>> good evening. thank you so much for joining us today. what a beautiful night. on behalf of all of us at the locally-based independently owned bookstore, books and books in miami florida it's my epleasure to welcome you to an evening with donald cohen and mayor daniela levine, to discuss this wonderful book. it's called the privatization of everything. how the plunder of celtic goods transformedamerica and how we can fight back . and it's published bythe new press . donald cohen, the co-author is the founder and executive director diof in the public interest on national research and policy center that studies public goods and services. his opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the new york times, reuters, the los angeles times, the new republic, the american prospect and many other online and print outlets. in conversation with donald tonight we're joined by someone who has meant a lot to him, has been a big supporter of books and books and other independent bookstores everywhere. mayor daniela levine, who was elected miami-dade ctcounties first ever woman mayor in november 2020. [applause] >> her administration is focused on building astronger more inclusive , more resilient miami-dade prioritizing reforms to make our counties safer and prevent gun n violence for the peace and prosperity plan. restoring and reinvigorating a thriving economy that delivers economic security from miami-dade businesses and families and tracks new industry. saving biscayne bay and building our environment and directly engaging with residents agto make local governments more responsive, transparent and accountable and here we are. donald and the mayor are going to have a conversation about this book and then we will open up to a few questions from the audience. there will be a book signing to follow and remember that we have copies of the privatization of everything for sale at the front register so don't forget to grab your copy. and now without further ado, i'd like to welcome our guests to the stage. thank you. [applause] >> thank you christina. it's great to be with you and christina and iplan lots of book events . this is really a great thrill to be here with you live for an extraordinary evening. with a wonderful friend and a great mentor and thought leader on some very important topics to how we grow and develop your. this bookstore was founded in 1982 and mitch kaplan founder and owner has expanded his wings all over even the caribbean and we're very grateful for his leadership and promoting the magic of reading. and of course good food too. so my purpose tonight is to really give the stage to donald cohen who is the author. this book just recently released is quite a turn page turner thank you. a page turner. filled with great examples and he'll be sharing some of that with you because i want to encourage you to pick up the book and congratulations donald for oactually writing a book . >> it took a while. >> so the book is very timely. it's very relevant to who we are coming out. knock on wood. we're getting over the worst of it . and we are here anticipating billions of dollars in federal infrastructure. we're going to be building a great deal of stuff. we're going to be upgrading our transportation, housing, internet. electric vehicle charging l infrastructure. all kinds of things are igcoming our way andit's so critical that we find ubthe right partners . both public and private to help us put all of that to work and get the best outcomes for our communities. so the topic of privatization is extremely relevant as we think about that. and so i'm here with many friends, some new friends and i just also wanted to acknowledge that we have a number of members of my staff and the person actually responsible for procuring all that stuff would be alex, archie of internal services departments. thank you alex. who is reading us through the labyrinth and i have also from my staff lauren parra and many gutierrez. and damien delacroix. godfrey anthe man behind the camera. did i leave anyone else? mike, always here. thank you mike. so let's get into it . it's about you and the book. donald, this is your first book but as was mentioned you written many opinion pieces and prominent publications . so what inspired you to actually hold her down and write a whole book. >> i think a couple of things. i've been doing this work for a while and looking at public services, looking at privatization ofdifferent things . i think back to when we were children since we are about the same age i believe. we had trust in our public institutions. we were making progress. medicare got past and got safer, the air cleaner. that's kind of the background . and when we, the work i do we get calls from around the country today. of cities trying to figure hiout how to unpack a proposal to privatize something or to make services more efficient orwhat have you . after 10 years of work dealing with places all around the country i realized s that there's a bigger story to tell. lethere's a lot of individual stories. it's called the privatization of everything. it's a little bit of everything. >>. [inaudible] i live in los angeles so i had a hard flight. had to go 20 minutes to take my mask off. i realized there's something bigger going on. we cover everything, schools and water and bridges. bridges and infrastructure will talk more about total services these are a broad range of things we deal with. but there are some cool ideas that's what it became