[applause] >> this concludes our ceremony. please join us again in 2014. the cleveland foundation's centennial year. we look forward to seeing you then. good night. [applause]

>> you're watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> booktv's online book club selection for october is representative john lewis' "walking with the wind: a memoir of the movement." >> as a young child, i tasted the bitter fruits of segregation and racial discrimination, and i didn't like it. i asked my mother and my father, my grandparents, my great grandparents, why segregation? why racial discrimination? and they said, that's the way it is. don't get in trouble. don't get in the way. but in 955 when -- 1955 when i was in the tenth grade, 15 years old, i heard of rosa parks. i heard the voice of martin luther king jr. on the old radio, and the words of dr. king inspired me to find a way to get

in the way. in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and is some of my first cousins, we went down to the public library in the little town of troy, alabama, trying to get library cards, trying to check some books out. and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for coloreds. but on july 5, 1998, i went back to the public library in troy, alabama, for a book signing of my book, "walking with the wind," and hundreds of blacks and whites showed up, and they gave me a library card. [applause] "walking with the wind" is a book of faith, hope and courage. it's not just my story, it is the story of hundreds and thousands and countless men and women, blacks and whites who put tear body on the line -- their body on the line during a very

difficult period in the history of our country to end segregation and to end racial discrimination. >> no need to register to join the club, just start reading the book and post your thoughts at any time on our book club chat room, booktv.org/bookclub. every day through the month we'll post book club-related items to encourage conversation, including links to interviews with the author, book reviews and videos from our archives. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week. in "days of fire: bush and cheney in the white house," peter baker, senior white house correspondent in the new york timeses, examines the working relationship between the former president and vice president. pulitzer prize-winning columnist charles krauthammer presents a collection of his writing in "things that matter: three decades of passions, pastimes and politics." in "40 chances: finding hope in a hungry world," howard buffett, the son of warren buffett,

relays his effort toss better the world's food supply. in "extortion," peter schweitzer from the hoover institution, argues that politicians are not acting in the interests of lobbyists, but are extorting them. if identity if kennedy lived," jeff greenfield, host of pbs' requested neat to know" presents his thoughts on how history might have changed if president john f. kennedy had not been assassinated. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the nors in the near future -- authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> booktv continues here on c-span2 with john lott who argues that partisan politicians don't like to nominate smart judges because they're afraid that smart judges have the ability to think independently and influence other judges. he says that judges who graduated in the top 10% of their law classes go through a much longer confirmation process

than judges who don't. this is a little over an hour. >> well, thanks very much for having me again here. it's always nice to get back to southern california. i have to say i can't take credit for having taught at a couple of those schools, but i had research positions at them. so how did i get started on book? well, i think we all have been concerned by how contentious and vicious the con pair mission process -- confirmation process has gotten over the years. and at first i was trying to figure out exactly how much it's changed and, more importantly, why it's gotten so much more contentious. but when i was looking through the data, a couple things became very clear. one of the most obvious was that while it's getting more difficult on average for judicial follow knee toss the different federal -- nominees to

the different federal courts, it's particularly gotten much more difficult for the very brightest, potentially most influential nominees to get on the courts. and i just give you a couple numbers just to summarize where we'll be going. if you look at nominees for the federal circuit court, the court right below the supreme court, for those who went to a top ten law school and graduated on the law review, kind of at the top of their class, those nominees took about 65% longer to get through the confirmation process than someone who didn't go to a top law school and didn't do particularly well in their law school. another way of looking at this, probably even a better way of measuring influence, is citations to a judge's opinion. you know, how do other judges, federal judges around the country rely on the opinions that these judges write? and if anything, it's at least as dramatic, the impact. if you look at a federal circuit court judge who, let's say, his

opinions get about 20% more citations than the average federal judge, it took him if you went back and looked at his nomination about 60% longer to get through the confirmation process. it's really dramatic how much if your political opponents think that a nominee is going to be influential, that other judges around the country are going to follow their decisions, how much harder it was to get them on the bench. the theory is actually pretty simple. let me give you an example. my guess is fun of you, none of of -- my guess is none of you, none of the lawyers would ever seven on a jury. and the answer is pretty obvious why that's the case, and that is, you're essentially more than one vote. the other members of the jury are going to defer to your expert legal knowledge. you're also kind of by your vocation very good at persuading other people. and so the lawyers on east side of the finish either side of the

case would look to see whether you might be tilting ever so slightly toward the other and then strike you from the jury pool because while they care about what your views are, they care about the fact that you may influence three or four or five or the other jurors on the panel that's there. it turns out it's exactly the same for federal judges. when you're talking about circuit court judges or you're talking about supreme court justices, it's just not the judge's own beliefs which are important, but the fact that they may be able to influence and pull other people on their panel to go and vote a certain way or that they may write these influential view additional opinions that are going to go and sway other judges around the country. so again, like they're more than one vote, and that raises concerns, and that's the reason why they're going to be opposed. let me give you a couple examples of this. in terms of supreme court nominations, one case that i

think kind of proves the rule, surprisingly, was the nomination in 2005 of harriet myers to the supreme court. if there was one view that people knew that harriet myers had, it was that she was very strongly against abortion. you would think by itself that would cause democrats to run to the barricades to go and fight as strongly as they could against her. but yet if you go through the newspaper articles at the time or other news reports, you can't find democrats coming out and speaking against her. instead you have a number of democrats, harry reid and others, who say that they think she's very well qualified, that she'd make an ideal supreme court justice. i mean, how because this square with all their statements in the past about opposing a particular nominee based solely, they would say, on the person's views on abortion? if anything, harriet myers was more strongly against abortions even in more extreme cases than

you would have found anybody else who had been nominated to the supreme court. but yet she was okay. the opposition to harriet miers didn't come from democrats, the opposition to harriet miers came from republicans. and, again, if you look at kind of leaked stories and news reports, the concerns that the republicans had was that she wasn't very bright. everybody said they were sure she was a very nice person, but the types of questions they were preparing for her when she went before the senate judiciary committee, they would by described as -- be described as the types of questions she would have gotten in law school just to kind of demonstrate that she didn't have what they considered a very song grasp of even basic law. they were worried that she wasn't going to be strong intellectually, wasn't going to be an influence on the court. so even if they thought that she believed the same thing they did and even if the democrats thought that she was radically against them, she was kind of

their ideal candidate. you know, the very reason why you want to have a smart nominee on the courts is the very reason why your political opponents don't want that person to be there. i'll give you another interesting example, and that is -- does anybody know who the three most cited appeals courts are? >> obviously posener. >> posener's number one by or that. frank easterbrook is number two and harvey wilkinson, who's on senior status for a little while now, has been -- least at the time when i was writing the book, was number three. posener is in a class by himself way out there. and easterbrook not as far, but compared to everybody else, he's just galaxies away. the interesting thing is if you look back to look at their aba ratings when they were nominated, those three judges got the three lowest apa ratings

of any circuit -- aba ratings of any circuit court nominees who have been confirmed since at least the beginning of the carter administration. you can get 15 votes on the panel, and you can get voted as well qualified, qualified or unqualified. so out of 15 votes, posener got 8 qualified votes and 7 unqualified votings. he did not get a single well qualified vote. so even though federal judges around the country en masse look to his opinions for guidance more than any other circuit court judge's opinions, the aba didn't root -- no one on the aba panel noted that he was well qualified. for easterbrook, he got the second worst aba rating. he got 9 qualified and 6 unqualified, and harvey wilkinson got 10 qualified and 5 unqualified.

again, in neither of those two cases, did not one member of the aba panel think that they were well qualified. if you go back through and look at news stories at the time, you can find news stories where reporters who talked off the record to the american bar association members, the complaint wasn't that these guys weren't qualified, the complaint was that posener was dangerously brilliant. or easterbrook was dangerously brilliant, that they were concerned that they were too smart, too well qualified, and that's the reason why the aba had given them such incredibly low ratings. so let me just, let me just give you some quotes here. it's amazing in the book how many quotes i have. i probably have about 40 quotes where opposition to candidates is mentioned in terms of how

bright they are. but take charles schumer from 2005. he said, but being brilliant and accomplished is not the number one criteria for elevation to the supreme court. there are many who would use this considerable, their considerable talents and legal acumen to set back america. or brit hume talking about someone who was on the circuit court at the time, luttig, 51, is described as brilliant. but the same trait that might get him nominated to the supreme court could also prevent his confirmation. and i'll just show you one of the comments about posener that i was mentioning. this is from nicholas christophe before he got to "the new york times", and this was in an article where me mentioned he had gotten this information from talking to the american bar association panel that rated posener. posener, formerly a professor of law at the university of chicago, is by all accounts

brilliant. brilliant. according to critics, dangerously brilliant. so, now it's pretty amazing how the judicial confirmation process has changed over time, how much more contentious it's been. most of us focus on the supreme court because that's basically what's in the news. but if anything, circuit court nominees and to a lesser extent district court nominees, their confirmation battles have gotten even more contentious. just to give you a rough idea of how the supreme court nominations have changed over time, if you look at all the nominations from 1900 through 1976, the end of gerry ford's administration, the average supreme court nomination took about 20 days between nomination and confirmation. almost 80% of these nominations were confirmed within a month, and almost 40% were confirmed within less than ten days.

