because paul volcker did the right thing. but ben bernanke is no paul volcker. i know paul volcker. he may not be a personal friend of mine, but i have met him. and bernanke is not paul volcker. everything he has done since the 2008 financial crisis has simply made the situation worse. and president obama is no ronald reagan. it's not a repeat of 2008. maybe it's a repeat of 1980, rather. it might be a repeat of 1976 or more recently, 2008 when gold did go down by 35%. but it was a buying opportunity. and i think this decline will prove to be a better buying opportunity. >> appreciate that. dave goldman, you heard peter schiff. how do you react to that? >> i think the key issue here is that gold is not an investment but an insurance policy against the collapse of the dollar. when your cost of insurance goes down, it means you're healthier. the chicken little scenario, larry, we run trillion-dollar deficits, borrow half from foreigners, they'll stop lending us money or at least not at low rates and we'll crash. now, that's not going to happen. because of the energy boom, we're going

paul volcker knew better than this.would not monetize the debt in the way we are doing now. >> paul volcker faced a very different problem. and they're actually using these low rates to deleverage. households continue to pay down debt. and that's exactly what they needed to do. and they're reaching levels that look a lot healthier. so, it looks to me like, you know, the u.s. economy is the shining star of the globe right now. and i think that's in large part thanks not qe policy. >> rick santelli, i know you want to get in on this. and you haven't exactly been shy about retiring the fed policy. what do you think? >> i think it's a shame. i think our first guest has it. she has it right. it's either do it the wrong way or experience pain and do it the right way. and nobody wants to experience pain. but the problem is, maria, that your comment is right, but it's wrong. because the only people that are getting money are people that have the position and sell the position and put the money in their pocket. see, i look at wh

i am showing this picture because the first time i met this gentleman paul volcker in my central banking days, i am not short but he is a good head taller than me and he always smokes a cigar. so he dominates the scene like you see here. and i remembered this cigar ashes wondering if they would fall in my right eye or my left eye and his first question was what the hell are you about with this? so it was interesting. the next episode for me happened in the same place. i had lunch there with then secretary general of the bank of international and he said bernard i read your book on latin america. what are you doing in the central bank? nobody had asked me that question but i told them literally that i am in the central bank because i thought that it was the appropriate place to find out whether it's possible to do something about the system. and he said but bernard you don't understand. we exist, the bank of international settlements. every central bank in the world exists. the imf in the world bank only existed for one purpose, to keep the system going exactly as it is. not to improve it

people have said paul volcker among them is an alexander hamilton. there is no alexander hamilton in sight. he has a big task in front of him, kelly. you'll be watching all of these and watching these meetings today. what would be the thing that would surprise you the most or that might make the most of a change coming out of this meetings, do you think? >> we'll hear from jack lew for the first time in just about 45 minutes after he meets with the president of the european council. becky, at this point, we know we are going to hear the same kinds of plat attitudes. they're going to work on, for example, the transatlantic free trade agreement. what i think could be interesting behind the scenes is the extent to which the u.s. is pushing back on europe's financial transaction tax, that does a lot of things, threatening to pull their european operations altogether if it goes forward. that would be a luge blow, obviously, to growth across europe. if it sounds as though we've had any progress on some of those issues, great. it's just that all of us are t

you had paul volcker raising a question about the central banks intervention in the economy.tion for the future. >> we should mention that we had it released early today. what was your take on that? zbr the take was more of the same. it's not doing to change. it's not a catalyst at any moment. this meeting would have happened before the jobs number. it is status quo until we see something endearing. >> but it does seem like the timetable is being moved up. a lot was being talked about about the end of the year, the end of the year, the end of the year. >> really, even with the poor employment report that we have on friday? >> well, you can't really take them at face value because of the timing gap that we have there. but when it talks about the fact that the unemployment picture is actually softening but the overall labor market is getting better, reverse those and that's what we saw in march. it's hard to take it at face value. >> i think it's also going to be interesting with the bank of japan moves and what is going on in europe xz that may make it more complicate. >> how