pays a lot of your housing problems. there is also location based section a, but let's focus on the individual section eight. that was a plan that was used in chicago. there are a number of problems with section eight, although there are also some benefits. they want to be fair to the benefit. not necessarily always a beautiful place to live. it might not be as nice to live in public housing. i serve unrecognized and from having been side many public housing units will be -- well writing this book. the idea is that you have the freedom and the buzz word is freedom to choose where you want to live. now i think it is a program that really should be scrutinized more fully than we do in the country. there's a difference between freedom and access.

nobody wants to and no one is compelled to accept your section a voucher. you wind up going from house to house looking for a place that you can live with your family in a moment or frankly you need it the most and you reject it over and over again. another problem is it does not help you with the security deposit because it is just a monthly stream. does not happy with things that security deposits and of the of the types of things that you need to move into a rental apartment. if anyone has recently moved, it does not matter what your monthly rate is, that first month you will pay more. if you were abruptly evicted from public housing in the united states you might not have a lot more. you might have thousand dollars. but the third problem, and the one that i think is the most important is that when you tear down a public housing conflict that has stood for generations

and then you scatter the people with these vouchers in their pocket to just find housing wherever, you break up communities. the break up those types of ties that people rely on for survival , particularly when you don't have a lot of money in a country that values money above everything else. so i'm so sorry. it is the dispersal of fact. it is the idea that the port in chicago or simply sort of banished to the four corners of the city and suddenly there was nobody when the federal government had at least been supposed to look out, there was nobody who was checking to see what was going on and whether these and loans are being predatory. so many of them were because so many of the places where people ended up then fell into foreclosure and the landlord did not feel compelled to necessarily inform their tennant . so section eight, while it had benefits and important that we consider a program to help subsidize housing especially

when we live in a country where many homeless as i get you a fair market rental apartment in any major city in the united states, while it is important to consider programs like section eight, we have to recognize how we rose under the reagan administration and rose in get another way to us subsidize the private market, to have the federal government pay private landlords. and so in some ways section eight is simply turning the federal government into one of the largest clients of a slum landlords across the country. >> in closing i have one final question for you. the legacy of private property ownership. private property, the proposal

about now communal orders come i'm wondering what kind of servicing, and the idea of ownership, people who have restrictions on property rights. >> it is a really good question. i think that we're pretty -- no one speaks for everybody. you cannot universalize things, but i think that recently in the united states we have really liked contradictions. and so for me when we talk about more communal structure as it is not necessarily that we want to banish the private housing market, but it is that in my opinion many to open up the

possibility of a little, legal, and also imagines it where we can imagine different ways of structuring society and have the ability in one of the most diverse countries and the world to actually entertain the possibilities of diversity economic in speaking and structurally speaking. so to move back to your question in terms of person head and dignity, a lot of this does come down to a question of the dignity and rights. it comes down to a question that think is important, particularly me speaking as a white american to be willing to listen to people and validate and really here what they say they're experiencing. so when i spoke to hundreds of people, particularly african-americans to said that we don't have any rights in this country because this country on the cares about private property , that is actually something that i think many to listen to. it seems wise.

there is a segment on this. blatantly risking his theory. give him a little bit of credit. in every generation the status quo says we have achieved equality now. back then things were really bad. so in the 70's we achieve equality, but in the 50's, that socked. and in the 50's we achieve equality in, but if you went back to the reconstruction time where we but allegis said as the federal government that we're trying to redistribute land, take a lot of georgia and redistributed to the free slaves and then we will actually not do that. not going to have a policy. that moment socked. the 1950's, that moment is of great. i think it is important. in a moment, 2013 and we have achieved racial equality. we have a black president. come on. it is important for all of us regardless of our race or religion or anything to be

willing to listen to other people in society. if you don't feel like your rights as an american are insured then we have to do something about it and have to be imaginative about it and maybe collective ownership is the possibility. maybe something else is a possibility. in my mind it is that listening and that ability to recognize the voices of other people and validate their experiences as true and then being willing to imagine together how we could restructure things such that there would be different. that's coming to me, is our task. that is what i try to achieve in this book. [applause] >> who would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback. twitter.com/booktv. >> next on book tv, president

reagan's goal commission and calls for return the gold standard which she argues will help improve our economy. this is about an hour. >> after nine and welcome to the cato institute. director of financial loss of -- financial information studies and i am also on a disservice the moderator. one cannot long study the history of monetary policy of the united states without at some point coming across the writings of the liz lerman, whether his occasional op-eds in the "wall street journal", numerous books. a uniquely both accessible and insightful style when discussing monetary policy. it was for this reason, among others, that he was chosen in 1982 to serve on the u.s. gulf commission where he co-authored with ron paul the minority report the case for gold which i will now you can download a free copy of from kato institute website. the debate of our monetary policy in america to the extent

