employment. there is a message out there for us that is consistent with conservative policies that we can drive and be successful in and that is why wrote this book. that is why wanted to come here today and share it with you. it is a vision for and won final point and i'm out of time. one final point. america is sick and tired of division. conservatives are sick and tired of division. they are tired of the fighting, tired of nobody getting along and tired of the victory. they really are tired of it. even your most hard conservatives say enough with this. it's because we are -- we have the most divisive president in the history of this country. he personally attacks people and attacks them and goes after the other party like i have never seen a president before. bill clinton didn't do it reagan didn't do it.

this guy is a divider and we have made the mistake of joining along and we are doing the same thing. we are being just as vitriolic as he is right back at him. it doesn't help this country. we need a message ladies and gentlemen that is a positive message for america's future. something that includes all americans and it. we should be the party. the republican party is the party of the union. we want to unite people. the democratic party wins elections by dividing america into classes and groups. that is how they win and they go out and try to pump up the boats within their own little groups. the democratic party is a collection of these groups labor unions and trial lawyers abortion activists environmentalists. that is who they are. all these little groups. that is not who we are. that is not who the republican party is.

we are the party that is a broad-based party that doesn't rely on any special interest group to fund us. that is who we are. there's a message that appeals to that broad group. >> great, thank you. are you ready for some questions? [applause] we will start off over year. >> my name is emily and i go to the university of dallas. >> my daughter graduated from there. >> any talk about the rising cost of college education? >> that is one of the toughest issues out there. i can say a lot of controversial things right now but i probably won't. better left for the private conversation only that doesn't exist in america anymore either. first you have to question the value of a college education

with the cause. that's a fundamental question we see a lot of folks encouraging people not to go to college. you have to look at the nature of college. there are some great schools. most of them are liberal education. there's a study done by the university of texas that says 62% of kids are coming to colleges in america today with a faith conviction and leave without it. are we really doing the country a favor by sending our best and brightest so they can be stripped of their faith so they can be told the world is about more relativism than godlessness and all the things that are pounded into them. i remember giving a speech at yale university. two months before the 2012 election i was asked to speak.

i was asked by one of these old debating societies that has been around for years to come and speak to their campus. seven parties and if they like what they have to say they pound on the table and if they don't they hate us so you sort of know how you are doing. they are very active in that regard. eyes had spoken there once before on radical islam so i said i will come back. it's a fun thing to do. i showed up and when i went the first time they were probably 200 kids. i came in 2000. the largest crowd they have ever had. do you know what the subject was? resolve. the government is destroying the american -- 2000 kids showed up to hear it. they were ready. they were ready to pounce.

i went out there and i said let's define our terms. i defined with the family is and what is the purpose of the family was serviced as a cap to society. what sustains a family sedan just walked through it all. when i finish not a person left. it was 90 degrees with no air-conditioning. people cannot table me one after another every stripe you could possibly imagine it said the same thing to me. i have never heard any of that before. one of the elite universities of our country and they have never heard any of that before. it goes back to the fundamental question. how much do we want the federal government to subsidize your liberal education in america? are we doing kids any favors by putting them through this and having these huge bills and a huge bill to the federal government for what they are

getting? the answer is i think there needs to be dramatic reform within the educational institutions of this country if they want to come to the federal government and say we deserve to have more support from the federal government. >> we have a question over here. >> is controversial. >> thank you for coming to speak with us. my name is phil wegman and i good at hillsdale college. >> à la although i know them all as a problem. >> you talk about how republicans can tailor their message to working-class families. would you comment on the export-import bank which is coming up for reauthorization in september and how that institution affects the local guy? >> i think it's a mistake for us to be out there focused on the ex-im bank. i agree with the string of

libertarianism in a republican party that says that government doesn't do a lot of things well particularly when it comes to interfacing with the business sector. i agree and support most of that agenda. i think one of the problems with an ideology is that it's an ideology and it has no foundation in practical roots of what goes on in society. i always say that the federal government's job when it comes to every business is to create a level playing field. government is going to be involved in a needs to set rules. i know there might be some who say we don't need big government but i don't think there are many out there. government needs to exist and it needs to be a playing field is level for everybody. here's my point i make this point in the book repeatedly. the problem with manufacturing is this different than every other business in america.

why is it different? wegmans, the grocery store competes with another grocery store down the street. walmart competes with target. citibank competes with bank of america. you can go on down the list. any restaurant, aei to heritage, they are all in competition. that's great. they all have a level playing field that when you're a manufacture your competition is not the manufactured down the street. someone from mexico, malaysia or china so when the american government looks at how we create a level playing field for manufactures we can't just look at other manufacturers in the united states. we have to look at how do we compete and how do we create a level playing field vis-à-vis the competition that exists around the world? that is why you have to look at our tax rates and say well the tax rates for manufactures should be the same. we should look attacks rates around the world and see what

our tax rates are compared to others and look at the regulations, the same thing. financing is another thing. every major government and every export country in the world has a similar or much more intrusive agency than ex-im bank that subsidizes in a great way the financing of exports. and to suggest that we say because it's a government agency involved in business it's a bad thing and we should get rid of it, we are tying the hands of our manufactures. the availability of credit for big projects. small banks won't do it and a lot of the bigger banks won't do. he becomes a big problem particularly for smaller manufacturers to get the credit they need to be able to do these exports. so i understand the ideology and i don't know how many of you know russell kirk but russell

kirk was as conservative as you can get but he also understood that compromise is not a bad thing. we can't just be rigid in complying -- applying these principles. not everything is the same. it mostly works. sometimes you say well in this case this principle needs to be amended. that is not a bad thing. i know in the world of interest politics that compromises. there is good compromises and bad compromises. i defined did find it in my career in the senate consistently this way. a bad compromise is doing less, getting less of a bad thing so if you can work with ted kennedy and he wants to pass some terrible pill and you can water down so it doesn't hurt as bad that's a bad compromise because you know it's going to hurt but

if you compromise with ted kennedy in order to when i was there in order to get something that but less of it that's a good compromise. we have to stop compromising your bad things and be willing to compromise to get less good things. that is how the left was able to eventually do what they are doing. they were always willing to compromise on taking less of the loaf. the next day come back for the next piece. and we don't. we stand for if you can't get this and we are not for it. that's just stupid. it's not how you move the ball. >> another question down here. >> link and cover from saint louis mr. and i will be attending wheaton in the fall. i know you mentioned about how your message to blue-collar workers was specifically what brought you close to clinching the republican nominee.

what is the message and how we need to frame it looking at 20 2016. >> what i talk about in the book and the message i deliver is we need to have a message that focuses on three major areas. number one we have to have a message that focuses on energy and manufacturing. there was a company that was sold six months ago called what app. remember this? so for $55 billion, excuse me $19 billion, $19 billion. 55. those are jobs.

do you want to talk about redistributing wealth? create employment in areas that by its nature creates jobs for more americans. technology is great and i'm not knocking technology that $19 million for 55 people, it's good because of the value that technology brings but it's not putting anything on the table for average working americans. if we can focus on energy first, and why energy is important because as we know the principle costs of energy cost to the average working american is as much a part of their budgets as anything else so we can keep energy prices down that helps. it creates an environment where manufacturing can aspire. we allow for the exploration for natural gas low and stable.

we have other things we need to do and i talk about the tax bill and a whole lot of other things. i grew up in a small town people did well. people have to have a decent job to bring home a decent wage to support their family. that is a huge impact on the american psyche. there's a political element to that. what a manufacturers locate? don't locate in blue america. they locate in red america. what is happening with demographically in our countries more and more people are being pulled in to the cities and what does that happens they are lost because they get involved in a culture that's very different than the small towns and rural areas they grew up in in their

thinking becomes very different. creating opportunity for small-town rural america to create economic viability. i came from pennsylvania and i was every little town in pennsylvania that existed because some sort of manufacturing or mining or timber, the mill was there and that is where the town grew up. we need to receive those communities so people can live in the communities they grew up in and people want to get out of the rat race. you going going to small-town and rural american raise the children away the children away in a way that's consistent with their values. two other things and i will be real quick. the second thing is education. i was with governor mike pence in indianapolis. he's proud of the fact that he is putting vocational education back in every high school in america. we allow the left to strip vocational education out of our

schools. 70% of americans don't have a college degree and we are not giving them the tools that are necessary. yoyou are a generation that does not use tools. the first generation in human history that does not use tools. he can fix anything. we need people who know how to work with their hands and by the way if some of you love to go out in the garden and love to go to fix things, i fix things and it's much more gratifying. politicians may never know whether what you produce produce good enough that he can tell what you built is good or not. or something gratifying about doping something. and the final thing, the family. we need to focus on marriage. not the definition of marriage but reclaiming marriage is a public good. marriage is the most important

