>> one of the things about your habits as a reporter is that you never vote. >> years ago, i decided not to vote because i thought that when you vote, you make a psychological commitment to one

side and against the other side and i thought it better not to do that. it was a private matter and i discovered another -- other journalists have the same practice and i assumed for roughly the same reason. my wife describes it as one of the dumber things that i do. she has a long list of dumb things i do. >> why does she think that? >> she thinks that you want to add a -- exercise your right as a citizen. she probably thinks that you have a bias for and against certain people and certain positions anyway. you write a column that is an opinion column, so what is the big deal? i am comfortable with it, and since i am writing the column, that is what i do. >> we need to start the column? >> the column started in 1966

when i went to work for the "national journal"." it is a magazine that is published in washington and is intended for lawyers and lobbyists and congressmen and their staff people. people who deal in policy and are interested in the details of policy. i was hired there in 1976 as an economics reporter. part of that job description was writing a column. it started off as an every other week column and then it became weekly with the washington post asked to use the column. i have been doing this since 1976. >> someone was mad at you for what you had written, asking why they should even listen to you because you do not have an economics degree. >> that is true. i do not have an economics degree. that is a strong point.

if i can explain things to myself, i can explain them to my readers. i am not trying to impress economists. i am trying to subject economic theories and arguments to the evidence and to practical common sense. so, although having an economics degree would be helpful in some ways, i think it is a burden in other ways because people who have economics degrees are often writing for fellow economists and that is not why i'm writing for. >> where did to get an interest in economics? >> i was always interested in it a little bit but this was an accident. many careers turn out by accident. i got out of college i was at harvard. i wanted to be a journalist.

i got a job for the "washington post" as a metro reporter, reporting about washington. i was hired in late 1968 and when i came down in early 1969 to take the job, the editor said that they had an opening on their business staff. what i take it? -- would i take it? i did not have a strong objection to taking it. if he had asked me to be a sports reporter, i would have said no. i was completely unqualified for that. but i have taken in accord -- a couple of economics courses and i thought it was interesting and important. i said yes and one thing led to another. >> are there a number of guideposts that you have when it comes to economic news? >> when you sit down and decide

you are going to do a column on something, what is going on in your head at the time? >> i am trying to do two things. i am trying to do something relevant and important and i am trying to find something that might be important to a reader. i envision my reader as somebody of reasonable intelligence and reasonable curiosity with no specialization who is trying to understand how the economic world impacts his or her life and explains what they see going on around them. is a judgment that i make every week. it depends on some of the things that mention -- that interests me. i have written over the years about how the nature of the federal budget has been

transformed into a vehicle for paying benefits for older americans. i have written about that substantially. going back over many years, i think it is highly relevant but it is not often very popular. i say that we need to reduce these benefits because we have an exploding population of old people, including me. i just turned 65. it will not be easy for the country to afford all of these benefits. 10 or 12 years ago, a guy did not like what i was writing and came into the office and said that he had a solution to my problem. he said we should shoot all the old people and then shoot me. >> i have a friend that says this country is going down

economically. he has bought gold. not gold paper, but gold ingots that he can put his hands on. what would you say to him? >> i am not a gold boss. i do not purchase gold. i have become optimistic about our future because we have not addressed our problems, including the burden of an aging society. if you go back to the late 1970's and early 1980's, the american economy was in terrible shape. we had double digit inflation and people thought it could not be cured in any practical way. it was very destabilizing. we had four recessions between 1969 and 1982. people were very pessimistic

about america's future because it seemed that we could not control this phenomenon. i was not all the pessimistic because i thought the problems were soluble. at the beginning of the 1980's, the chairman of the federal reserve board, with the backing of president reagan, took the country through an awful recession. this recession resulted in unemployment reaching almost all a &, but it did purge -- -- almost 11%. but it did purge the country. i felt that our management had become overconfident and complacent and many of our companies were being mismanaged. that was a problem that was also solved in the 1980's. we hadng in the 1980's, a 25 year boom. in the course of that 25 year,