clear and i needed a book to be able to lift those ideas up. >> i know you're a great collaborator. but collaboration is an unnatural act among consenting adults. and you found someone to co-author this book. could you tell us about that, what it was like to work together with someone else. what was the decision andwhy this partner ? >> collaboration is hard. the book about five or six years and i don't recall any more. and so why this partner. this is not his first book. and number two, i could get into the weeds in so many different subjects and somebody but make sure we don't get too deep into the weeds in any one part that we be able to tell the story. i needed a partner to be able to do that and alan michael author is an historian. the phd minted historian and want wanted historical context to be part of the story. like any marriage there were good days and bad days. but it was, you know, we produced what i think is a pretty good story pretty good book . >> my husband is here. all right. you also have a day job which may be what it took five years. you're the founder and executive director of in the public interest. it's a national nonprofit research policy organization so if you u can tell us about the groupand how you came about starting back . >> i started about 11 years, 12 years ago. i have this thing about time now. i say the four times does everything feels a little different in the last few years. i started it because i believe in public services. number two is the work i was previously doing i live in san diego and was doing similar work. seeing efforts to privatize early fundamentally public services and public assets and had collaborators and allies across the country s that were seeing and experiencing the same thing. i realized we needed a resource center. we share ideas and lessons ouwith one another and that we doing that we would of our game as it were. and help, be able to help better. nonprofits i had to raise the money and hired staff. we did research, we did policy analysis. we helped in places allaround the country . >> so let's go ahead and get a little into this book privatization of everything. and had another name possibly told me. >> not up for grabs. >> not up for grabs, that t was our first title. >> anyway, now it's privatization of everything you start out talking about public goods for life. talk to us about what you mean by public good. and how is it how does it shake your thinking. >> for any economist there is a textbook definition of public goods which we e don't erase. here's i talk about public goods. so i'll keep it real close. here's what i'm sorry. there are things we all need to survive and tothrive . like health, like education. like clean water, like morbidity. we need to be able to move around . there's probably other things as well but it's not justthat we all need them, we need everyone to have them . we need everyone. we need an educated nation and rei think we've learned through covid, we learned the health of all of us depends on the health of each of us. it isn't just aboutme not getting it or beinghealthy and getting boosted , i need everybody to be to do that . that's bla fundamentals that i felt like as a public good. and that there are things we can only do if we do them together . you can only get everybody healthcare if we do it together. and government institutions there will be private te involvement as well. we can only create a ite transportation system if we do it together. so there's some of the basics, democracy which is under threat right now. we can only do it if wereally do it together . >> you mentioned the pandemic which we all know is twoyears old . at least. and that was an example of an unexpected challenge. that might have for example an expected when we were preparing contracts. as a county. aso how do you advise local governments or local advocacy groups or even the general public about how to prepare for the future that might be unknown ? >> it's a really good question. i'm going to answer. government is complicated. the first of the 30,000 foot level. what we advise folksis to do several things . think forward and thinking forward implies a certain humility that you don't know what's going to happen. imthat you don't know the future.. that's really important to think life cycles. if you're talking about and infrastructure your thinking forward . the other thing is to sideways. when you do something, it will have an impact laterally on other goals are trying to accomplish and other communities and other people. the third isto interrogate . asked really hard questions. that's the most important thing. ask the hard questions, the what ifquestions . i think we'll all now ask going forwardwhat if a pandemic . asked what about floods and hurricanes, and will ask about earthquakes. there's other things we could think about but it's not crazy to think. we also think we shouldn't itthink about that because it will never happen. it's important eto interrogate every decision thinking forward, thinking sideways and finally keep it transparent. make sure that that's the only way you get it right because you got to crowd source life.