all right, sir, alan blinder, thank you. very interesting report.re will be more research built upon it. thank you very much. >>> developing now, we'll show you a few pictures here. house republican leaders are holding their press conference before they get into the nuts and bolts of their annual retreat, which this year is taking place on the eastern shore of maryland. a now more familiar face to some of you, that, of course, is cathy mcmorris rodgers, who did the republican response a couple of nights ago. >>> coming up next, hatching the plan. the most senior republican in the senate. utah's orrin hatch joins me next, part of a trio of republicans who unveiled an alternative to president obama's affordable care act. can he convince his party to unite behind the plan? >>> first, the white house soup of the day -- [ female announcer ] who are we? we are the thinkers. the job jugglers. the up all-nighters. and the ones who turn ideas into action. we've made our passions our life's work. we strive for the moments where we can say, "i did it!" ♪ we ar

. >> reporter: economics professor alan blinder, a past vice chairman of the fed, hired ben bernanke at princeton, so of course he's biased. but in his post-crash bestseller, after the music stopped, even blinder takes bernanke to task for letting lehman brothers fail, freezing credit worldwide. that lowers the grade from a straight a or a+. >> the lehman episode just sticks in my craw, not to save lehman or put them to bed in a more gentle way, this is a joint mistake of ben bernanke and hank paulson, who was secretary of the treasury, but it was very consequential. i mean as you know, all hell broke loose the very next day. >> reporter: but at a town hall in 2009, bernanke told jim lehrer that the fed didn't have the legal authority to intervene in an investment bank like lehman. >> in the case of lehman brothers, there was just a huge $40, $50 billion hole that we had no way to fill and no money, no authorization, no way to do it, so we had to let it fail. we had no choice. >> reporter: to blinder, though, the government made up all sorts of tools during the crash. >> guess what?

der ins alan blin alanall street -- here is blinder in "the wall street journal."otes unemployment benefits were cut off. linder, professor at princeton university and former vice chairman of the federal reserve. go to "the wall street journal" to read his piece. waldorf, maryland, on the line for folks who are unemployed. how long is too long? caller: hello? the question you should be asking this morning is, as long as the democrats and the republicans continue to bring foreign products into this country and allow our country to be invaded by ford invaders that come in and take our jobs, as long as they allow these things to go on, that makes them responsible for people who don't have food on the tables. they have taken their jobs. how long will we allow foreign products to come in and allow invaders to come in. both the democrats and the republicans playing the american people. we need to get up and take our nation back. lee from waldorf, maryland. scott olson on facebook, "how yout three months, then have to report for job search and menial labor." that is scott