if carter didn't have any nominations, but if you look at from reagan on, the shortest nomination was sandra day o'connor. she took 37 days. but the average was about 77 days. so you go from slightly over 20 days average to an average of about 77 days in those two periods. then you had confirmations as long as robert bork's which took 114 days. so it's a fairly dramatic change that happened over time. let me just show you some numbers for circuit and district court nominees. these go from the beginning of the carter administration through the end of obama's first term. last year in 2012. and you can see the squares are for district courts, the diamond shapes are for district courts, and you can see by congress how they're bouncing around, being around 60 or so more most of the

time from '77 through '86 going up above 100 days for both in 1987 when the democrats took control of the senate and reagan was making nominations. went up during clinton and then was higher here, and then under bush these, the circuit court nominations soared in terms of the length getting well over 500 days during that period of time and gradual general upward trend there. now, there's one thing i should mention here. you may see a lot of discussion in the press about the length of confirmations or the confirmation rates. i think most of that discussion is wrong. you look at things, articles in "the new york times" or "usa today" what they do is they'll pick nominations and look at them as of a certain date, let's say november of last year, december of last year. the problem is a lot of those things can be greatly affected

by when a president makes his nominations. obama, for example, tends to make his nominations relatively late in a congressional term. you know, he's made nominations as late as september. well, there's no way somebody's going to get confirmed or even have a hearing if you make a mom nation during an election year in june or july let alone sometimes like in september. so if one president tends to make a lot of his nominations very late before an election, it's going to make it look like his confirmation rate is relatively low. what you really need to do is to see what eventually happens with those nominees, you know? from nomination to final outcome for those nominees. and when you do that, you get fairly different results, and i'll show you some, than you often hear talked about in the media. now here's something if you look at it by president, for three

different types of courts we have the one with the square, the bottom line is the length of nominations from nomination to confirmation for district court nominees, the diamond is for circuit court nominees, and then this is for circuit court nominees for the d.c. circuit court which is often referred to as the second most important court after the supreme court in the country. if you go back to carter and reagan, you were talking about nominations for, that would take 68, 69 days for circuit courts. under bush i circuit court nominations went to about 102 days, and you can see under clinton it was about 230 days. under bush ii it went to about 360 days, 363 days or so, and then it went down, but it's still above what it was for clinton for obama where it's about 250 days in length.

what you find, basically, here is that the most important the court, the more difficult the confirmation battles have been. so district court nominations tend to be relatively shorter, circuit court and then if you look at the d.c. circuit court, it tends to be the longest. under bush ii, the average length of time for bush nominees to be confirmed to the d.c. circuit course was about 702 days. which is quite long. obama's is about 330 days, but it's quite a bit less than half what it was under bush. a lot of that has to do with the fact that during the first two years of bush's administration he, essentially, had a filibuster-proof senate, and he had a strong majority later on. ..

and obama. what is seen as a percentage of nominees confirmed by those different days takes longer and longer periods of time for the same percentage to be confirmed. to take an example, reagan got 43 per end of his nominations confirmed with in the first 60 days. for somebody like bush do, it

basically took 122 not 150 days to get the same percentage of almond nations confirmed. that's a pretty large change that occurred there. same thing is true for each president, taken a longer time for him to get these guys confirm down. confirmation rates here. this is probably the biggest difference from what you see in the standard newspaper discussions where they take an arbitrary date rather than seeing the privately hotbed to nominees. three different courts here again, district courts, d.c. circuit court nominees. we will start with that. you can see a dramatic decline from carter at her right hand through bush one, bush two,

clinton to bush to an obama. from carter to bush to, he's got 93% of the circuit court nominees confirmed. by the time you get to push two, which only had 72% of circuit court nominees. 21 percentage points. obama has gone up fairly dramatically. slightly over 85%. not quite as high as it was back under reagan. you can see a huge change occur primarily because democrats had complete control of the senate for all four years of his first term as they are. there's an interesting pattern that goes on for district court. you basically see it fine until you get to bush one. i think what's been happening in

both parties have been guilty of this is that everybody knows the circuit court nominees are a lot more important than district court nominees. but most of the nominees that congress faces, senate faces are just the core. the point they basically made the decision, let's let the district court nominees go through when you're in the opposition party to the president. but we'll make it particularly difficult for circuit court nominees to get through. it's kind of hidden how long it's taken the most important people to go through. you can see if you just go back and look at old news stories in terms of which side uses which numbers in the debate. so if you have a democratic president and a republican senate, the president will talk about the confirmation rates for certain court nominee, the one he hears most about, where is the political opposition will go in at the circuit court, district court nominees together and say look, it's much higher. both the rate, but they've gone

and focused on different combinations of numbers. the same thing happened in the opposite direction when you had george w. bush the president more recently. bush kept trying to focus. he says look, my confirmation rate is for these most judges the circuit court. the democrats in the senate with a look, overall it's very good because they wouldn't put the last part in. they would say it's because for letting all your district court nominees through. the fact that the district court nominees through would make the average between the two groups look very good, even though the most important nominees barak is your close in terms of confirmation rates. you can see in terms the d.c. circuit court nominees, the general decline in only a couple people for obama.

you can still see the general decline that occurred over time. its decline under here. it didn't come nominees for the d.c. court looks like they've been going through quickly. so you may dramatically change these results. let me just explain something for a second. that is why have these nominations become so much more contentious overtime click that is more than at stake. they're smart take on who gets to be a judge for two reasons. one is the role of the federal court has just exploded over the last 50 comments exteriors. if you look from 1962 now, the

rate of circuit court cases per capita have gone on 12 fold. they've got untold times faster than the growth of the population during that period of time, which is phenomenal. to talk about why that's the case is pretty obvious to anybody who's a lawyer. he had the environmental protection agency is an equal employment opportunity commission from the federal election commission. literally, many dozens of regulatory to these that didn't exist previously. cases that would have gone to federal court may not have existed at all or been a thought mind are commonplace now. and if anything comes federal government continue to grow and my guess is the areas the courts are involved with a continued to expand. that expansion of what the federal court covers. my new areas of our lives that

nobody 60 years ago would've even to the courts would have been involved with increasing importance. but there's another thing that's changed, too. the other thing has changes that will pick judges perceive for themselves. judges now view themselves as much more policy measured as opposed to people who go and follow what we refer to as the black letter of the law. you can see this in many ways. as hard as it is to believe 80, 100 years ago, presidencies to appoint judges from the other political parties, either circular supreme court. the reason why they did that if they had the belief at that time that it really didn't matter whether somebody was a republican or democrat. it would look at the law, do their best job of trying to interpret what it was. so wouldn't matter. the last time we had a president appoint a member of the supreme court from the other party was

herbert hoover. she did that with benjamin cardozo. what happened at that point, herbert wrote letters around the country with one question. he said who is the brightest person we can put on the supreme court? many republicans and lots of democrats wrote back and they said engineman cardoza. so hoover said that's my only criteria. so i'm going to the cardozo on the supreme court. could you imagine today president nominating somebody from another party can't let alone the smartest person he could find from the other party with the notion that there are going to do exactly the same thing when they get on the court, so it doesn't really matter whether i appoint a republican or democrat to the supreme court. grover cleveland, for example, who was a democrat, even when he had a democratic senate

nominated republicans to the circuit court positions around the country. he essentially had the exact same reasoning. wanted to get the brightest people he could to be put on the court regardless of their political views because he didn't think it mattered at the time. today judges are quite different in terms of making policy decisions on posing their own political views. it does matter in terms of what the votes are going to be, with your point democrat or republican. that wasn't always the case. how can we get an idea of how important judgeships are compared to other positions? you can look at nominations for other types of nominations that go through the senate. one thing is to look at cabinets or subcabinet divisions. it seems like pretty important positions. please get some idea how the senate these different positions

as being relatively important to each other by how much they fight over who gets to be nominees. nominees get to be confirmed. the bottom line is they seem to want to play a lot more over judicial appointments and they do cabinet or subcabinet level positions that at least indicate members of the senate seem to think who gets to be a judge is a lot more important than who gets to be subcabinet level position for head of judiciary. you know, the attorney general for the department of justice. so you can look at obama's district court nominees come and take about 20 times longer than his cabinet nomination. obama circuit court nominations have taken about 26% longer than a circuit court nominations. [inaudible] >> 26 times.

so you can look at the rate of confirmations. the rates are much higher. there's a difference in terms of how nominations for circuit courts are judges were versus cabinets positions. the difference is when you make the same day that he nominate the end, and the file is ordered to a senate to begin at consideration. for cabinet level positions, there can be a month or more in the senate actually gets it to hold hearings and look at the person. so, the numbers that would most closely approximate for a judicial nominee with even the senate actually gets the file he can start to look at it and

compare that to how long it's to get confirmed. that's essentially the bottom line here. you can see for carter, his average cabinet nomination took about eight days. under reagan it was about 18. under bush one and clinton it was 25 days to about 18 under bush two. it's a little bit of 90s under obama. you can see how dramatically that different from the chart where was 260 sundays for obama to get a circuit court nominated group. you can see 100% there. about 85% in the last administration. but overall it's been very high. well, the numbers that i've shown you in terms of how the confirmation process has changed over time really underestimate how much it's changed.

