For what russia has gone through but also to be strong and persistent to make clear russia had a great future ahead of it. We dont have to rebuild the past to be a great nation. That is the debate99 inside Vladimir Putin sprained and russia today. I have read about him and met him but that story really told me of what about the man i was dealing with. Host i will conclude on this note dealing with Margaret Thatcher to expect the unexpected why do you include that and how do apply to that personally . Guest i learned the floor but as secretary of state to expect the unexpected nobody expected the arab spring and tells it was upon us. We have to learn to be agile and ready for the unexpected end while we try to build the world that we want to building a future for over children and my future grandchild for all these people making hard choices every single day and be ready for that. I am convinced we have to continue to lead the world into a future that we want. We cannot sit on the sidelines. We cannot retreat we will have setbacks and disappointments but over time our story has become the dominant story with the hopes and aspirations of people everywhere. That is what i want americans to understand. I know there is the big debate going on with our role in the world and it is an unfortunate consequence. But we can abdicate our responsibilities. How we define it and execute it is of political debate. The world needs us american matters to the world and for prosperity and our story and democracy. We hope more americans engage with that debate and i look forward in the coming months to have that discussion as people read my book and have questions. Host to follow everything that is said about you . Guest i can. It is too overwhelming. I cannot do it. If it is important it will come to me i assume. Of what is a lot of it is not important or inaccurate but i tried to keep up with it. I would be doing nothing else. Host hard choices madam secretary thank you very much. We are very privileged to have with us this evening in recognizable figure in the media and business worlds steve forbes editor in chief of Forbes Magazine the nations leading business magazine and he has headed of Media Company that includes not only asian and european editions but Web Properties focused on politics, sports and financial markets. Many will also remember his Spirited Campaign for the republican president ial nomination 1996 and 2000 during which he promoted the idea of a flat tax. Along with the new Social Security system, medical savings accounts, term limits and a Strong National defense. Steve comes to us as an author that is not a new role for him he has written or cowritten five previous books the latest is money how the destruction of the dollar threatens the Global Economy and what we can do about it is every bit as synthetic and recent and clear of the written as the revere works. People familiar with his libertarian views would not be surprised to read his criticisms of Central Banks and monetary policies with the fed winding down pcs an opportune moment to rethink our system to ensure a more Stable Currency by returning to the Gold Standard. Heb writes freeing the dollar from gold was supposed to make punitive states strong for instead it made the country weaker. Something has to be done. ladies and gentlemen, here to explain what needs to be done along with his coauthor is steve forbes. [applause] thank you very much and all of you for coming out. As brad indicated the book is about many Monetary Policy and many and Monetary Policy is one of those topics that will intimidate a lot of people for some strange reason and as a result the Federal Reserve has less formal oversight from capitol hill and conquers they and our intelligence agencies. The thesis of this book is the topic of money is very straightforward and simple although shrouded in equations the idea is very basic. We have gotten away from it and policymakers today no less than they did 100 years ago since the early 70s even with booming decades the growth rate going of the old Gold Standard the u. S. Average growth rate is worse than 1971. Up through 1971 to maintain those growth rates on average u. S. Economy today would be 50 percent larger than it is now. 40 years, counting adds up to a lot. Just think 50 percent higher income would it means for the deficit, a Social Security, social divisions today, over time it adds up. Critical reason why it takes two incomes and the family what one income could do previously and taxes are a large part but the base of the dollar is critical as well. Print this happens we dont have a Stable Currency and end up with people not getting ahead the way they should come a median incomes not grow wings the way they should and the way my coauthor will discuss the fraying of social fabric and reduction of trust and more divisions. It is a process not one in a billion can diagnose. That is why we wrote the book. Since Monetary Policy does not get people a flutter like reality shows i will give you the advance reward to give you a travel tip. If you ever find yourself in an airplane in coach the middle seat on the runway watching your life pass away if you want an elbow room start to talk about Monetary Policy. [laughter] as a result of the chaos we have had slowmoving since the 70s the Federal Reserve has more and more power but the more power it gets the worst