spirit. how is the united states doing? >> i tend to think in terms of what we can be. it really is back to the united states thriving and winning when we can imagine and when we can dream with our own creativity on what we can be. i think when president kennedy made those comments, that's back to the spirit that we don't ever want to lose. and we don't ever want to have anybody take it away from us either. let's continue to spark the spirit within us. it sounds like a commercial, but arts are great at doing that. let's give ourselves permission to make sure we can honor that. that's when america is at its finest. and finally on the eve of the national endowment of the arts 50th anniversary, what do you

see for the next 50 years? what would you like to see celebrating at its 100th anniversary or since your future successor will be celebrating that 100th here at the national press club, what would you anticipate they be talking about in the organization 50 years from now? >> i anticipate they would be talking 50 years from now we would not even be having a conversation about explaining that the arts are not a frill, they are not off in a corner by themselves because everybody would so get it. it would become like many of our tribal partners and our families in of the native american who is do not have the word arts in their vocabulary because they are so infused with the arts in all they do. it's just part of their life and

don't know it any other way. so in the next 50 years the chairman of the national e endowment for the arts will be thanking and celebrating all the new types of activities that the arts are tied to in our everyday lives. things we can't even think about due to the technology developments and things like that. and we will still be honoring all the ways we have traditionally, it will be the both and. >> how about a round of applause for our speaker? [ applause ] >> i would like to thank or staff including the broadcast center for organizing today's event. if you'd like a copy of today's program or to learn more about

the press club, go to that website press.org. thank you, we are adjourned.

>> text messages are not immune. using them to ascertain travel plans, social networks and credit card details. let me be clear. this information is being collected on individuals who are not themselves suspected of any

illegal activity.

>> you can't name anything today. you can't name anything today that wasn't impossible first. right? think about that for a second. it's in the a trick question. look around this room. looig lights and cameras and projection and snap chat and all of these things, stacked potato chips. everything. everything was impossible before it was possible. go back even further. this's kind of the obvious stuff. how about woven clothes? go back even further. how about walking up right, right?

>> hillary climbs everest. so you have these things that are going. let us not forget the most significant accomplishment of the last six months, the rock jump, right? on vacation. so you have all of these incredible things that are happening. and it's readily about permission, right? someone does it and then it gives cart blanch to everybody else to go and do it. and we've seen this in kind of the classic things, you know, jumping out of satellites. and you see these there the little things, you see this in your own life. oh, i've got an idea. boss says you're not going to do it. someone else does it and now the impossible because possible. i'm ceo and founder of a company

called non-impossible labs. i came from the world of technology from animation and entertainment and things like that. nour, what we do is technology for the sake of humanity. what that means is how do you take something in you and crack it open or break it or modify it in someway, duct tape it and zip tie it back together so it accomplishes a fundamental and social and human need. and then we try to make that accessible, either free or d.i.y. or open source or we just keep it as cheap as possible. so we have a slew of things that we're working on. i'll talk about them now. if you were here last year, you heard me talk about this. the iwriter. we identified an artist who was paralyzed with als and he hadn't drawn anything for seven years, we brought together glasses, a

coat hang ere and a web camera, hacked it open and he drew again for the first time. he's motionless in his bed, he's blinking. als is taking over so now his eyes don't blink as rapidly as they could. so now what we've come up with is a device called the brain writer. what that does is we're looking at measuring the eeg signal that is your brain gives off and we're replacing blinking with thinking so he can draw again. we're doing a project right now and this is a project that i'm incredibly excited about. walk non-impossible became as an out pouring of a project called project daniel. and i set up the world's first 3d printing prosthetic

laboratory. and we started to print 3d prosthetics for the children of war over there. they got all of this press and notoriety. and it was kind of spread all over the world. people started coming in and talking and hey, can you do this or i want to help you with that. in a hospital in mexico city had me come down and tour their hopt. it's a pediatric rehabilitation hospital. i got there. did my tour. i said welcome, we've already wanted you to knowment it's noon and we've seen 1200 kids. even at the 50% rule, 600 kids by snoon a lot. i got to the tour and the last room is the tech room. in this room, there's this little girl and she's hooked up to this thing and she's walking on this contraption. i said what is that? they said it's a gait trainer.