factor. all the studies done by the obama about income equality. and everyone at the studies the number one determinant of whether you are economically successful or not number one by far was marriage. whether you came from married family or were intermarried relationship. every family in america is a little business. has a budget in income and expenses. the word economy comes from the greek word which means home. every home is a little economy and when those little economy struggle and suffer because they are broken broken and there are not two people using their efforts to make things successful, only one than america fails. those are the three things i would talk about a focus on. i'm twothe eagle forum

coli gin's leadership summit. from booktv, this is 25 minutes. >> our next speaker is emily miller and her talk is on "emily gets her gun" that obama wants to take yours. emily miller is the chief investigative reporter for the fox affiliate wtt g. channel 5 in washington d.c.. she previously served as senior editor at the "washington times" and the comments -- economist at aol. emily served as deputy press secretary at the department of state for secretaries of state colin powell and condoleezza rice. she graduated -- at georgetown

university school of foreign service. please welcome emily miller. [applause] >> it's always hard to follow a big ask but i know you can do it. >> i am talking about guns. that always brings out always brings outages. thank you for having me. i might be here and so honored to be in the presence of all you guys. i miss -- i wish ms. schlafly was here she says such an example for conservative women for those of us out there fighting for her. as i said i'm talking about gu guns. on the cover of my book i have myself covering a gun which is my own gun. ..

and got around the corner and found him stand outside of about 15 other men then melissa and the cme.

and that turned in quickly ran back. and to become an thing now. the license plate and so that's where i walked into. and by the grace of god i was not heard. killing to bet that was terrified. what if god forbid they act out. and so if you just don't know. the first time in my entire life i have a chance to defend myself i took my friend's dress. try to barricade myself.

at the washington times was fine . gun-control laws that no more arrows in the country. overturns the complete ban on ownership. but after nine the supreme court acted. all these gun control laws. and started going through it. a written test. it ended up. took four months.

and so did hear those. is that right? and those of you are not reacting to my but you're from the northeast. it takes 17 steps of four months and i don't get it. as normal. it's so hard to exerciser second amendment right to. in america recognizes that part of the constitution. that's shocking. a mile away. he walked into a gun store. and not mentally ill. not a drug addict. hot the state background check.

it's because sen after i decide who have been through all of a sense of what gun-control laws do. soon after that we had two factors. all reelected and that always this currently anti-gun and openly sell the second horrific thing that happened. the children and educators who were shot and killed by a homicidal maniac. now i think all of us, every human being was distraught over this and the idea that these children were killed. but what president obama did and

what is different now.

functionality. they ignorance is widely exposed after the white house released a photo of president obama's de shooting. the new york times incorrectly labeled a gun and rifle instead of a shotgun. for those of you that don't know this, rifle shoots a single bullet while i shotgun fires many pilots. skeet shooting is done with a shotgun in order to have a chance at hitting plate. it is difficult to do. it would be impossible with the rifle. they are not shotguns. every newspaper uses the term assault weapon. high-capacity magazine to my clips, technical terms.

these are not functional terms weapons of war. but the average gun owner's possession. continually astonished the hon remarkable quantities of ammunition. once again in new york times editorial involved boats and questioned why both purchases are not monitored by the government. apparently they did not realize a casual shooting go through a thousand rounds of original we can become a reasonable and cost-effective cox quarter a

large amount of one time theftproof. i went to my closet to see how much ammunition i own. i have 1500 rounds. it takes up about as much space is mighty veld. when you hear arsenal it is as much. so this book and wanted to get out. it is the facts. the three most important, i hope he will take away. number one no gun control laws are reduced crime. common sense gun-control laws tatami wind. and that is not part of this. the centers for disease control, government agency cannot find

one that reduced crime. harvard university, not in exactly a bastion of conservative thought to the same study. number two, there is no correlation between gun ownership and gun crime. what i mean by that is war guns in civilian hands. there is no increase in gun crime. less guns? why? there is adhered less gun ownership. half-hour american houses have begun. however, gun control, gun crime has gone down every year for the past 20 years to the point that gun murders are down 50% in the past 20 years. you talk about people who were shopped : down 70% a news so

damn crime is like this. it is not actually accurate to say morgan's lead to more crime. however, the rescue organization polled this question. do you think and crime is up, the same, or down. nine out of ten americans said gun crime -- gun murders, gun killing is up. so that means there is only one out of ten people and the country that knows that gun murders are down. so why is that? well, people don't have these basic thoughts which is what i am trying to do. and the third major plot -- the first one is that no gun control reduces crime. no connection between high gun ownership and more crime. the third one goes to what i were reading about. has not increased pyridium seen on more cable news especially covering these things.

this study. mess shooting. for more people on a public place. the covers is increasing. we are -- the stunt -- gun-control issue said that would do it. android to do it with or without congress. it is going to be accomplished. $50 million. the has now taken this group and made it is front group. he is finding it. 2014, 2016. what people want for their gun-control law. what i found, where i come prom in this book and my personal -- as i said to you, if i came to

three years ago, i never shot a gun, i would now. for me it is not about the gun. is about meyer right as an american of the constitution. my rights have been taken away. this is where i'm coming from. god give us the right to defend ourself. if a dangerous edison or entering the government. a founding father said that those rights cannot be infringed . i generally did not, self pro-gun. i describe myself as per second amendment. a gun is just a tool. thank you. >> thank you. right down here. >> hi.

i am olivia thomas from texas. you were talking about second amendment rights and all that. my dad and tigers shooting almost every other weekend together, something we have always done. we have a friend who lives outside of city property. we go and should place. they're is a gun at that has come up set to ban semi-automatic weapons which is a type of rifle i have been shooting since i was for. >> the only kind in civilian hands. >> yes. i was just wondering your thoughts on the issue of whether that is actually something that potentially could be passed? >> of course a lot of language. semiautomatics is basically what we all have except for revolvers

you pull the trigger once in a fire is one shot. the military uses fully automatic, the police have them. he pull the trigger and the fires forever. they are never used in crime. for half a year ago of fund-raisers said we have to get semi -- i mean fully automatic guns off our streets. he corrected himself. there are no fully automatic weapons on the streets except for the was a police have.

semi-automatic to offer the people understand the firearms is it is used. >> even if it did you get the supreme court. >> lincoln as a question. >> i. when can from st. louis missouri was wondering if you could comment on those people who would say that the second amendment has outlived its usefulness. protecting us from the government. and because of that qualifier are right to bear arms is just on feasible. if you could respond. >> stevens said that the supreme

court was landmark. they're pretty boring. this one is interesting. if you get a chance to read it. it's easy to act understand and interesting. a lot of people think the part about the second amendment of the militia means that the again controls malicious. they explained. it has a clause. the concept. and they went by the documents. what they were saying both them what their role in with their thinking was that they had just come out from under king george and a charity and wanted to make sure that no government ever had that much power again. the deterrent is having civilian ownership. so i cannot see ever possibly

getting through the senate. would never get ratified. >> it's pretty easy to get a gun in michigan. it is very hard to carry or even have a gun would you. you can have a gun anywhere. an exception of state law. would you comment on what could be physically done? >> well, i hear about this a lot. such a wide range on this issue. if you have a concealed carry permit. a campus says you can't have it. the people are pro second amendment or pro-gun.

virginia tech. you want to have a way to defend yourselves. gun free zones of the most dangerous places. more rare obviously. but james said that eight movie theaters between his apartment and the one that he chose the people in colorado were allowed to use and carry guns. murderers are crazy, but they are not going to go somewhere that they cannot do damage. fort hood, the school shooting. essentially gun-free zones. i understand the movement. i don't want to live in a known gun free zone, especially on a college campus. it is a large place. you know, the flip side of that as people say, well, kids a tramp -- drinking on campus. obviously gun ownership number-one is a huge responsibility. it is one that no one should

take lightly. if you are gone on you have to be responsible at all times, when it is on you, when it is not new. if it is loaded, not luggage. so if a person takes on that responsibility and they did not allow concealed carry, the right to bear arms is not recognized with the rest of you probably in your state can get a concealed carry permit. go through the background check and training and being responsible enough, i don't see why you should not be allowed to carry it on college campuses. >> a question over here. >> jordan henry from missouri. how do you suggest that we come at the disparity in ideology between bigger cities where there is little to no gun exposure to the majority of people verses small towns like my own where we bring our gun collections to church and show

off to each other. >> right. really jeff koch i was in so many different places. the culture of america, it's so different. every gun control law the toughest gun control laws in the country. new york has gone up again. again, i can say to you because i don't know for a fact that gun-control -- that gun-control increases crime. a lot of people believe that there is no deterrence. frankly i do believe that. someone is going to rob you. that is my experience. they're not going to walk into a house in virginia and rub it. they're from virginia.

