the only part of that sentence that is accurate is undeserving. they were undeserving. they did not deserve it. but when the ship is sinking, you do not look at it that way. in fact, the process is tremendous. the financial part, as you may recall, the financial part has turned to profit for the taxpayer. making sure that we didn't go into the kind of scenario that a lot of people were feeling. and yet is vilified. it is a code word for an awful

government program. it's not that things could have been done better. if you read this chapter on this book, i have a number of things where i think it could have and should have been done better. that withstanding, that means about 67% of the time. i don't take it to be a damnation of what could've been done. the other thing i worry about is the whole country, but especially the financial system is drifting back to business as usual. nobody is worried about them, and that is great. but we are starting to see risky behaviors of the sort that people are too scared of.

in the days after the crisis, they are becoming braver now. there are places where we like bravery but we might not necessarily be one of them. it starts with an interpretive history the first number of chapters. it is not journalism. those looking to find out who is eating at an italian restaurant and was interrupted by somebody, i don't do that. i have read these books and i have gone a lot of things out of them. a lot of books about pieces of the crisis. i'm trying to be more holistic and interpretive and explain to people what happened. quoting yourself is terrible.

did anyone get the license plate of that truck? [laughter] this is the way a lot of americans feel. we don't quite know why the driver was there at the time. and a bunch of things like that. those are the kind of thing things that i have tried to deal with. especially, as i was saying just a few moments ago, especially with the policy responses, which were manifold, complex, often counterintuitive. they left many americans feeling that ironically the government turned against them. when, in fact, the government is doing a lot of good things and then got us through the great

depression. there was a paper written on this a couple of years ago. it was estimated that without these policy responses, we would have been looking at a rate we have not seen since the 1930s. no one can know for sure, but it would have been a lot worse. i think it is important to have a understanding of why the federal reserve did what it did, why we had the stimulus package, it did in fact raise the deficit. we all know that the deficits are a bad thing. bigger deficits are bad, other things were not all that close and there was a rationale.

the biggest message of the book was the rationale, this paradox that there were massive markets that ran amok. they went off the track. the government came in not perfectly, but pretty effectively to try to put things back on track. at the end of the day we witness, and you have all witnesses, is quite sharp backlash. americans have never liked big government. but there was a reason for government interventions. it was a market failure in the financial world. the likes of which we have not

seen since 1930s. if we had done nothing about it since then, the 1930s probably would've been a preview of what was to happen. nonetheless, you did have this backlash against the government in general, against president obama, present bush left office shortly after they started. against the democratic party more generally, against the federal reserve. against keynesian economics, i am prepared to defend if anyone would like to ask about that. this was encapsulated to me by two events that kind of book ended the backlash period. my favorite cartoon from the crisis appeared in the new yorker around march of 2009, i think. and it showed a page that was

set in medieval courtyard, and the king's head is on the chopping block. the page runs in and says, government is part of the solution, not part of the problem. and that lasted about two or three months. after that, people started thinking that the government was part of the problem. when it's book ended, it was appended with the 2010 elections. which is really angry at him cummins, people that voted for t.a.r.p. and it resulted in the biggest turn of the republican party ever. it was this angle that i was talking about. as i take a few more minutes, is that okay? okay.

very briefly why was this anger directed at the government? well, first of all, i think there was a terrible thing. people are upset when they or their friends or family members lose jobs, and many people lost jobs. the vast number of innocent victims they got dragged out, i don't know how many people you could actually point to. human beings that do things that deserved and led them to deserve their fate. they can't be more than a few thousand. maybe a few tens of thousands. we have 315 million people in this country, and virtually everyone was a victim of the events that followed the collapse. despite this, you can count on the fingers of one hand, and you do not need all five, you can

count up the number of people that went to jail. this is in stark contrast to the savings and loan debacle of the late '80s and early '90s of something around 750 to 100,000 miscreants in jail for what they did. now, am i sure that a thousand people should have been a part of this? no. fraud is a high bar to prove. but five or three, i could actually only think of one. he's not even that well known. [laughter] somebody said yes. this is a good audience. number three, this is way above the national average. he was the most prominent guy in the financial market actually went to jail for this. bernie made off is a whole

different thing. you are hearing is now in 2013. it's a little bit late. a bank bailout is going to be hated no matter what. if the government does everything perfectly, including explaining things perfectly, which is my next point, it will still be hated. to my mind, there are degrees of hatred. so the next point, if the government had explain better what it was doing and why. let's include the obama administration. the american people still would have been upset by the bank bailout, but i think that they could have a more accurate perception of what really happens when they do, for example, when i mentioned before. as those of you who have been paying attention, now you do