>> so that's looking into the future and our crystal ball but you've also included a a lot of history in this book. you have to historian. so you were looking back at some of the public goods. those great public goods in our country and can you talk about a few of those that inspired your thinking ? >> yes. if you think if you go back to the beginning of the 20th century.. after upton sinclair wrote the jungle. we, there was a movement to make safer foods because that was, it was about slaughterhouses, that's not what you wrote the book about the it was the movement for safe food. that is sent then we've made progress on safe foods. doesn't make the food but it's our job to keep everybody healthy. the national parks, pr. we realized that nature and the ability to access nature and to seek beauty, we created the national parks. you can kind of walk through the 20th century. social security, urthat's about economic security for people sort of our age. and 65 it was medicare and these are all sort of decisions that we, that we make together democratically that people should have healthcare when they reached 65. people should have a certain levelanof economic security . the clean air act, sort of a whole set of things that have happened over the 20th century is 100years of good law that was increasingly good . it's as an example i like to give. cars, the steering wheels of cars used to impale us on impact. you can think the paint on the wall used to have letting it. it doesn't have to lead in it because of public action. it's a pretty broad view of public goods when you think about it that way . >> we are here to talk about privatization. and most recently piii's or public-private partnerships. and you say you're always asked what makes a good piii. so if you could give us some examples of things that have really worked out and also maybe an example of something that was not such a strong peachtree. >> i brought in the question and i'm going tostart it in reverse because it's helpful . >> i'm just looking. >> first off k-3, public-private partnerships is a term of art. it's using lots ofdifferent contexts . there's public and private and everything around us. and i've seen it used in lots of different contexts and we're going to focus on infrastructure because that's the primary use in privacy debates. the first thing to remember is a little one-on-one on how to grill a bridge and a road anda water system . they're all piii. every project, every road, every bridge, every water system is built by private contractors sothey're all piii . there's different versions of piii. this might be technical, design bills where you have the same designer and the same builder as the contractor. you can finance, operate eand maintain. you get private finance and private operation and maintenance . other roads are water systems for many years. i just want to set the context. people will use it in different ways. i want to tell a cautionary tale first because it helps illustrate the history and how to do it right. so chicago in theyear , in 2008 2009 the worst during the great recession worse time. every government was seen here as well including reading. a great fiscal distress. the city of chicago decided, they responded to a proposal from a private consortium of morgan stanley, national parking country and a sovereign wealth fund from the middle east. national investing firm. that consortium would give us $1.1 billion upfront. remember they're desperate in exchange for control of a long-term lease in the city 36,000 parking meters for 75 years. that's till 2083. a couple things. they voted within five days of the announcement of the proposal . they did not do the scrutiny, did not do the things we will talk about more. two things are true. one more important than the other. terrible deal. you shouldn't borrow money every five years. we all borrow money on our future income etc.. who knows if will be driving in 75 years? i know i will for sure. but that's not the most important part. terrible deal financially. most important that if the city of chicago now wants to eliminate parking spots to deal with traffic. a limited parking spot for a dedicated bus lane or a bike lane or nturn the entire neighborhood into a pedestrian mall l or any number of things that are the of the ibility municipality intransportation and all those things . they want to do any of those things they have to essentially either spots back . not a technical buyback but i'll get it. so think about that. this is why iit's important to talk about that. you remember the city y council you're the mayor ofchicago . and you want to create bus lanes and eliminate parking. you want to create a pedestrian mall in downtown on michigan avenue or whatever you want to do your constrained because it's going to cost you a lot of money. and your it's going to cost you a lot of money so in many casesyou're not going to do it . i wrote an article a number of years back with a professor from roosevelt university in downtown chicago who had interviewed city transit planners could not implement their plan or bus traffic transit. they had a whole set of lines they were going to do. that's the reason i want to start with that is when you're going forward the question is how do you do it right ? so interrogates. first thing forward. interrogate and ask hard questions. will these have an impact on our ability to do something else we want want to do in the future like expanded transit rand if so how? what will happen with the parking by the way. everyonein chicago hates this deal . who has control over the parking rates. we're going down the list. will we be able to know about the deals because you lose a certainamount of transparency . so you have to interrogate all the deals thinking forward. and