the criminals all have guns. you know, it is unbelievable, the people live understand that. >> if you are not allowed to take the gun out of the house of the go to the reins to practice? >> transport. under federal law you can take again anyway you can legally carry i can carry again at the shooting range. take it come on loaded. that's it. >> any other questions? >> hope you don't get. >> im kelley. i have from florida.

something very controversial. if you think is the capitalization by the media. >> totally out of control with the martin trial. stand your ground lost to florida and initiated the first one. he did not have to back off. back to the criminal. physically under. so it -- if you watch the media there was a stand your ground

law. pretty simple. if you are a tax you can fight back. you know, of course. in florida put into law again. if you are in your home and someone comes in i have the right to assume that their there to cause with bodily harm or death and shoot. he don't have to be a victim. but a lot of misconception out there. >> any other questions? >> thank you very much. >> thank you

>> hos host of the peter schiff show. this event was hosted at freedomfest in las vegas. >> good afternoon. peter schiff has spoken at

freedomfest many times and you are leer here to listen to him and not be. it is as a great pleasure for me to work with peter at euro pacific capital and i say it is as a great pleasure for three main reasons. one is that peter has the ability to see through the smoking mirrors of government propaganda and government crooked statistic and the supportive media of the establishme establishment. seeing through the smoke and mirrors peter gets what is happening in the world in my opinion. secondally, peter has a great ability to articulate very complex issues in a simple way so that people can really

understand them. and he has the courage to tell the truth and in today's world telling the truth does take courage. now, peter not only sees what is going on in my opinion but he offers real solutions. both for you and for me as investors and survivors and also for our country. so ladies and gentlemen, it is as a great pleasure and privilege for me to introduce to you chief executive officer of euro pacific capital and great speaker mr. peter schiff. >> thanks, everybody for coming and thanks john for introducing me. hopefully i can make it through

my presentation. i was loosing my voice. i was out a little late in las vegas and i am not as young as i used to be. i was at the very first freedomfest and it was blossomed into a great event despite the fact every year i come we have less freedom to be festive about. what i like to talk about is what we can do to preserve what freedom we have left with respect to our financial assets and our portfolios. i think many americans are going to find out why they are loosing their liberties and their wealth especially if that wealth c

concist of corporate bonds and municiple bonds. they going to lose significant value. nominal value is harder tknow. but i think that is immaterial. what matters is the purchasing power that the assets conw pcon. and i say i don't know nominal because i don't know how much they are going to print. i think it is going to be a record and she is going to eclipse the money printing of the previous two combined. i don't know what the dollar will buy. so i think the most important thing from investors is to be aware of what is going to happen

and make sure your financial assets are invested in the appropriate manner to come through this. and i think even more importantly then maybe even preserving the wealth for yourself and for your family but i do believe if we are going to try to be active personally in helping to repair and rebuild the country and helping to make sure that after this crisis, that is coming, and i will get to that and it will be much worse in just about every respect then 2008, it is going to be the worst economic period i think in the united states bar none including the great depression. it will not be as bad as the civil war or something like that. but as far as an economic event it is going to be bad for

investors. the majority of the investors will see it is going to be very bad. but i think the only opportunity, this silver lining to that cloud is the opportunity to really get the country back in the right direction. see the problem is all of these solutions to the problems that we have and there are solutions but they are not politically viable given the democratic state we now unfortunately find ourselves living in. a lot of the safe guards that our founders put in place to protect us from democracy no longer exist. so unfortunately economic policy is made based on whatever the population wants to support. and unfortunately very few americans really even understand

what needs to be done including a lot of the members of congress. but people are not going to vote for the right thing. look how many people are in favor favor of minimum wage. even among economist at universities and many have noble prizes and still believe minimum wage is a good idea. that is the level of understanding even among the brightest so how do you expect the average american voter who has been brainwashed in government schools his entire life to understand anything. so they are not going to vote for real solutions and the politici politicians have no impetus to try to deliver any kind of bad news to the voters. they don't have any will to ask the voters to swallow any medicine that might cure the economy because it is going to

taste bad. but i think a complete economic collapse which unfortunately is coming might provide the motivation to finally do something. hopefully people in this room, if you can preserve your wealth, will be able to be active in that movement and trying to get americans to understand that the source of the problems that they are going to be living through is not capitalism or the free market or greed or the evils of capitalism. unchecked capitalism. it isn't because we didn't have enough government and sufficient regulation to rein in the wild capitalist. the problems are all going to be and have been created by government and there are things that the government does supposedly to protect us. those are the programs, the taxes, the regulations and spending that is the source of the problem. and we need people to be able to

art articul articulate that and roll back the government and have a second american revolution. it will not be easy. but if people have financial wealth and can fund the candidates with the right messages and organizations that working towards those goals. we have passed out a bunch of index cards. if you don't have one, let one of the brokers know. there a few from the office of your specific capital. we have six offices. make sure to fill them out so we can get a hold of you and talk about the strategy. if you get on my mailing list we

put out news letters and put out a lot and i write and john brown writes. i talk, if anything does want listen to my radio show, i am doing a show now every week day from 10 a.m. to noon or most weekdays unless i am travelling or something. but you can listen to it. it is shiftradio.com. i said i have six offices and my asset management company which handled all of my accounts which i added about 4-5 years ago. we are a broker dealer and advisor and i moved by management company from california to puerto rico.

my tax rate is 50% in california and 4% in puerto rico. i will be at my booth with questions about this. i have not personally moved there yet. four of my employees have moved there and are managing our clients' money just as effectively from san juan as they did from new port beach but we are not giving as much of the income to the government. we get to keep it. it is an interesting place if you are looking for freedom puerto rico is where you will find it. at least if you define freedom to keep what you earn. the capital gains tax is zero and zero on divdeneds and if you structure it correctly you are only paying a 4% tax.

no federal taxes at all. just 4% to the government of the commonwealth of puerto rico. i will be at my booth and we have the book "how an economy grows and why it crashes" it is as a great book. i have a few copies i am signing and i am doing a signing later today with the bookstore that has my book "real crash" and that is what i want to talk about today. people ask what are you talking about the real crash. the reason i wrote that book is because after my first book came out, which was "crash proof", that book predicted the events of 2008 that we now refer to as the financial crisis of 2008. i wrote in that book about the

housing bubble. why we had it. how government and the federal reserve had conspired to inflate it. how wall street went along for the ride. i wrote about how the housing market would collapse and that when it did it would be much worse than when the stock market bubble which was a creature of government policy, not the market, but i pointed out all of the ways the housing market was so intertwined with the economy and banking system that when the housing market collapsed it would bring down the banks and cause the united states of fannie may and i forecasted the deficit would balloon to a trillion and unemployment would be above 10% and of course all of this stuff happened. so people could say, you

predicted it, you wrote this book "crash proof" and we had the crash. i have to tell people we have not had the crash yet. that is not what my book was referring to. the title wasn't about that crash. that event was part of the book. but that event was more like, you know, the overture for the opera. so a lot has to play out. when i wrote the book, what i laid out was my thesis for the economic collapse. i wrote, okay, so we will have the implosion of the housing market. if you want to see a good example of the type of force i have. i spoke about it a lot at these freedomfest but i don't think they recorded them. but look at my mortgage bankers speech i gave in 2006. it is on the internet. interestingly there were 3,000

mortgage bankers in the audience. so these guys were at the heart of the crisis and during the presentation i spoke about a hedge fund i started to short term mortgages and i explained how the market was going to empl employ -- implode -- and out of 3,000 in attendance one called me to open up an account. and he made eight or ten times the money on that trade. these were people in the business. i urged them hedge yourself because most of you will be out of business so you might as wealth well make a little money as your main job implodes but they didn't want to prepare because people don't want to believe. but being forewarned is good.