it's underestimated for an important reason. that is people who would've had their names put into nomination 30, 40 years ago are unwilling to do it now. particularly the brightest people who would've done it 30, 40 years ago are particularly unwilling to do it now. somebody like a poser or reeser book you could see how much even in the early 1980s the american bar association website again and he and unwilling to give either one of them even one well-qualified though. there's no way either of those two guys if they were again as young as they were then and were renominated could possibly be confirmed to the circuit court position. well, the nominees are the potential nominees know that could have been. when i was ideal for a couple years or university of chicago, i would talk to other faculty members dared who would go and tell me they had gotten

inquiries from different administrations about whether or not they would be interested in being a circuit court judge. the answer these individuals would give back his mouth, i don't want to have to go through the process. these are very bright guys. i'm sure they're confirmation pose in her or easterbrook might be, but a very bright guy. the confirmation would have been very vicious. their reputations would likely be in the end. one of the things they didn't down the court was to go and interview some people who would read through the confirmation process. the interesting thing to me is how many people who went through the confirmation process just weren't willing to relive the experience or just weren't willing to talk about it again. some who are willing to do so were only willing to do so off

the record. but i primarily in the book focus on this case is both republicans and democrats who went through this meatgrinder to explain what it was like. if you are in private is, your life was put on hold for years. you know come you couldn't take new cases. financially it was a great hardship for those individuals to have to go through the waiting process that was there for academics. one of the things political upon us but frequently do. constantly, almost monthly they would go and spend additional requests for information piece of people like william revere at the university of virginia law school would describe how she would spend huge amounts of her time going through different requesting questions being put together by democrats on the committee who are just trying to weser time on things they didn't care about. 99% of the stuff she gave them,

she was convinced was just filed in the back room someplace to be forgotten about. the point was to weser time. probably the most difficult thing for these nominees if they couldn't respond publicly to all the attacks. you would've people accusing accusing them of being raised as to rather types, vicious type things. their kids would hear about it in school. robert bork was nice enough to give me a blurb for tranfour. they talked about how to change the kids, how they were no longer interested in public life. then go follow this types of things that might go and get them in the center of the public eye because they were so traumatized by what happened to their dad. you have similar types of things in similar discussions over and over again the people. so here's the problem. if the brightest nominees would

be willing to go through the confirmation process in the seven decent early 80s, but they're not willing to do so now, then in some sense these graphs i've shown you about the length of the confirmation process, the drop in the confirmation rate at the same individuals were willing to go forward 30, 40 years ago, were still willing to go through now, confirmation would be even longer on the confirmation rates of even lower than what i'm able to show you on this grass. probably even dramatically. so basically i talked about who faces the greatest delays and it tends to be the smartest people. there's two ways we can measure intelligence i think her influence for federal judicial nominees. one way you can do it is just where did they go to law school?

today do particularly well among school measured by whether they were a mock review? they have prestigious clerkships over time clerics to de klerk for appeals court judge ordered the clerk for supreme court judge. another way you can do it, the best way doesn't cover all the nominees, would be citations to their opinion semitrucks about before. there's lots of different ways that go through the book that i'm not going to have time to breakthrough here. it's not just citations by nominees generally or judge's opinions generally, but it could be the supreme court site judge's opinion. does he get cited by judges in other circuits, not just his own? there's also different ways that a citation can be done. they can go and measure. so just to give you an idea how large the study is in this book, the largest previous study,

remotely similar i had done, which looked at 84 circuit court nominees over basically two administrations. the next largest study looked at 40 nominees from a circuit court nominees over to administrations. here's the problem. when you're looking at so many people for such a short period of time come you can't tell just those two administrations are idiosyncratic. it's a part of a longer trend? you also can't find a lot of interesting patterns. for example, one thing when a fun talk more about, but the american bar association. after you control the quality of the judge, where they went to law school, how well they did, what type of procedures and appointments they have afterwards, other things they did. you'll find the average democratic nominee would be ranked as well-qualified by a majority of the aba members on

the group and well-qualified by a minority. the average republican nominee after accounting face that yours would be qualified well-qualified. most of the panel would vote for republicans as qualified as opposed to well-qualified. but then really underestimate how biased the aba ratings are. the reason is because they do all sorts of cute little things you only see when you get a large number of cases here. i'll give you a couple simple samples. one thing is that you're very old republican nominee, been a while someone who's 60 years of age would be a circuit court judge. if he's a republican, hook it a high aba rating that out of sync with what his accomplishments

are. but if it's a young republican, go get a very low aba rating. if you're very old democrat, if you're 58, they've never nominated anybody as old as republicans have. in her late 50s, both in an unusually low american heart association rating. but if you're a young democrat coming up in a rating. i did they do that? the answer is obvious. why waste the good ratings on a democrat who's only going to be on for five years or so is a circuit court judge? at the same time, why not give the republicans are really high rating because it raises the average if he's only going to do harm from their first active for five years or so. figure good ratings for democrats who are young will be around for a long time and save your worst ratings for the republicans who would be around for a long time.

they only use kind of the most really biased ratings when u.s. to control the train the president and his controls the senate. so if you have a republican president, republican senate democratic president, democratic senate, they aren't biased in terms of their ratings. the reason is that clear again because it doesn't matter. they are going to go undefeated this individuals to make a difference in terms of getting unconfirmed because the same party the president belongs to controls the senate. they're pretty much going to have their way in who get through. the most extreme bias estimates is if you have a republican president and democratic senate, then they want to give get democrats and didn't hold onto to go unopposed the guy. or if you have a democratic president and republican senate, they want to give high ratings. so it's only those types of things that come out when you

have a large sample to go amok through. so to see how large this is, i looked at 342 circuit court nominees from the beginning of the carter administration all the way through 2004 and over 1215 district court nominees. these are all the people nominated during a period of time. i have other data at the close from 1977 through 2010 in the book. the most comprehensive data for the slightly earlier data i have biography news searches, information on the nominees earth day, political affiliation , information on the nomination and confirmation. a very detailed information on their paper trail. we often hear whether you publish the lot that matters. that's not the case it turns

out. what really matters is how smart the guy is, very little impact in terms of whether you publish. i know what are the published journal articles, what types of journal articles. i know what types of books, the number of op-ed pieces they wrote. if we have time, will briefly go through some of those things. the aba ratings we're talking about, citation opinions they talk about. i also have some interesting material from the almanac of the federal judiciary. i don't know how many of you are familiar with this. i first came across it when i was chief economist. one of the really neat things about this is they go and ask lawyers who practice before federal judges a whole range of different questions about those judges. so they say was the judge politically biased? if so, how is it biased? is he biased conservatively,

liberally? did the judge after judicial temperament? was the smart? all sorts of things that have lawyers practicing in front of all these judges. you have survey data that you can really make comparisons across nominees that you could make otherwise. this is important for a couple reasons because is it possible that nominations have become more contentious overtime because president have appointed more extreme nominees in terms of their political views? is surely something you hear a lot of a possible explanation for the changes we've seen. i'll just give you one craftier to give you some idea. in the almanac of the federal judiciary data. the black column here, and this is the percentage of lawyers of federal judges who were nominated. carter, reagan, rashomon,

clinton, bush c. takes a few years. you can see this black line is for the percent of lawyers who practice before these judges by these different president who believe their politically natural. the percentage who think they are politically natural has been increasing pragmatically over time. so now your something that's almost near 60% of the lawyers who practice before these guys think their politically neutral. this hardly seems like that's going to explain why the confirmation process has become more content. i'll give you something else here. that is how difficult is it to confirm nominees who went to a law school and did well and got on the flop review versus those who neither went through a tough loss goals nor did particularly

well. the white lines show a call and show you people who went to a top 10 law school. the black column show you those who have neither does. i just look for a minute that republicans. reagan, bush, bush c. each of these cases you can see the confirmation rate for the republican nominees who were the brightest was lower than it was for the ones who were. almost 90% of his number nominees, no offense to those people who didn't graduate top law school. when i sent this around to some earlier academic publishers, i've got all sorts of people offended when i would use these terms. but anyway, you can see almost 98% for his brighter nominees being confirmed.

