banking assets, but consolidation itself does not make it risky. i believe it's a regulatory problem. and i believe if you get rid of all of this regulation, go back to the 19th century where you had panics, booms, and busts, because there was nothing regulating the financial system or the economy. >> go ahead, quickly. >> the 19th century had all that, approximately the same degree as the system we've had since world war ii. >> that's not true. >> it is true. i'll -- the recent scholarship shows that the things that were thought of as being big recessions in the 19th century were simply mistaken -- looking at the fact that prices went down, not looking at real output went down. it did not go down dramatically. >> are we in a depression? how would you characterize it? >> a recession meaning we're still declining, we're not in one of those, but i agree with the spirit of what he's saying,