cerebral palsy, basically, the brain is trying to tell the legs walk. so i do that and i walk this way. but with her, the signal is not getting to the legs. so what this does is et actually trains the body from the muscles up, shoots the signal back into the brain. they said that's incredible. i said tell me more. she said if they use this, if a child uses this for about a year, there's a high probability that she'll become ambulatory. she's walk. and i said whaps if they don't? >> well, they have to use conventional therapy and it's probably not. >> so use it and she walks and don't use it and she won't. is that it? yeah, kind of. why don't you have an spire floor of these things. they had so many kids who need this. they said we'd love to. we can't afford them. they're prohibitively expensive.

i said it's a treadmill. i said what are you talking, you know? she said they're like half a million dollars. i said what? are you serious? i said all right, i'll be right back. so we went back -- i went back and the way that we work is we build consortiums of people that are smarter than us. i guess reagan did that, too. but we call it people who make us feel stupid. woe surround ourselves with people that make us feel stupid. so we started to hack and program and come up with different ways to go about this. we came up with a lot of what we thought brilliant things. at the end, the salespersintern back of the room raises his hand. i said what do you have? he said first of all,you guys are all really smart. so it's, you know, it's really amazing.

i'm honor today be in the room with you guys. but what i was thinking, what if we untethered the patient and created algorithms that created the force exertion of them and as they get stronger, it spins down the gyroscope and as they get stronger, it will spin down so they can keep thems up? and as the founder of non-impossible, i said the most mature and encouraging thing you would expected me to say. shut up, joel. and then you heard everyone's jaw hitting the table. and i'm happy to tell you that literally, right now, we are checking messages as i'm coming up, we had been working over the last year to create a low-cost, rehabilitative exo skel ton that

will be a fraction of the cost of what we were first exposed to. i'm happy to tell you that that will roll out in second. we're working with brilliant engineers, we're going to go into clinical trials and then we're going to roll that around and actually get into the hopt in mexico city. and our mandate is to have a thousand kids walk again in the next two years. [ applause ] >> thank you. and guess who was the lead kind of team on this. joel. joel and his group of hackers and robotics club members. they were the ones that kind of set us on that course. to get to where we are now. so, for us, our process at non-impossible is really quite simple.

>> when you don't know that you're not supposed to be able to do something, you don't not do it. you just do it. and so what we do is we go through this process, we look for what we call morsels of permission. we look for these opportunities. hey, what about that? let's take a little piece of that and that. we don't have the exact thing, but if we take a couple things and put them together, maybe that will be your solution. so, now, it's your turn. i'm willing to bet the majority of people in this town have far more initials after their name than me. the question that you have to ask yourself is why it needs to be made. not how. the how, you'll figure out the how. an artist needs to draw again.

a child needs to walk again. that's the why. and things will congregate. things will mobilize behind you to feg your out how that happens. orr how that should happen. and i would is you guys, why not now? what are you waiting for? if you've got ideas of things that need to be made, finances, whatever, i'm the easiest person in the world to get ahold of. our company is the easiest place to get ahold of. you already have permission. everybody here has permission to go do this. you just have to jump. thank you, guys, very much. >> and, now, senior advisor to the president, valerie jared with nbc's andrea mitchell.

>> thank you all. thank you, again. >> good afternoon, everyone. >> hey. >> well, so much has happened. we've heard a lot of very interesting speakers today. i just came from the united nations and the president most likely wanted to have a victory laugh, the iran deal, the cuban negotiations, at the same time, a very difficult meeting with vladamir putin and then, today, air strikes. what can you tell snus. >> we did have a heads up that it was coming. it's far too early for a victory lap. we still have another whole year and a month to go before the election. so i think the president did want to have an opportunity to address the u.n. here. it is the 70th anniversary. he's addressed it each year since he's been in office.

he also was very clear ant the challenges that lie ahead. i think it was a productive last ten days between the visit with the pope, pope francis and the way our country welcomed him, the state visit with the president of china and then the u.n. >> this audience has heard speakers including mitt romney and john mccain strongly criticize the president's form policy. how can you respond to that to the criticism by a bipartisan congressional committee on the war against isis. the perception that isis is wining on the ground, that our air strikes are not effectively preventing jihadis from joining the group and that we don't have a plan for syria. >> look thrks is a tough business. it's a coalition that's growing

and ever stronger. so no one said it's going to be easy. it's very easy to be critical in a sense from what they say are the cheap seats, but the president is committed to making measuring safe every day. he had an entire session focusing on how can we combat extremists and particularly isil, and what are we going to do collectively together. so it would be much more con struktive if those folks would join our effort. >> how concerned is the president about the kind of rhetoric that's being used in the campaign this year. >> i'll say this to you, abdree ya. having the privilege with the last two presidential campaigns, my observation tends to resonate with the american people is somebody who sees the united states as a diverse country with diversities of strength.