george h.w. bush, this is amazing. 89% of the nominees got confirmed. only 33% of his nominees from the top law schools who develop those schools got nominated. really dramatic difference. now if you look at the democrats, the opposite. they're smarter nominees, whether carter, clinton or obama all but confirmed. i'll just make a general statement. when i do the regression results later, basically the same is going to be generally the smarter nominees. republicans have a smart time. why democratics fight stronger than republicans fight stronger. don't make a big difference over

time. by a lot of measures at the smartest nominees. these guys are in their 70s. you'll begin to see a shift in the intellectual balance on the chorus, which are going to say much of the democrats and republicans may be quite sorry that they didn't go in sight strongly against the smart democrats as democrats fight against the republicans. you could look at the confirmation rate. in this case, the nominees who went straight talk 10 law school. in each administration, the smarter nominees took a longer time to get to the confirmation problem. this case is particularly

obvious. his nominees took about four to 50 days to get through the confirmation process. the other ones were about as dirt long. okay, so i am showing you grasp it just kind of compare one thing at a time. obviously lots of these factors could bear. just be careful that may be president obama goes and nominates a lot of the people towards the end near an election. you have to account for that then when you're doing them. there's lots of other fact is that could be similar. so i have empirical work where i try to account for all those different factors. i look at what administration made the nomination, race, gender, age, kind of the background of the judge, where they went to law school, whether they previously served as a justice for circuit court.

i have kind of the confirmation process, same party control. be at the nomination nomination, whether it first, second, third or fourth year of the term. i'll just quickly point out a couple things. trying to show the data in a somewhat unique way here in terms of progress even get an idea of the different factors. you can see compared to carter, clinton circuit court nominees after you account for these other factors took about 105% longer to get through the confirmation process. bush to play the nominees took about 240% more to get through the confirmation process. asians and hispanics tend to have a somewhat easier confirmation time getting through. age seemed to matter. basically the older you were common easier time you had getting through confirmation is

was quite significant of an effect, which is understandable again because wi-fi her because of old nominees not going to be in the court that long. you can see the big thing here is same party controlled the senate and presidency. at the same party controls the senate and the president by itself will reduce the confirmation process by about 43%. again, the big thing i was mentioning before the timing, how important it is. if you ever get a nomination, please pass the president not to appoint you during the fourth tier of its term. if you could appointed during the fourth year of the term increases the length of the confirmation process by about 73%. a year different clerkships. if you clerk for supreme court

justice, that by itself increases the confirmation process by about 41%. some other things i could show you here. this is one that i think of get a kick out of. when i called the lawyers, they said this explains a lot. one of the questions i mentioned before from the almanac of the federal judiciary was judicial temperament. did these guys listen? do they weigh the information being given to them? are they considering? it's either poor, fair or good. if you get rated as fairbrother them poor, that increases the leg of the confirmation process by 24%. if you get rated as good as compared to poor, that increases 30%. so the better your judicial temperament, the harder it was for you to make it through the comp admission process there.

this is her district courts, so skip this. i told you other data on publications to pick up paper trails. in general, paper trails don't matter that much. the link is the number of books and journal articles i publish. i even had breakdowns in the journal article. there's a couple things that did matter, difference between republicans and democrats. republicans who wrote the nature of a longer confirmation process by 25% longer. the other differences between republicans and democrats in terms of things like op-ed. all i can say is if you're republican and you're thinking about wanting to be a federal judge please don't write op-ed pieces. it doesn't seem to matter if you're a democrat, but republicans take 17% longer to

take through the confirmation process relative to democrats. so i just kind of summarize a couple things here. one is you compare circuits and district court nominations. if you look at district court nominations, big factors come the same party control the presidency and the senate. if you have a clerkship weblog review, went to a top 10 law school that matter and it's gotten worse over time with clinton and bush. for district court nominees come you don't see as much going on there. it's not as important a petition. where they went to law school matters in racial variables like asian, hispanic. aba ratings were significant. i think basically particularly in the later. you find as time goes by republicans are just ignoring the aba ratings. they have less of an impact.

when you're looking at circuit court nominations, there's a couple other things that were important. one was race, particularly blacks and republicans broken out. they had a big impact. someone like clarence thomas had a tough appeals court confirmation in a difficult time even more difficult confirmation. partly that is black, but also the fact he's a bright guy. if you read a lot of the books that have been written about the inner workings of the supreme court by jan crawford or jeffrey toobin, it's amazing how they talk about getting other justices to change their position. much more than anyone else i've mentioned on this. i had a professor at ucla's mine

who passed away. for about 25 years, he taught economics to federal judges. he had touched something like 400 judges over the years that he was fair, federal judges. he told me that thomas was one of the two or three smartest people he ever had go through that program among the federal judges that are there. so i think that also helped explain. so let me kind of summarize what we have here on this ever taken a couple questions. that is as morrissette date, we see much greater battle judicial confirmations. so what can you do to try to stop it? how can we make it so lessons that state in terms of a nominee that is fair? one with day you could have a term limit for these guys.

there is a cost to that. if people are only around the supreme court for 10 years or 15 years, you can see a lot more variability in terms of the positions of the supreme court. there's a cost of having the supreme court change positions more frequently over time. there's real problems. not as much is going to be at stake. i'm not sure that the preferred option. the other way so i don't have any illusions as who's going to be accomplished is to make the federal government less important. so if you kind of cut back on this massive growth of all this regulatory these, which are making it so you have more cases covering more areas of people's lives, going before the court, then you are going to have less battles over who's going to be there because less is going to be at stake. so here's the irony.

at the very time the federal government is growing important of who gets to be a federal judge is increasing. we are having dumber people on the federal courts. so kind of -- i mean, you will lawyers have a good idea how much work complicated judicial questions have gotten over time as he's gotten more and more detailed and complicated regulatory issues that come up here and i mean, look at the growth of the federal tax code over time or just go through and look at the environmental protection agency, how much longer than detailed and complicated the regulations are than they were 30 years ago. financial regulations that are there. so at the very time, we are kind of demanding that these judges make more and more complicated decisions they are for having people with less and less intellectual firepower to go and deal with these important

topics. you know, so now we are talking about aliens or tens of billions of dollars. there's a reason why 80 or 100 years ago when president would nominate on the supreme court, they would say who's the smartest nominee, rather than pick somebody who is the same political party. one thing i didn't mention is not only did hoover nominate cardoza in the supreme court, but cardozo had actively been campaigning against hoover in 1928. but it didn't matter to him because he didn't think it mattered in terms of political views who was put on the court, but it mattered in terms of how smart they were. even then before we've got maybe marquand potato types of legal questions that went forward, they still valued even then having smarter judges on the

court. so that's the law species now and do some question i think it's been kind of loss in the political debate. i appreciate it and the federalist society having me here to talk about down the court and i'm happy to sign books afterwards and take a couple questions. >> join me in thanking dr. tranthree. [applause] unfortunately, we've come upon a heartbreak here. maybe we can take one or two questions if anybody has a couple quick questions. >> yes. >> did you find any evidence either in totally -- did you find any evidence correlating length of confirmation or something on that order with a republican's views on abortion? >> well, i didn't have therapies

on abortion per se. but i can say i don't really think abortion had a lot to do with it. i know their political views. i had the survey of these nominees, whether conservative or liberal or not by the lawyers who practice before them, but that didn't matter. as they give an example with harriet miers. my eyes have the most public views on abortion if anybody that's been nominated to the supreme court. yet there wasn't any democrat who spoke out against her come even though she had the strong views. when you look over time, there is really any discussion about abortion there. you heard it before that could see changes that were occurring at that time. >> did you find any correlation in terms of the religion of the nominee? >> outcome i have data on revision of the nominees.

there were some things going on, but i'm not really sure there is something systematic. so it intended to take a long time to get confirmed. jewish tend to take relatively short time to get confirmed. but mormons, part of that was that there weren't a lot of them never thayer compared to the religious groups. there were a couple cases where you had a democratic president nominee democrat mormon with the republican senate and a really hatched and others called them up a lot in this case is. >> is your data suggest one way or the other whether these trends are politically response to? that is our american voters demanding these battles be happening or is this springing from the mind of the senate and individual senators judicial or governing philosophies?