we are. Take quantitative be seeing even though theyre now tapering to end up contracted the economy rather than stimulating. In terms of money. It is very basic to make transactions to improve our standard of living makes it much easier. In the old days we had barbering which was an efficient so i sold an ad in forbes how would i get paid . Perhaps with a herd of goats i am being facetious but if i want to buy ipads i went to the apple store 3,000 years ago then they said dont want coats. I want sheep so i have to figure out how to swap the goats for sheep and hire the sheep herder because you dont wanted. the wolves to eat the sheep and he wants to be paid in wine. Have red wine if he wants white wine is still imagine if we had that today then deposit the cow into the atm. It is very inefficient. In essence money does not have the Intrinsic Value unless you have all gold coins but it is easier in that sense but it measures value. That is all it does. The way clocks measure time , scales measure would wait, rulers and measure linking and money measures value. Because it represents value to make it easier it is a form of communication to let you know, to all the billions of transactions each and every day. Money is not wealth represents a claim on products and services think of it as a coat check. It has no intrinsic fell you it represents a claim on the coat. The idea monday represents products and services is already produced. The idea if we stimulate the economy by printing up money like a restaurant say if we create more coat checks that will stimulate the production of more coats. No. It does not. It is a claim that represents a claim on a product or service. Money works best with a fixed value like a clock has 60 minutes in an hour imagine what the world would be like the daily life if the Federal Reserve and did the clocks what it did to the dollar an edge including the clock 60 minutes, now 48 minutes then 22, then 80 soon we would have to have hedges and derivatives to figure out how many hours you worked each day. Baking a cake . Bake it 45 minutes is that inflationadjusted . It makes life much more difficult. Imagine what would happen if they changed the number of inches and a foot to build a bridge now with is 10 inches or a house, it makes things chaotic. Money works best when it has a fixed value than the question becomes what is the best way to do with it . He fashion the way it works in this country for the first 180 years is you fix it to gold. Why . More than anything else it keeps the Intrinsic Value. You cannot destroy it, every ounce that has been mind is in the world today. The gold ring they could have certain grains back to the egyptian times. It is hard to make but not too hard. You cannot destroy it if you find of gold mine you dont get it collects even with the gold rush the biggest ever only increase the annual supply by three or 4 percent then taper down to the average 1. 5 so on like wheat you dont get droughts or worry about storage. So whether you freeze it or eats it you cannot destroy it has very unique properties it has withstood the test of time. People think does that mean that after have gold coins and 100 percent backing . It is a fixed measure of value. Looking it will the dollars in notes if it went above 1200 that means the fed is creating too much money so it goes below 1200 . That means you need to create more so lets the marketplace determine the needs. So you dont have to have an ounce of gold. So with the varied little amount of gold they responded to signals of the marketplace writeup through world war i. So cold in that sense is like the rulerk[y like chamomile has 5,283 does not restrict the bios of highway that you build. Just to show how brilliant you are at the time of our existence with a Small Agricultural nation, up through 1900 with a population increase 25 fold fold, during that period of time the amount of gold mines only went up 3. Five told money supply when up 160 folds even though it was fixed. So it make sure it does not restrict supply it just stays fixed. Javanese stagnant economy so it is very basic so when people lose sight of that since 1971 we had that terrible decade in the 70s we got it kind of right in the 70s and 80s but the last decade we went back words. It started under bush and the Treasury Department started to weaken a the dollar to stimulate exports and that is how we got the housing bubble. Any time you undermine the integrity of the dollar coming people go to hard assets. The mid80s the average price of a barrel of an oil was 21 today it is 90 . Maybe 110 and. In the 70s he were not old enough to remember. [laughter] i tried that with politics it did not work why no i peddle books. [laughter] but oil went from 3 a barrel of the almost 40 everybody thought we were running out of whale been going up at 100 then weld breakin came in with paul volcker to killed the inflation it went crashing down at 10 an average 20 of barrels a like putting a virus in the computer so you get less investment is less productive because you buy existing things rather than the future but you dont know if you get back 0. 100 or seven years or the 0. 100 or the 0. 