for the guy that got short subprimed was probably glad he came to the conference and heard me speak. you have to do things. you cannot just listen to a talk. you have to take action and do something in response to the warning i am giving. when i wrote in the book, i said as a result of the big economic collapse and the bursting of the housing bubble and this big recession and all of the unemployment and the collapsing real estate prices, i said prices would drop 30-50 percent which seemed impossible at the time. and i said in response to this the government is going to try to stimulate the economy. they are going to pull out all of the stops to reflate these bubbles. they are going to print a lot of money. try to get housing prices up and

stock market up and try to get everybody borrowing and spending again. and what i wrote is that was watt was going to create the real crash. it was going to be the bursting of whatever bubble the government managed to reflate to get us out of the great inflation. the bust are in relation to the booms because the booms are where the mistakes are made. the bigger the boom the bigger the bust. this is the biggest boom of all. this is the biggest artificial boom every created by the feds. and they did it at a time where the economy was in the worst shape it has ever been. so instead of solving the problems that led to the crisis we made them all worse. despite the sunshine and all of

the rosey talk that you hear from economist and wall street and the president the economy is not better. we have not recovered from anything. we are the sickest we have ever been. we are just too drugged up on cheap money to understand the symptoms. but there are a lot of americans who are not and feel the pain of this phony recovery. and think about this. this is a recovery. if the recovery is this bad imagine the recession and imagine how bad the next recession is going to be. look at where we are starting from. we are going into recession if we are not in one. and we may be already. i think we are if you would have a more accurate reporting of inflation but the government

under reports it to such a degree that sometimes it is hard to get officially to the reception. but the economic growth isn't there. and that is why the jobs are not there. they call it a jobless recovery. they are half right. it is jobless but it isn't a recovery. that is why there is no jobs. people are leaving the labor force, earning are collapsing, people are loosing their full-time jobs and getting part-time jobs and people say this is great. we created 200,000 jobs. you look beneath the numbers and maybe we lost 500,000 jobs and got part-time jobs. but is that good news? no, it is bad news. they don't report the details. they just report the headlines. they report the unemployment rate is down. but they don't report why which is all of the people have left

the workforce. so the really economy is imploding and that is why congress' popilarity is at an all-time low. this is the worst depression we have had since the great depression. it started in december of 2007 and i was doing television interviews in december of 2007 and early 2008 saying a recession was coming and people were saying not going to happen. we were already in one. i read an article this morning on how economist don't see a recession. they have never predicted a recession ever. every recession has been a surprise to the feds. every recession has been a surprise to economist.

they don't know you are in a reception it is there. it is possible we are already in one. but if not we will soon be. look where we are. normally when the recession starts the feds jack up the interest rates to 6% or so so it can cut them. but we are about to start a recession and rates are not risen. they are still at zero and they have never been that low. every other recession we have had the feds got us out without resorting to 0%. even the housing bubble that bursted in 2008. the feds inflated that with 1% interest rates. they were only 1% for a couple years. we have had 0 for five years and they have not raised them to a quarter of a percent. why is that? i mean if this recovery is really five years old, why are we still on life support and not only do we have 0% rates the

feds are printing money and monetizing the debt and saying the economy is in good shape. well then why are they doing that? it is like if you go to the doctor and the doctor says you are in great health but you are hooked up to a ventilator and eating through a tube and you say can i get out of bed and it is like no, no, no keep that there. there is nothing wrong with you, though. obviously the economy is sick and government doesn't want to admit it. why are interest rates at 0? because that is all we can afford. we have so much debt in this country. the government has much more debt now than it did in 2008. corporati corporations have far more debt than they did. and americans haven't delivered. in fact they have no home equity. americans on paper before the financial crisis at least had home equitly to offset the debt. now they just have debt.

so whether people say they have less debt, well they have a lot less wealth as well. they talk about the housing market has recovered. homeownership is at generational lows. rents are rising rapidly. 5-10 percent a year. why are home prices going up? because of private edge funds are taking money from the feds and buying up the properties. same thing with stocks. companies are borrowing money and buying back their shares. their interest expense is at record-lows. everybody's interest expense. the united states government is spending less on interest on national debt than we spent when ronald reagan was president even though the debt was a tiny fraction of what it is today back then. what would happen if interest

rates went up? it would be complete implosion. if interest rates went back to normal, 5%, the government wouldn't be able to pay the interest on the bonds they have sold. they would have to default. if the national debt was $20 trillion. it is close to $17.5 and that is the tip of the iceberg and doesn't include the big bucket items and unfunded liabilities. 1.2 trillion in student loans. the government guarantees the debt but it isn't part of the national debt. and even though the students are not good for the money. these guys have been spending six years majoring in socialology and borrow money to pay for it. they are not going to pay that.

but 20 trillion and interest rates were 5% that would be a trillion a year. the government is spending a quarter of that. 250 billion a year on interest. where would the government get the extra 750 billion a year? every year. there is no place to get that. we don't have that money. all of the debt is short term and rolls over. what would happen the housing market if the interest rates go up? the housing market will implode again. this could be a bigger real estate claps collapse than last time. the banks didn't want them to sell because they don't want the property or foreclose so people stayed in their home and lived

mortgage payment-free. but when you have private equitly like black stone and they want to liquidate they will blow outf the properties. they don't need anybody's permission. and they don't live in them. a lot of the places are vacant anyway. what is going to happen to the banks then? all of the banks that were too big to fail are now even bigger. and so next time they will fail. and remember, if the federal reserve is tightening and raising interest rates, no body can get bailed out. the only way there can be bailouts is if the fed is easing. the fed has to be printing money. if they are tightening and racing interest rates and banks fail no one is there to bail them out. congress doesn't have the money they have to get it from the feds but the federis are taking money from the banking system so the banks fail and when that

happens the shareholders are going to lose money, the bond holders going to lose and the depositors are going to lose. the fdic only has money if they get it from the feds. so if we have an increase in interest rates, the banks would fail and the government would have to default on its debt and the country will implodes. that is why the federal reserves can talk about raising interest rates in the future but they are never going to do it. when the feds first did qe and said it was temporary i said no it isn't. they will do it again i said. and they did do it again. i had qe2 and i said there is going to be more qe's than rocky movies. it is never going to end. it can't end because it can't work. whenever the federal reserve

does qualitative easing they worsen the problem. so the more they do the more they have to do. the more drugs they give to the economy the more drugs the economy needs to stay high. i said it was like a monetary roach motel. once you start it, you can never end it. every time the feds tried to end it in the past they had to come back. they tried to take away the mor phene and heroin. they saw the patient going into the seizures and said they need more. to think the fed can stop this and you can take away all of the artificial props beneath the economy and somehow the economy is going to continue. i heard this. people say the feds put training wheels on the bicycle. and now they can take the wheels off. they didn't put on training wheels. the only wheels this bike has is

qe. that is it. you take off the wheel and the bike falls over. we need to do that actually. because the pro no one wants to acknowledge is the bike is cycling toward the edge of a cliff. so we have to take off the wheels or else we go over the cliff. it is full speed ahead. but you cannot end qe. a joke i made to describe it and people say well they can do it but it is going to be difficult. it isn't going to be easy they say. but it isn't difficult. it is impossible. the feds can't even do things that are difficult. and they are not going to start with this. when people say the feds, this worked, qe worked. you don't know it worked until you stop. it is like giving them credit and it is like you don't say congrats to the pilot on the

take off. let's see them land. ben bernaki doesn't know how it hand. he has been making excuses for five years, six years now. he turned over the controls to another guy who doesn't know anything about flying. maybe even less. this is the example i use. this is a difficult trick. pulling a table cloth out from under a table when you have a whole set of dishes, right? the hard trick is taking that table cloth and i thinking it and leaving the -- yanking -- the dishes. you could do it. it is probably to do it if you practice. but that is not what the fed has to do with ending qe. the feds have to yank the table out from under the cloth and leave the cloth and dishes

suspended in mid air. but everybody thinks that is what they do. no body can connect the dots that we cannot afford higher interest rates or have the feds not in the bond market. how can we finance these massive deficits and they are a little lower now than they were because the government is getting extra cash from fanny and freddie when the making profits and only sewing the seeds of future losses. they will have to give it back and then some when the loans go into default. and they are getting extra money because we are fining banks around the world and that is money the government is getting back. but this is temporary and they are getting capital gains as people are cashing in and selling out overpriced social media stocks and so the government is getting more revenue. and of course as we spend

borrowed money it generates sales for companies. a lot of this revenue that the government is getting is a function of the phony economy that the stimulus helped create. take that away and let the interest rates go up and it will all go away. the tax revenue goes away, the budget deficit explodes and the whole thing would collapse which is why they'll not do it. when they first said they will raise interest rates when unemployment is 6.5 or inflation is 2. the minute he said that it will not happen. i said if they get there they will move the goal post. and the cpi, the government's distorted version of the cost of living is up 2.1% year over year and we are above that goal post, too. and not only have they not raised interest rates they are

not going to commit to when they are going to do it. maybe at the end of next year or the year after that. gwen the

the bonds that are held by private decisions for individuals by foreign central banks. they are all going to want out because if the fed is going to keep printing money indefinitely inflation is going to erode the value of all the treasuries. once people understand that, once they accept that if i hold this treasury until maturity i will lose. the government is paying me 2% a year and inflation is 4%, 5%. i'm guaranteed to lose money if i hold onto these bonds.

