere that someone is writing. or it may be in one of the edison projects volume. and -- anything else? yeah. you know, i certainly want to thank everyone for coming. if you've got the book and enjoyed it can detain you back. if you don't have the boat, for those of you not hear, www.amazon.com. e. versions and the paperback.

or www.dot harvesting gold.com, all one word. please feel free to e-mail me with any comments. hammes@hawaii.edu. [applause] >> coming out next