we've always been the nation that people the world over gravitate towards. and that's something that we should celebrate. i think in the last two elections, the reason why the president won not once, but twice, his message is one that pulls the country together. >> are you sur pprised with the pope's private visit with kim davis who is defieing the supreme court and arguably not doing her job but stabnding up for her view of what religious freedom is? >> we believe public officials have to comply with the law. at if out set, he had a terrific visit with the pope.

i think he and the president share common values, priority, everything from climate change to equality and justice and providi providing opportunities for those who are less fortunatement. >> the experience that you had, that you were able to share with the pope, what was completely different about this experience? >> i've met some extraordinary people. but there was just something about his spirit. and i'm a non-catholic. and sitting in his presence and listening to his message, hopeful message, a message that

really lifted up everyone and saw the value, i was brought to tears when i saw him at the prison. you know, president obama just recent le visited a federal penitentiary in oklahoma. and i watched the president's conversation with those incarcerated. and to see the reaction on the faces of the inmates when the pope grabbed their hand, it was really very moving. you're right, i've seen a lot. but every day there's something that happens that makes me pinch myself. meeting him was a real privilege. >> and being on the hill when he was in congress that day, i found so ed vating and extraud lirly moving. what is your diagnosis that ails both party sns.

>> how much time do you have? >> see, look, it's dishardening, to say the least. one of the things that i like about my job is i get to work with all the elected officials outside of congress. and i think what is disappointing to me when i see just the amount of time that congress wastes where they could be doing the people's business. i mean, just think about it. i lost counts after 54 votes to appeal the act. i think it's troubling.

>> how concern certained are you about the democratic race right now? there will be four more releases of e-mails before the iowa caucuses. so this is a drip, drip, drip. >> if one were to go back at this time in the 2008 campaign, i'm sure there were people that would say there's no way that then-senator obama will ever be elected. in the end, it's going to be up to the american people and we

think what the president has done over the last eight years, if he'd just think about what was going on i think sometimes people forget. we had banks on the verge of collapse. our entire economy was starting to head into a depression and we were able to stave that uf. and so we've made a great deal of progrez. and so our challenge for the nekts is to continue that trajectory h, as we aumpb say, talent is ewe peck willtous. so my point to you is we're still focusing on a lothd of hard work to create that opportunity for every american. and i believe is that that is the vision that the majority of americans will support at the end of the next campaign. >> obviously, the billionth hod

acoraling to the latest nbc news poll, the best democrat to go again, you're speculating and vice president widen hasn't ed up his mind. so let else see wo end up in the race. then and whoever wins the nomination, that's who the president will support in the next election. >> he could shut down the speculation right now baa he's taken nor from clinton support than bernie sabders. >> we're talking ties prd. he's doing what you would do if

you had is. >> i think it's the same thing that i've heard him say privately. it's that he really doesn't know what he wants to do. he's had a devastating loss. i think it e's possible to give him the time to figure that out on his own. >> the president has said that the best political decision he's ever made is choosing bow biden as his vice president. how hard would this be for barack obama to have his vice president running against his former secretary of state?

>> i think he believes that everybody should get to make that decision for themselves. >> one of the main reasons why hillary clinton has been suffering the polls is this e-mail con tro ver e she say if you did use a private e-mail, it should be turned over. that's what she's doing as recently as you said a few minutes ago. she has been asked about this mut multiple times chls look, to

do it again, i probably made a mistake and woujtened do. >> when you look at the other said, what do you make of donald trump? >> i think really what resonates with people is his spirit of hopefulness. we have a great country. we are the greatest country on earth and i don't think that we should ever tare it down. there's still a lot of hard work ahead. as we have seen in the last election and the one before that, people go up and people go down. in the end, the m.d. youzed to

say in m you got to go around the state and lift up your hood and people would kick your tires and find out who you really are. that's what's great about a democracy. that's why we have a long period of time where everybody gets to know one another. i think that's what's going to happen this time. he said later, the president wouldn't defend me, why should i defend him? one recalls what happened in