-- the- 25 year buoom problems that we have now, we are reluctant to address. it may be that the reagan alliance that crushed inflation was a happy accident for this country. if we have other leaders at the time, it would not have done that. for the last 20 years, we have not had political leaders that were willing to address problems that were completely obvious and have been written about extensively for narrow and understandable reasons. >> on the 19th -- the 21st of december, this water's story

came across my desk. i want to read just a couple of paragraphs. the u.s. government fell deeper into the red in fiscal 2010 with net liability swelling more than two dollars trillion as commitments on government debt and federal benefits rose the u.s. treasury report showed tuesday the financial report of the united states, which applies corporate style accounting showed the government's liabilities exceeded assets by $13.47 trillion. that compared with $11.45 trillion gap a year earlier. >> i think that is the wrong way to look at the problem because it is extremely complicated. although there are significant

differences, they are technical ones. i look at things on a year-to- year basis and see what the trends are. for the last two years, we had a deficit of well over $1 trillion. if you look at the projections that are made, the deficits are in less. the government has made more promises than it can keep up the existing level of taxes. social security, medicare and medicaid and the second being health insurance for people over 65 fully for medicare and partially for medicaid. those programs already constitute 40% of the federal budget. if you look out over the next 20 years, 30 years, when the baby

boom generation retires, those people over 65 is, to roughly double. at the same time, we have not controlled health spending. when you put all that together, just maintaining the existing commitments of the federal government means that the government needs to expand by 40% or 50% over the next couple of decades. that can only be done in a couple of ways. you can raise taxes vary sharply, which would have a huge transfer from young people to older people which i do not think it is economically prudent or socially justified, or you can run these massive deficits which would be unsustainable. all of this has been known for decades. we basically have ignored the problem.

we continue to ignore it. the amounts are in the trillions of dollars for th. if we decided to do what we could have done at the end of the 1980's, and began to raise the age for benefits and began to reform health care that -- in a way that reduces increases in spending, we would be in a lot better shape today than we are. >> based on what you know of the new house that is coming in that this majority signedcan, the president' up to not increase taxes, where would we be a year from now? >> my guess would be -- i hope

that the economy improves in 2011 and the consensus among economists is that it will improve. the horrendously high unemployment rate will come down but still be very high. there will be some reduction in the deficit if that occurs, but in terms of dealing with these long term problems, i do not see us making much progress. i hope i am wrong, but i have been disappointed too many times in the past. the democrats think that you can solve these problems by taxing the rich as 1% or 2% in the nation. republicans think that you can ignore the spending and enact an endless number of tax cuts and somehow pay for them by cutting other spending. the spending for the elderly is

a major part of the budget. those things that i mentioned not attack you'd do -- if you do not attack that problem, you are ignoring the mismatch that exists in our accounts. right now, there is tremendous public support for cutting the deficit. there is also a large majority that opposes doing things that would begin to reduce the deficit. i looked at a poll and roughly 60% of the public opposes increasing medicare premiums for wealthy your -- for wealthy retirees. >> i have your book that you wrote in 2008. this is the new version in paperback, called "the great

inflation and its aftermath". we keep hearing that we are going to get out of some of this mess. what would happen that would increase inflation? >> right now, i do not think that inflation is a big threat. it conceivably might become a threat in the years to come. what would happen is the federal reserve would keep pumping money into the economy regardless of how much prices went up and would ignore the problem. i do not think that this likely to happen and i do not think that the public expects it to happen. if the public thought that the federal government's loss commitment to keep inflation down, it would be self- fulfilling. one of the conclusions i came to in that book is that it is extremely important what the

public, ordinary consumers, labor union leaders, the whole gamut, what they think the whole -- to govern is thus the government is going to do. if the mid 1970's, the government did not care about inflation. higher prices would produce higher wages and higher wages would cause higher prices and it that on itself. the government was unwilling to take the punishment of a recession deepens and severe enough to convince people that the government and the federal reserve really was determined to stop inflation and would stop it at any social cost. i think that that lesson has sunk in. even though the fed has kept interest rates very low, people

do not expect inflation to increase, there for the business practices and wage practices are quite restrained. businesses do not raise prices because they do not feel that they can and workers are hungry for jobs and do not push for big wage increases. --s the psychology changed if the psychology changed, you could see a reversal of this. one thing that we have learned over the last 30 years is that economists and other sages of the economy are not very good predicting -- at predicting what actually happens. i do not pretend to have a crystal ball to tell you what is one to happen in five years. >> how often do you write? >> once a week. i write a column once a week. i sometimes to other pieces. >> in washington, it is highly