that they even take place aren't dominant but -- dominated by keynes used to have any more austrian voice to this debate. the central flaw in my opinion is that they both generally take the desirability of a government central bank for granted. the argument is really just over how you run it. his work has repeatedly reminded us of the importance of choice and competition in the room of money. after all, choice and competition are the hallmarks of free society, as our trust and honesty, elements that are far more important to the nature of money in something like price stability. we're also fortunate to and reformer cato institute alone to introduce an offer commentary. i should make sure that we all know there are copies. he will be around half torrance to sign copies. a very big discount off of the price. addison, again, i will introduce

momentarily, currently executive publisher of agora financial based in baltimore and is president of leasing farebox, which i no -- they should probably give me a little money back is someone i have spent over the years. before i turn over to addison i also want to offer my apologies for having to slip out near the end of the panel as i will be rushing over to capitol hill to testify before a house financial services committee on why we need to end fannie and freddie which might be the second-biggest after the federal reserve. with that, let me turn it over to addison. >> market. it is a great honor to be here today for couple of reasons. one of them is ten years ago or a little bit more than ten years ago, were to myself. i helped to sponsor forms just like this. so it is great to be back, and it is also -- it is a comforting thought that kato has continue

their work, gone on to a fairly illustrious career in publishing , and the troops have continued to give workers of bringing forth books like the one we're here to talk about today. the second great honor is just the opportunity to work with louis. we have become friends over the last several weeks or several months after meeting at the conference at the heritage foundation a couple of years ago had the virginity to visit louis at his home. gracious enough to allow a film crew to command is library and do a lengthy interview. we are very interested in the book is coming down now, and i will explain why in a moment. but it will help define a spy novel bit about what agora

financial is. agora financial is a regional publisher publishing investment advice for individual investors, people are trying to manage their money. to illustrate what that is like, for our own purposes, training, helping writers learn how to communicate with our audience, we went into our your database and we found a typical reader of our publications. actual character for a reader came in to our file. a 58 year-old dentist. he has a valuable skill for most of those. i want to keep my as long as i can. he went to medical school obviously to be very expensive to become a dentist. and then as he entered into his practice he had to become an entrepreneur. he spent most of his adult life

picking about dentistry and running a business. he has not spend a lot of time examining how the monetary system works or how the financial markets work or what goes on when he is getting the nightly news about the dow and gdp numbers and things like that. the first thing bonded when he realized he had enough money in his retirement savings account or about it is to give it to wall street's. and i made this comment on friday night at a venue in new york city. did not kill barrell. net income safe. the first thing that happened after you got his money was started losing it through bad decisions and through hi-fi's and he did not understand. a lot of trading going on. but bob is smart enough and sophisticated enough to know

that he can figure out. you can do the work on his own, figure out how the markets work, invest successfully on his own. he goes on line. he finds a gore financial. that is our core market. one of the first listens that we turn teach individuals are sophisticated enough to understand it, when managing their own money they have to understand that the dollar itself is what is under a planned obsolescence, what we used to complain about american car manufacturers. the strategy is in place to have the dollar eroded in value by 2% a year. if you listen to speeches given by the chairman of the federal reserve, currently mr. ben bernanke, they will tell you that is what the goal is. if they cannot get there, there is a little bit of deflation in the market, they want to spend

more or put more money into achieving that target. von's reaction at first his incredulous. he cannot believe that that is in place. .. >> it means that what costs $100 today of the money that he saved will cost $400, $500 in that

much time. another response that we often get is that, well, the dollar must be doing well, because it's rising against the euro, or it's rising against the yen. because that's in the headlines, if dollar moves up, then bob feels better about the economy. but the planned obsolescence is still baked in. one of my favorite lines from a movie that we produced a couple years ago called ire usa was uttered by the then-comptroller general of the country, david walker. just because you're the nicest looking horse in the glue factory doesn't mean you want to be in the glue factory. he was talking about the dollar being part of this race to the bottom that all fiat currencies are a part of. that's why i'm here today, because i think it's very important for this debate, this policy debate to be played out

in public. as mark alluded to, most of the debate is hijacked by keynesians and moderatists, and it's very difficult for an alternative point of view to get out there. so we've got, we're on c-span today, we've got the forum through our own publications, we've been publishing a lot of works, comments, talking about the interview that we've done, and we'll be issuing the, releasing the interview that we've done on our own web sites. and giving a copy of the true gold standard, which is another book that lewis has written, to members of the laissez-faire book club which are people that have come into our, into our reader lists and joined, excuse me, an economic club, essentially, to learn how the economy works and how the financial markets work so they can manage their own money.