2008 -- >> is senator mccain still in the house? what he did was really, i thought, excellent. i thought sent an important message. it's okay to disagree with somebody. but name calling is something you're supposed to stop when you're much, much, younger. 34 we are a country that needs to celebrate diversity and strength. wefr a cup that believes inially jous freedom. ment ultimately, the reason i, i to have confers the in. >> and the president, in these nsh nkt floisht he layed out a

vision on this p 0th anniversary. but he tounded frus raet one was filled with hope and change, if you will. and the speech this week seemed frustrating. >> i think obviously, six years later, he's had a spirit that's been enriched by the president of the united states. i didn't feel that he was frus raided at all. in aened the theme i heard when he was running for office was diplomacies hblgt they e think he's proving that it's foul ming torkt does he wish that the

world were easier and that some of these problems would have proveren do be quite intract an, of k pill suz. what are your hopes and his hopes of coming up with this yeemt? are your homed e. >> look, the whole purpose of that, rely on me gauchuation and we believe that this agreement is the best possible way of assuring that. so, obviously, time will tell. a lot of hard work is going to go into mob xxing the appliance with the grievement.

i think that's a positive sign. the sail thing could be said pr childrening our rehaitians with kuba. i pi poo p mooet meeting he had in new york while is with florchd. >> there's absolutely the om must recall possible of encagement is to make the wo tech nol is pricking under the circumstances all closer nrntd face along and i think that's the template going forward. we have to figure out how to be a port of the world and not live in isolation. we can't do it alone anymore.

>> do you expected that president obama would go to cuba before he leaves office? >> these are all posztive steps to take. we'll see. let's take it one day at a time. imthink we had a pretty good summer. i woke up this morning and i was trying to rebel hoim states legalized same-sex marriage when the president took office. and i guessed four. i was wrong, it was two. before the supreme court decision, it was 137 plus the district of philadelphia. so i don't want to pre-judge today what can happen in the next year plus. a year ago, we probably wouldn't

have predicted all of the fro gresz we haed in this last year. >> at this time last week, a lot of people were studying the body language of vladamir putin and president obama. what is that relationship? >> i think they have to work together. they will where they and then they're going to disagree. i think that actually describes the president's overall approach. it's his approach to congress right now, hopefully, moment tearily, we're going to have a continuing resolution: and so we

can work with one another and we don't have to agree with everything. that's been the president's approach since he started with the state senate and i think that's what he did when efs a u.s. senator and what he's done do mesically and ger nationally. >> thank you so much, sprrks alerie. >> you're welcome. thank you all. up next, chairman of the white house council economic advisors.

a. >> is that something that has an impact on the american economy? >> jason? >> i think there's been a lot of attention to the question of will the government be open toerm or will the government not be open tomorrow. and the fact that we might be on track to passing a spending bill is a lot better than if we didn't. but it's not exactly a major accomplishment. and what's really important is

not whether you're continuing the appropriations but how you're continuing. if we continue spending the these levels for the next year, we would have inflation adjusted spending lower than it's been since 2006. it would mean per pupil, spending education would be back to where it was in 2000. cuts across the board that the congressional budget office said would take 0.4% off of our growth rate next year. that's twice than what goldman sachs said the turmoil in china would cost our economy.

>> doug, would you agree with that? >> i think the cr, a tiny shut down is not a big deal. the great battle is over. bill is on the defense side where if we continue at cr levels, there are deep concerns and readiness and capableties. and the pentagon folks don't like that idea. but to be honest, of the three things you mentioned, the biggest one is the debt limit. every time we run up to this limit and we threaten the liquidity of enties. it's a particularly volatile markt right now, as you know.

so there's a rlot of risk preem ya, a lot of uncertainty. and then this debt limit sort of walking unto the brik and then, well, they're probably not going to jump off of it, but maybe. it's dangerous circumstances to ply this game. >> how sduz that does that factor into the globe economy. >> i certainly look at congress and sometimes have that feeling myself. there's no way that debating

planned parent hood for two months helped the u.s. economy. in fact, it put us in a position that we weren't debating what we should debate. >> the things you say, jason. >> i know. what we should be figuring out is how much are we going to invest in infrastructure and how should we pay for it? how much do we want to invest in the national institute of health. how do where he want to move our economy forward. some of these we're going o have a difference a of opinion on. all of these you're willing to compromise on. but let's have that kvrgs about our growth. >> i think counsel tris are used to the u.s. -- its representative system and the two-party system. i think the bigger communication problem has been the fed. and, financial markts are the fastest transition. and i think the fed, quiet frankly, has left everybody confused and thems confused.

i would guess if we had perfect vision, we couldn't agree on when the fed was raise and how much. >> if you were running the fed, what would you do differently? >> i believe that they made the case to raise at the last meeting and they should have. and to not change the sort of diagnosis to be fundmently about the rest of the world and no longer about the sort of recovery in the u.s. and then to realize they confused everybody and send january et out to clean up, that just doesn't look good. >> i really completely disagree with that. id think the fed has been completely clear. i was not at all surprised by the decision not to raise in september. if you look at the situation. so they're very clear. the dual mandate, inflation and growth and unemployment. inflation, sorry. no evidence of its pick-up.