>> i don't want of other research and politicians pretty much represent constituents that are there. i don't see anything that indicates politicians are somehow not behaving rationally or not representing their voters. i mean, if your lawyer and a jury case come i mentioned before why you would object to certain types of people sinning. he's very persuasive. pretty smart compared to the average juror that they are. so i was a year or rational to unopposed. my opposing counsel who thinks a radio talkshow host may be politically on the case may want to have them on. there's nothing rational or irrational with either of those two positions. i don't think there's any more mistaken terms of politicians opposing people that are there.

the issue is there something fundamental going on here in terms of what's at stake. so let me give you one last analogy on this. that is a lot of people go and complain about how much campaign expenditures have increased over time. let's say hunter years ago the federal government was so 2% of gdp. but people do want to make as large contributions to the campaign? >> now, the reason they make such large contributions to the bush campaign is because so much morrissette take now but not only larger spending by the federal government, but the massive regulations that are there. so it monitors much more. back then who cares whether senator was. that's 2% of gdp. how much can affect most people rise? now it's a massive amount going on. 25% of gdp plus all the regulations, which may affect

everything in people's lives. so with more at stake, people donate more. so in some sense they are fighting more. they're asking whether voters are dennis trading with their donations how much they care. i would imagine they care just as intense late for the exact same reasons, whether their political opponents get somebody and a court, whether it be a circuit court or a district court or supreme court. >> one more question. i know mac >> professor tranthree, if this trend continues 20, 30 years and we do get an overall less intelligent, anybody is going to get through is going to be reasonably intelligent. closer to the average intellect, we have sparked tichenor's know lots of gotten more complicated and it's just the point where

it's almost. long time ago. in that, wouldn't it read better to have a judiciary more in tune, marcos menelik to the person whose meaning judged if the judge can understand this is so ridiculously complicated. you people are trying to charge this person with violating the law. i can even think of it. so bye-bye due process grounds. do you think you would be harder to impose this massive complex when they don't have the intellectual capability on the bench to do so? >> well, i guess a couple points made here. one is they have gotten worse and i think they'll continue to get worse in terms of the confirmation process because the federal government is growing. just over the last four or five

years within a massive growth in the size of federal government over the last four or five years in terms of spending and new regulatory agency. we have massive regulatory agencies with consumer protection and regulation of financial markets with dodd-frank and everything we didn't have previously. so morrissette date. if you look at history in the last 50, 60 years, from time to time the growth may temporarily slow down. if that continues, your concern is valid. you have two possibilities here just because the laws giving more complicated, doesn't mean the judge say i'm not going to take a guess on what it should be. it may simply be more random in terms of the decisions of judges made. my guess is the going to be the most likely outcome. cannot think i've seen over the

last four or five administrations by the quality of new judges have been solved. it's dramatic if you look at citation by other judges now versus ones who were nominated by four or five administrations, how much is fallen over time. other judges don't think the new guys are smart as previous judges were. but i don't see that as being related in any way to evidence that these judges are deemed too complicated. i can't figure it out. i'm just going to throw the case out. i haven't seen any evidence of that and i know see any reason why expect that's going to be the case in the future. baby smarter judges really is better than the government how much more complicated it is. so anyway, thank you very much for your time. [applause]

the night we sat down with transeven, author of trannine, a braille book of diagrams with lunar craters. >> years ago, my team came to me and basically told me that we would have a blind student at my atmosphere of a science class. and i teach the planetarium, which is totally visual. at that time i was very intimidated. i was thinking, how am i going to make this visual class accessible to the student who can you see? well it turns out that here in kansas at the time we had a text aloud and this person would do some tactile materials for students that are blind.

he also just happened to have a love for strong to me and was an amateur astronomer. so i hooked up with him and the rest is history as they day. we started to develop astronomy material for human and that led to a tactile star chart. that was one of our first products that reproduce because in the planetarium, we spent a lot of time learning constellations, major stars, a little bit about the seasons. as things really had to be visual. all access can be drilled for you and should be braille for you if you need them. the problem is that so much test because that can be said. is aiming. it's oftentimes too late or after the fact, which is sent and we need to do better on a

stick at this material accessible to them immediately. but that's really not the problem. one of the major problems particularly in science is are the diagrams, are the pictures that go with the tax. those can be just produced automatically like you can braille text. all you have to do is have a pdf a diagram have to take a lot or thought, a lot more effort. so that where we have read these books. textual in the diagrams. our text is an alliance or attack those are actually the crowning the achievement of our book. we want to make our images feel like they actually look. in order to do that, we use all

sorts of creative materials on our mass tears. the night basically asserts that they can action, a picture. so for example, here is a massive picture, printed eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper of an actual picture from the curiosity rover. you can see that arm and the camera attachment and the mountain that we went to this i.d. on mars called not sure. so it starts with a picture. so we have to do is develop a master that matches that picture. said this is the master re-created of mount sharp. it is labeled in braille and the top in upper right-hand corner. you can see the robotic arm in the camera mount in the distance of mount sharp. so here you can see the

difference and similarities between the actual picture on top and tax on the bottom. once you have a master produced, then you can make the tax does. to do that, we used this machine right here called a thermal machine. it's a very simple process. he uses heat in a vacuum. heat in a vacuum will form the beautiful tackles. so what you do is you simply put the master on the free. you take a sheet of sick call braylon. he placed the braylon onto the thermal for machine, put the frame down and then this portion before the heat over it and set the time. it was heated up for a few seconds can usually four or 52nd. after four or five seconds, the

vacuum pump will combine. he cited of and we would peel off the braylon and we would have a finished product of the camera attachment was not sharp in the background, all made from this mass air. ratepayer. we have to collate all the sheets together. we have to print it out and then we take it to a binary in erie, pennsylvania, who finds that for us and we have a finished product at the end in there. we test these with blind people that can look at them and study them and feel them and give us

their opinion. >> my name is ken quinn. i'm the type to graphics specialist. a lot of times typographic surtout settled. so when you bring your hands over the whole graphic, might miss a creator. you might miss a rain. you might miss an arm of the camera, even if it is labeled in braille just because it's blending in with the rest of the graphic or because of the paper that it are a lot of dimensions that go into what you might miss part of the graphic, making it more diverse and more intensive for the particular thing you're trying to point out more boldly. if you're trying to create a crater, and what the reins of the crater to be more defined so you could eat the center of the crater while you're moving your hands over it. otherwise this just is not imitation around the walls of the crater oftentimes can either

be misleading for you might not even be at all. even stephen betters cited kaman from the books because they can get their hands on it. they can't touch the actual things. they are what we would call it two and a half deep. we use actual two and half feet, so they're raised images and diagrams. >> the difference between what we produce are like night and day. the race line drawing can be very graphically pleasing to the visual i, could be very colorful. however, if you just have something outline, depending on the knowledge base of the student or the person is sitting in front of a totally dependent on what they get out of it. for somebody that's in middle-school or high school, though have to explain a lot of

the details. oftentimes it have to even put their finger on where you want them to be. and compares them with making graphics how they look and feel how they look, so basically taken a graphic and make you feel how it looks to decided i is totally differing because you're seen all the dimensions of a particular item. you are seeing the rings around saturn. you're seen all the craters on the moon. you are seeing the volcanoes the atlantic ocean, what it done by making something that is just plain two-dimensional, three-dimensional to decided i to two-dimensional graphic for the blind and visually impaired. >> every book comes with a cd. on that cd, there's an accessible pdf file that you can

ask as the tax. also, there's a professionally recorded audio file of the tax so you can listen to it or download the pdf. the beauty of that is to produce all the braille as to the cost to the production of the book and would make the book rather thick. and so by providing it on a disk, we save money and we save space also. most users that are blind have what is called refreshable rail. if you use that refreshable braille, you put the disc in your computer, you have a real threat up front of you and you can read the text in braille and you can scroll down at your leisure, at your speed of reading.

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in the next hour you will see clips about the three past chairman of the federal reserve and conversation with william soaker, author of volker, the triumph of persistence, greenspan, the age of turbulence , adventures in a new world demand will street journal economics editor on current

share ben bernanke, and fed we trust, ben bernanke's war on the great panic. we begin with william silver, finance and economics professor at heat new york university's stern school of business and author of the triumph of persistence. in 2012 he was joined by former federal reserve chairman to the test -- discuss current economic issues. >> lessons from the era in the present situation. today we are fighting clearly a different angle, appointment yet we are having some of the same conditions a huge budget deficit that we need to solve. is the solution higher interest rates? >> before you answer the question, let me say, first of all, --

[laughter] you know, after the 80's inflation became very high around the world, but particularly in the united states with the possibility for world currency. and people thought this was a problem that was going to be dealt with. to begin with they thought that it could be dealt with. some became popular at the time because they have price stability. no, that's 20 years ago. but this history of central banking, a huge financial crisis , very big recession, lingering recession. so all the emphasis is on expansion. there's no inflation at the moment. but it does raise the question whether it is necessarily

understandable to push money out into the system and get the economy going again, will we lose sight of the lessons that we live with some difficulty in the 70's and 1980's? i am very glad, as they say, taking more and more action for easier money. we wanted that all in the context of price stability. repeat that mantra and hope that it will be acted upon. it is right now. >> fairly preemptively of it's going to work. when will that be, the time to act? >> i am not sure that anybody should take from what i said that the fed should tighten now. i did not say that, and i don't think that they should unless

the unemployment rate starts to really come down even faster than it already seems to be coming down. but i think you have to worry about price stability. price stability is easy to say and horrible to do, like diet and exercise. easy to say and hard to do. and one of the things that paul volcker taught us is that the big mistake that was made in the 70's and in the 80's, renaming. and it was criticized. not in 1980, not so much and 86 drolen 1985 and the unemployment rate was seven & and the fed tightened up because it was being pre-empted i worry whether ben bernanke pour whoever follows some well, in fact, be

able to preemptively raise rates when we have a legacy of five years of unemployment. >> in this conflict one of the parts of the book, it showed -- >> they wanted to pay extra for air volker rules. >> it would have been money well spent. it shows the power of central banks used to influence the economic activity. i guess the question facing a lot of central bankers today which ensure u.s. faced is have the central bank's down to much to compensate for a political arena where nothing has been done? >> down through much -- done to much. right now. we are in a situation. pullman and driven home from any

economist in might be given up in post world war, the great mistake was made in the 1930's with a long recession, and long unemployment. the federal reserve, to 80 and too early. and under those particular. i held that they can get to tighten in time and get one another to reform down the road, but it is not here right now. and we can argue about these recent moves. the traditional power has been exhausting. one are two things, but nothing really dramatic. so here we are. we have tech devolve upon other

methods cannot rely upon a little return. the we are in a situation we have not been in since the 1930's. great financial expansion, the late 1920's and in the early part of this century. and a great boss done in the stock market and the housing market. happened in japan. the stock market and in the housing market, and they still haven't done anything. and then we get your. and the real lesson here is not so much inflation at the moment, but how did we ever let these abscesses with housing, housing elsewhere, japan, none of those days, we used to talk about the property around the imperial palace in tokyo.