when we were, when we were talking at your house, lewis, you made a very important observation. it was off camera, so we don't -- we haven't actually published it, but you mentioned that, you were sort of lamenting that the rise of the internet, the influence of the internet because in much of our own work and in the work of journalists around the world, it's very easy to look stuff up online and use that as your source material. it's much more difficult to go back beyond 1995 and look for arguments in this case about monetary policy because you have to go to the library and use microfilch. and that's a little more arduous than just keying things into google. lewis mentioned that he had run across that and founded goldstandardnow.org which is edited by mr. ralph bank coe,

sitting there in the front row, in order to dig up some of the pieces of the monetary debate that was being waged in the op-ed pages between, in the late '70s and early '80s, pieces that otherwise you would not be able to find be online. they're now housed at the goldstandard.org, and there's a conscious effort to reignite the public debate. ralph was writing in "forbes" not too long ago, rebutting a comment made by the economists, the new york university economist nouriel roubini that the argument for sound money through a classical gold standard was the province of nut jobs on the right wing, the fringe of the right wing, i believe, was the actual term that he used. and ralph did a very eloquent job of defending the public

debate, the very centrist and important job of arguing for a classical gold standard. not from a fringe, lunatic fringe or from the side, one element or another of the political spectrum, but to actually advocate a monetary system where bob can save a dollar today and know that it's worth that dollar in purchasing power 40 years from now. and i'm not exactly the most eloquent speaker on the subject, but i think we do have in lewis lehrman probably the most eloquent speaker advocating for the classical gold standard. so with that, i'll allow him to discuss the contents of his book, and then we'll open it up for questions and discussion afterwards. [applause]

[laughter] >> so i want to thank you, addison. congratulations for your just remarkable success with agora, laissez-faire books, even documentaries which win prizes in places like france. and, mark, i know the work you do here at cato. it's outstanding work, it's the center of, one might say, the regulation center, but it's really the center of deregulation. i also want to thank you for inviting me to cato today. there are many distinguished guests here today and my dear friends too. so i begin by declaring this a

period, an era unparalleled of financial disorder. indeed, a modern age of central banking now in its fourth century may be characterized by the rise and fall of real money. to historians, every decade is said to be preoccupied by specific issues. for example, from 2008 to 2013 international economic issues focused on want tative easing and the fluctuating purchasing power of the dollar. but the focus turns now from the fall to the rise of the dollar exchange rate and the consequence of its instability. on domestic issues goth economists -- government economists, the academics and talking heads of bubble vision are today focused on what they are pleased to call modest price inflation.

let it be said, however, that financial market participants know that instead of federal reserve quantitative easing not being expressed in the cpi, it is expressed in the successive price rises of speculative hedges such as commodities, foreign exchange, equities, bonds, farmland, real estate and art among other vehicles. these are the vehicles used by the so-called carry trades of the speculative and financial class empowered as they are by near-zero interest rates. the financial class gets the cheap fed credit first and able, thereby, to front run the fed's massive security purchases and then with the proceeds of new sales, they profitably arbitrage the prices of related assets and

securities. in fact, excess cash balances created by quantitative easing were reabsorbed during the past five years by the rising asset prices of the rich and by the export of excess be dollars abroad -- excess dollars abroad through the overall u.s. balance of payments deficits. these deficit payments themselves being partially financed by rising prices until a short while ago, the emerging prices began to rise. commodity prices again, foreign exchange rates and economic growth in the emerging markets themselves. at the moment, some of these trends are in reverse, making for reciprocal dangers. a word about the cpi. savvy statisticians have impeached the government methodology to compute the price be index, for example, using the

methodology of cpi computation in 1980, cpi inflation would have been close to 10%. using the government methodology of 1990, cpi inflation would have been closer to 6%. whatever and whenever the inflation, workers earning salaries and wages and those living on pensions and fixed incomes know that their paychecks and their minuscule income from savings do not keep up with their expenses which must be paid for at rising true market prices. and working people have also discovered that the creditworthy, liquid financial class with access to cheap money at the fed and at the banks has enriched itself not only by bailout subsidies, but by cheap financing derived from its similar yachtic dependence on the federal reserve system.

this, a fundamental cause of the rising inequality of wealth in america. but it is also true that fears of deflation persist in the world of commodities, equity, emerging countries and at the central banks. they haunt the fed and the financial markets. not least because foreign economies try to adjust to the unpredictable and disorderly fall and now, the rise of the dollar on the foreign exchanges. indeed, manipulated floating exchange rates engage all the demonic forces of late tent mercantilism and foreign exchange controls, the combination of which has the power to destroy the international trading system. as, in fact, it did during the interwar period from 1920 to 1940. so let me touch briefly on only

a few of these subjects, others during our discussion. in the full light of history, the past century has been preeminently the era of financial disorder, an era inaugurated by world war i, a catastrophic and suicidal act of the west entailing the self-immolation of the european great powers. it destroyed not only much of european civilization and the flower of its manhood, but it also destroyed the monetary system associated with its unprecedented growth and prosperity. namely, the classical gold standard. world war ii and its aftermath were the next acts of this unfolding tragedy as all european countries struggled with inflationary disorders during the war-torn 1940 and the reconstruction efforts of the 1950s. the experts called this period,

the this early post-war period the permanent, i quote them, the permanent scarcity of the dollar. remember that the u.s. economy in 1945 dominated the planet as no country of history, accounting for about 50% of world output and about 75%, perhaps as much as 80% of global gold reserves. for 15 years from 1945 to 1960, the gold-linked dollar of the postwar bretton woods system remained a reasonably stable epicenter around which other fluctuating currency systems orbited quite unsteadily. it should be emphasized that the bretton woods gold exchange system was a reserve currency system based on the hegemonic dollar. it had been erected upon the rickety foundation of the post-world war i reserve

