and bill buckley wrote a column about it, in which he summarized moynihan. and said liberalism faces a crisis and there will be a series philosophy, government philosophy or not. and then he said anything we conservatives can do to help, just holler. that is to say, there was a shared ideal that left and right, two parties, would observe. thir is the thing that disappeared i fear from our politicsere i not to say we should have debates and quarrels. and they shouldn't be intense. anyone who reads bill buckley on liberalism knows that he didn't pull his punches. but he also believed in the foundation of society and the government. so he found himself in a position in 1959 defending the universities that he had attacked in his first book. fending free speech. those who attended campus is what descred academic freedom as, quote, superstition, unquote, in his first book. so these are some of the issues and my book seeks to explore and in a kind of narrative essay that looks at the different tabs conservatism has taken. and i am a terrible prognosticator so i don

brian moynihan, a positive for him is the fact that simply he's done most of the businesses. a lot of people give him the inside track. i know a lot of people speculate about sally krawchuk but they don't give her the inside track on this. but ken lewis is stepping down. he's notifying the board probably momentarily, or he's done so already, and it's going to be by the end of the year. >> has the company given you a comment on this? even if it's a no comment. >> no comment yet, but my sources on this are impeccable. i will tell you this. he is stepping down by the end of the year. he is telling the board he's stepping down. he's either doing it now or he did it just a few minutes ago. and ken lewis's reign as ceo -- remember, he gave up the chairmanship not too long ago amid the merrill lynch ching thing and all the stuff with the bonuses. he's no longer the chairman. i forget the gentleman who is the chairman. but he will give up the sort of day-to-day operating title, ceo. he'll be essentially out of the company. this is a major thing. remember, we've been speculating about

>> brian moynihan. i do not think -- people talking about sally koichak.t will be here. brian moynihan, he has been there a while. there is a chuck prince principle, he is a lawyer. chuck prince didn't do very well. >> we've got to run. >> they may go outside. who knows. >> thanks, charlie. >> all right, guys. >> charlie gasparino, the one, the only. >>> up next we break down which direction the dollar may be headed for the long run and how that could impact stocks and commodities. >>> before we get to the fast money final call want to show you a chart of aig. the stock has been hit right after 3:00. there are rumors circulating on the floor that aig may be preparing a secondary offering, a call by cnbc to aig. they did not comment on that story. they do not comment on market rumors. that mere rumor that aig may be preparing for a secondary offering may be felt in this stock price after 3:00, that sharp reversal after what has been a fairly decent two days for shares of aig. it is time for the "fast money" final call the dollar is lower after several days

the idea, the birkie an idea moynihan had been reading burke and actual michael r. shot. the politics of stability is based on the notion of a civil society. that repudiates ideology of any kind. we forget about burke who is the urce for all of this. birds. of conservatism was written at a time of great political relution. and he in no way had a serious defense of the regime. is is a perfect system. wants to create a perfect society and will sacrifice our institutions on its altar. and the obligation of a society and any government. burt used the words society and government almost interchangeably. it is to purposes. preserve and to collect. you crect t things that need correcting. so drying on all of this. it is reported on the front page of the new york times. such a shock to democrats. he summarized. liberlism faces the price. anything we can do to help, just holler. that is to say there was a share that @left him. any moncoutie who beats bill buckle on liberalism knows that he did not vote his conscience. he also pulled the that in the foundation of society. so he fou

the chief risk officer, you know, listen, i think brian moynihan is a capable guy. i think -- those are people that i no pe those two i hear are eternally considered the odds-on. but i tell you, that is not a list that you would think would necessarily run a big bank. >> how about bob steele? former treasury official. >> okay, you really want to go there? bob steele came on jim cramer's show and basically said everything was a-okay with wachovia and it blew up the next day. i like bob steele but that's a little bit of a problem when you start dancing around like that, being hyper, legal and technical and the reality is that you're, you know, it looks like you're misleading people. listen, there's board members that are apparently pretty good. although a couple of them, there are a coup of names they mentioned earlier today, and i tell you, these are names that escape me. one guy was the number two of bank one, another board member was, i believe, the head of fleet boston. the names escape me right now. but i tell you -- there we go, charles gifford. these are both b