a few hundred acres was equal to a value of all the real estate in california. that was real -- i don't know if it was true, but if you were to talk about it it was a sense of extreme. >> when you talk to fed officials, do you share. [laughter] not right now. you are fully mike. [laughter] >> have the parlor, they reveal and betrayed a certain kind of frustration with the criticism, including the criticism that usually it is too much because there will be only cross. cannot rule anything out in the affairs of the political that was not doing much. >> well, i don't think you're

getting all that criticism. but if you really think you can accomplish something you will. no, we get a lot of criticism in the paper the last few days from the so-called emerging countries the somehow the federal reserve is somehow undermining the prospects for the developed world. we have a responsibility for importing. somehow it's hampered. that criticism, i don't understand it. it's pretty wild. somehow we should tighten up the united states. so it will fall in the hands of this. i agree. with the chairman was saying the of the day, what he's doing is

not aimed at the country. it just has not been the same. it is aiming for policies and the united states which in the long run will help everybody. we have to do that consistent. and that is the tricky part. >> you know, he sounds too knots. he does not want to criticize ben bernanke. >> well, to secretly. >> he is a nice guy. >> i think is important. >> the second book right now. >> all have to buy the first one. i mean, we talk about -- we should have a fiscal stimulus, and we should have had fiscal stimulus bill read you need unemployment maturities because

you need to bolster spending, but you also need long-term budget balance. if there is one lesson that comes out of the 1980's, it is that you can't have a responsible monetary policy without a responsible fiscal policy. it is too large, politically it is too large. this is not a question of can you control the money supply. you can control the money supply, but can you take the that congress will, in fact, call the chairman and say, what are you raising interest rates now? we just that unemployment. you are trying to the nep the recovery in the bud. you know, this is -- when it comes to inflation. and he knows this better than i do. you can't wait until you see the lights of their eyes. it does not work. you have to nip inflation before and. and i say that ben bernanke says, well, there is no other

game in town because fiscal stimulus is not there. i'm going to push out. don't worry. it will take later. i say again. that's easy to say. i'm very, very hard to do. it's going to be difficult for ben bernanke or whoever is the fed chairman. it's not a problem right now. all months are now from 18 months from now you get a recovery going with the kind of deficit that we have outstanding and with the kind of liquidity that is sitting in the banking system, i want to see a fed chairman and raise interest rates cannot not talking about will go from one and a half to 21. is it not going to get anyone's attention in any of the way. and that is really a political problem. this is not an economic problem. this is a political problem.

the two issues, chair policy and fiscal policy cannot be separated. that is what he told senator heinz. >> should we put him in office? [laughter] [applause] >> why you think i wrote this book. >> that top of his political campaign. >> he has not told me. >> a hidden agenda. >> are you ready to be the chairman again? i am of the old for that. a year ago. >> okay. on the other hand, you see in the book, that's a structural problem. the issue you just raised is a structural problem. it's very difficult to find. >> it's very difficult to find a

balance, particularly difficult to get to the fiscal side. and nobody is talking about really making a substantial tightening of fiscal policy, but they're all talking about how much has to be done in the future. this is obviously the big problem with the administration. >> i wanted to ask you about that. in journalistic terms, there really surprising thing is you're finding that the high interest-rate, expected to be strong into an irresponsible. >> first of all, his recollection if there would be in the agenda. if that's what you wanted to do. >> strong arm in anybody.

he did what you thought was necessary and appropriate and the circumstances. once again under way you're not going to give up the matter. i can say that i have any great faith that the congress is going to allow to precisely deal with the budget. >> and going to jump in. let me just tell you. what i started, when i started to write this book this is not even on the agenda. it was not something that was part of this book. i did know but. it will have found out about it is by reading the documents, the contemporary documents, by reading interchange between he and senator heinz. that was sort of for public consumption increase the minutes of the federal open market committee. in one of the people on the

local market committee who was a protege. and he said if we don't raise interest rates, the chances of getting any health from the fiscal side is almost zero. so i have to say that if you read what the federal reserve system would say behind closed doors, and by the way, back then no one expected the minister be public because they were not public until 1993. this is really unfiltered conversation. and there were very clear. >> yap. >> just what i remember back then. conversation that was going on. >> we have this argument. just the way that it was. and, you know, that is the contemporary record. we have to go with contemporary

record. and he said, well, the time passed, he was saying the opposite of what he really meant. i know that. you want me to say. he reminded me, by the way. he did not read the book until it was already gone to press. so you made a big mistake. is the truth. he calls me up. you made a big mistake. what? you have my resignation. your resignation wrong? and he had this whole story about what happened with foreign exchange. foreign exchange collapsed. you got it all wrong. i've resigned monday afternoon. you say i resigned tuesday morning. i was sweating. have to say. the book was already out.

it was too late. so what happened is, well, let me check. so i would go and look at president reagan's diary. president reagan's diary, that's not such a bad source to look at and, of course, president reagan says he was not the most reliable. but this is a diary. >> were going to have the announcement tuesday morning. maybe that was one thing that i forgot about. so i think contemporary records have the place. >> i think i am hopeful that we can solve these discussion in the next two minutes. i'm hopeful. i use saying that what happened, the fiscal responsibility of the

u.s. government eventually embraced was just an unintended consequence of your politics? >> it was a long time ago, and i don't remember. the estimation. his nose when i was thinking at that point. my memory, you know, pretty tight policy. other times, it was still high unemployment. and i did have any way of saying whether the congress is going to act. i think the fact that interest rates are so high row was a factor in them getting together. how effective that was. the high interest rates pro we had something to do with the.

it would have been suicidal. >> right. >> that is as much consensuses you're going to get with that. >> yes. the -- volker rule before a move on to questions from the audience, it -- you know, i did many christmas cards, that's just face it. >> you would be surprised. some very important ones. >> publicly, not many. >> well, publicly, yes. philosophically. >> i'm about to retire. mexico now want to say this.

one of the things they you hear from the financial industry when you talk about their role, it's done nothing to do with equality. so -- >> well, of course that's wrong. >> that's a good answer. >> you just look at the whole outcome of the crisis one point of your configuring, the banks lost as much money in trading in 2008 as they did in the previous four. and it is nothing to do with the crisis. but you know all the individuals , the cases when this time of crisis, five, $10 million a rose from individual failings. it's unsettling. but the important thing about

this for me which is overlooked is not just the risk involved in the trading, which israel, but this trading mentality, the last 15 hours so years and all the financial engineering and so forth. the culture or banking generally so that the radical behavior part of it was consistent with stability. the biggest single factor in this plan, of course, was housing. having to add all these sub prime mortgages easily sold, people manipulating, kind of trading in its self, but this is, you know, the conversation practices. how can we give the deals that traders will make their supposed to be the ones some it became

the highest riders. >> the line not just cut out the middleman. >> they use these techniques to securitized. $200 every time they go to the of housing mortgage. but i never argued that the risks. end in itself it was the cause of all the crisis. did it contribute to the cultural atmosphere? the biggest problem the banks made is then made too many bad loans. there is no question about that. but it was a major factor with what contributed to that kind of behavior. >> our focus on the federal reserve chairman continues with alan greenspan who held the

position from 1987 until to does a six. mr. greenspan said down with billions of prize-winning author daniel juergen in 2007 to assess that this is the simi during the later years of his tenure. >> this book is actually in gendering a good deal of controversy and argument. at the upright at the beginning we would take them and on. number one, this question of were you a critic of spending and tax cuts or did your views changed? and i think he's day it has been striking to see how this has changed. yesterday president bush said he respectfully disagrees with you. today vice president cheney and op-ed piece in the "wall street journal" said, your assessment is off the mark, which i think was a way of saying you're wrong. [laughter] >> you suggested some doubt in that remark.