they didn't have to move on their dual man date. they have always said that global financial markt circumstances have to be taken into account in the timing of a decision. these were not ideal global market circumstances in which to raise rates. i really don't think so. i think that, actually, interestingly enough, a numd beryl of people pushing the fed to raise rates were pushing the fed to raise rates because they felt that global asset pricesarouprices around the world were inflated. they did it in a very botched way at the wrong time right guy,

wrong moment. i think they've been very clear and ill think they made the right decision. >> the jobless rate has come down. but labor market participation is also relatively low. why is it when the u.s. economy is recovering, we have so many people leaving the labor markt. and what should jason be doing to fix this? >> well, jason, you've done a lot on these numbers. >> the single biggest factor is population change. when you're 70, 75, you're less likely to work than when you're 40, 45. and that explains the majority of their decline.

they have been declining almost every year since the 1950s. for women, that ended in the late 1990s. i think we do, as a country, have a serious structural challenge when it comes to getting people into the labor force. i don't think it's a by product of this business cycle. >> does that mean that the only answer is more immigration. >> immigration certainly would help. but, you know, so would more flexible workplaces, better child care, reducing the taxes on secondary earners, which is an idea that we've put forward in the political campaigns from both parties and better training and connecting people to jobs. a whole range of things to make labor markets function better.

>> i saw recently that japan's labor force participation for women is now higher than the u.s. a lot of this is related to flexible workplaces and child care and parental leaf. and there's really going to be a push on those issues in the election. and i think that's right. i think among american voters, american citizens, yeah. most women that they know have had employment at some point in their career. and it's been incredibly difficult, regard less of whether you're an upper income level wait a moment or a very poor woman to figure out what to do with family care and family leave. so i think this is going to be a big issue. but i do think -- the other thing i would say, and i know jason is working on this, too, is i think the move to try to

encourage more free community college so it's more target today a workplace needs, that we've got to think about ways to provide past ways for people into the labor market that are a bit more targeted pathways. and i think this's really interesting stuff being done at the level of states on this. so i'm optimistic that that may be part of the solution as well. >> there's really a two'fer on this. we know the dividing line between poor and nonpoor is work. so having a pro-work safety net both helps us with the poverty problem and the labor force pretigsation problem.

>> i should tell you that john mccain didn't listen to me. [ laughter ] >> you should listen to me. >> income growth is relatively moderate again despite a decent recovery. why is that and what can be done to make a difference? >> i think there are three factors mechanically that go into it. one is the labor force participation that we've been talking about that's been trending down for a while since women have surged into the labor force. the other is the productivity of our economy isn't high enough and it isn't being shared well enough. there's too much inequality. it's not any one cause of the slow growth and incomes we've seen over the last several decades. we need more infrastructure,

more research to increase our productivity. we need a higher minimum wage and more progressive taxes to deal with inequality. we need flexible workplaces to help labor force participation, but those are the three levers that should be organizing our thinking. >> congress struggles to pass a budget, which should be the bottom line thing any government does. >> we are trying to bring to closure a successful transpacific partnership. we got the authority from congress and the instructions about how to negotiate on that. the senate passed a highway bill. there's a lot of ways you can build on it and improve on it, but that's another way to move forward, so i think congress can do things. i certainly think we need to be doing a lot more than what we're doing right now. >> doug? >> i think the focus should be on the support outlook for the trend rate of economic growth at the united states.

that's the number one problem that should be addressed, and that's a problem that has to be dealt with deep structural reforms. these are the entitlement reforms, tax reforms, immigration reforms, the education reform that is take a long time and the political world is not very patient about them need to happen. that should be the focus of the policy agenda, and that is 180 degrees away from how congress is operating on this day-to-day basis. >> i only want to say two things in response to this. one is we need to understand there's been a great deceleration of growth around the world. this is not unique to the united states, and indeed if you look at 25 year growth rates up to 2007 and 2008, right now you'd say significantly lower. you absolutely would. the potential growth rate in the united states because we've had essential lly zero productivity growth would be 0.5%.