20 no uncertainty which is why we have the stagnant dead in the water historic standards. That is why we wrote the book money to educate. Money represents value. Gold is the best way to fix fact. If we understand that we can move ahead to get back the growth rates we had before 71. The other things we have to do but experience shows us if you dont get the of money right with the fixed value you can get the other things right. It undermines the fabric, the social fabric and ways that go beyond simply gdp numbers and exchange numbers. So i will call up elizabeth but one thing to keep in mind is when money is stable in value, brainpower goes for a productive use. Just one example. Before 1971 when currency did not much fluctuate because we were fixed in gold very little currency trade and now currency trading is a huge activity all around the world. Daily volume over 3 trillion. Tens of thousands of the best brains in the world focus on activity would not exist if we had stable money, brainpower that could be used for medical research, other things, productive things. So this thing has consequences that go beyond merely gdp and in qe and whatever acronym safe or out bet with that let me say thank you and turn it over to my colleague elizabeth. [applause] good evening. Its good to be here and i would like to talk a little bit about that chapter, chapter 5 which is money and borrow alaki how did they see money to base his society and people are found this chapter particularly thought provoking and money. It starts out with the famous crowe from economist John Maynard Keynes and i will read it in its entirety. There is no more sure means of overturning the existing basis of society band to debauch the currency. The process engages all the Hidden Forces of economic law on the side of distraction and it does it in a manner in which not one man and a million is able to diagnose. And we say in the book that unstable money is a little bit like carbon monoxide. Its odorless and colorless and you dont know the damage its doing until its very nearly too late. Thats because people are really not always aware when governments weaken their currency and they only see the effects of that which is one reason why debasing money is so corrosive. People say money is about greed but in fact its about trust. Money permit strangers from all nations and societies from all walks of life to come together and conduct transactions based on a commonly agreedupon measure of value. Money in this way promotes cooperation between people. It serves as an instrument of communication as well. Tells us what its society values not just material but what its priorities are. So when money is corrupted its ability to act as a facilitator of trust and cooperation as corrupted as well. Unstable debased money undermines the vital relationships between buyer and seller, between lender and debtor. The philosopher john locke describes this fissure that is produced at Society Score and he wrote and you have heard this as well, whether the creditor be forced to receive less or that debtor be forced to pay more than his contract, the damage and injury is the same whenever a man is defrauded of his due. And during periods of unstable money you often see a particular scenario unfold. Scapegoating involves scapegoating and correction social unrest and increasingly coercive government and in the worst cases it can unleash the forces of political extremism that can lead to the rise of dictators. And recently an investment strategist named dylan rice wrote a good piece describing this classic scenario that has occurred throughout history and he points out that monetary debasement has coincided not only with the persecution of the jewish in preworld war ii germany but also with the french revolutions reign of terror in the salem witch tires and other salem witch trials another bloody unrest is not just the remarks historical occurrence occurrence. Its taking place in many countries in the world today such as the middle east europe and to a certain extent the u. S. Etm analytics a south African InvestmentInvestment Advisory house as an issued report called riot alerts which predict the worlds most likely troubled spots in the firm has been able to forecast unrest based on nations rates of monetary abuse and syria which has suffered nearly 200 hyperinflation top the list in february of 2013 followed by argentina, south africa, egypt, india and turkey all of which have been inflators. Of course their political causes for them causes for then unrest and it takes different form in Different Countries that unstable money in all cases has been a catalyst. The riots that began in the arab spring for example you may remember started over increasing food prices. The financial crisis was very much a lockean betrayal of trust. Weak money helped create a housing bubble and then the fed pulled the rug out from under borrowers and this led to ultimately the collapse of some financial not the wave of foreclosures which led to the collapse of the Financial Institutions and started a stopgap market meltdown of 2008 and that in turn set off a worldwide destruction of trust that ricocheted from one continent to the next. In europe Bank Failures and bailouts shook the confidence of Global Investors helping bring on the sovereign debt crisis over there. We all remember those days and i will read a cloke from economist from Deutsche Bank who told the New York Times in this day and age spreads around the world not around the block. Want block. Once a bank run is underway doesnt matter if you have good loans are bad loans, people