ken manning, this black guy assured them that actually there are in boston also. >> and in fact, ken manning because he had become friendly with this family of a jewish pediatrician in north haven connecticut whose mother lived in brookline, he made sure that ben bernanke went to rosh hashanah services is first year in hard and took him to brookline for rosh hashanah dinner. bernanke told his parents have always been upset that can mannings down more meaning and judaism than he did. [laughter] >> but it turned out all right for both of them. bernanke goes to harvard. he gets a phd in economics, mit. is a shy, introverted guy. a fan of baseball statistics which seems to be a habit of central bankers. alan greenspan has the same fascination. he becomes the economic equivalent of a paleontologist. he spent his academic career trying to figure out how was it that otherwise smart people at the federal reserve in the '20s and 30s did such a lousy job and let us to the great depression. and it was a fascinating intellectual study, with, he thought, not much relevance today. you fast-forward

now, red ken livingston, as he was known, is unpoll jetcally a man of the left.e counts fidel castro and hugo chavez as among his closest friends. he made a sport of antagonizing margaret thatcher while she was prime minister. livingston had about the most unlikely profile you can imagine of a candidate of someone who would adopt a market road policy favored buy free market economists. but embrace it he did because it conformed with his environmental views and might be a way out of london's environmental nightmare, congestion nightmare. so there are many ways this thing could blow up, ok? so think about the times it's been proposed in san francisco. the initiative would impact a lot of people's lives. it had to be done all at once, not street by street. it had never been done before to this scale anywhere, ever. so his political advisors said don't do it, because if it didn't work he could kiss his next term goodbye. the media said it would be an unmitigated disaster. the quote from a rabbi in "the guardian" newspaper was typical, it said, "my synagogue was bombe