currency system designed at general what in 1922. the genewa system itself jerry-built upon the role primarily of sterling but also of the dollar. both currencies being official substitutes for prewar settlements in gold of residual balance of payments deficits. now, it was from 1945 to 1958 that the reasonably stable bretton woods dollar did dominate global trade and exchange as the world struggled to recover from world war ii. but after 1958 a momentous monetary event took place. western european governments restored the mutual recur about of their systems on current account sponsored by the european payments union, abolished most exchange controls and sought to establish

budgetary equilibrium at home. promptly, dollar primacy began to wane. from that very year, 1958, when the once-prostrate nations of europe hardened the convertibility of their national monies, the european nations accelerated their postwar rise in world markets. and then, and then it was the united states which began to experience near-permanent overall balance of payments deficits and budget deficits. now, throughout the 1960s under presidents kennedy and johnson, inflation and the external deficit of the dollar generated by expansive u.s. monetary policies and budget deficits led to perennial, perennial foreign exchange crises, and ultimately to foreign exchange controls. foreign exchange controls in the united states, the bretton woods

system groaned under the flood weight of excess u.s. dollars going abroad where they were accumulated in the official foreign exchange reserves of our trading partners. this was the period, maybe some of you remember, when the washington policymakers and economists led by academic neo-keynesians paul samuelson and walter heller, suggested that a little inflation induced by managed currency -- say 2 or 3% -- was controllable and desirable. at the end of the 1970s, inflation had reached the annualized rate of 15%. now, since the u.s. dollar was the primary reserve currency under the bretton woods treaty, foreign central banks were, in effect, required to purchase the undesired dollars in their banking systems against the creation of their own domestic

money. foreign central banks held these dollars as official reserves. they didn't bury them in vault as. they promptly reinvested these dollars in the new york money market, thus enabling americans to buy again with the original cash balances used before to buy the goods abroad. in a word, this duplication of purchasing power under the reserve current is si system of bretton woods, unassociated with the production of few output, caused aggregate demand to exceed aggregate supply. inflation must be the ultimate result. this, in a word, is what my colleague john mueller and i call the reserve currency curse. it was also during this period, 1967, that an international paper money special drawing rights, sdrs, was invented by

the international monetary fund. "news of the world," it was argued -- in order, it was argued, to avoid a potential liquidity shortage. indeed, it was even said that the sdr and artificially-fabricated asset to be allocated among its members by the international monetary fund, was the necessarily quiddity to finance growing world trade. but as one foreign economist remarked given the inflation and the world money glut caused by u.s. deficits, the creation of sd rs amounted to irrigation plans during a flood. so from 1965 the federal reserve had been required by a reform statute to hold gold reserves equal to 25% of federal reserve notes and deposits. the so-called monetary base. now, when president lyndon johnson decided simultaneously

to expand the vietnam war and to build the great society welfare system, he moved to void the statute which by virtue of the stipulated gold cover limited the amount of money and credit which the federal reserve system could create. the full inflationary potential inherent in the federal reserve act of 1913 and in the monopoly central bank it had created was about to be realized. and predictably, as the legally-required gold cover was gradually brushed aside, budget deficits, credit expansion, inflation and the balance of payments crises intensified. now, what a few far-seeing statesmen had actually predicted as early as 1960 seemed almost inevitable in 1968. namely, the collapse of the bretton woods system. from 1960-'61, the london gold

pool originated by the developed countries red by the united states -- led by the united states had underwritten the bretton woods convertibility agreements. but the gold pool had grown increasingly shaky because of excessive central bank quantitative easing. by selling gold at the stipulated gold/dollar parity of $35 per ounce in order to redeem excess dollars accumulating abroad, the anglo american powers had been able to finance their extravagant welfare systems at home and their extravagant foreign policies abroad. but after march 1968, the united states refused to supply gold for dollars to the london gold pool. arbitrarily refused. the presumed linchpin of the bretton woods system, the fragile external link between gold and the dollar had been ruptured if not definitively

broken. these dramatic changes in the international monetary system before and after 1971 were, in fact, welcomed by most of the academic and policy-making commitments and the politicians. the bretton woods agreement was, as they said, an unnecessary discipline. professional economists, neo-keynes minneapoliss and monitorrists alike gladly dismissed bretton woods exchange regimes not because like the interwar monetary regime it was a flawed, profoundly flawed currency reserve system as it surely was, but because it was the last vestige of monetary restraint still remaining from the pre-world war i classical gold standard. the academic economists now proclaimed the coming of a new era of central bank-managed money and, of course, floating exchange rates. to be managed just as well by

economists at the fed and other central banks, and the economists at international monetary institutions. so it was that from 1945 to 1965 the neo-keynesians had ruled economic policy making many washington and in other developed countries and in other imabove impoverished, underdeveloped countries like india. then came the counterrevolution of the monetarists who captured much of the field of technology in the late 1960s and 1970s. from them one learned that money matters as much or more than fiscal policy, and in particular one learned from the monetarists that governments could manage inconvertible paper currencies according to certain prescribed monetary manipulations.