then when you do a deal, when you're negotiating a contract and you say you decide to do something, that's technically all brownfield deal. not for a new project, greenfield . you have to decide what's your value and what standards you want to put in the contract . what's going to happen and is it going to advance the solutions for the bigthings . climate inequality eqso what's going to happen to the jobs are they going to be lower benefit, lower wages. what's going to happen to the rates for folks that may or may not be able to afford it if it's a bridge or something like that. you have to make sure you set those standards. and that you have the tools, the legal tools. >> do you have an example when it worked well? >> my own report. i'm not a big fan of tunnels. came in on time. and had control. it was free to thepublic . i did not analyze but i'll get a different viewpoint. it didn't narrow the finances but it was a project that was built by private that you leave and you decided you need it. there's a road in colorado, us 36 that included more community participation so they dealt with the multimodal transportationthat they wanted to deal with . the challenge with the question is if this is what a good piii and you heard me say this morning. it's like saying what's a good marriage. it's good stuff and there's that stuff. it's in the standards, it's in the weather you have clawbacks. whether you can get out of the deal. whether the standards are enforced. >> let's talk about the participation part. you brought that up several times. i am the most it is a story mayor . we have the largest of the participation initiative in county government history.mi drive 305, the one percent of the population are very significant percent fully participated and we have priorities and plans as a result. so how is it that public participation can really make sure that these deals are constructed in the most favorable way? >> .. ng to just give you one more question and then we'll leave it to the audience to raise their questions and comments. so these public places are places that use talk about building community. so if we give away public places or public spaces or assets then we're we're compromising if you will potentially those places where we come together not just in democracy, but in community, so could you talk about that libraries parks other things and and their value as as public places. yeah, well, you know start at 30,000 i'll come in. so i don't know if you've all noticed but we have a we have a issue with division in america today. if so, let me start at that level we have problems that that we have to confront together. if we and you can only confront them together if you trust one another and you have some level of crowd you trust our institutions and we trust each other at some level. so i you know, i'd say a privatized america is a divided america and for you know for some reason so and i'll go right to the specifics of the question. it's there are. if we don't interact with one another in public places and the fundamental public places we interact are. in terms of publicly operated our libraries we can interact with different kinds of people parks you see different kinds of people schools where these are the places where we connect where we learn to appreciate the perspective of the other. i really believe we have this massive empathy deficit in this country and you don't get that unless you you know, you're doing it together at some place, you know at some levels and i think the it's in the book. i'll give another example, you don't want to solve the same problems if you don't experience the same problems, right? so one of the reasons social security is social security is in the section of the book about community because it's a because it's the community of the whole. try to touch it. try to get rid of it because we've realized as a nation that. we want everyone to have that some level of econom. security at that way, so it's and so it's an all-in project. so we need to get to that when it's all in. we are a community at at the local level at the state level of the national level and in covid at the global level. wonderful. thank you for that thoughtful answer. so let's just ask any questions. you're gonna help us with the the microphone. thank you, christina. quick question first off. i want to give you a he goes on that ralph neater blog interview. thank you. very excellent this your issue is written large and state and federal with large. yeah, my my point that i want to talk together with that is written law and in this community recently, we had a state of the art street fair, but i've noticed that it's become what appears to me at least as a prophet center and i see that as an evolution in different community type functions. within the small community's things that used to be a family affair that were free or very low cost it seemed to evolve into a commercial enterprise for what is basically not transparent part of the thing with your ralph nader blog thing. was that you were talking about transparency towards the end of the interview as something that's missing from some of these. evolutionary type things within the community such as this recent art street fair that become what appears to be a commercial enterprise and could you speak to that issue? so that i assume you mean the coconut grove art? yes, okay. okay, let's turn it off. give it her. so that was well, so it's a i'm now i'm stuck on my