have to listen to the backlash of the federal reserve. as if it came out of nowhere and started grabbing power everywhere. i can remember "the wall street journal" attacking ben bernanke for printing money. the federal reserve prints money. who knew? [laughter] >> this is why we have the federal reserve. this is what we have been doing and to a number of americans, this is a revelation of big government and you have these unelected people. doing things that they didn't know they could do, all of which were perfectly legal, by the way. you had the explosion of deficits. americans have always had a live service level. as long as we have polling data, this was back the least into the '30s, i am sure it was earlier than that as well.

it is bad to have a budget deficit. franklin roosevelt railed against that against herbert hoover, for example. if you look at the polling data, you also see there was a single exception of spending on international affairs. foreign aid, single exception, americans oppose every single thing that might reduce the deficit. and if any piece of spending and plurality and the majority of americans in this. the response to this crisis to blow up two levels of debt that we never imagined possible, that certainly did not do us any good. most controversially, and i'm

sure the president of the united states does not agree with us, but in my view, it wasn't just that he focused on the laser beam of the economy. the economy was nowhere near as bad as the one barack obama inherited. he was doing so many things at once. he accomplished an incredible amount of stuff. but one result of that was it was very hard for the american electorate to see all of these things popping up. like with good health care reform have to do with getting people back to work. the answer is not anything really. it was a good thing to do in its own right. and so you have people watching this burst of activity and not really perceiving the job that

the obama administration presented as a much worse things that we could've had. if i have talked to already, i thank you. let me stop there and see what other questions we have. matt. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. >> we will take some questions. >> this is a bit of a town meeting. if you are comfortable saying your name, please do. please line up at the microphone and please ask a brief question as opposed to a long speech. >> my question is people were

blamed for lack of personal responsibility, but the banks are in a position to see whether people could take it and if they didn't, if they chose not to look, that was their problem, and that would've put more money in people's pockets and we wouldn't have had these hundreds of thousands of people. >> did you hear the question? >> you just posed were the hardest questions about this whole crisis. >> in order to get this behind us and face the reality, the answer to your question is clearly yes. that would been part of the problem. given the volume of bad

mortgages, had that been done on a large scale throughout the country, a very large fraction would've been absolve him. and we would've had gigantic claims on the fdic to make good on the positives and the need it seems to me unwilling an unlikely that the taxpayer via the elected representatives would've been willing to come up with that much cash. they had the order to a lot of voters and they just wouldn't have the public support. now you can have these banks to more realistic value, and now we will have and make up a number.

5000-acre banks on him. that is what i had on your answer. >> thank you. >> dick smith, ordinary citizen. >> i'm just wondering if you could say something. i am sure that the book does. even though we have a look at it yet, about where we stand now in your opinion with respect to financial regulation. >> the question is where we stand now. i think that we stand -- i think we stand with the fifth or sixth inning of what could be a good ballgame once over. but it's not over. what do i mean by that more specifically? i think the dodd-frank legislation, which is the main reform legislation was passed in

2010, it is a pretty good bill. now, nothing that is 2319 pages long is going to be flawless. many people have criticized us for a number of reasons, including myself, although i am an admirer as a whole package. but in the united states of america, the legislation that congress passes is just the beginning. the regulatory agency then has to flesh out many details in this gets ridiculed as if it's silly. it is not silly. congress right skeletal legislation. if you just read some of the things in any law, including dodd-frank, you ask what does that actually mean specifically. that is why it is a regulatory bill, the regulators have to flush it out and the pages are

goodness knows how many pages. tens of thousands and it's not over yet. many of those things are still on the drawing board. many of them are being fought tooth and nail by the industry. i will give you one example, which is one of my pet peeves. dodd-frank goes someway, and i applaud them towards forcing derivatives to be standardized and traded on organized exchanges. stock options are a derivative. that is a very familiar derivative that has been standardized for decades. it works really well. one upshot of that is that if you decide that you would like these prices of $419.27 a expire on your birthday, you can't do that. you go to the market and it is

closest to what you want to see. if there is a counterparty, if you are in trouble because there is no exchange between you, these were the dangerous ones, these were the ones who got us into big trouble. dodd-frank take some of that on and the industry is fighting back ferociously. i don't think it has gone far enough. but in the right direction. that is one example of the volcker rule making this example. things are yet to be done.