visible in op-ed pieces. how do you get reactions? >> i get some e-mail reaction. i do not get as much reaction as you would think. over the years -- i am not flooded with e-mail the next day after a column. i hear from people that agree or disagree. i also get old-fashioned mail. i do not get inundated. i am one of the few last columnist that does not put an e-mail at the end of the column. it is not a constitutional right to sort of -- i do not put an e- mail at the end of the column. >> when did you make that decision? >> it is a decision i didn't make. some of my editors urged me to

do this, but it's like not voting. this is the way i am. if you looked at the comments box people can't comment on the columns -- people can comment on the columns. when i get them, i see that a lot of the comments have nothing to do with my column. they are very strident, but sometimes somebody picks up something and starts to run with it and somebody response to it and frankly i do not care to be inundated with those kind of e- every day. i do not want to engage in a theater where comments might be sent and readers would get an automatic reply so that he could not respond to them all. if somebody wants to get in

touch with me, they can find my e-mail by searching the internet. that is fine i do not give them a free ride. >> how many words is approximately in each column? >> when i started out writing for "national journal" it was about all the hundred or 1200. over the years, it has constantly shrunk. in the "washington post" i write less. it takes longer to write a shorter column that day longer call because you can be a little bit more relaxed in your writing style when you have a low hundred or 1200 words instead of 700 or 800. >> when you lay down a lot of figures, does anybody say that this is garbage and that is completely incomprehensible? >> before it gets published --

for years, i have had a very good friend of mine who is an editor and reporter for the " loss angeles tons" edit my column before it went to "newsweek". having covered the economy for the "*," -- for the times -- he is a good writer. he is an expert at grier. when things are not clear, he tells me. his political views are different from mine. he tries to bring me in. then i go either to the "newsweek" editors for the editors at the "washington , and theyers' groups

are very good, too. when i say things that are unclear, they tell me to clarify this. i have always regarded editors as my friends. what every rider wants to hear is that this is the most brilliant thing ever written and you do not have a word out of place. unfortunately, that is not the reality. the editors protect me from myself. >> did he do this for free? >> i make a payment to him. he objected to making that in the beginning, and i suspected he gave it to charity. >> i have a comment -- a column from the 16th.

i will read the first paragraph. it is becoming clear that the great recession has left a deep and possibly lasting scar on the american psyche. from ceos to ordinary families, we are a nation that is more cautious, more fearful and more risk-averse. this widespread and that so far indestructible anxiety has hobbled the recovery and helps explain the slow pace of job creation. the economies right up -- revival depends in part on risk- taking, but risk-taking is in eclipse. >> in the aftermath of the financial crisis, americans of all sorts, beginning with wall street types and ceos and then coming down to ordinary consumers, had underrated the risks that they were undertaking. this is a very natural reaction

to this financial calamity that we have. people that were paying down their debts and saving more. corporations were cut off -- . they would be cut off from normal sources of financing. this is also, to some extent, one explanation as to why we are having such a weak recovery because businesses do not want to undertake risk. they do not want to hire people if they do not feel there is an absolute need to hire them. i pointed out in a column that half the hiring that has occurred over the last year has been temporary job services. companies are taking on more people, but they are not making a permanent commitment to them. ordinary americans are also cutting back. they are reluctant to take on new debts and they're trying to

build up their savings because there cash reserves and their wealth has been depleted because of the decline of the stock market and the decline of housing values. i think that this will lender and we will have a much more cautious risk averse the economy going forward for the next few years and maybe for a decade or so because this dramatic event will leave such a large scar on our collective psyche. that would begin to contribute to a more sluggish economy that has more difficult meeting obligations that people expect from jobs to public services and new products and rising living standards. >> as you look back on people that you cover and write about, who has done the best job over the last two years from your perspective? if you had to name one person

that made important decisions that you like. >> of the people who have done it, obviously been bernanke -- ben bernanke. i would say that he stepped in and in the fall of 2008 and provided the backstop to the financial markets that were collapsing. financial institutions that have been used to borrowing and could no longer borrow from sources for the banks were not lending the way they used to to each other. the commercial paper market for businesses and financial institutions was freezing up. the federal reserve stepped in and created an array of very complicated liquidity

institutions inside the fed that substituted for private credit. the collapse of these markets was arrested and the kind of hysteria and panic that people were feeling at the time was basically stopped. the economy stabilized. you can go back before that and say that bernanke and the federal reserve did not anticipate this crisis and might have and this up -- prevented if they had anticipated that. they may have avoided it. you can say the same thing of henry paulson who was the treasury secretary. although his reputation is not as high as bernanke's. he acted decisively on a number of occasionss to help stabilize financial markets.