i agree with the notion that that is the basic challenge. i would say relative to your list of structural reforms since this is shared around the world, i would be hard pressed to make the arguments that entitlements in the united states or entitlement reform have anything to do with the productivity slowdown. i do think issues in infrastructure spending, rnd spending, capital spending in the united states and around the world has been quite slow for a recovery period, so we've had a balanced, consistent but very slow recovery. one of those statistics i've seen recently is why productivity growth so low. if you look at capital services per employed hour of work, that's been declining. that's been declining for the past five years. we haven't made enough investments in workers to make

them more productivity. i think the business agenda for investment is a big one. that's something doug and i work on. what should we do to make it more attractive to invest in the united states, bring the capital here. that also related to the export import bank. >> when you talked about the growth rate, can i ask you about jeb bush's plan to raise it to 4%? is that a realistic goal or an aspiration goal to make people feel like you're being bold and ambitio ambitious? >> i think it's the latter. people know how hard it is to move average growth rates by half a percentage point. i don't think the average american is tuned into that. what they hear is he wants to grow faster and that would be great. >> the u.s. has grown now for seven years. at some point there will be another recession, whether

people like it or not, but rates are pretty much maxed out on the low side. there's no appetite in congress for any kind of stimulus, are you worried if we do enter another recession the policy tools are not going to be there? >> when i think about the fiscal side, which is the part i pay attention to, i think there is no economic obstacle at all to using fiscal policy to address any future contingencies. i think there's a very serious political obstacle to it in terms of political will, and that's why i think one of the important things we need to be doing is strengthening what are called automatic stabilizers, the things that kick in regardless of whether congress acts. unemployment insurance, for example. the tougher an economy is, the more of a rationale there is for letting people stay on their unemployment benefits longer.

we did that through congressional action this time. next time that should happen automatically. those types of ideas i think we could be preparing now for whatever contingencies we face in the future. >> i would say in that respect right now i think the greatest risk to a global recession and to a recession in the u.s. is into the u.s. based. it's china based. as i said, we've had a slow and quite balanced and consistently growing economy. it's hard to see where the recession trigger would come in the united states. you don't see the imbalances. you don't see the inflationary pressure. you don't see the notion of the fed having to move aggressively against inflationary pressure to slow things down, so i think the risk is from the rest of the world and particularly from china. what i would say there is they do have the policy tools to

handle this. they absolutely whether you're talking about reserves or fiscal room, debt limits, anything you want to talk about, they have the tools to do it. what was unnerving about what happened in the last six or seven months is they made some errors, which people said, really, they're doing that. that doesn't seem consistent with their very sound macrmacrr management track record. how do we deal with a recession? let's say it's an important recession. it's not our cause. we really do need to reform that because people need -- the time of replacement of income is short. the amount of replacement of income is short. and the restriction on what you can do, for example, to be trained while you're getting unemployment compensation. some of the best unemployment compensation systems in the world really reside in the

nordic countries. they have massive training during unemployment. they have a movement of -- they have very active labor market policies to try to match people with jobs, so you have to build around the automatic stabilizer. again, this point of how you get people on the track to new jobs. >> did you want to add something on china? >> i think the diagnosis of where the shock comes from is important. the fed can still do a lot of things, so i'm not concerned on that front. the track record on discretionary fiscal policy is dismal in the united states, so they're inability to exercise that doesn't trouble me very much. automatic stuff should work. that's the key. >> last question. i can't ask jason because i know he won't be able to answer this, but my wife is an economist. she says you never ask an economist to give a number and a time. when is the fed going to raise

rates and by how much? this is being televised globally, i believe. >> one thing i will say the fed has been absolutely clear about is whatever they do will be in small steps and gradual. and i have known janet a long time. i know her experience when she first became on board with the fed in the 1990s. she is not a fan, and i think a number of people on the board are not fans, of big rate increases that are shocking to the system, so that's the first thing. the second thing is if you really think, and i think we do, that the potential growth rate of the united states is significantly lower than it was in the post -- in the 25 years up to 2007, say, than the interest rate to which they will move is going to be considerably lower because that equilibrium rate is going to be lower than in the united states.

the steps are going to be smaller and the rate you get to is going to be lower. >> i have to introduce you to my wife, i think, because we're out of time. >> i don't have to say when. whew. >> 25 basic points next meeting. >> thank you to the panel. >> thank you. american history tv airs all weekend every weekend on c-span 3 and in primetime on weeknights when congress is in recess. we cover all periods of american history and a wide diversity of topics. at our website, you can watch all of our programs, find our tv schedule, see youtube clips of upcoming shows, and connect with us on twitter and facebook. this is american history tv, only on c-span 3. join american history tv on saturday november 7th, for tours and live interviewsm