>> in regards to the fiscal cliff and the cumulative effects and policies in particular, that of maintaining interest rates artificially lower, which you call quantitative easing, i ask especially because recently economic journalist william cohen had an article on the front page of "the washington post." this is what he said. quantitative easing not only hurts older americans on fixed incomes and loans that are dutifully saved for retirement, and these are people who can't afford to take advantage of historically low mortgage interest rates. mainly the quantitative easing

helps the wall street banks and traders with a dynamic that could be setting us up for another financial crisis as investors have high-quality investments that wall street is only too happy to provide. >> i do not agree with the last part. i don't think there are a lot of people that are just provided. they have a lot of winning there, but they like to get more than that. that being said, what you said -- [talking over each other] what you said about low interest rates hurting people in general who live in general, that is largely older americans --

nonetheless, we still need the medicine. this is helping bringing the housing market back to life, now it is definitely coming back to life. this last quarter, it and has done a lot of good for business investment. firms can borrow very cheaply. that is necessary to pull us out of this muck. so there is a reason for the very low interest rates. it is unfortunate that they are bad for some people, yet good for others. as to crisis in the future, my guess is that there is a problem for the future that won't be a crisis. when interest rates are so low they can basically only go up,

and we are pretty much there, that means that eventually they will go up. the key word in that sentence is eventually. this does not look round the corner to meet or ben bernanke and his friends at the federal reserve. the city has substantial control over that. when they do go up, there will be capital losses all over the place. interest rates go up. the prices go down. that includes my wife and i, we are going to suffer capital losses. and the risk management system of financial institution fails, like they filled in 2000 and 2009, if they do, they do will be serious lawsuits to a lot of

institutions. if that happens, we should hit them over the head with a sledgehammer. it's not that they screwed up badly at that time, but they should have learned something from that. if they are not, they are going to suffer significant losses. that is inevitable. the only question is the timing, including the speed. although you never know for sure with markets. the housing bubble collapses pretty fast. this bond bubble, if you want to call it that. the question, of course, people should be listening. they should be listening.

it should not cause a financial craddock wisdom. >> hello, i am an ordinary citizen, ordinary citizen number two. >> not just a second, but there have been several yankee talk about the efforts made by the government. >> we talked about it to poor is in the system to stabilize it. the previous system, it is also the increased government debt. as a result, the federal balance

sheet has ballooned significantly. do you see this as a threat if it is not balanced soon enough? what you think a timeline is for a good way to wind us up? >> so how do we get out of that, which is exactly what chapter 14 talks about. call this a trillion dollars among friends. a trillion dollars, now has about $3 trillion. the fed wants to go back to something much closer to $1 trillion eventually. let's just say $1.5 trillion. they have not enunciated a

specific one. is this difficult? no, not technically. when people talk about this, they got into this by going to the marketplace and buying a lot of stuff. mortgage-backed securities and treasuries, mostly. you can get out of it by selling a lot of stuff. timing is crucial. they will not dump it all at once. they are not going to do that. they have responsibility and they will sell it out gradually. there is conceptually an absolutely ideal perfect rate of selling down assets.

nobody knows what that is, including ben bernanke, who is a very smart man. the fed will have to try to find that rate by trial and error. it's not selling fast enough, it will see the market reacts. now, will they get it? no. the inflation target is a part of this. ..

but i just don't see any evidence for. >> is that right? i appeal to the church year to answer. >> my name is justin galt and i'm also an ordinary citizen. i had a question about something you touched on earlier and i suspect is also in your book about the lack of prosecution towards potential offenders. it's kind of a two-part question. the first question is, why do you think the government did not prosecute where people above that the price is then are we

now past the point where we would see prosecution for potential offenders? speed the second question looks to be easier to answer, which is i don't exude. it's been a frustration of nine and millions. to get to this job, because put off and put off and you can see the administration gearing up to do more about it now quietly. so i think there will be more. why not? is asking myself this question for years. i've been scratching my head, wide day doing some data about earthquakes the main reasons are one i have booted to that fraud is a high bar to jump in and many of these cases may not have

been a fraud. misleading people is not quite a fraud, though if you do it enough, it is a fraud. the government has lost a few cases taking people to court and lost because they couldn't cross the high enough for fraud. the other reason that bothers me frankly is a feeling in some parts of the government for taking too many financial executives to court is going to upset the markets. i hope it was more the first reason than the second. it's hard to get into peoples heads that they were really thinking. >> thank you very much for your years of service and for writing this book. we are paying a big price for

the polarized politics in america. we had these gerrymandered districts and extremes going against a lack of compromise. as bob woodward wrote an interesting vote here recently, the price of politics and the failure to make a meaningful compromise on the budget and i'm just wondering, how do you see the interaction of politics with which it be a more rational policy coming on to the fiscal side and monetary side? >> it's going to be hard for me to answer that question without sounding partisan. so a lot of you know that i am a democrat. if you don't, i have now revealed it.