i think that the credit for stabilizing the economy belongs not just to one person, but to an array of people in both parties. but they all made mistakes at different times. nobody was perfect. under other circumstances, things might have gotten much worse. >> who do you think has been wrong? >> everybody has been wrong. if somebody committed a single sen more that -- a single sin -- >> talk shows are pointing their finger at the other side. if you were just listening to figure out who is wrong. they say that president obama is

a socialist and if you look at the left, they will say that it is george bush's fault. when you say that is baloney. -- baloney? >> this is -- this falls along the lines of "the great inflation and its aftermath". the fall of double-digit deflationary was the greatest economic event of the last half century. as i said earlier, reagan and volcker crushed inflation. they raised the price of credit and tightened credit and basically created unemployment and create excess capacity that brought down wage increases.

companies could not sell at higher prices. continuing the policy long enough, it basically set out the message that the federal reserve was no longer in the business of accommodating a wage price spiral. this was a deliberately engineered recession to get rid of inflation. it triggered 25 years of prosperity. the stock market when from under zero thousand on the dow jones, and went over 10,000 by the end of the 90's. you have a recession in 1990 and '91 and another recession in 1992. you had a huge explosion when interest rates came down

dramatically. in the early 1980's, you're talking about interest rates of 40%, 50%, 60% and by the end of the 90's, it went down to 6%. you had essentially -- the economy was much better than it had been for the previous 15 or 20 years. my view is that this induced an enormous amount of confidence and complacency all across the political spectrum and across the spectrum of the economists and regulators. the dubious practice of sub- prime lending and the assumption that housing prices would continue to go up and that loans because mortgages to be refinanced at lower interest rates, people were thinking they

would get wealthier. households had an increase in wealth over this period. so, you essentially have a classic boom and bust cycle. the boom created an enormous amount of complacency and people started doing things that were done. in some cases, they were unethical. the context and the climate in which this occurred was not one in which all of the blame belongs to the republicans or the democrats. president clinton was president during a large part of this extended boom. george bush was president during a large part of this extended boom. economic officials in the clinton administration basically backed the policies that helped create this boom and the same policies were basically

followed in the bush administration. so this was a crisis that has deep historical roots, but to have all the history of what happened instead of engaging in this partisan screaming match that has become the standard explanation for what happened and why. it is not that everything people say on both sides is mistaken, they are factually correct. but they overlook the context of the climate in which all of these things occurred. >> what about the fannie story? freddie mac you never see what is going on inside. >> what fannie mae and freddie mac did was they assumed the mortgage lending was less risky than it turned out to be.

under other circumstances, i do not think it would follow the policies that they did. these were two institutions that promoted home ownership and promoted the housing industry. they were extremely thinly capitalized. they had small capital bases for lending. they felt that the losses would be minimal. they helped power the house and bubble. but they were not the only ones powering the house and mobil. the same practices were filed in the private sector as well. in my view, it is a false dichotomy treate. go back to everything going

down. you do not think so? >> what the think is worst that coun? >> that the united states would default on its debt. 20 years ago, that was inconceivable. i do not think it is one to happen. it is not inconceivable. the people who borrowed from us will have to take a hair kept and receive 90 cents on the dollar. -- a year cut -- a hair cut and receive 90 cents on the dollar. people would lose faith in the dollar and might dump assets all around the world and the dollar

may go into decline. banks and financial institutions that held treasury securities as part of their capital base because it was the safest instruments in the world will take a large loss. they would then curtailed their lending and would cause a chain reaction that would make the financial crisis of 2008 look like child's play. that is one of the worst things you could have happene. there are other things that might happen. we have a global economy. not all of the countries that are part of these supply chains are all friendly with each other. you would ask yourself what would happen if we came in conflict with some of these countries. there are a lot of things you could imagine happening that would destabilize the world and pose a threat to future price disparity-future prosperity.