even by a computer, as milton friedman suggested. their favorite technique for manipulating the money supply was the very same open market operations of the neo-keynesians, that is the daily intervention in the bond and money markets to buy and sell billions of dollars worth, and later trillions, of government debt securities in order to manipulate the supply of credit and money and to influence the level of interest rates. simply stated, monetarists promoted growth of credit money by means of a steady increase in the money supply or, if you will, the monetary base. say 3% money growth per annum. engineered, of course, by the all-seeing fed. it was supposed by the academics that the fed had the tools, the all-seeing computer and the unique personal foresight to attain these goals. however, the monetarists and the

neo-keynes minneapoliss of the '60s did agree on one major reform issue. no not upon the reform of the to therring bretton woods currency reserve system, but instead they advocated together the demolition of the very tenuous bretton woods gold link with the dollar. in its place monetarists and neo-keynesians alike endorsed central bank-managed currencies; floating exchange rates clean for some, dirty for others and the permanent demontyization of gold. simply put, they wanted an end to any international exchange rate regime based on the discipline of real money or convertible currencies. may i digress for just a moment. i remember a debate at that time, it was around 1969, 1970, a debate of some very distinguished figures including milton friedman, the chairman of

the banking committee, henry royce, was there, and he had the floor last. and he proclaimed from the floor that he was absolutely certain he was willing to bet that when gold were demontized, its price would decline to $6 per ounce. in 1980 when gold reached $850, i couldn't help but wonder whether mr. royce had covered his short. [laughter] it's a memory of yesterday. now it was that central bankers armed with the power to manipulate nominal inconvertible currencies could presume to become de facto central planners. to attain in this goal, the historic institution of a real monetary standard, the gyroscope of the civilized world economy for years must be destroyed.

a nominal, inconvertible monetary token devoid of real substance had become the fashionable zero-cost monetary standard of the fed. the academic economists and policymakers everywhere. and so it is todayment -- today. in the meantime, under president nixon european governments had become increasingly impatient to exchange b their excess dollars for what remained of u.s. gold reserves. nixon responded by defaulting at the gold window on august 15, 1971, my 33rd birthday. the president abolished by executive order the last vestige of dollar convertibility to gold. tattered remnant of the gold standard had been destroyed by the undisputed leader of the free world. the rise and fall of real money, it seemed, was now a finished chapter of history. gold would thenceforth be

primarily a fluctuating commodity, though even today monetary authorities do hold about one billion ounces of gold. and also contrary to conventional opinion at that time, the dollar would continue as the world reserve currency to this very day. the world dollar standard. but now the dollar is a nominal paper and deposit money, a legal token linked primarily to the judgment and manipulations of its issuers and regulators at the federal reserve system. quantitative control of money has supplanted the market. may i sum up briefly a few indisputable, long-term economic consequences that followed. but let us, like a businessman,

take a quick look at the economic world bottom up, not top-down like the crack to economists -- macroeconomists. since the end of convertibility in 1971, average real wages per hour of work in the united states have been stagnant. average annual american economic growth since 2000 has been about half the average annual real growth of the previous two american centuries. the real purchasing power of a 1971 dollar saved in the bank adjusted by the cpi has declined to a value of about 15 cents. that is to say the price level has risen from 1971 to 2013 by about sixfold, a rise unparalleled in the history of the american republic.

in a word, the american middle class rell thetively speaking -- relatively speaking has been gradually dispossessed. the consequences of the collapse of real money worldwide are still unfolding, but let it be truly said that only one century of post-world war i financial disorder has been written. and now the question is, what is to be done? so let us move forward to our discussion, and let us inquire together into what is to be done. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, lew. every time i hear lew talk or read his work, i feel like i get

an amazing whirlwind tour of history, and quite frankly, no one needs it more than washington. we seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. i also want to notice as an aside, cato recently came out with a paper on the history of the gold standard in the united states which is also available free at cato.org, so i certainly would encourage you to take a look at a that. we're going to start taking a question, and i first will ask that you actually have a question rather than a statement or speech. if you could also give your identification and, please, wait for the microphone to come to you so that we can pick it up on the speaker system. thank you. first question, you know, i'm tempted, berth, not to let you -- bert, met you have the first question, but keeping with tradition, we will let the first question go to bert. >> thank you, mark. bert healey, monetary policy consultant here in town. mr. lehrman, thank you very much for being here today and for offering your book at the very

reasonable price of $5. i have a question for you, and this is jumping to the end of the book in your coda on page 245 when you talk about the five steps to get from here to there. and, you know, essentially as i understand it you're calling for a central role for the federal government in reestablishing a gold standard in terms of a fixed convertibility of gold to the dollar. that concerns me because that implies a role for the federal government, and i suspect i'm not the only one in the room who's highly skeptical of anything the federal government gets involved in. my question is this: can you envision the creation and the sustainability of a gold standard that doesn't require the involvement of a national government? >> so excellent question, bert.