once people realize that nobody is going to want to hold them. no individuals, no corporations no foreign central banks so what does that mean? that means the fed if it wants to keep interest rates from skyrocketing which it has to do because the economy cannot cannot survive it that is to print more money to buy it and what happens when the fed prince more money there's even more inflation and that means bonds or even riskier had that means even the people aren't selling want to sell because inflation is even higher. so eventually if you keep doing that you destroyed the dollar. now at some point the fed is going to maybe have a decision where it could still say the currency but it's probably going to lose a lot of value for the fed is going to, even consider the unthinkable so maybe the dollars going to lose 50% of its value, 60% of its value, 70% of

its value. the dollar lost 7% of its value in the 1970s and volcker did put a stop to it. he brought interest rates up to 20%. that stopped it and reagan did come in and we did have some substandard changes in the governing of philosophy. not enough but enough to stop the bleeding but it's not like you know volcker thought 20% interest rates are going to be fun. he knew that it would be difficult but the country survived it. obviously we can't survive it now. we don't have the balance sheet to afford 20%. we can't even afford 5%. i don't even know if we can afford 1%. i think it's still zero, right? but at some point when the dollar loses enough of its value then the federal reserve will have to decide are we going to be germany or are we going to be

zimbabwe and are we going to let the dollar go to zero or are we going to stop that? the only way to stop it is to jam on the brakes let interest rates skyrocket start selling down their portfolio treasuries in mortgage-backed securities so it would be massive debt liquidation. it would be a huge implosion much bigger than any crisis we have had before because banks are going to fail and governments will default in the government will have to default on its debts. he will have to default on its promises to pay social security and pay medicare not to future recipients but current recipients. the government is going to have to do that from stop the dollar from being worthless. it doesn't get any good to be made in worthless money. i don't think it's that far off because i think the fed is already in this box. the world is waiting for the fed to stop and raise interest

rates. and going to happen. we will figure up with excuses going to be but they aren't going to do it. because they can't. meanwhile jenna gillen says the higher inflation is going to get a lot noisier. and that box is going to be exposed. the world is going to figure it out. meanwhile we are hastening her own demise by finding all these foreign banks spying on all of our allies and listing off all the people we need to be up to. we don't even realize how vulnerable we are. that is how arrogant the country is. but what do you have to do about it? if the dollar is going to go down then you need to get off the ship and don't be lulled into a false sense of the u.s. stock market. u.s. stock market went up in the last couple of years based on the idea that what the fed did

worked but that's wrong. it didn't work. the only people who thought it worked for the people who didn't understand the disease in the first place. all the people that didn't know the financial crisis of 2008 was coming all the people that didn't know we have a housing bubble until well after bursts these are the guys that are telling us that the policies work. the doctor had no idea the patient was sick now proclaiming he is well. people pay attention to it. these are the same people who said there was no problem. jenna gillen everyone said she's so smart because she was warning about the housing bubble. the only time she ever talked about the housing bubble was too dismissive and say we didn't happen. the only warning she mentioned were the warnings other people were raising and she said they are wrong to be concerned. at the height of the housing bubble she said if i'm wrong and housing prices go down it's not

going to hurt the economy. that is what she said so who cares what she says now? she obviously doesn't understand economics and doesn't understand money. that's why she's the chairman of the federal reserve. if she did -- she would be here. [applause] so the dollar goes down -- the stock market went up based on all the false optimism the same phony optimism we had in 2005 in 2006. nothing has changed. u.s. stocks are going to go back to dramatically underperforming. the price of gold, you know the stock market went down from 40 ounces of gold to 41 and i forget what it is. it went down to eight and now the dow is almost 17,000. maybe it was 12 to one. i think it's gone down two to

one or one to one. this is a long-term bear market that the u.s. stock market is in. it started in thousand so it's ongoing. if you go back to 2000 the dollar lost value relative to most commodities it's lost a lot of value relative to other currencies. many of the fern -- foreign currencies we owned it was lower in 2014 that was in 2000. people think the dow was more valuable but it's not. the dollar is less valuable and is going to get a lot less valuable in the future. what are our investment strategies? what are we doing? we are looking around the world for the countries that are making the fewest economic mistakes, the fewest monetary mistakes and fiscal mistakes. again there's nobody that's doing it perfectly. unfortunately there are no economies that are getting it all right. it's just a question of who is

making the fewest mistakes. that's the best we can do in the world today. but there are countries that i believe represent good opportunities and that is where we invest. we also look for value. most of the stocks we buy pay dividend -- dividend yields of five, six, seven or 8%. the recurrence are paid in new zealand dollars or singapore dollars or hong kong dollars or norwegian krone. you are getting currencies that are not going to be inflated into oblivion. and more importantly when we are buying companies we are very cognizant of who their customers are. one of the problems with a lot of u.s. businesses is their customers are americans and where the americans getting the money to buy? they are borrowing it so when the credits stops the customers stop buying because they can

afford to buy what they are buying now. one of the things that's going to happen when the dollar collapses and a lot of people overlook this aspect of it but at if the dollar collapses against other currencies the purchasing power that americans lose doesn't leave the planet. somebody else gets the purchasing power that we lose. the production doesn't stop at the factories are still here. we have a currency crisis in the doesn't mean factors that are producing stuff they don't stop producing stuff. but what changes is who gets to buy the stuff. right now americans disproportionately by a lot of the stuff that gets produced in factories around the world. but when the dollar goes down we are not going to be able to afford that stuff. somebody's going to outbid us so i want to own companies whose

customers are going to earn the currencies that will gain value against the dollar because those customers are going to have more buying power. so the earnings of these companies are going to go up when their customers have more purchasing power. most of the global customers even now don't need credit. they have savings. americans have no savings and whatever little savings we have are about to collapse the value. so i don't want my customers being americans. i want my customers also living in the countries that have sound monetary policy, sounder economic policies more freedom, less government. those countries are there. they are not as free as america used to be but they are a lot frear than america is. so that is where we are investing. that is where you want your money to be. if you are not there physically at least invest in those countries, in best and most asset classes and i also think about how i think the world

change when a lot of people who were poor in emerging markets were doing all the heavy lifting the ones that were producing all the stuff we consumed and we thought this was a good deal because we get the stuff and they get the work, that hasn't been a good deal for them. it's been a gravy train for americans but that gravy train is going to and end when the producers of the world start consuming their own production what are they going to consume? so i think what somebody in china for example is going to buy is going to be different than maybe what an american bias. if they buy a car chances are it's their first car but if america america buys the cards just trading in old one in. if someone tries to buy a car maybe it's as if they have a bicycle so it's a lot of steel and resources. a lot of the cars the chinese are going to buy they will get from us. we will be selling them all the used cars that we can't afford to drive because gasoline prices are going to be too high.

americans are already driving a lot less than they used to. one of the reasons as they don't have a job. that is one of the reasons energy consumption is down so much. it's going to go down a lot more. they are not going to be able to afford the gasoline because it's going to be in china or other the countries because as the dollar collapses what happens to bar prices of commodities? they collapse and so if prices go down everybody tries to say deflation is bad. deflation is great and if you're talking about consumer prices the best thing that happens to the consumer is that prices go down but when the dollar collapses prices for everybody outside of america are going to go way down. what do you do when the price of something goes down? you buy a lot more of it or you buy some of it. there are a lot of people from china who can't buy any of it because they can afford it. why do we buy cell phones?

they were $2000 apiece and it costs almost that much to make the car. but now we have them because they are cheap. people buy things because the price goes down and we enjoyed a higher standing of living because prices go down. that's what's going to happen but in america we will see prices skyrocketing. it doesn't have to be that way for you because if you get your money now out of dollars, if you own the assets and currencies that are going to appreciate, to get yourself on the receiving side of that transfer purchasing power, 300 million americans will be a lot poorer but the other people who will be a lot richer as far as whether currencies are going to be able to buy. if you can just reallocate your portfolios now, then you will benefit from that transaction. you are going to have more purchasing power because you own the assets. the same thing when you look at an asset asset, as a country

becomes richer assets in that country are more valuable. as the country becomes poorer assets become less valuable. so even if you think i'm going to hold u.s. real estate, if america is a poor nation than u.s. real estate is a lot less valuable. because what's it worth? it's worth what you -- if everybody is spending three-quarters of their income on food and electricity how much do they have left to pay rent? you know what happens in a collapsing economy people can afford to pay their rent or they move in with their parents where they move in with their kids or they take on borders and they rent out rooms. even if the nominal values go up the real purchasing power goes down. the important thing is to recognize what's going to happen and recognize that this is bigger than 2008 and you think chico has a possible in such a big crisis to be on the horizon

and hardly anybody sees that? that's what happened before. it was the same thing and it's happening all over again. it's interesting that i'm not the only person that was warning of it that the people whining about the last crisis are the ones are warning about the next one because winners of the problems were and because we understood the problem we know the government did not solve it. the government made it worse. it's not going to make everything better so you have got to recognize that you are not going to have a second chance to get this right. what i think is going to be much different about the next crisis in 2008 was in 2008 the dollar rose. it was at record lows going into the crisis and the dollar rose as everybody ran towards the blast. the next crisis, it's not going to happen that way. the dollars going to implode. it is a dollar crisis is coming so it's going to be very different and it will require a different approach. there a lot of people that think it's going to be a repeat of 2008. it's not going to happen. the fed does not want to let

that happen. they are fighting the last battle. they don't want deflation. they don't want falling asset prices even though that's what we need. that's not what the fed wants and they have enough, they can print it out money to make sure it's the dollar that loses value and is the world is rushing to get out of dollars it's going to be a very different prices. so you have got to get it right and you have got to be early. you can't be late and you can't time it personally. that's why support you get your account set up, fill out this carton turned the men and we will be able to talk to you. if you have any other questions you can come by the booth and talk specifically about manage accounts we do in brokerage accounts about the fees are, how to get started, how to transfer if you have an i.r.a. or various types of accounts. we have several brokers from the office. i know we didn't have time to take you a date but again i will be at the booth if you have