lose confidence in you so thats really obviously shows this is really about trust. This worldwide loss of trust can safely turn to rage, riots and protests and we say in the book it went from Balance Sheets to the streets and in 2012 there was a poll by the Pew Research Center that we cite in the book is that america has been more polarized now than any time during the past 20 years and what they basically said most of the increase polarization has taken place not just in the last few years but during the presidencies of both george bush and barack obama and both administrations were weak dollar administration so was definitely this polarization has coincided with the weakening of money. Basically when money is weekend theres a sense of increasing unfairness that the system is rigged, that they are being defrauded. People on fixed incomes on salaries see their moneylosing value while other people are reaping what looked like artificially and unfair windfall gain. The link between effort and award is severed and that is why unStable Currency you get more corruption and crime. And number of studies have found that inflation actually has a stronger connection, actually a stronger connection to crime than joblessness. Crime rates in fact in the u. S. Dropped immediately after the financial crisis when there was a serious deflation and it began to move up in 2010 during quantitative easing which is an interesting thing that we see in the book. These are just a few highlights from the chapter. Both left and right agree that this is the period of malaise that we hope this book helps people put aside some of the fingerpointing that has been taking place in recent years and helps them recognize the role of the unstable dollar as the catalyst incorporate. Thank you. [applause] we now come to q a. If you could come up to the microphone if you have a question and feel free to ask away. I guess rather than trying to debate ended the ideas here of the concept of stable money and so forth i guess i would just ask this. Why is it that so many countries including the United States have dropped the Gold Standard and why is this sort of theory so unpopular and you mention the fact that you gave the quote from king who said one in a million will correctly diagnosed the problem so thats kind of a hand that there is some basic fundamental reason why its hard for people to understand this and for other economists to accept the theory. Why do you believe that there are so relatively few economists accept your proposal . The reason the Gold Standard lost dominance that it had in terms of intellectual circles was the result of quds two catastrophes. When was the First World War which began 100 years ago this year, destroyed the classical Gold Standard and after that w war, because the standard work so well, they didnt really realize what made it work and so britain did not do it right trying to go back to it. That led to for example after the war they tried to ignore the inflation that the First World War created and they try to repeg gold to its prewar price, which is ridiculous if you double or triple your money supply and recognize to have a onetime catastrophe and do a reevaluation. They didnt do it so they harmed the economy that way. Keynes came along and others who turned classical economics is very arcane but very basic. Classical economists say the real economy is the production of products and services. The money economy is the symbol economy, a symbol of products and services. Cambridge first evidence that money is the driver of the economy and is the production of products and services that respond to the money so we reversed it put the cart before the horse. So they got up with the idea that if you put money in that can stimulate the economy. It will certainly stimulate activity but all it does is going to activities that normally would not happen like the oil boom in the last 10 years. The oil boom that we have in the 70s, the housing bubble that we had. We have a housing search in the 70s. Its not the catastrophe this time because the government wasnt quite as involved in it but its like putting the virus and a computer. You get activity but its false that to be. In 1980s you had energy go through depression, agriculture winter depression. Commercial real estate went through a huge hit. We grew in the 80s and a lot of activities that thrived under false and funny money had to be liquidated in the 80s and he sought with housing today read who knows if we get stable money on other things are false investments that we had out there so with world war i and the Great Depression nobody nailed why the depression came. It was Something Like a bolt out of the blue and they were desperate for solutions. We explain in the book the depression was triggered by a hideous trade for what the smoothawley tariff and people of the Global Trading system. Everyone retaliated. Then every country made it worse by massively raising taxes. For example the depression was ongoing in the u. S. We raise the top income tax rate overnight huber did from 25 to 63 . Excise tax which is where the sales tax were enacted on numerous items and including a stamp tax on checks. In the early 30s if you were to check to pay a bill you have to pay a tax to the government for using a check. So these massive tax increases came into the u. S. , britain. Germany went berserk on the taxes