. >> you talk about how moynihan and buckley came together even though they were on op sid sides sides. one quote i find interesting blindfolded you could find a liberal. who could step up to the plate and lead them to their good point in history and lead them for the u.s. >> that's the crisis right now. we don't see a strong leader in the republican party. when we look at federal governments who are most prominent, they are either defeated politicians like sarah palin who actually walked away from her job as governor of alaska or newt gingrich and john mccain who belong to an earlier era. at this point there is a vacuum no one has filled. just as important is when you mention figures like moynihan and buckley you are talking about intel lectures and the conservative movement doesn't have the level of thinkers it once did. it not only makes the case better for the right but make liberals think harder and examine their own ideas, too. that's what we need in the country today. >> a fascinating book. the death of conservativism and you have a book signing on the at sixth and i synagogue o

how certain moynihan's first important contribution -- patrick moynihan pose a first important contribution was the paper he wrote on automobile safety in the late 1950's in which he urged an epidemiological approach. it was recognition that improving human performance was a necessary but insufficient strategy. much better results come from assuming that's human corm ridiculous performance -- much better results come from assuming that improvements in human performance alone cannot make it stick. we must come from consequences of focusing on human psychology rather than changing human psychology. the conclusion was that a much more effective approach to automobile safety would be one in which the automobiles and the highways would be billed to be much safer in the face of the human imperfections and errors that were inevitable. so, too, in addressing financial regulatory reform, i would suggest as a first crucial insight that we focus not so much on making people better but on recognizing that human psychology is what it is and that what we can influence with public policy is the incentives

>> well, theo people i think would be in top positiowould be brian moynihan, who is the head othe retail bank, and thperson that i like the best is barba desoures, >> so you thinkt will be an inder? >> i bieve. so it would be against the traditionand culture of this compy to take one from the outside. >> susie: what aut sally kraucheck who just got big job over at bk of america? >> he's notn the running because she'sot a bank of america rson and sheas no history at the cpany. >> susiewhat do you think will be the null one job of the new c.e.o.? >> you've go to contr the loan losses that are in the company. i think that the acquisitions of merrill and countrywide, despite what pple think, were huge successes forthe coany, theyenefited the bank. the area wherehe bank h serious probms are in t loan losses, that's wher the eatest atntion has to be paid. >> susie: bank of arica ock is up in afterours ading. would you a buyer of the tok at these levels, around $17? >> y, i think the potential of the stock is ermous given that the fact that its ln lossesver the next few year should contract fro

>> guest: well, we ought to -- larry o'donnell was senator pat moynihan's chief of staff on the senate finance committee, which ant that he was sort of the guardian of one of the major passageways to the floor for that health-care legislaon. he found his dealings with the clinton white house mind-boging because it struck him that these folks did not understand the rudimts about congressional politics. d the threat of a veto, which e president issued in his january 1994 state of the union address, four months after it had begun was mind-boggling to mr. o'donnell because it was so clear to him from his perspective on capitolill that the only way anything would be passed would be through compromise and substtial compromise on the presidens part. hear him come before the congress and say, "if you don't give me the bill that i asked for, i will veto it," seemed to him to signal that, as he put it, that he was dealing with a bunch of amateurs down there. c-span: you have this line in the book, "o'donnell distrusted the clinton planners, especial maganer." that's larry o'donnell working for p

moynihan is supposed to be a smart guy.hen it comes to the question of fairness, and, michelle, you and i both covered this, the maelstrom of last year, and i will say this, i've been critical of ken lewis in the past but put yourself in his shoes when the nonsense, the crap was hitting the fan, okay. he did what a lot of people thought was the patriotic thing to do, and that was buy merrill lynch. you can make a case he should have known about the bonuses, he should have known about the losses. >> no, it's much simpler than that. if you thought you were going to go to the government and say i can't do this deal, why didn't you tell the shareholders. >> right. he maybe should have told the shareholders but he also had the government telling him probably not to tell the shareholders. >> that's where you need a spine. >> i know. but i don't know -- listen, we sit up here and we joust with each other, we all have our opinions -- >> he gets paid a lot more than you and i, charlie. >> i know, but i'm just saying play devil's adv