i do not think your friends gold bars would do him much good. >> why? >> people would not be willing to give him other things for that goal. >> if you are in a business, it you were told that you have to pay your debt. you have to pay your debt. what is the government just keep spending? >> the government does not pay its debt. when a bond comes due, the government pays the interest. the difference is, the government has had an unlimited access to the credit markets. people would want to the government because they think

that the government is a good credit risk because the entire wealth of the united states ultimately stands behind the u.s. treasury bonds. the fact that that is true makes it easier for the government to spend beyond its means. it makes it easier for the government to spend more than it is willing to tax. politically, that is quite advantageous. generations of politicians going back to the 1960's has -- have been willing to do this because they spend more than the tax people. before the 1960's, there was a custom in this country that in the good times, you balance the budget. in the 1960's, we broke that rule. once it was broken, it has been impossible to restore.

not that he balanced the budget every year -- not that he balanced the budget every year, but the government's made an effort to tax as much as it would spend. >> how many years have you lived here? >> since 1969. >> the republicans have said their order to cut. will it make a difference? >> i will believe it when i see it. if they do not go after spending for all americans, social security, medicare and medicaid, it is essentially a fraud because you cannot bring the budget under control unless you deal with that issue. it is the largest chunk of spending. if we try to compensate for the

increase in spending that is going to occur by the retirement of the baby boomers by cutting other programs, we will lose programs that are important such as national defence. it will be very difficult. it is not that we shouldn't make cuts there, too, but we cannot get to the problem of the budget without getting at the problem of the welfare state. we have a welfare state. the transfer income to people that we think the service. >> we have watched great britain, and you see them cutting and there is no evidence of cutting here at all. over there, do you see a lot of cutting? >> they have made substantial cuts in their future spending to bring down the amount of

spending in relation to their gdp. even after they do that, their government spending will be higher a. we have not done anything like what they are attempting to do and i think that we will need to do something. what they have done is they have gone to basic premises. they say that some spending is not justified and they're not going to do it anymore. those of the kinds of questions we have to ask. -- those are the kinds of questions we have to ask. when should we cut off life expectancy?

if you reach 65, you can expect to live about another 25 years. the average person over 65 now receives about $25,000 a year. >> doctors say that they cut us what they're planning to, they will stop taking medicaid patients. >> sooner or later, that will happen. i do not think it is going to happen right now. most doctors that i have been familiar with the zero and ethical obligation to see their patients. it is not just a monitor will relationship that they have.

i think they will try some accommodations and spend less time with their patients, but i do not think it will stop seeing them. -- they will stop seeing them. our health-care system is really quite dysfunctional, now. it is not clear that we're getting better health care as a result of more spending. one of the reasons that the system is out of control as it is is that it is too bulky. you have doctors who are specialists and they do what they do and they recommend that their patients have this procedure or therapy or what ever. there is very different coronation between specialties -- coordination between specialties. >> where do you fit in the

spectrum? >> i have learned a lot from studying both schools. i am a pragmatist. to start on one side, i think one is right about inflation. it is created by government printing or creating too much money. once that was accepted in the united states in the 1970's, we got a handle on the situation by bringing down the money creation. he postulated that you could have a mechanical increase in

the money supply every year and that it was the best will to follow. that turned out not to be the case -- the best rule to follow. that turned out not to be the case. he was certainly right about the 1930's and the initial diagnosis of our current recession. the fundamental problem was the absence of demand. you need to create enough demand, somehow, to make sure that the economy does not go into a vicious downward spiral. on the other hand, i do not think they paid much attention to the macroeconomics of white businesses create jobs and why they hire and they have not paid attention to creating the right incentives by reducing government regulation and reducing uncertainty so that a business who is facing a decision of hiring would do so

rather than not is up. the reform but obama pushed through cars has not been helpful in helping revive the economy because it has created an enormous amount of certainty for employers. -- of the uncertainty for employers. if you try to figure on what you have to do under this law, it is immensely complicated. there are certain thresholds. if you are below 15 employees, you do not have to meet certain requirements and if you are above 15 employees, you do. -- if you are below 50 employees, you do not have to meet certain requirements and if you are above 50 employees to do. i would try to be a pragmatist.

i look at the evidence and i look at the ideas. i ask myself if this is possible. >> who do you have in mind when you are writing? >> i have in mind someone i consider of reasonable intelligence and reasonable curiosity who is not a specialist in the things that i write about and i write for that person. i do not want that person to be put off. i have been laboring under the belief and perhaps pollution that if you say things that are a simple-minded, you could say things that could appeal to somebody who is reasonably knowledgeable.

i have deliberately tried to keep this column accessible to a mass audience. it is not targeted to an audience of businessmen or corporate executives or economists or bankers. that is not the audience. i do not aim at them exclusively. >> take the recent tax bill or what ever you want to call it. what were you thinking in the middle of all this? you have president obama that said we were not want to give -- we were to give a tax increase to the rich over to order the thousand dollars. -- over 200 -- $250,000.