the answer to the latter part of your question is, yes, indeed, i canment -- can envision and describe, and i think others can describe a workable, effective, long-lasting gold standard that does not necessarily involve federal government management. it's laid out really in the propositions of establishing the gold standard as standard in the united states and allowing free banking and nations all over the world to elect to follow the united states' lead. on the first part of your question, there is an inevitable involvement in america of the federal government. we live in a country where not all things are permitted. there is a constitution of the united states and an articles i, sections 8 and 10, it is made clear in the first place that

congress has the sole power to coin money and regulate the value thereof. in a word, congress under the constitution is given the authority to establish and define the dollar whether it be a weight of gold, a weight of silver. not the federal reserve system. the federal reserve system is a mere agency like the federal communications commission or the old to interstate commerce commission. it's a mere agency of the federal government. so there is an indispensable minimum if not more on a prudential basis involvement of united states government initially by congress having the power, the sole power to define the gold weight of the dollar were the gold standard to be reestablished. that is where the initiative, i believe, will come from, and it

is certainly not without recognition many washington that there is a move -- in washington that there is a move for a monetary commission not unlike that which was established after the banking panic of 1907 to create a commission at the very highest level among those senior officials of the government and private citizens to examine just as the aldridge-vreland commission did in 1-9d1908-1912. the causes of the panics and failed enterprises of the federal reserve system since the inauguration of the federal reserve act. so the -- and this was churchill said about britain, the situation is hopeless but not serious. [laughter] >> next question over here.

>> thank you. warren coates. mr. lehrman, you have done an excellent job, as have many others, of arguing that the if by yacht currency standard needs to be replaced with a hard anchor. could you elaborate what appears to be your preference for gold or any other single commodity which is bound to be less stable in value than, say, a basket? >> on the basket of commodities or basket of currencies or any kind of store-based monetary standard, i think it's sufficient for me to say that it would be as unstable as the fluctuating currencies themselves or the fluctuating commodities themselves. and there would be no reason to

believe that the monetary standard would be stable based upon a fluctuateing basket of articles of wealth drawn from the market, the price of which must fluctuate based upon supply and demand, cost of production and those variations which are characterized both commodities and fluctuating foreign exchange rates untied to a gold standard as in the past. so i conclude that almost anything is possible if we rely on academics in classrooms to design a perfect monetary system. in the end whiteboards or blackboards at the university of chicago or harvard university or even cambridge will not do. a testimony of history, i think,

reveals a sufficiently-conclusive answer on that. what we need to do is look at the historical evidence. of the modern world trading system. let us call that a period of 300 years. and we need to look at what was the least imperfect monetary standard by which nations, families and groups of nations grew at rates of growth unparalleled in the whole history of homo sapiens, if you want to put it that way. and the facts are that imperfect people with imperfect institutions can only choose the least imperfect institution which will give them the stability of purchasing power of their wages and salaries over the long run. and it was the decision of the

british in 1717 to establish a bond metallic system whereby the british pound was defined as a fixed weight of gold and silver, ultimately as a result of a certain transition, a pure gold standard to which in a network effect not unlike a microsoft operating system, more nations emulated the british system and joined themselves to the gold standard including the united states, germany, france and all the great powers of europe. if you look at the price level fluctuations between, let us say, 1717 and the work of isaac newton and the year before world war i or even up until the 1930s, you will find that variation in the price level over the long run was virtually zero. that is to say the purchasing power of the pound over a period

of a couple of hundred years, choosing a standard assortment of basic goods from the market was the same purchasing power based upon the wages and salaries of each particular set of facts and circumstances. so that while not perfect because there were variations on a decennial basis or even an annual basis, they were very modest. the deflations of the gold standard were about 1.2% per annum. despite the unbelievable exaggeration that one hears from academics who wish to criticize the gold standard, inflations under the gold standard themselves -- that is to say when gold output was rising and giving rise to an expansion of money supply and not only that, but an expansion of growth which continued both during the deflations and the so-called inflation -- what was described as inflation was about a 1-1.5,

sometimes a 2% rate of gain in the price level during periods of augmentation. but for the full period under the gold standard if you take, for example, 1879 to 1914, a period which encompasses both a deflationary moment, a decline in the price level of about 1% a year, to a period of just before world war i at a rise level of about 2% a year, from 1879 to 1913, if you put it on a graph, you will see that the purchasing power of the gold standard whether it was the gold/dollar or the gold/pound was virtually without movement. some fluctuation in between, as i mentioned, but from point to point over the long run, people who saved their wages and their salaries, who were not speculators on wall street or lombard street in london, who had no access to special arrangements, they could count on the purchasing power of their dollar after their entire life

span had expired. >> i was going to respond be, lew, but we have very powerful computers now, can't we do all this? >> yes. >> i can't be the only one that when i hear that i think back to the socialist calculation debate, and it's the same thing repeatedly. i think there's a book that should be written all the things the government could do if we just had more powerful computers, and we never seem to learn. i'm going to take one last question and hand it over to addison who will take a few more be questions for about ten more minutes. young lady in the middle. >> my name is lindsay mcbride, and i work for the charles koch institute. unfortunately, i haven't had the pleasure of reading your book, and i'm fairly new to the issue of monetary economics and hon tear policy, but i had a question. i was doing some research into my home state of utah, and recently after they passed the utah legal tender act, there's an association called the utah