you are actually asking two questions. and it is, did i change my mind? a lot of people i said i had have you with respect to the tax cut at the time it was initiated and only in retrospect to have revise history, which is one issue. the second is actually the question as to my views with respect to what is essentially my judgment of very sad case of the progression of the republican congress from when it took over the majority in the early 1990's and when it lost the majority in 2006. those are two separate questions . let me try to do the first quickly. it is basically an issue of evidence. when i approached the tax cut issue and the beginnings of 2001

where everyone, including the best experts in the fare reserved or arguing quite persuasively that we were about to deal with a very large year after year surplus in the budget , and the expectation that by 2006 the debt would be effectively paid off which meant that according to the -- most of reavis figures it would have a $500 billion surplus in 2006. and if you pay off all that, there is only one thing you can do with those funds, put them into private securities or to a lesser extent in state and local securities. there is no third option. >> of the u.s. government turn into a mutual fund. >> well, it was a huge mutual fund because you're talking 500

billion-a-year plan and it was supposed to rise thereafter. i had been -- lyndon johnson's regime and richard nixon's. and i had no doubt in my mind that they would have used those funds for political purposes to get corporations to do what they chose to do. and i felt that was of very -- i just felt that was a disastrous thing to happen. so having been a deficit hawk all those years and just looking and savoring the surplus because this occurred in 1998. i'll this and realize that the problems would be the surplus. the surplus is with regard to that going to effectively zero and rocketing into the mechanics of it. either the bush tax cut or the tax cut of the democratic minority would have served my

purpose of essentially bringing down the perspective surplus by 2006 effectively to zero, so the issue would not come up accumulating, less to say, mutual fund. that outlook turned out to be just plain wrong. by 2002 we were already beginning to see the huge surpluses disappear rapidly. and at that point, having argued in the testimony in 2001 that we were not really sure that the surplus was there, we ought to have a trigger, which meant that tax cuts from anything else that increase the deficit had to be reviewed and, indeed, probably altered automatically in the event the forecasts were wrong. and then on top of that when the surplus disappeared i began to argue that i was in favor of the

tax cut very specifically the partial reduction in the double taxation of dividends which most fiscal experts tend to be in favor of. but i said, the tax cut which i favor, however, had to be paid for, meaning that the pay requirements of the federal budget requires that he do that. it was not required when it was a surplus, but it then became a requirement. by 2003 my view of the tax cut was conditional. i wanted to see it providing that there were reductions. so i did change my mind, but i changed it for years ago. >> right. abcaeight. thank you. let me ask you this second question, of course, it has been in the press much, the housing bubble. was the fed responsible?

we certainly heard much of that. >> i find that very difficult to be a conclusion for people like it because the evidence against it is startling. there was from, i guess, the early 1990's for probably 20 or more countries around the world all of whom were experiencing this dramatic drop in long-term interest rates and therefore mortgage rates which occurred for reasons i explained in the book as a consequence at the end of the cold war. everybody is behaving similarly. you look at the actual trend of prices in homes country after country after country, and they all look right smack on top of everybody else. if anything, the u.s. numbers are somewhat less than the average. now, when you see and an extraordinary correlation where

everybody's commonly be having the same way, you need a little bird explanation of why is in a single force that during a. and since there is such an obvious in the force out there, as i try to explain the book, the question as to whether the fed did it seems sort of beside the point. now, more importantly in a certain technical sense, we did try to raise mortgage interest rates in 2004 and again in 2005, and we failed. the reason we failed is that we could not raise the longe fact e sort of bubble. the irony is that as best i can judge of looking at the date, looking at the flow of funds, looking at the various aspects of the banking system, i was

mistaken. we were not creating anything which would induce a rise in the price of homes in the united states. and the evidence is unequivocal in my judgment. i just don't understand some of the other arguments that were made in a position to that. >> and you do see it as part of this grace to of great transition that happened at the end of the cold war. >> oh, yeah. >> i have a sense that is one of the sort of major things that came into focus when you're actually writing the book. >> is started to come in focus in the latter years of my tenure at the fed. indeed some people may remember that we were very puzzled why when we raise short-term interest rates on like most of the time, long-term interest rates did not move. i eventually said this is a conundrum.

>> that was the famous conundrum >> a famous conundrum. i found i had gotten ten bottles of conundrum. >> how was it? >> i don't even know what the vintage was. >> to new what was in it. >> precisely. by its very nature it is unknown. >> with the background to the conundrum as this movement. >> in other words, at that point i and a lot of my colleagues at the board started to really ask ourselves what is it out there that is preventing the markets from behaving the way they always did? and what is it out there which is this inflating the american economy so vigorously. and while we are acutely aware of globalization in general was a significant factor, we have not identified the headed for @booktv visual components. in writing the book what i did

is step-by-step in trying to go from what was the a strong narrative and when the berlin wall came down. there was a startling sense of economic ruin behind the art @booktv iron curtain which even the most pessimistic people about the state of eastern europe was, surprised that. and there was a dramatic geopolitical shift in the world. most of the third world then was thinking in terms of some form of central planning to organize there economies, but the evidence of central planning's failure was so unequivocal and devastating that everybody quietly, unceremoniously, without fanfare and seminars, debates, or anything shifted. china is the critical example which is, of course, the big

operator year. in 1980 and before you could not have foreign direct -- foreign investment in china by law. in 1991 they got it up to $4 billion a year. then as the evidence of central planning began to fade, you have the most remarkable rise in foreign direct investment in china, 20% to year. it was now more than $70 billion per year which means a very large number of people believe they can invest in china and get their money back which means they trust their property rights even though, as you know, the legal constitutional aspects of property rights is a very vague law. people's congress which passed an early this year is an improvement. it is obvious that the fact, everyone believes they have

property rights. >> one of the things that comes true in the book. if you are young man you would have been considered part of their small minority, very right wing libertarian market oriented people, you described onion in 1970's when you were head of the council of economic advisers you would go to your and you and only one other person the markets were a good thing. turnaround today in the world is pretty much embracing markets. what do you make of that? you are no longer a small minority. >> i like it. >> did he think would happen? >> no. actually, the other person, and this -- so stiffly he became president of the bank before the european central bank became one of the really prominent central bankers in the world. so he did well. >> the two of you.

>> i think at this point the most famous sentence in the book is on page 463 for those of you already have here copies, you say it is politically inconvenient to knowledge where everyone knows, the iraqi war is less in non-oil. there has not been an industry last few days in jeopardy what you mean by that. and when you don't mean by that. so this is -- >> well, i was referring to my view of what was going. i had been watching some hussein for twentieth 30 years taking very specific action which led to one central if he ever were to reach there which is to gain control of italy's oil. and first ten as you know, in the 1990's, secondly, actually, he was fighting iran before then. in 1990 move into kuwait call is turning saudi arabian.

and just watching what he was doing it became very clear to me that he was looking to finally control the straits of hormuz, which is the channel through which 18 are $19 million a day of middle east oil flows into international trade. it struck me that the real scary danger there was if said tom adams often unclear weapon, as far as i was concerned he was trying to get one. remember, we were not altogether certain, and the demise of the soviet union up and up an awful lot of possibilities for a lot of weapons to leak out into the world commandery have been fortunate for reasons and not tehran as to how that was avoided being done. but if he got a weapon, i was reasonably well convinced that he would then try to make a move

on the oil-producing countries, control the streets, and essentially taken out five or 7 million barrels a day out of world crude oil supply. and that would have crippled the industrial. >> the stability of the world economy. >> people and not aware how fragile a tied to energy is even now. hair straggling with $80 per barrel oil. al was not thinking $8 per barrel. no is the key 130, 150, 170. it would have been devastating. i was looking for any way to take him out of there. i mean, bin lot and was nowhere near the threat that someone's. so my initial view was if they're is a war and said, is taken out, that is a positive

plus. what i obviously was not happy with was what happened subsequent to that because that is a wholly different story. there is no better in my mind that the war, at least did something useful which was basically to get some of that. >> one more question to ask about current events. as i think you know, the fed cut interest rates yesterday. >> it did? >> yes. crises on the book toward everything sienese makeup. he's not read the papers. and we know that your policy, not to comment on current federal reserve policy, but i wonder if he cared to comment. [laughter] >> no. >> okay.

>> just allow me to say something. the one thing that is fascinating about the federal reserve is it is unique in washington, a government institution. i think there are more ph.d. per square foot than anybody else. and it is an extra nattily effective operation. you don't always know whether the actual policy in retrospect turns out to be right, but i will tell you, the way they go about it, from the staff level to the governors, it's really impressive. >> our look at the federal reserve chairmanship concludes with most regional economics editor david russell, author of in fed we trust. bin bernanke's war on the great panic. mr. russell examined current federal reserve chair bin bernanke's during the economic collapse of 2008.