of the deep in the downturn. So then they said well gosh lets try money money so the bread started it by devaluing the pound. Numerous other countries and so one bad thing was done after the other. Despite that experience we still got a Gold Standard after the war. Bretton woods system designed in 1944 works perfectly well but by then the idea of using Monetary Policy to guide and economy, using the government to guide the economy was so prevalent that they didnt know how to preserve the system which is why we blew it at the 1971 gratuitously and we have been floundering ever sent. As imagined in the 80s and 90s, gold average roughly 350 an ounce. It had some fluctuations but gave it a c for Monetary Policy and so we got growth from it but it was still not what we could have done. And in the early part of the last decade we went off the rails again and we still havent dug ourselves out of that one. So coo two catastrophes world war i and the Great Depression but now its beginning to reverse. Its still below the radar screen. A number are saying hey maybe this funny money which was tried before adam smith came along and demolish the idea of funny money may b. Smyth had it right. Maybe we should reexamine things again. This is what the book is contributing to getting back to basics on money, getting the conversation going so we can get get back on track again. The Federal Reserve is doing its job right should be no more important than the thorough bureau of weights and measures inside the commerce department. Am by the way, if you ever run into a Federal Reserve official asked them in terms of assuming the powers by the fed, they say they want 2. 5 in place and because they believe creating extra money stimulates the economy. That translates to a typical family an extra thousand dollars a year in expenses. Asked who gave you the authority to tax American Family an extra thousand dollars a year and white is paying that extra thousand dollars a year stimulate Economic Activity . I would love to hear. Ive asked them that i have not gotten an answer. Yes. It just seems that even though i believe you are correct that something is wrong with the money, i dont think its a broad enough discussion both to really cover whats happening to us economically. Its so much more sophisticated now than it was then i believe your analysis is. Few things i will correct you. The value of gold changes. It fluctuates a great deal. A lot of the value of gold was artificially created by legislating it as the center of the value of money so it has the reverse effect too. In other words, but i mean there are times in our history when we havent had enough money and we had to expand. There were panics in the 1800s but the point is is that they are in your thinking some more broader concept of the distribution of wealth and income . I mean it just seems too simplified in this complicated situation that we are in. Well, the key thing is to recognize money is a measure of value just like a clock is a measure of time and if you grasp that and you see that gold does not influence the money supply, it just make sure that when the dollar is created the marketplace has a fixed value. Now to take your point of the fluctuating price of gold that is less about the Intrinsic Value of gold and more about the markets valuing of the u. S. Dollar. The fears and hopes for the future so when people felt the world was coming to an end in 2011, remember the debt crisis, default and everything else, good gold shot up to 1900. The world did not come to an answer now up to 12 or 1300. In 1980 it look like the world was coming to an end and it shot up to 870 an ounce before going back down again after the election of reagan. So thats more about the perceptions of the value of currencies than it is about the Intrinsic Value of gold. As for legislating a value the reason gold rose up was not bankers getting together and saying lets do this. It rose up out of the marketplace. Coins in athens rose out of the marketplace. Governments quickly went into the minting business in order to keep their hands off of that money rosat of money to the marketplace, people doing transactions with each other so was a spontaneous thing. What isaac newton did 300 years ago with britain and gold was to in effect codified what people thought needed to be done three the dutch had done it. Holland for example in the 15 and 1600 to small country under constant attack from. , lousy land, underwater literally. A small population but because of its sound money elected arises sophisticated capital markets. They became the Financial Center of the world before linda and that london did even though on paper this country at nothing. Britain became the Financial Center when it fixed the gold even though it was a secondtier power before they did this. They have a lot of other things going but having stable money brought it all together. So the marketplace has said over 4000 years this is the way to do it and as a result economies always get more complex as you get more and more growth. That is what adam smith talked about, the division of labor and the jobs rise up. Apps a few years ago, is that sharper applications in college . You said ipods were we making a movie about monsters in the ipod . Things right up so again its a fixed measure value. It makes the measuring transactions the way we improve our standard of living