precious metals association that formed which under, in my understanding, it's a place that stores gold and then issues almost like credit cards or debit cards that allow people to buy and sell in gold. and i was wondering what your thoughts are, it seems like the gold is acting as a competitive currency in that sense to the dollar, what your thoughts are on that and if it could be an alternative to the gold standard or a transition to the gold standard. >> well, for a young lady who has come anew to this issue, you get the picture. there are people in this room who had something to do with the adoption in utah, the legal tender arrangements which under article viii, section 10 of the constitution are permissive of the states establishing nothing but gold and silver as a legal tender, therefore, permissive of doing so.

and it is intended to create a competitive currency, and the institutional arrangements to make it effective in utah and elsewhere are being worked on assiduously by lots of very smart people. there are two things that i would wish to say about that, because there's so much written well about it, indeed, on the internet. one is that the effort to get the states themselves -- and i believe there are efforts, i think jeff can tell us, ralph can tell us how many, i think there are about 15 states where there's an active effort to replicate the utah, the utah bill which is aimed at making gold and silver a legal tender and competitive with, a competitive currency with federal reserve notes. and that is a effort to teach

very busy people who work all day long, take care of their family, try to save a couple of bucks, send their kids to decent schools and teach them at home when they find they're inadequate. this is an effort to teach american people from the ground up the characteristics of a monetary system which will preserve the purchasing power of their wages and their salaries and especially those who retire on fixed millions and pensions -- fixed incomes and pensions, which happens a lot faster than a young lady like you might think. so one should not omit the didactic purpose in this. it's not the most important, but it is, it's central. a great president of ours once said that public sentiment is everything. if you can convince the public, persuade the public that a policy is necessary, legislators

will follow. so the utah work and work in other states is part of the building of a public sentiment behind the reform of the inconvertible paper dollar manipulated by the federal reserve system building a constituency behind its reform. the second important fact is that one of the things about standard money is like standards in telecommunications or standards in computers. once the standard is established or makes its way into the vast majority of entities which want to hook up to that network, it takes on a certain characteristic even if

privately-held of a monopoly. that is to say everybody wants to use that network. and one -- and that, of course, was the characteristics of the gold standard from about 1717, i would argue, until 1914 in the first world war. everybody wanted to be in this network because everybody wanted to make their payments in a currency that was a standard acceptable worldwide in all forms of trade and payments. so that the disadvantage of having only one state or 11 states or 12 states is that you still have a network in place, namely the federal reserve note, as legal tender which is ubiquitous and to which everybody is connected and which everybody is in the habit of making payments at the grocery store or by wire transfer for a security purchase. and as a result, it's very hard to displace this network as everyone who's tried to displace

microsoft's operating network has found that it's very, very difficult. once the standard is established. so that this is a profound be effort at the state level, utah in particular as the leader. what we need is a congressional action establishing the monetary standard under the unique powers given it by the constitution of the united states under article i and define the weight dollar as a -- the dollar as a weight unit of gold. it doesn't even have to define it as legal tender. that is $1. $1 is equal to one unit of gold. that is not sufficient, but that would be a necessary element, as bert was implying about the five-step program, that would be a necessary element in moving forward to reestablishing the gold standard at the world network for trade and exchange.

>> one of the encouraging aspects of lew's writing and the way he speaks is his passion for advocating for families and working people, people outside of the financial elite, people outside of the political class. there aren't that many voices are advocating for such broad prosperity, and i for one appreciate all your work. and i just want to point out in the book that you've been, you've been making this argument cogently for 40 years and have now collected much of that argument in the book, and it's now available. anyone watching on c-span, you can also get the book. i just -- i think we have time for one more question, but before we do that, i want to, i just want to thank lew for being

so passionate about this subject for many, many years. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] >> the book is "money, gold and history." and i think we have time for one more question. >> raymond buehler, i was a committee counsel for congress for 14 years. and when i listened to what you talk about, it sounds like you're suggesting that congress impose some kind of monetary discipline. and my observation is that congressional discipline is kind of an oxymoron. and i wonder if you had thought at all about the idea of taking the core of your, the discipline you propose and writing it into the united states constitution

about the fact that unlike laws, states have the power if they use it properly to force congress to propose a constitutional amendment. and so instead of relying on politicians in washington to impose discipline on themselves, perhaps we might be able to empower states to impose some discipline from the outside on washington. i wonder if you had thought about those ideas. >> raymond, i have thought about them, and, indeed, those issues have arisen ever since the crises of the monetary standard of the postwar bretton woods standard arose around 1960. and ideas not unlike that have been proposed. i would say not quite so succinctly, extremely well said.