i think along with norm ornstein and tom mann that a lot of you may be familiar with a book that it's not really symmetric. it's not 100%, 0% either, but it's far from 50/50 and i think you up out of party in the united states moved very far right. so far right that if you extracted from the man who is very appealing personally and just imagine ronald reagan's views on everything being embodied in a current politician, i don't think the republican party would accept it. he's way to last. and that makes compromise difficult. as i said, there is a wing of the democratic party that also doesn't want to face up to the reality that it's often said we have to curb entitlement. this is not true. we have to curb health care

spending. if we could get health care spending under control and fix social security, which is really easy and wouldn't have to do anything horrible, forget about the rest of the entitlements. first of all, there's hardly any money they and they don't matter. sure in the long-run budget problem -- cannot be in the next few years. look out over a decade. sure the long-run budget problem is coterminous with them in the cost curve, the health care cost curve downward. there are some democrats that are just again about, not doing anything about medicare and medicaid. but it's not the majority. you may remember about that site might be a grand bargain, and that of angry at president obama because he was willing to compromise things on medicare. organ hostages. having said i am a democrat, the

first will democrat in the second will be for the other side. it is not politically realistic will fix this budget problem without more revenue. revenues for like $60 billion a year. this is deficit of eight children a year. the numbers don't compute. on the other hand, if you look at the wrong run projections or anybody else who makes long-run projections, it is ludicrous to think we're going to close that hole gap. impossible. we would have to accept race that swedes accept. we are not swedes. americans will not allow 52% of their gdp to be represented by taxes. we want. and so, if there is going to be a realistic long-run solution,

it is going to have to be curbing health care spending one way or another. here are the things that will solve the whole problem. i can't. >> color. my name is renée not here. i wonder if you would like to respond to steve pearlstein otherwise favorable review, where he asked why you had put the financial crisis in the context of global trade imbalance. >> could year the question? steve pearlstein in the "washington post" finished his review as i recall, for not blaming the global trade imbalances for the crazies. the answer is because that is not what caused it. [laughter] we have had trade imbalances,

which means we've been borrowing from the rest of the world for decades. there were people in this or that it's their entire lifetime. not my entire lifetime. but it's like decades and we didn't have anything like what happened over the mortgage blowup and the derivative signal that status. the world is interconnected and causation is always running in both our many directions at once. but this is clearly a case where shenanigans in the united states and also some other countries. ireland, iceland, england, et cetera emanated to the rest of the world. it wasn't the rest of the world doing it to us. it was a student to the rest of the world and that is my answer to why i didn't blame these international trade imbalances for the crisis. >> good evening. i have been button and i am an

economist. >> as opposed to an ordinary person. >> that is what i'm sometimes told. on the author and hypotheses for your comment. at the time the obama administration was trying to determine the size they were opposed for the stimulus package, there's an expectation that if they didn't do anything, the amount of gdp decline would be a certain level. the trajectory was to be far safer and a primary criticism is not that it was too large or woefully is too small. >> i have to agree with that and let me explain. let me just put on my economist hat because that is what i am. if you look at the peril facing us and indeed what has happened already and what was likely to happen, a leisure fiscal stimulus was called for if you view it as this big gap that we

had to fill a large hunk of it they fiscal stimulus to save the economy, that would've taken much more than $800 billion. if i take off my economist hat and put on that ordinary citizens have, which is much more important, the notion that says to pick a number, a $1.2 trillion stimulus bill could have gotten through the united states congress was totally fanciful. i don't know what is the exact maximum amount of stimulus that could have passed the congress, but the obama administration came really close in the vote looks like it was really close. so rather than being stubborn and save 1.2 trillion or bust, we've got rest. i'm very glad to compromise an 800 billion, soweto criticized them at all for that.

