here with us is charles myers and richard with us from blackrock.l to have you this morning. how is the president doing? i thought it was a clumsy, quiet weekend. what is your focus for march? charles: i think it has been quiet, although he was tweeting up a storm over the weekend. i would say that when you look out over the next couple of months, the biggest priority for the president on the economic front is to try to get the infrastructure bill through congress. i do think it will give through. infrastructure has been a major issue for the democrats for many, many years and there is very widespread support for the democrats in congress, and we will see a bill work its way through congress over the next few months to the tune between $200 billion to $300 billion, adding a lot of stimulus to the economy at a time when it does not need it, but on top of the tax cuts, on top of massive deregulation, and big increases in defense spending, this economy will do very well, and booming. i think we will see 4% gdp growth later this year. tom: my theme for

charles east was willing to see go. he had the jefferson davis papers and two big paper projects would be too much. then i started a series in black history with august myer one of the two leading scholars in this subject area. i had been talking to him about this at lsu and he was willing to switch to illinois along with just friends the editors of the book washington series. as the black history series developed, we published a book by herbert who was the author a of a major book be on the black family i'm sure you know it well it shall he had published a long critique of book on economics of slavery in an african-american journal. i suggested that we publish this as a book. and put a new yorker cartoon on the cover in which a slave was told not to be too concerned because historians would show his life was not all that rough afterall. this little book led to one of the presses most important areas of specialization. he asked if illinois, interested in starting a series on labor and working class history. which he thought that two leading scholars in the field gave them montgomery and david would edit with him. i jumped at the chance. within two years w