how many of them survived? you can count them on your fingers. some of you are old enough to remember the early 80s when we had the first pc boom. then you've got a shake out there, apple. apple survived the atari text entries and others that were in the business went by the wayside. that is normal. the market, that's how you move ahead. he don't know what's going to work until you try it and then 15 years ago no one -- not google was once i i think the numbers of these two kids challenge microsoft and searched ebitda and now they are the good bad guys, google so this is constant. all gold does this standard does is make sure money as a stable value. it does not prevent people from getting giddy and it does not prevent people from getting depressed. just make sure that when you do a transaction the money is fixed in value just like when you order a gallon of gasoline you

assume that the gallant and it's not too good to the gallon or 1.3 gallons. you know what you're getting. in terms of the rest of human nature, what it does do as a stable value is to get more risk-taking. you do get more people investing in your future. most don't make it but that's how you find out what works and doesn't work is the constant experimentation in the marketplace and even failures. remember henry ford had two painful bankruptcies on almost a third before he figured out how to make a car that could sell. trial and error and that is what you want. if you don't have that stable money and things stay the same. yes sir. okay. >> two short questions. what was nixon faced with in 71 and what was he trying to do that he felt he had to resort to the gold standard.

the gold standard as an increasing use that is going up geometrically and we all know about the uses of space and collectors of a the conductor and more and more users are being found for it. how will this affect and what will happen to them how will this affect things? what effect will the standard have on that? >> the first question what happened in 1971 that forced us off the gold standard supposedly? because we weren't playing by the rules in the bretton woods system. $35 an ounce. nixon was worried about re-election. the economy wasn't he thought responding quickly enough so the theory is out there that if you devalue the dollar that will boost exports which will help the economy, boost the economy and everyone will be happy. for a year in 1972 they put in a the wage price controls, devalue the dollar for a year and he was reelected in the economy crashed.

so, it was a bad intellectual theory that brought it about, not any real crisis. any of the economic problems we had in the 50s or 60's, small beer compared to some of the crises we have had in the past. there is no sensible reason to do it and in terms of industrial uses of gold, it's a small fraction you have out there. in fact we don't use gold anymore for fillings in our teeth. once upon a time we had gold and silver in our teeth and so we don't use that. in terms of most gold is for stored value and ornament. it has some industrial uses the nothing that would say oh my goodness we need 5.5 billion ounces or 6 billion ounces for industrial uses.

it's too valuable to use and that's why we don't have it in our teeth anymore. we found cheaper and better ways to fix our teeth. any other questions? if not, thank you all very much and we will go to the signing. thank you. [applause] >> please remember to fold up your chairs. [inaudible conversations] >> booktv covers hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. here's a look at some of the

events we will be attending this week. look for these programs to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2.

>> on a recent trip to new york city booktv toward the corporate headquarters a book publisher simon & schuster. while there we profiled several of the principle players responsible for the book's publication. acquisitions editing publicity and sales. we also discuss the history of simon & schuster now in its 90th year and the current health and future of the publishing industry.