>> i am not a citizen, but i pay taxes here. >> i want to see they're not wasted. i'm not sure i agree with your assessment that he was too big, disgraces. in the future, students will say this crisis did need to have been. u.s. mortgage debt was about 10 trillion if i remember for which 1 trillion within the sub prime. they are also standing there. so even if you mark them as 50 cents on the dollar, people holding those bonds face losses of 500 billion, only half of which were held by banks. bob mcnamara server pc masses of the billion. the reason why the crisis happened was because banks didn't know which of their colleagues was holding a staff.

so they stopped lending to each other, dried up liquidity, so the price fell below what the value of the underlying houses were worth. the regulators then insisted markets or market, which then began to threaten adequacy. so it mushroomed completely out of control is the lack of transparency in regulators and market to market. back in the real economy, the debt service ratio was only slightly above previous peaks. 15% previous peaks. everybody that does this debt income ratio. it's a test service to income ratio. so i fear this crisis did not need to happen if banks have been transparent in regulators had shown some forbearance. that being said, the guys who

made mistakes at the bank are still there. the guys who ran goldman sachs and bet the bank on aig are still there. if this had in mexico, they would have been removed. >> i agree with almost everything you said. we take the parts i don't agree with. as the previous questioner asked, the mortgages were not marked to mark for that reason. basically everything else is correct in the thing i would like to add however, especially the fact that this crisis could've been avoided. but i don't think it is because of the regulators forcing things to be marked to market. it was because of the mistrust, lack of transparency, who can you trust to deal with? the inconsistency of the treatment of bear stearns

amendment others, which really threw the market for the loop. and the important part you admit it, but i don't think i disagree with is that on top of the trillion or so of dubious mortgages, probably even less than a trillion was built by wall street, pdas and make believe that complicated stuff that hardly anybody, including wall street banks understood and all of it, however, was predicated and this is where my title comes from, the music continuing to play. the music being house prices keep going up. that house prices had kept going up 10% a year from 2006 to this very day, imagine where they would be, but none of this collapse would have been.

it was this inverted. men have securities and derivatives batch of $500 billion of mortgage law says and turned it into trillions and trillions of dollars of financial losses and that was crucial to making the crisis is biggest device. that was why in the early days of the crisis, smart people linking policy to ben bernanke who was then handed the fed would send this is not that big and will probably be contained. it was only the mortgages, they would have been right. but it wasn't. it was a lot more. >> high. richard wisner, and interested citizens. i went to pgt and your book. i figure if i get there at august the answer to my

question. it has to do with troubled assets starting with bear stearns, we heard dirty billion dollars had to be extracted from their book and many other banks are helped out, all these bad assets were taken off and observed by the government. but i don't hear any more discussion. i wondered where they? are they going to be packaged or are they still nonperforming? how big is that the more they? >> first of all, the government did not acquire all that many of the bad assets. they acquired son. the big purchases huge volume for by the federal reserve of workers backed securities, the securities based on mortgages and the federal reserve was hardly put this, somewhat picky about what it would buy.

is basically buying only the sandy, freddie guarantee paper, not all of which was fabulous, the sandy and freddie habits in this pool of junk, sand and freddie had the best -- some criterion you're thinking, but that is what the fed by. since then, since the worst of the crisis, those asset are appreciated in value very substantially. you know the buy low, sell high. that's what the federal reserve is doing. as of the treasury wound up doing with aig. buy low, sell high. so the answer is to restore the fed is still holding us to, the mbs. but if you had was smart -- actually the freddie snarkiness aftermarket. it's showing a huge profit. it doesn't want to sully up for the reasons we spoke of earlier,

but if the fed was going to sell it, it would be making a profit. the fact that is barely believable, that is not only to case the federal reserve's portfolio assuring a big profit on this purchases, but it hasn't by one single to third. i compare that to my portfolio. imagine if they didn't have a single loser in my portfolio. what's the reason? it bought at the bottom and nobody else would buy. it came in and bought the stuff in some cases at ludicrously low values. >> hello. i described myself as a fiscally responsible democrat and it's

been annoying me here after year the republicans who are viewed as fiscally responsible or not is left to the democrat. virtually all of the bush administration we had guns and butter in more guns, so you didn't even go to the first aid economics 101. so we now, the democrat have to try to work out stuff on the deficit. counter cans, which somehow the republicans overlook that. but my specific watershed is going back to the issue of interest rates. as you say, they've got to rise at some point and i am concerned that debt service on the government may wipe out or