as between a legislative act and a constitutional amendment, as a practical matter, as disfunctional as congress is thought to be, i would choose the legislative act as the less imperfect of the mechanisms by which to inaugurate the gold standard. and if i may pick up on the very beginning, you say probably not with forethought, but that congress imposes the gold standard on an unruly, dysfunctional financial world. the better way to say it, if i may, is that congress is required by the constitution to define the american monetary standard. not to define the french

monetary standard, nor to define the world monetary standard, but congress under article i, sections 8 -- and you'll see a derivative point in section 10 -- in article i, section 8, congress is given the sole power, and i do repeat it, to coin money and regulate the value thereof. there is nothing, there is no power given to any agency like the federal reserve, no power given to banks like jpmorgan to establish, only to have opinions about the american monetary standard. so it is congress' duty to define the american monetary standard. not least because we have observed now 40 year this is

which congress has failed to -- in which congress has failed to define the monetary standard which for almost the entire history of american republic until 1971 was defined as a certain weight of precious metal, primarily gold ld. it's congress' duty to define the american monetary standard. and it is fair, i think, to say that congress has been defunct, dysfunction a. however, congress has been dysfunctional through many periods in the united states' history. if you just take the antebellum period after the inauguration of the republic in 1789, there were many people who thought everybody in america should have a free and equal opportunity and that certain classes of people or races of people were denied that particular opportunity. and doing that, if you read the debates in that period, you find that there were people, that

there were great statesmen who despaired that the equality problem la haitian in the declaration of independence would become the american proposition governing our way of life in america. things happen. statesmen arise. congress gets itself together. congress proposes amendments to the constitution such as raymond was suggesting. constitutional amendments arise from the people directly as well as within the halls of congress. so that we go for long periods with a dysfunctional congress. the reason i mentioned that the chairman of the joint with economic committee of congress,

a distinguished gentleman from texas kevin brady, and his committee have presented a bill calling for a centenary monetary commission to examine what should be the american monetary standard. an examination of history, an examination of the empirical evidence, especially the historical evidence and what all those of different persuasions -- keynesians, monetarists, classicists, i guess there's many more in that taxonomy of economists. but to bring forth these opinions in an attempt to gain a consensus and thereby to go to congress and perhaps then it will do its duty and establish the american monetary standard and define it as it was in 1792 at the beginning of the american republic as a certain weight of precious metal. thank you very, very much, and

thank you, addison. [applause] >> so in a moment i will invite you to rise and join us for lunch. lunch is head on the second level in the george m. yeager conference center. up the spiral staircase. and if you can't find it, this gentleman will help you. on behalf of agora financial, i'd like to thank you, lewis, for inviting me to come and help present your book. wait, i'll do it again properly. "money, gold and history." and i'd also like to thank the cato institute for hosting the event and allowing me to take part in that. i think it's an important be piece of work, and i hope it will serve its purpose and reignite the debate for the classical gold standard in the united states. thank you, lewis.

>> thank you, addison. [applause] thank you. thank you, everybody. [applause] >> we can rise and go to lunch. [inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> doesn't actually tell us what to do. it tells us what we think is going to happen, and then we have to make choices about that. and, because one of the implications of simon's line of argument is that, you know, if the earth is always changing, we, the societies, can change and adapt in ways and, of course, we don't know that that's necessarily case with the climate problem. it may be something that we can adapt to, but if you take that

idea that societies can adapt, it leaves us with the question of -- well, even if we can adapt, is this the kind of world we want to live in, with this extreme heat, with the droughts, with the sea level rise, so many things that we care about are in danger by the changes that are happening, and we do have a choice about this. >> can human ingenuity save the planet? paul sabin on "the bet," tonight at 9 on "after words," part of booktv this weekend on c-span2. and booktv's book club is back this month with mark leibovich's "this town: two parties and a funeral plus plenty of valet parking in america's gilded capital." read the book and see what others are saying on our facebook page and on twitter. >> this fall booktv is celebrating its 15th anniversary. this weekend we look back at our first year of broadcasting. in 1992, publishers weekly's

best sellers list including tom brokaw, author of "the greatest generation." we covered mr. brokaw in december of 1998. >> and a as i began to write these beaches with these veterans, they were schoolteachers and anglican preachers and lawyers from south new jersey and from a cross-section of american life. and as i began to walk those beaches with those men and meet their wives, i emotionally was brought to my knees by what i was hearing. not just about the raw courage that played out on those beaches that day, but by the bond, the unspoken bond that existed between them. many of them had not met each other before. in one case we had two of them who it turned out had been on the same landing craft, and coincidentally we had found them and put them back together again. and they were modest beyond my ability to describe their

modesty. and they were proud of what they had done, and they were willing to come and tell their story but only if i asked the questions. and almost always they would respond, oh, i didn't do anything more here than anyone else did. and they all had stories of buddies that didn't make it or were terribly maimed, and they came back to america -- many of them from small towns, they'd lost their fathers at an early age, they lived lives of great deprivation -- but they came back, and they took the g.i. bill, and they found professions in foreign families, went to college in record numbers. they were the underpinning of the marshall pan, they rebuilt -- plan, they rebuilt their enemies in japan and in germany. they were involved in a long, difficult cold war. they withstood the ravages of the cultural revolution in the '60s. they were too quick at the beginning to say vietnam was a good