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everyone, and welcome once more to another panel by the harlem book fair. i want to thank max rodriguez once again for putting on this event year after year. the television audience cannot see outside of this auditorium, but if they could, they would see the street is filled with people, books, there's enthusiasm. it's just a wonderful day, and

thank good the sun is out. thank god the sun is out. i am5cn elizabeth nunez, but bee i introduce myself, i'd like to introduce my co-panelist, tracey syphax. >> just want to do a quick introduction. my name is tracey syphax. i'm a 20-year entrepreneur. i wrote a book titled "from the block to the boardroom" that basically has chronicled my life story, and i'm just here to share with you all this morning. i am also just a recent, just as recent as two weeks ago, one of the white house champions of change for this year by president obama -- >> wow. [applause] >> and i spend a lot of my time, thank you, i spend a lot of my time speaking on mass incarceration and using proper reentry tools, and i'll tell you a little bit about why i do that later on. >> while we may seem strange partners on this stage here -- [laughter] the thing that binds us is that we have both written memoirs. and for me, it's my first

memoir. i've written eight novels. some of you may know some of my titles, "in between boundary boundaryies," etc. i really am an academic. i have been teaching in the city university for many, many years and am currently at hunter college. and this is my first memoir, "not for everyday use." so the first question i want to ask tracey is a question that a lot of people ask me, actually, is how do you get the courage to put in print some really true and hard things about yourself? because when you're writing, when i'm writing a novel, i can hide behind the fiction. when you're writing a memoir, you've got to put it all out there. >> yes. and be that's a good question, elizabeth. a question that i get quite often. in my book i take people to my lowest point in life, and as a

20-year-old -- 20-year business owner, a lot of people have asked thatñi question, why would you do that? and you own a business, i own a construction and real estate -- >> could i just ask you, what, why did you do that? >> yes. there's a reason why. it's because as i said even though i'm a 20-year business owner and, as i said, i was honored by4 the white house a couple years ago, i also made history aspirinston chambers entrepreneur of the year. princeton is princeton, trenton is trenton. first african-american in the 51-year history to ever win that award. so the reason, and to answer your question, the reason why i wrote the book is because i wanted to encourage anybody else that's trapped out in that lifestyle to let them know they can not only come out of that, but they can prosper. i wanted to take people to my lowest point in life and then to bring them to where i am at today as a respectable business

owner in the community, a community activist, to show them that there's a way up and a way out. >> could you talk a little bit about that lowest point in your life? how old were you, and what were the pressures on you to go into that life? >> yeah. you know, and i say this all the time, a lot of our kids, we grow up, we don't have an opportunity to choose our parents. we don't have an opportunity to choose the environment we grow up in. it is what it is. i grew up in a single parent household, mother on drugs. i was first introduced to drugs by my mother and her then-boyfriend. >> wow. >> a lot of my family members would go to jail one year, come home. so i grew up thinking that going to jail and coming home was normal. that's what we did. only to find out later on in life that that's not what we do. so being able to take people to those lowest points, i started using drugs at the age of 13 -- >> wow. >> very young. started selling drugs at the age

of 14. and i just grew up in that lifestyle until i was 31 years old. and i finally said enough is enough, and i made a vow in 1993 when i came home from prison, i made a vow to myself and my god that i was going to change my life around, and i was not going back to prison, and i was not going back to that lifestyle. my last conviction was from 1988, and i've been free ever since. >> wow, wonderful. ..

he said listen, i have seen you twice since i have been under binge, 1980, 1988 and doing the same thing and he told me three time is the john. next time you are eligible for 18 years and i can double that sentence and make it 36 years. this guy is trying to take my life and i realize i could not come back before him again and expect to get out of prison. >> sometimes i really should be talking about my memoir too. i think people have children and don't realize -- my sister used to say to me, she said you know what? when you're going to deliver, have a good time because that is the least amount of pain you are going to have. it is a lifetime thing, people

have children and don't realize the pressure is in their hands, they could shape it one way or another. you are seeing the other way. >> i tried to do something different with my kids. as a father, me and my wife celebrate 30 years of marriage this august. we have been together for 30 years so we met in the eighth grade. i am telling you my story, everything i have gone through, my family has gone through, a whole chapter in my book where she talks about the experience see had to go through being with the person that has a drug problem, been in jail, trying to get something together says she has a whole chapter in my book, the name of the chapters from that perspective and talk about that. >> why didn't she --

>> it did affect her quite often. we used to call it our seasonal breaking up where she said enough is enough. >> why didn't she go into that life too? >> she has never been involved with drugs. i did a lot of things from her. is ironic now that here we are celebrating our 30th anniversary, my wife is a corrections officer. my daughter is a corrections officer, my son is in prison. talking about how we as parents have a responsibility to our children. my son and my daughter grew up in the same household, my son is in prison and as a man is my responsibility to raise my son right. my wife does all she can, but i say this all the time, a woman cannot raise a man, cannot raise a boy. take a father to do that.

my daughter, corrections officer at the age of 23, she is a 7 year correction officer and as a whole career in front of her and my son, starting to realize the rap he took was the wrong one and he is getting himself together and i had high hopes that he was going to do the right thing. >> two she huge questions and you have questions too but one of them, i forgot the name of the woman but she had done the deal and said most of the women were in jail are there because they -- because of their connection to a boyfriend who pulled them into their life so my question is your wife was important. >> she pulled away. >> what was it that had her pulling away and not pulling into the life? you said you got pulled into the life because of your mother and her boyfriend and the community around you but there she was. what made her so strong?

>> my wife believed in her children more. loved me that loved her children, more than she loved me and she told me that. when we broke up the last time she set i have to leave. you are not doing right. i have a son and daughter and my responsibility is to raise my son and my daughter in an environment away from what you are doing and i understood that. living the life i was living i understood that some my wife is -- i have been with her 38 years. she is a very grounded woman and very strong woman and i thank god being able to have someone like that in my life, to have that to fall back on because the same relationship i had with my wife for 30 years is the same relationship i had with her mother who is another strong african-american woman who is like my mother so these two strong african-american women that have been part of my life for 30 years basically set the standard how to conduct my life and brought me from a dark time

in my life to who i am today. >> why is it your son is in the households with a mother who is a strong woman stands up against this. why is it the daughter goes one way, what happens to the sun? before i get there i want to say there was something you said it struck me which was that your wife loved her children more than she loved you. that is pre courageous for a man to say, for a husband to say. that was the passage in beloved that got me, when she says that her husband, you know, he fell apart when he saw what was happening to her and she said i went on and the reason i went on

is i had two children and the baby needing my milk and i couldn't just -- in other words, she was -- raising my children over my husband and i say that because would you believe i am going to mention my memoir? that is one of the hardest things for me in my memoirs. my mother loved her husband more than she loved her children. i felt always that my mother, my mother's choice she had to make one was always with her husband and i recall a scene in my memoir that my mother had six children ranging from ages 9 to 2 and my father got a scholarship in london and i

remember i was 5 years old and i remember seeing my mother crying crying crying every single day. she was useless, she couldn't take care of us, she couldn't do anything. u.s. -- couldn't hold it together waiting for letters from my father eventually my mother took that ship from trinidad to england. i am talking long ago. and stayed with him for quite a few months. it just was something that stayed with me for the rest of my life. my friends who didn't have that situation and even in my family, there were 11 of us but i could tell you something at as i got older, all my siblings left the home and my parents died in their 90s, they had a very long life and healthy long life.