with more and more trade, more and more specialization where we can focus on what we do best that we dont have to spend all her time growing mastodons or things to survive and we can focus on what we are best at. Thats what you get with fixed money. You can do those things more easily. Yes sir. Getting the seeming dependence on money especially the markets Monetary Policy and the feds creating money whenever they feel like like a billions of time what with the return of Gold Standard look like for the markets and the street . While i think if they decide to do it if you will i hope its not the result of a crisis that the result of people saying we have been drifting on and off for 40 years. We are not doing what we did historically. Lets started. By the way theres a congressman representative kevin brady who has proposed a commission, bipartisan to examine Monetary Policy and i think thats a good start to get the debate going. But going on the Gold Standard what it would mean over time is you would have a much bigger economy. [inaudible] [inaudible] there a lot of myths in the book and we discuss them in the book. The question was whether crash the market . Bad times for farmers and all this kind of thing, no. What it does is allow the humankind to surge forward and the changes he given the econo economy, it was not gold that led to hardpressed agriculture. It was the fact that we learn to grow more food and we are still learning to grow more food. Just take one for example. It just popped into my mind, corn. Right now in the 30s a typical acre of corn produced 27 bushels. Today its 150 and we wrote about a fellow in iowa who is now about to invent breakthroughs and corn that will lead to a 300 or 400 bushels per acre. So agriculture today, 2 of our economy. 100 years ago with 60 or 70 . Railroads for example after world war ii employs 1. 2 million people. Today they employed less than 200,000 and they carry about 10 times as much freight. So economies are always adjusting. The key thing is you want to be adjusting upward rather than what we have now where its stagnation and people are wondering am i going to get ahead . Is my 50yearold son never going to leave the house . Glasco yes sir. Mr. Forbes thinker coming out. I am probably part of the minority that agrees with the principles but unfortunately i cant afford gold at all. Its about 1600 for a coin. I always carry silver with me and ounce of silver. Anyway this is a 1923dollar. Its worth about 20 today and to the most interesting things ive realized after learning over the past two or three years about gold and silver. Biz to come by the same amount of gasoline today with this dollar as you could have before 1964. I guess before 1964 all quarters, dimes and half dollars and dollars were made out of 90 silver. That was a mindblowing effects. Although this is still 1 dollar if you go to a coin shop is worth 20 because its made out of silver. You sell this dollar for 20 go out with a 20dollar bill and by the same amount of gas 45 gallons that you could at the 1964. What that tells you is the price of gas estate constant in relation to gold and silver were as the price today of gasoline rose not because of the price of gas necessarily but because of the purchasing power of the dollar has gone down. The second most interesting mindblowing fact that i learned is that 10 dimes is exactly the same weight as this quarter and 10 dimes is exactly the same weight as the Silver Dollar in four quarters is exactly the same weight as a Silver Dollar and two half dollars is the same weight as this dollar. Before your dimes were smaller than your quarters for reason. 2. 5 times as the same weight as a quarter so you talk a lot about gold so i guess my question is what do you see silver coming into the picture of your ideal society . Well in terms of ideal society, society is never ideal in games but going back in essence, Going Forward and doing in essence what we did for first 180 years of existence from George Washington and Alexander Hamilton who fixed the dollar until nixon blew it up in 1971 with the applause of most economists and socalled experts. Apropos the appointing gasoline just got back 13 years or 12 years before it went off the rails again big time instead of smalltime. A gallon of gasoline was 1 dollar. Imagine what life would be like today if you paid about for a gallon of gasoline and that was only 12 years ago. Now its 3. 50 or 4 depending on what part of the country were in. In terms of silver for centuries gold and silver were roughly at the same relationship. 15 ounces of silver were usually worth one ounce of gold. 15 or 16 ounces but what happened in the 1870and starting in 1870as people started to use more and more paper money, coins, small coins for convenient starting with hamilton area if you could get accustomed to a money economy but with derisive paper we paper we didnt need coins as much. And so the demand for silver fell so by the mid1890s it was 30 to one and today its 60 to one. Now sends gold is held up better than silver. Your point that the money had a constant value in certain things like oil or your gallon of gasoline have remained constant. You make a very fundamental point. A lot of what we think of as rising costs like energy is really a devaluation of the dollar and the fears of future devaluations of the dollar. As a very good point and by the way that