lavalier thing. i don't have no idea where my glasses are. anyone see your glasses. okay. oh my gosh. so i can't comment on the specifics of the art fair, but let me i but let me let me let me answer. the question that i would have liked you to answer which i asked which i think it was. i you know, i do a lot of interviews and i've been am i okay? okay, and there's something important to understand it seems stupid almost is that one of the you know, one of the first thing i have to say is things cost money. and is really only one place to get it right you can get it from taxes. you can get it from tolls you can get it from i don't know if the i don't know about the street fair because that's it. maybe there's fees to join, you know to participate in the street fair. so i think it's important to so as i am. i can't really comment on the specifics, but i think what's important to understand is that if we don't have the public revenues to do something and it needs to be done then you've got to go to individuals to pay for are you know fees or tolls or you know transit fares or you have to go to businesses to do advertisements or sponsorships? so let's let the mayor respond because what you're talking about would only say this that of course taxes are what pay for things that people value across the society and if it's not something that people are willing to pay the public dollars for then, of course, you have to go other routes to kind of and i just will add as far as the topic of privatization. same applies, you know somebody's paying for it. you've got to build the bridge. you gotta maintain the road you've got to do whatever it is. so it's really just a matter of where who's paying when and how can i do a real quick? well, let's just see if we have anybody else. yeah, i would imagine okay, christina you just you want to stand up. holler it out. yeah, so miami has a tri-rail which is our publicly unreal and we have bright line now. to the outside observer bright line if you move this way. yeah over there you can bring alcohol here. so there you go from talking about trial and bright line. i'm from an outside observer brightline seems to be more healthy on raising land values around the stations and property at the same time. they're providing fantastic public service. i'd love to change. um and recently as an example of the we have a station at our airport that was built with public money to operate with amtrak and now amtrak's not only not going there, but i forgot a bright lines was quite interesting using it. so at what point does the failure of public good like yeah, you're gonna share so. yeah, maybe you can see just well, i'll go. repeat yes, we're talking about bright line versus tri-rail and amtrak and we have a station that was built with public funds, but it's not being utilized by the public transit system. no it was before i was near. but anyway, the the point being what happens when a public investments. let's say don't really pay off and now you have a private interest in how do you weigh those things? yeah, so again not being able to knowing the details of the specifics. so it sort of makes the case to not privatize because you need the flexibility because conditions change when you don't if i'm getting this, right, right, so if if things change and you're locked into a 75 year contract or a 50 year contract you locked into you know you're in an inflexible situation where you may have an uncompete clause or a compensation clause where you are on the hook for that period of time. so again, i don't know the specific to the trial know. but the but you know, it's a point i make a lot when you're contracts are very rigid documents, you know, think about why there is so much contract litigation in america, right? there's you know, that's an ambiguous. it's not you know, they're just it's it's hard so you need maximum flexibility. it doesn't mean every decision is going to be the right decision. that's just the nature of life. so i'm not sure if i answer your question because i don't know anything about the subject that you the specifics of flexibility and anticipating the need for adaptability in the future. i think those are really good takeaways and alex munoz is taking notes. anybody else? think doug's gonna ask question. regarding our civil courthouse downtown. yeah government run has fallen into disrepair maintenance has been deferred now, the new civil courthouse is being built under a p3 agreement where the developer will also be the operator and have lots of penalties if the air conditioning is leaks or if a room is closed or more than 24 hours does that work is a great benefit in having a private operator that faces sanctions from the government taking on that risk. well it can work. yeah, i mean i haven't been to the news as it already built the new courthouse. yeah. i've seen it. i've been inside of you know, many years ago it needed to be rebuilt. and you know, there were this is the things cost money you weren't able to get the money to to borrow the money to build the new thing to build the new building from the voters. so you've got to do it so you go to the private sector in private to get private capital to build it. they want the o&m the operations and maintenance because it's part of their pro forma. it's part of their financial equation to to make the whole thing profitable, but the key of is standards and sanctions. right because what will always yeah again, i don't know what's happening