severely hamper of these other measures they're trying to take. >> your right to be concerned. the interest rate on u.s. government debt held by the public is the part that matters. what is inside the trust fund doesn't matter because it's one piping another government pot. the part by the public is extraordinarily low. i guess i said before can only go by. you wouldn't expect it. it's basically at some point going to go up and that event, which i believe will happen slowly. there's always a chance it happens rapidly is going to read hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit. it's not a question of will this ever happening. it will happen. the question is only about the timing. as you suggest, that event or

the series of events as it takes place will wipe out a significant amount of deficit reduction that the congress is fighting so hard and calm so grudgingly to achieve. this is not going to be a happy time when it comes to budgeting for a long time. >> that something else that could have been avoided. >> pricey mansion could have been avoided. i would draw a distinction between running deficits for no good reason. fighting wars without paying for them. medicaid part d is a good program, but every other entitlement a revenue source to pay for. this one had none. there was any good reason for that. the big increase under president bob, how bob, had a reason for it. we were fighting a terrible recession.

>> in the bush tax cuts. >> how could i forget that? [laughter] [applause] >> this is the last question. the gentleman was moving in the wind before i finish speaking. >> thank you. i consider myself a nerd or a citizen. it should also disclose and the person who oversees the trouble that their beliefs program. first of all i want to thank you. i haven't read the book yet. i look forward to it, but having lived this, it's been very difficult to explain these things and i'm glad that you're doing it. i also would agree there are undoubtedly things who could've done better in this will become clear with time. it's still a little too close to really analyze that, but one i've seen you mention in

interviews that i would appreciate your thoughts on is the issue with code the program have been designed for more than name, but there's obvious issues they are as to whether you end up courage he lending, as to the demand side of the equation, too at the u.k. try to do, should work because they put covenants in the rescue to do that. i appreciate hearing your thoughts. >> the question has to do you know, do when the tire pros were written in the bush administration, there was no requirement as a condition of getting the money did anything with their lending portfolio or almost anything else. the public purpose conditions on the regional partner really knowledgeable.

so i thought there should have been found. for example, the taxpayer could have gotten more of the improbable upset could have been. if you think of the commercial terms of options, we could have done better. the hard question is the lending because the part that would have been the most good for the economy if it rains had some lending conditionality. while in normal times, that is exactly what she don't want the government to do. you don't want the government time thinks they should do more for the sector, that sector. with the government is becoming a shareholder and when public money is put at risk, it all turned out great, but it was put at risk. the public has a right to some public purpose conditionality. the one that would've done the most good but was probably the hardest to get to would have

been a reasonable thing to do something like me and said that her. just don't cut it. just start there. i'd like to think we could have pushed a little further. the danger of course is nobody wanted to go back to the lending standards at 2005 and we shouldn't have been pushing not. but i think there is room. not so easy. you're quite right to call attention to that. but there was room between nothing and crazy lending standards and we just had to explore that back in 2008, way before the obama crowd took over, let's be clear. [applause]

>> agriculture secretary tom vilsack said today to sequester budget cuts go into effect in two weeks, some new plants could close temporarily. the agricultural conference is next on c-span 2.

>> now, a conference on agriculture outlook for 2013 from the usda. agriculture secretary tom vilsack and from the senate majority leader tom daschle. the event starts at a chief economist for the department, discussing the effect the recent drought has had on crops. this is two hours and 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone. good morning. good morning, everyone. [inaudible conversations] i hear some response. i'm asking everyone to settle in for a great morning now.

hi there, everyone. and deputy secretary, kathleen merrigan and i want to welcome you to the 89th agricultural outlook forum. so every time we have a conference like they come the first person who can set up as the job of asking to please silence cell phones. thank you very much. on behalf of the secretary and usca, chief economist, i want to welcome you here to arlington, virginia, especially her international gas and all of those watching the forum by live webcast. we have several representatives from foreign embassies and we welcome you. thank you so much. we're honored to have you with us. organizing this conference with 25 different sessions is really quite a lot of work, so i want to be gained by thinking the organizers of the congress for

all they've done. i work with a top-flight team in the office of the chief economist. i particularly want to thank our chief economist, joe glauber and of course all the great the work they've done. they plan to very full days. i know we are going to learn a lot. along with the traditional commodity and food price outlooks, this year's program emphasizes the many ways agriculture must manage risk from finances to natural resources to transportation. one of the things i'm really excited about in this particular program this year is more time spent on certain vegetables, which are increasing importance in american agriculture and diet and we see them center stage in the sears outlook and that that futuristic thing. i also really excited to be here becaus h