>> that is true, but it is .isleading to ri it is misleading because they agree on most of the things that were in the package. they agreed on extending the bush tax cuts for people who are under $250,000. i think they agreed on doing something with unemployment insurance though the republicans said they would not do it unless they got certain other things. so, the add-on that was not expected, that did not accomplish the consensus of a holiday for 2%, that added $200

billion. my own view is that they simply should have stuck with the status quo. they should extend all the bush tax cuts for a few years because this is not a time to mess around with the recovery which is fragile. they should have made it a bipartisan pledged that it would reduce all rates by broadening the tax base. the burden on wealthier people by getting rid of some of the exemptions and credits and tax deductions, i don't think that they should have gone with the 2% payroll tax holiday.

symbolically, it indicates a lack of seriousness in dealing with it despite all the rhetoric of that. i do not think it was necessary. i do not necessarily right about that issue because everybody else will write about it. i did not really have much to add. i wrote the columns that she saw. one about the increase in risk aversion and the other about stable government finances and the problems there. again, when i go back to your original question, when i write, i try to write on something that will help my readers understand. i try to understand -- stay away

from what everyone else is right in about -- is writing about. i want to enlighten people or inform them. >> here is one from the 22nd. america's budget problem boils down to a simple question. how much will we let programs for the elderly displace other government functions-national defence, education, transportation and many others and raise taxes to levels that would almost certainly reduce economic gross -- growth? >> depressing is that this question has been obvious for decades, but our political leaders have consistently evaded it. democrats, republicans, conservatives, liberals and every president since jimmy carter, particularly bill clinton. the people think you are on one daughter the other? -- you people think you are on one side or the other?

>> some people think that i am conservative. some conservatives think i'm liberal. there are a number of people -- when i say people, these are people that i come across. some say that they do not know my politics are. i try to be sensible. i try to judge things by what actually happens as opposed to assuming that all the good guys are on one side and all the bad guys are on the other side. >> they are tired of the rhetoric on both sides. how do you test any thesis that somebody has and what kind of guideline can you give us as to what to think about when someone comes out and says that this is what they are born to do? >> -- they are going to do.

>> you have to be skeptical. i do not regard myself as a kind of player, here. my goal is to inform people as best i can and to bring some meeting to the things i am writing about. i do not regard myself as marshaling for this or for that. >> our political culture prefers the allusion to tender. liberals would solve the budget problem by taxing the rich and cutting defense. think again. the richest 5% already pay about 45% of federal taxes. they may pay more, but not enough to balance the budget. defense spending constitutes a fifth of federal spending, projected deficits over the next decade are similar.

we will show the pentagon. the major spending programs, social security and medicare, are widely popular with the 50 million beneficiaries. >> the problem is that our local leaders tell their bases -- political leaders to tell their bases what they want to hear. i have come to the sad conclusion that what is one to make as wake-up is a crisis that will force action. that is opposed to political leaders doing what they should do, which is leading us out of in dealing with problems for which there are solutions. there are a lot of social problems that are not want to have obvious solutions. -- not going to have obvious

solutions. schools are an issue where there are obvious things you can do. you can't cut benefits to raise taxes. >> i have to ask you again, your not related to paul samuelson. how many times have you been asked that? >> several hundred and 80,000. -- several hundred and maybe 1000. he wrote a very nice letter that was one or two lines and he said that someone named samuelson cannot be that bad. he had a good sense of humor. he was obviously a giant among economists.

we will mention this book. the paperback is out in 2010. "the great inflation and its aftermath. but you. >> the key. -- thank you. >> thank you. >> for a dvd copy of program call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available as as c-span podcasts. >> the redesign of book notes website has over 800 authors

interviewed about their books. you can do the programs and use the searchable database and find links to the offers blogs. a helpful research tool and a great way to watch and enjoy the authors. >> next, a conversation with peter knowles. at 11:00 p.m., another chance to see "q&a" with columnist robert samuelson. >> tomorrow, a political roundtable with linh to rush and lisa mascaro. and drew big discuss the social security and other pension security and other pension programs