Silver Dollar you have if you flip it on the table you will hear a nice loud sound. Thats how we got the raise some money. [laughter] [laughter] thank you. Would the your thoughts on the concentration in the Banking Industry consolidation . Concentration of deposits . The question is what about the consolidation of the Banking Industry . Its one thing to get consolidation as a result of Natural Forces in the marketplace. To get efficiencies and the like. Its quite another when its the result of regulation and fiat. In the first part of our history we have a lot of extra banks because of regulation not because of the nature of. Politicians would not allow banks to combine but bank of america, the original bank of america back in the 1920s started to do starting in california. When he took the bank across state lines using a Bank Holding Company to get around restrictions that if you had a bank in one state you are not allowed to bank at another so he had a Bank Holding Company and Congress Passed an act to stop them from doing it. Once a time once upon a time they had too many but today doddfrank have the implicit purpose of driving small banks out of business. The reason they are doing it and if you talk to small bank today they will tell you its not the economy thats killing them but regulation thats killing them. The reason they are trying to do that is big is easier for government to control than a lot of small entities out there and thats why theyre making it impossible and by the way for single practitioners and health care. He spent 90 of their time filling out forms a set of practicing medicine. They dont want you to have so many doctors out there. They want you to be part of a hospital or a company. Easier to control and easier to regulate so thats whats happening now. That consolidation is much more official, more than it is the nature of the changing marketplaces. The other danger of the feds grasping a power. After the elections they will go after mutual funds and money funds, equity funds, hedge fun funds. Anything that moves they are going after to reduce risk. What it means is you reduce risk that the way they want to do it as you will get no innovation. They never would have allowed 40 years ago the rise of money funds in those days they regulated banks to pay for interest. Money funds blew that up. So its a bad thing and its coming about by fiat rather than by nature. Thats a bad thing because one of the virtues we have in this country is our vibrant Innovative Capital markets. They went off the rails in the last few years because the fed went off the rails but over history we have always developed numerous ways for people to get capital. By contrast in europe its all bank oriented which is why they get very few new Big Companies because they dont have a system that nurtures companies from babies. Adolescence so they become big and go public. They dont have that and one statistic what they call commercial industrial loans in this country banks, lending commercial industrial lenders 1. 5 trillion. In europe when you take your pick at their its about the same population. A little bigger than us when you add up all the other economies. About 4. 8 chilean dollars. They are way over dependent on banks which is a very fragile suffocating and dangerous system. So you bring up a good point. Its we dont want to go that way. Thank you very much. I want to go to the core of the argument and ask you really are. Forgive me for simplifying. We can cure that. Hopefully. The old to some extent modest argument that inflation is bad and of course everybody has heard about in germany the 1930s and the fabric of society. But things dont always work that way. People do foolish things. Go to the history of sovereign countries and you will see a lot of dreams and constantly 50 years of economic history. The devaluation is a way to bring things in order, bring them back. So to some extent one could strongly give the argument that in fact it is rigor that forces the society and destroys the fabric of society and there has to be some mechanism by which do two allowed dreams but then you have an adjustment at some point in time. A Gold Standard was not going to change human nature. Thats not going to change, period and utopian societies only try to change human nature by ending up crushing people, killing them. So it doesnt change human nature so you are always going to get like in the early part of the last century, everyone realized automobiles were a big thing. We had a the creation of two or 3000 auto manufactures. How many of them survived . You can count them on your fingers. Some of you are old enough to remember the early 80s when we had the first pc boom. Then youve got a shake out there, apple. Apple survived the atari text entries and others that were in the business went by the wayside. That is normal. The market, thats how you move ahead. He dont know whats going to work until you try it and then 15 years ago no one not google was once i i think the numbers of these two kids challenge microsoft and searched ebitda and now they are the good bad guys, google so this is constant. All gold does this standard does is make sure money as a stable value. It does not prevent people from getting giddy and it does not prevent people from getting depressed. Just make sure that when you do a transaction the money is fixed in value just like whou