george will objected at the time, so did daniel patrick moynihan, but there you have it. it could be a problem. to answer the question abo what should be done, i'm terrible at this, the mechanics of parties. but i'll tell you one thing where i differ with most observers in all of this, and this mayave, hold one clue. i'm aually not one of those who think the republican party went wrong when it ceased to be conservative. i actually think it got in trouble when the conservative idealogues took over. i think we'd be better off with at least one republican legislator from the northeast, a representative in congress. you kno back in the days of late '50s and early '60s there was talk of there not being tw parties in america, but the four. there were presidential parties and legislative parties. that's partly, by the way, why eisenhower and fdr also wanted to form a new party. it's because they saw everything deadlocked and stymied in congress often by conservatives in the wrong party, so they wanted to create realignment. but we nowot only don't have the four-party system anym

george will objective at the time and so did patrick moynihan but there you have it. it could be a problem. to answer the question abou what should be don h will tell you one place where i differ with most observers in all of this and this may have-- i am actually not one of those who think the republican party went wrong when it ceased to be conservative. i actuay think it got in trouble when the conservative ideologues took over. i think we would be better off with at least one republican legislator from the northeast and a representative in congress. back in the days of the late '50s and early '60s there was talk of there not been to parties in america but for. there were presidential party zen legislative parties and that is partly by the way white eisenhower and fdr also wanted to form a new party because they saw everything deadlock in stymied in congress often by conservatives with their own party so they wanted to drake realignmts. we now not only don't have the four party system any more, we have an imbalance with the republicans are very disciplined and unif

as you pointed out, and since you worked on the hill for senator moynihan and know the finance committee and the senate as well as anybody on the planet, you know what's going on. as you pointed out, for republicans, taxes are worse than death. death and taxes, taxes are worse. they think they can try to kill it off. as one top democrat told me on the phone a little while ago, he said the sharks are in the water, and they would be not just republicans but some democrats, too. >> well, it does seem that it's all in the language at this point, it's all in the framing. certainly when you get to public opinion on this. you heard republican senators today constantly using the word tax, where democrats prefer to use the word fee. and in our nbc poll, we showed that support for the obama health care reform proposal fluctuates anywhere from 46%, as low as 46%, to as high as 73%, depending exclusively on how you phrase it. so this is as much as anything else a battle of the semantics with the republicans, it seems to me, having a much easier angle here going for their simpler descriptions for eve

how certain moynihan's first important contribution -- patrick moynihan pose a first important contribution the paper he wrote on automobile safety in the late 1950's in which he urged an epidemiological approach. it was recognition that improving human performance was a necessary but insufficient strategy. much better results come from assuming that's human corm ridiculous performance -- much better results come from assuming that improvements in human performance alone cannot make it stick. we must come from consequences of focusing on human psychology rather than changing human psychology. the conclusion was that a much more effective approach to automobile safety would be one in which the automobiles and the highways would be billed to be much safer in the face of the human imperfections and errors that were inevitable. so, too, in addressing financial regulatory reform, i would suggest as a first crucial insight that we focus not so much on making people better but on recognizing that human psychology is what it is and that what we can influence with public policy is the incentives tha

the late daniel patrick moynihan first important contribution to the public policy debate was a paper he wrote on automobiles safety in the late fifties in which he urged instead the epidemiological approach approach, the recognition that improving human performance was a necessary but insufficient strategy much better results, from assuming improvements in human performance alone could not make the system safe against crisis prevention suggested points much less focus on managing the consequences rather than changing human psychology his conclusion the one that we have followed in the last 50 years around the world with enormously beneficial results was a much more effective approach to automobile safety is one in which the automobiles and highways would be built to be much safer in the face of the human imperfection and errors and were inevitable. in addressing financial regulatory reform and i would suggest as a first crucial and site that will not focus on making people better but human psychology is what it is and what we can influence with public policy is the incentives that pe