>> ben bernanke comes to the fed convinced that his mission is to follow alan greenspan's policies but to have a somewhat different style. he wants to be the un greenspan pg things greenspan has created federal reserve that is too much like the vatican with an infallible pulp and everyone else is kind of irrelevant. the promises to try and elevate the institution and the other members of the policy committee into deemphasized the role and the individual of the chairman is the symbol. and for the first year that is about 20 dead. and then things start to get pretty different than the anticipated. i think in describing the book that bernanke was going to as low off the mark. of he and the treasury secretary and a stigma in the housing problem. they thought it was, in their work, contained. it did not think that it was a cancer that was going to endanger the entire financial system and the u.s. economy.

tectum allowed to figure out that the diagnosis was wrong. january 2008 he catches up and because interest rates rather dramatically by point and a half and there is in remarkable bear stearns at the supper we have an institution that is not supervised by the federal reserve, one for which they have not been a responsible. bernanke decides that it has to be saved for the good of the system and there is no one else in the country have been saying the gates of the federal reserve. the president of the united states could push a button and want to mislead is not carry a on mexico, but he does not have the money to fight the financial panic. only the federal reserve does. so they use that power and say paris turns from bankruptcy. they sell it to j.p. morgan chase and by $30 billion with the stuff of the bear stearns balance sheet.

and for the next six months thing sort of bump along. there are some problems. fannie mae and freddie mac turn out to be not solvent and have to be taken over effectively by the state. there are a number of ways in which the chairman of the federal reserve and the of the people of the feds seek to keep lending killing in the economy understanding that lending and credit have been as a connector system of the economy, and if it is not functioning the economy can function, but it is only in the fall of 2008 that weekend in september when lehman brothers, merrill lynch, and aig on in trouble in the same weekend and the drama really reaches its crescendo. as most of you know, and am happy to talk about it in questions, the fed did not save lehman brothers. it went under. they knew it would have some ripple effects. turn that to be a tsunami. they did not have to save merrill lynch because the married it to bank of america, much of bank of america's letter

regret. in the wake of that, in the wake of a run on the money market funds that was just in bats as severe as anything we saw in the 30's, they decide to save which has become a giant money sink with your money, but at that point having let or maybe been forced to lead lehman brothers go under, bernanke and tops a new mantra, and that is liver takes. and from that point on he sees himself as the only thing that stands between us and the calamity of the depression. they lend tons of money to a angie come 85 billion. he helps convince paulson to get the congress to get 700 billion to prop up the banking system. they guarantee money market funds. they guarantee the debt of almost every financial institution in the country. they launched the whatever it takes campaign that with the benefit of hindsight, i think you have to judge it a success. novosti journal a few weeks ceo

poll the launch of foster economists and ask integrate bernanke, and unlike the comment that one of them made. he said, bernanke's record was outstanding with floss. you know, when i go i would like for someone to say might record was outstanding with flaws. [laughter] some happy to talk about what they did -- did not save lehman, what they did saving energy. it seems to be a subject of endless fascination of my e-mail is any indication, but i thought i would ask a couple of other questions. if this guy is so smart white in d.c. this coming? after all, he was not at princeton when some of this stuff was going on. he came to washington, a member of the federal reserve board under alan greenspan, he worked for one of for george bush. and nothing to add really there to very simple answers. one is simply a failure of imagination. a lot of people have likened this to september 11th, and it

is a metaphor that makes me uncomfortable because an awful lot of people died that september 11th. there were people he said maybe someday some terrorist policies and airplane, but the people in defending our country did not think it possible that someone could commandeer three or four airplanes and apply them into the pentagon and the world trade center. this was a similar thing. it simply did not occur to the people who were responsible for managing the financial system that so much of the financial system could be built on the single premise that turned out to be wrong. housing prices across the united states will fall everywhere. and it turned out that we had a financial system that was a house of cards built on this very flimsy foundation because houses are the collateral for mortgages turned into securities turned in the more securities, turned in a more securities and sliced and diced in ways that

even the people are buying and selling did not understand the war. housing prices and not fallen it would not been nearly so bad. housing prices to fall and never use losses to be taken. that is the first thing. the second reason that this crisis so bad, why we have had weak now can say definitively the worst recession since the great depression and self, for all the work that has been done in economics of the past 70 years since the great depression to try and prevent something and even though we had $700 billion in taxpayer money, is somewhat heroic for reserve, interest-rate cut to zero, all sorts of unusual and eggs in actions taken come even with that we ended up with the worst recession since the great depression. how could that be? in the answer there is an extraordinary number of things, people and institutions failed. the list of culprits is awfully long, and i am sympathetic to the people who say, if only this lineup unchanged to one class

stiegel are falling greenspan and not done this. no, the lesson here is that almost every check on the system failed. you combine the well-paid executives and directors of the banks who gambled their own companies and did not know what they're doing. risk-management committees that one of managing risk and did not invest in the risk there were taking to my credit rating agencies that said aaa and paper that was not to play. people bought it knowing it was not and pretended it was in the most prized and the money did not get paid back. people made loans and mortgages to people who they knew could not pay it back and the republic to close the thing it could not pay back. there were just hoping that compresses with a lot and refinance. there were people have made fat fees and every part of this process, and there were people who had a lot of money in the gain and or relied on to know what they're redoing it did. and at the combine the politicians to let that happen, who bought into this notion of the market always does of its

ewing and the process to take its fair share of responsibility . there were stories about things not being right, but they obviously were not well done enough when it would have had more effect. you have to blame the fed itself. it is their job to maintain financial stability and so when you look at greenspan with the benefit of the small amount of hindsight that we have economic view about whether a cut interest rates to love to along with the benefit of hindsight, an important caveat. i think he probably did, and that contributed to an orgy of speculation in borrowing. you can argue he did not use the regulatory muscle that he had to try and prevent some of the sub prime abuses, but i actually think the most interesting thing is somewhat less specific. it had to do with the mindset. the mindset was the one that it yell a lot of sophisticated investors who have their own money in the game, they will police the poker table better

than regulators and bureaucrats can never. that was what greenspan himself in his testimony before henry waxman's committee, why if you want to do a confession you choose to do before henry waxman is beyond me, but that was what greenspan said he got ron. it turned out there were not policing the table. the table had been overturned commanded nearly to call this with the. so we have now a situation where i think we have learned a lot. i don't think we learned everything. this is one of those have says that will be studied and restated reexamined for the next 20 to 30 years before we really have clarity. i think we can address lessons about what happens in the crisis and to we have this distant or for all its flaws a bunch of people can come together and do something, sometimes bending the rules, sometimes stretching the law and that, i think an agenda

to be something that is essential. if we had faint -- wait for congress to decide that the water had to finally go on the fire the house with a burn down before they get done. let me conclude with quickly asking where we are right now. i think there are three parts of that of want to talk about. one is where we are on the economy. as i said, out of intensive care. things are getting better but are not good and will be for a long time. the history of recessions that are caused by financial crises are that they -- the recovery is painful and slow. despite the recent euphoria see no reason this will be different where are we on ben bernanke and his reappointment? his term as of january 2 does intend. my bet is if the president had to make a decision today he would reappoint him. changing drivers when the road is still bumpy and curvy is risky.

obama's putting in his own person in order to have easier money, more inflation, weaker dollar. i don't think the president's appointees would likely do that, but people would think that he was which would cost something. finally one of these decisions are made it is all compared to? and i think the president probably concludes that despite some pretty attractive options on his own staff, larry summers, maybe janet yellen, the president of the san francisco fed, for the sake of the economy and stability that his reappointment would probably be the safest course. if that is true why did we not just cannot announce tomorrow? the president wants insurance, that if the economy -- before he makes a decision was to assure the economy is not falling apart because of the economy falls apart the political pressure to replace bush's appointee to the fed was someone else will be strong. and then -- have we learned

enough so we don't go through this again? that is why i am worried. we went through a financial catastrophe. we almost had another great depression. congress still has not done the things that needed to fix it. the president, the treasury secretary and the fed chairman of no more power today to deal with a teetering financial restitution that is not organized than they did the daily minimum down. the thing that concerns me. and now there seems to be this atmosphere on wall street that that is over and we can go back to doing business the way we did before which is also threatening . while i am confident that we're not on the abyss of the great depression and employees the economy seems to be getting better than worse to my don't think we can be complacent. we cannot expect the federal reserve to rescue us from ourselves. we were warned that we needed to fix things and is up to us to fix those things so that the market does not drive the economy off the side of the cliff in.

>> you can watch all the programs feature of the past hour or numerous other brands on the topic of the federal reserve and our website book tv. >> this fall book tv is my -- marking are anniversary and we look back at 2005. the 1776 about the american revolution was a best seller that year. >> and speaking of the army that much of washington. and i want to just read you very briefly the way i introduce the army in the early pages of my book, 1776. the great majority were farmers and skilled artisans, shoemakers , saddler's, carpenters, we'll rights. the regiment, destined to play an important part as a new or nearly all sailors and fishermen

. it was an army of men accustomed to hard work they were familiar with adversity and making do in a harsh climate. resourceful command new tools. they could drive a yoke of oxen or hold up a stunt or tie proper not as readily as butcher a hawk or mend a pair of shoes. they knew from experience, most of them, the hardships and setbacks of life, preparing for the worst was second nature. where was the man who had never seen someone die? to be sure an appreciable number had no trade. there were drifters, tavern low lines, some the dregs of society. but by and large they were good, solid citizens, as worthy of people as ever marched out of step as would be said. married men with families who depended on them and with him they try to keep contract as best they could. it was the first american army

command an army of everyone. >> other best sellers were thomas friedmans, the world is flat, and for economics by economists steven levitt and stephen bender. watch on the programs that have aired on book tv of the past 15 years online at booktv.org. .. >> good