they were not sickly or anything like that. i began to appreciate that they loved each other more -- my father loved us too. if they had to make the choice it would have been each other. i resented it growing up which i talk about in my novel but in the end i got to feel they didn't need us. they have a good time. so let me get back to your son, what happened? >> my son made bad choices. >> i am talking about the influence, what influences someone to go one way or the other and we are saying parents have a great thought because you were saying that is what happened with you that your mother had a great part in your going that direction. >> as i said, my wife was very grounded in her beliefs and strong in her convictions and

that is why i said it is hard for a woman to raise a boy into a man. it takes a real man to do that and for the better part of growing up i wasn't there. i was in prison. my wife raise my daughter and my son and my absence and my daughter like i said is -- has a career in corrections and my son is in corrections. i take ownership of that. that is my fault. i also know that my son the last time it was just bad choice. my son -- my son just went to jail five years ago so he went to jail when i was at the height -- he was working for my company. things he did he didn't have to do. he made the choice, people telling him -- being influenced

by that crowd and ending up getting shot and spending time in prison. >> i want to ask about those choices when it comes to blackmail and it just seems to me, what is it that makes them make those wrong choices? is it a kind of hopelessness, a kind of like i don't see a future, seeing the future with you. >> that is a question. one of the things i talk about in the book i grew up in the 70s and 80s in trenton, new jersey. don't know if anyone hears familiar with trenton, new jersey. there was a street in trenton, new jersey two miles long which in the 70s and 80s was 11-12 african american-owned businesses and i grew up in that area so i grew up at a time

where i got to see on a daily basis what an african-american entrepreneur looked like. i looked -- i worked for two of them for a couple of years so i grew up knowing what that looked like. a lot of our kids to they grow up and don't see that. they don't see themselves as entrepreneurs and i have been involved with a program for 17 years, johns hopkins university, the business program and what we do in that program is going to public schools and teach six fort seven how to run a business. african-american and business owners were part of the program so once again our kids are not getting the opportunity -- to see themselves. i have been involved for 17 years.

i have to be the example of what they can be and i wanted to say this real quick. in trenton, new jersey, i am the only second private citizen in the history of that town to have built a private residence in that town. and i did that for a reason. number one, once again, kids growing up need to see that image. my office is located on martin luther king boulevard like any other martin luther king boulevard across the country. one of the most challenging areas in trenton. a nice office, we renovate it. once again, it is because -- i can have an office anywhere. once again, our kids in our community need to seek fissions. not just drug dealers, not fancy cars, clothes, they need to see visions of central entrepreneurs

look like them so they know they can aspire to -- >> exactly what i believed for many years because i have been a professor in the university and i believe when i stepped in front of that classroom i don't only teach a subject but when the students see me it i give them an idea of what they can be because at this point i had written nine novels and i can tell you that i spoke my first novel at 42, why did i wait so long to write my first novel at 42? that was because i never saw anyone like me writing a novel. i never saw a black woman and i have to say john oliver kilns, the great african-american novelist, a hero, came to my college as a writer in residence

and eyes that look at these papers and he said you are a writer, elizabeth. without that role model, without one who looked like me saying it was possible, i wouldn't have had this career. people talk about diversity as if making different colors in a room but it is not about that. it is about giving young people, older people, if you don't see some things that is possible it is hard to do it so right now i actually -- i give workshops in my room to residents there. i do it free of charge. it takes a lot of work. i am paying back early. it leads me to the other question about leadership, black leadership. could you talk a little bit

about that and before you do that tell us about the business you run? >> i believe black leadership myself, i speak for myself, i have an obligation. i have an obligation as a present that grew up in a city neighborhood that has been able to accomplish something in life and be successful. i have an obligation, my obligation to reach back and do more. i wrote this book not -- and trust me -- 16, not like getting rich selling these books. i wrote these books to be able to be that -- with the lot of young folks need. on the daily basis are losing hope. >> how are they going to get the book? i am speaking as an academic. one of the big problems is they are not reading. >> i understood that when i

wrote the book. i did it -- if you get a chance bill on youtube and go to the board rob -- the boardroom and the video will show up. of very positive message describes this book and the reason i did that is because once again just like you are saying a lot of our kids are visual and audio. i need them to see themselves in this book so i did the video young man out of trenton, new jersey, up and coming rap star and i knew this guy had talent because i gave him my book and said i need a theme song for this book. he did that theme song in one take. if you listen to it it has 10,000 hits on youtube. it is phenomenal that this young mind could create with rap music that song in one take and i didn't have to say take this out and put this in and the video itself when you go to youtube he

directed the video, we shot the video in 12 hours in one day, we start in the morning and end at 9:00 or 10:00 that night. the talent that our kids have is there, just needs to be cultivated and brought out. >> i am going to tell you and you may tell me i am totally wrong, you are unique in this sense, it seems to be that most people when they get theirs, take pairs out of dodge. that is why i am asking about leadership. i just feel -- i don't understand when someone helps you get somewhere that you finally get there and you don't feel you have a real responsibility to get directly to that person, the community as you are doing. that is not what we see all the time and that is part of the

problem we have. >> i agree and you can talk about that to athletes and entertainers. >> millions. i tell you that i am really offended. i turn off the tv when they show programs of people living in houses where they cannot possibly for a whole month, what do you tell me? the values you are asking me to have. i just feel come john, what are you giving back? >> it is important. i am very grounded in my faith and my religion and what i believe in and i got that way. it didn't just happen through my addiction to drugs and i say this in the book. i got shot in 1988 and i have but 102-year-old grandmother and

chief is sharp now. she told me 20 some years ago, i can't tell you to get out of the streets but i will tell you something. god is going to find you in your darkest hour. only then will you realize what you truly are glitch that happens to me in 1991. i was in raleigh state prison, spent 20 hours in latka for something i didn't do. for years separate. >> explain that to us. >> 23 our law. you don't the come of the cell for 23 hours. in half an hour, like in a yard like this where the walls are so high all you see is the sky. i did that over some things that i didn't do. i had a cousin who was locked up, the correction officer, tried to break it up and he went

to the hold and got charged with assault. i got charged with assault. he got shipped to state prison. i got shipp to raleigh state prison. they gave him a street charge. they gave me a street charge. they dropped might street charge, the administrative charge is the prison system charge so i spent a year in a cell that is no bigger than the average sized bath room. that is good. god has a way of doing some amazing things to wake you up and smacked you around and he did it then because i remember sitting in that cell, i read the bible from start to finish and found out who i really was and i knew then that i wasn't the guy that landed me there. when i came out of raleigh in 19 -- around the end of 1990 i was

shipped to camden, new jersey, to riverfront state prison and i was a changed man. i was a changed man. i was not the same person that went in. stuff like that, i really believe, i get this question of a time. if you go back over your life would you change anything you went through? i got a bullet lodged in my spine. i tell people all the time i would not change one thing i have been through because what i have been through is because god wanted me to go through that. he wanted to put me where i am today and do the things i do today and to be an example of what you can do. >> you made the choice. god put you in the situation but you made the choice. >> it was a hard choice. >> you could've gone either way but you made the choice and that is admirable. tell us about low award you got

from president obama. let's -- >> june 30th, now i can remember this date for the rest of my life. in 2011 when i became a entrepreneur of the year as prison chamber of commerce as the first african-american in the 51 year history and the first acts offended but they didn't know it. i thought that was the top. once i am gone, i was going to be there but a month and a half ago i got an e-mail from the white house. as i said, i developed programs which i talk a little bit about, i also speak in prison and drug rehab stories and halfway houses around the country on ending as incarceration for non-violent offenders and on capitol reentry to entrepreneurship for folks coming home from prison because

i've learned this from 1985, october of 1985, i attended the million man march and if you don't have a charge you don't have a job your charge was to go back to your community and create one and i started my business three months after that. fast forward to june 30th when i got the e-mail from the white house, actually missed it became on tuesday on election day in trenton and i was working on getting a friend of mine of elected mayor and ironic when i was trying to get elected mayor the former police chief, best friends of the day, i talk about him in my book also but he didn't win, and checked on thursday and the white house had hidden e-mail, and was nominated as a champion of change 2014 and i had to respond and i didn't so i responded that thursday and i was done.

so she said listen, give as information by the end of the day and you are still in there. this was unprecedented. thousand nominees from across the country. i was one of 16. [applause] >> went to the white house and was on some panels with attorney general eric holder and i believe we are in a good position, attorney-general older doing things are revamping the justice system and criminal laws and all these laws that are continuously incarcerating african-americans at alarming rates, incarcerating more people in america than any country and it is as immoral that as free as we say we are, it is mainly african-americans and as free as we say we are we have laws right now, as was written so

eloquently in the new jim-crow, we have laws, don't care if you're a convicted for one year in jail or ten years in jail you are convicted to a lifetime when you get home because you will never be eligible for housing, for a job, you're voting rights. all those things you need to reintegrate yourself back into society or strip for the rest of your life. i put my old state number 226926 as a reminder in my book. if i was ever to go back into the job market next week guess what? i will still have to check on the application i have been convicted of a crime. we worked in the state of new jersey and this is why i wanted a chance -- just recently i announced because it happened two weeks ago, the state legislature of trenton pass a law i worked on tirelessly for three is with the new jersey institute social justice called ben the box, which stops employers from discriminating

against people with criminal records. it is not the you are going to be asked about that criminal record, just that we want you to release the second or third interview. we thought you could at least a we offered him a job, now we need to hear back before we give you this job and that is giving them the opportunity to get their foot in the door because if you check the box on the application your application only goes in this pile over here and that piles is to not hire a you could be listing your best employes, over 20 years in business during the height of mike company, 18 employees might best jobs are ex offenders because of a comment, 18 employees, some of the best employees i ever had. looking for an opportunity. i got guys to come to my office on a daily basis a guy can't go back to jail.

