myself reading some of this stuff, the nixon white house conversations among themselves or with arthur burns, and i did not realize at that time -- by that time i was in the treasury -- the degree of pressure that was brought upon purposes. it was pretty rough in terms of pressuring burns to be easier. i don't think burns was ever as easy as the white house would have wanted. so i'm not sure it's a real abdication of independence, but there's certainly a hot -- a lot of pressure brought upon him. now, around to your question. oh, what -- [laughter] that period to me from where i was sitting in the treasury as undersecretary, again, for monetary affairs international and domestic, i thought the federal reserve was too easy because we were struggling to maintain the stability of the dollar, and it kept getting undercut at times by easing of policy at times which didn't fit comfortably with what was going on internationally, to say the least. so i was kind of rebellious. i wasn't in charge of it, but i didn't like the -- i thought monetary policy was pretty much too easy during that period. now

something serious about inflation and the first meeting of the open market committee in 1971 when arthur burns became chairman, reverse that policy and began to say we have to do something about recession and set the pattern that went on throughout the 1970s, which was we could always do something about inflation until the unemployment rate rose above 7%, and then we had to stop.