versus a -- says, no actually, it starrted as kind of a contrat crunch, the great contraction as milton freedman put it, and then through a variety of the stakings, on the one hand on the part of the federal reserve and then so-called government interference which prolonged the crisis is that's what caused the great depression. so that version of the great depression is being replayed right now in arguments that say, well, what happened was government stepped in and bailed things out. and then the obama administration made things worse by this economic stimulus package, by not allowing the free market to reign and therefor the market becomes -- lessons of the great depression in the way we're managing the crisis now. i point to one other thing i think that's very, very important. you might recall that at the very beginning of the great recession and what to do about the great recession -- >> 2008. >> yeah, in -- really, actually, there's a big question of when all this started, but yet, we say early on in the obama administration, there's a lot of talk about 1937 and the great lesson of 1937, su

the other thing to say is if you look at past economic debate, milton freedman would be on a the leftnd active policies to fight depressions. he would be considered an inflationary socialist in the debate. >> in terms of what you think we can do to end this depression now, you argue housing. you say housing was one of causes where we ended up but it's the thing that we have to tackle. >> it's one of things. three years ago, where do we spend? how do we stimulate the economy was hard? you had to find the right project. now all you have to do is reverse the terrible things we have been do i think the past three years. we've had massive layoffs of government employees at the state and local level. we've laid off 300,000 school teachers. we should have added 700,000 to keep up with population growth. you have people you can put to work with no need to do anything adventurous. we can probably get the unemployment rate below 7%. that's the start. you also had this overhang of bad debt, which we have not tackled properly. it would help if the fed was doing more. right now is the time to be s

and you know, milton freedman used to teach us that government spending as a share of gdp when it cameown, that was a tax cut. i take it you don't agree with friedman on this? >> i've been advocating raising taxes and expenditures as a temporary measure to get us out of the weak economy. so that's the balanced budget multiplier. >> what happens to all those obama multipliers? we were supposed to have a 6% unemployment rate today or less. it's over 8. it didn't really seem like that samuelson model worked. >> well, that wasn't the balanced budget expenditure. but yeah, we've had a worse recession than anybody expected. i don't think it proves that the principle is wrong. i think we need to do that. we can't give up on this economy. we have to do something. i don't have any better solution than to temporarily -- i don't know that there is -- temporarily raise taxes and expenditures. and there is no impact on the national debt. >> maybe we ought to let free market forces work out the rest of the corrections, robert. think of that. maybe no more government fine-tuning, no more government i

it is because the milton freedman award is being granted tonight. -- milton friedman is being granted tonight. in new jersey, we believe that everything in america has a connection to new jersey. [laughter] [applause] so, fo ofr view devotees of friedman here tonight, remember that milton friedman went to rutgers, the state university of new jersey. [applause] he went to the your birth the chicago to, but i do not think there is any question that his genius was truly developed and nurtured on the banks of the american river. -- in new brunswick, new jersey at rutgers university. we are coming together to night at the close of a weaker that will always have a place in our country's history going forward. it will be remembered as the date that america finally caught and killed osama bin laden. [applause] i hope that in the future it will be a moment where we can come together as a country thankful for seal team 6 and the continued sacrifice of our soldiers. [applause] it is a day, i think, that will strengthen our resolve -- a day to renew our commitment to battling terrorism. i spent s