i just need and opportunity. i will sweep up, i will do anything. i cannot go back to jail. i have a son. when somebody tells you that and you have been through that and you know where they're coming from is not something you can walk away from. not something you can just ignore. winning the award of being a champion of change in the area of reentry into mass incarceration is not something i take lightly, something i'm going to work on until the day i die because it is such a very important issue. >> my father used to say there for the grace of god go i.. limited too hard on ourselves, there for the grace of god go i. if you were in god's situation what would you do? i am sure you have a number of

questions to ask so we are going to maybe exchange one more question here and if you would line up the microphone so we could go right into your questions while we are doing that. how is your son now? >> my son is in north new jersey at anne hathaway house so he is on his way home. this is my son's second bid. in the first one we sent to north carolina. we fly and my wife takes another airplane and listen. you were young. he came back to new jersey, got locked up again. as a parent you say that but do

you really mean it. i am doing it again but like the judge told me, third time is the charm, i am telling him i am not doing it any more. for me as the person being locked up to go into the prison system i don't mind going back. i do at all the time. i will be speaking to the inmates at trinity state prison on september 12th which is my birthday i told him was my birthday. i will be spending my birthday in state prison talking to the inmates for the naacp to have a branch inside the prison because i believe it is such an important issue. this is it, i am not doing it anymore. i think he understands -- >> you will be there every single time. >> i used to say just don't let your children here several hits

against the grounds. and under them, this is the last time it takes that sliding for you if you do it again. tell us your name and your question. let's go to questions rather than comments because we have a wonderful opportunity. >> my name is chris johnson from albany, new york. the question for tracey syphax is what role did the memoir play in your healing process from when you finally came out of hell to where you are today? >> i talk about it in the book. i was abused as a young kid, 8 years old. my mom moved to texas and when we got to texas she got locked up and i was in a foster home and abused by a young lady that was there. something i never talked about.

i talked about it with my wife. my mom didn't even know. when i wrote the book i talk about it and a lot of my family members found out about it's only then. so writing this book, i had a ghost writer that wrote the book so you are talking a lot of full conversations, tape-recorded conversations to atlanta. it was almost like on long caps being able to remove my whole life. i start to where i am today. i have a great opportunity to cleanse myself of a lot of things i held in. a lot of things other people did know about and did very well. it was good for me, good therapy for me to do the book. c-span: >> i will take your question too because the memoir has a kind of

cathartic release and you find yourself facing some things you would not ordinarily face and one of them i have to tell you, when i was having my son in hospital in brooklyn which i will not name, the night before i was -- to take him home the night before, i am getting myself ready because in the morning i am taking my son home. in comes this doctor. he was a young doctor. along with social service person with a clipboard in his hand saying they reported me and i said reported me for what? you know what. giving your son macedonia to calm him down. i was a professor. i had a ph.d..

i had written of book. but i was okay. i don't know what they are talking about. i can't connect. i didn't know what that was. he told me i was the heroin addict. and i said how? immediately in front of everybody, i didn't care. i said find it. find where i injected myself. it is in my memoir. it is a hard story for my son to read because it happened on a friday and they have already reported me and therefore the bureau was locked up. i couldn't get my son out until monday and of course at this point the hospital is afraid i

am going to sue them so when i come on monday to get my son they have all kinds of excuses. cheese spitting up, he is this, he is that, you can't take him, i can close my eyes and see myself ripping through that hospital and taking my son and i said i don't care what form you want me to sign he is going out here with me. it is a hard thing and people don't realize, they talk about racism but don't realize the extent to which it affects us. almost in tears, you kind of hide that from your son because it is like once people believe it is absolutely not true but people believe it. i don't even know what it is

about. you hide it and i wrote it in the memoir and is a hard thing for my son to read because the next thing in my head -- when he gets to go to college and looking for a job they have a hard thing, is an unbelievable thing that happened and that was 1976 missing a long time ago for some of you but that was yesterday for me. let's take another question. >> good afternoon. i am from new jersey, the brunswick area. i have a question regarding your daughter. you mentioned your daughter is doing well in her career and had a strong foundation with her mom. strong african-american woman. how is your daughter able to

establish a healthy relationship with african black men since there was such a conflict in her life with her father not there and her brother being incarcerated. >> that is a good question. my daughter has done very well in her relationship with other men. as far as i know my daughter is 30 years old now. i can only remember three boyfriends in her life. her daughter's father who she is not with now and the person she is with now who they are looking to get married in 2015 so i think she has done very well and i think once again i attribute that to her mother. >> to you too.

>> she talks a little bit in the book also. my daughter will tell you that i am not the father that i used to be and she remembers but also remembers even in my addiction i had my daughter. you know what i mean? i played with my daughter, have a lot of pictures in my addiction, meet with my daughter, laying in the bed with her, so we had that father/daughter relationship. she remembered that but she has done very well now. >> as i said i am an epidemic condition and academic and one thing i always told my female students, sex with a boyfriend, two children, you can be met with your boyfriend all you want but that is the children's father so no matter what happens

you keep this relationship, let them have a father. was a lesson i applied to myself too. my son has a great relationship with his father. he hasn't got a clue. he hasn't got a clue with what happened in my life. i think when i told him i was getting divorced, everything seems fine, what is going on. it is two different things. i learned it from my parents the same way. your child is entitled to a father or mother. no matter what your little problem is or your big problem is. >> before we get to the question, with my father also, i didn't have a relationship with my father, i lived in trenton,

new jersey, which is a 50 minute ride. my relationship with my father, when i did that in school, i took a buzz from trenton to asbury, got beach and went back to trenton. even today, a relationship i had with my dad is beautiful. my dad supports me in everything i do. i have a great relationship, my dad had challenges growing debt but he got clean the law earlier in the newseums to work for the federal government. he did well for himself but he had some challenges growing up also that he had to overcome. that was my relationship. >> we have the beating aside, totally against that.

1,000 -- >> this is in the early 70s. >> selling that out, just the fact that she is not doing that, and that was love. >> i am from and eddie -- and eddie --amityville and i have a question about my relationship with my sister. she is an entrepreneur, and she entwines all these things and gets caught up with unsavory elements in our environment so she has been incarcerated most of my adult life back and forth. since i was 15 years old. in the frost this of differing times she has impersonated me.

i am counselor and the work and different boards and that live in the town of babylon to assist in opening a silver home and i have been awarded certain things. as a veterans they allow me to start my own business and i think that mean -- i have one major challenge and that is how do i at this age find healing and forgiveness for my sister and be able to help her because literally she is asking for my help. >> let me have tracy answer the question. >> i have to be fair, i have to

give her a chance but where and how do i start? it has to be a way that i haven't been manipulated in the past. >> that is of very important question. i have a lot of family members in prison. just recently, my cousin that i got in trouble with that i was locked up with, that same cousin is locked away for murder, and i still write him, send him money, support him even though he is still in prison now and may be in prison for a long time. i think it is a way you can support from a far. it is hard -- these are my brothers and sisters, these are my cousins, my cousins are like my brothers. we are always that close.

i try to support him and support them. another cousin, his brother actually who came home from doing 17 years, has a job and lost the job so i am trying to help him get another job to keep him from going to survive, family is family. you don't let them bring you down and stop you from doing what you need to do. family can do that also. you have to support -- your sister, that is never going to change. you have to support her but you don't want her to hamper you from you wouldn't do for yourself or your family. >> i appreciate your time. >> i don't know how much time we

have. i need a timekeeper. we have eight or so minutes. ten minutes. let's have your questio >> it all starts at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span2's booktv. >> c-span2 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings, and key public policy kids. every weekend, booktv now for 15

years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span degraded by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> the annual new york ideas festival was held in may by the atlantic and the aspen institute. is next part featured discussion on how to improve more minorities in the technology industry with remarks by the ceos of morgan stanley, hbo and kickstarter. conversation with the founder of the philanthropic website donors choose. altogether this is about two and a half hours. >> please welcome to the stage megan garber, christina halpern, taofeek rabiu and nikolas