the courthouse where often happens is underbid. you know ten years later. we didn't you know, we we come back because that we we made a mistake we don't have enough money to do the deal to do the job and then the county or the city or where you know, it has to address a change order, which is always going forward. they're pretty much always have to deal with you get into this trap because you can't you can't not have the project move forward. so again, it goes back to really good anticipation really, you know as best as you can we can't, you know, canada in the future, but that's exactly what i would have done. absolutely. this is not answering your question, but it's something that you said to me earlier that struck me as important. that when a private bidder is going to save you money. you want to know why how are they going to do that? and if it's because they're going to cut a salaries or they're gonna have fewer employees. you know the cutting salaries, maybe that's not what you want to do because you have a certain wage scale requirement, but cutting number of employees. well if they could do it more efficiently than what was anticipated. well, why is that? how are they under? how are they figuring that out? maybe we could learn at the county. i'm as the specific example how to do something more efficiently too. or maybe there's a technological innovation that that bitter has access to that the county doesn't have and that's a proprietary or you know new something new that we want to take advantage of and so these are a range of things but the point that you really made was find out how they come up with their cost rationale and and really be super curious to make sure that they're not, you know fudging or you know, basically not revealing so that you don't run into problems where oh, actually they they underbid and should have been anticipated something like that. so i think you know if we look at this as more of an educational process like you said, there's always private sector involved. it's really a matter of who's paying for it. and you know it it sometimes it's longer term not short term like the courthouse the public did not approve a bond. item, so unfortunately, then it had to go to the private sector was more expensive the borrowing and over a longer. we are going to pay for it just over a longer period of time and i'd say just because a couple things to that one is if something's really new and innovative we could buy that doesn't mean you have to give them control for 30 or 40 years. that's number one. it's the other thing just a real fine point doug is it could have been just a with referred to as a dbf and leave the operations and maintenance under the public design build design build fine. thank you design build finance. so, you know, i don't you know, you'd have to get into the neg. asian decide who should be the who should the workers be who should be responsible for operating and maintain all those things are possible all those different combinations. so and that's just it's in the negotiations and one of the things we teach and urge electeds and you know public officials around the country's negotiate real hard if you're not willing to walk away from the table. you're probably going to get taken. cardi thank you so much for being here just here to subway. thanks so much being here. i know a lot of the conversation around privatization often circles around the notion of profits and costs and my question is can you talk a little bit about the human cost of privatization and how we build in accountability to systems of privatization, especially when the human cost is most likely to be born by those without political power. so for instance the privatization of prisons that are built on the backs of black and brown people through the whole system since the antebellum south that we are still living that legacy the privatization of schools that legalize discrimination and that have no accountability to the public and that leave the most expensive to educate children in public schools that are deeply defunded by the privatization of schools. so, can you just talk a little bit about human cost and accountability from that perspective? and mccartney works for the southern poverty law center, and it's really knows her stuff. so human cost a variety of things jobs, right? i mean often when something we're not taking mind out of infrastructure when something is outsourced, you know, whether it's custodians at a school or a library or something when they say they're going to save money as you know, daniela was referring to earlier is we always ask this question. what are you going to what are you going to what are you going to spend less on it's real stuff and it's very often. it's wages and working conditions. so there are reasons there has been research that have found that there are two trillion dollars of procurement in america by governments up and down. that's that's millions of people under who are working for government working for us, but not working for government at that scale you had you can have material and significant statistically significant effect on the on inequality in a very serious way. we're pushing wages down. so that's number one number two is you know the more we you know, everything gets paid for even go back to the what we're saying early. everything's got to be paid for the courthouse is going to get paid for from the general fund at this point. everything's getting paid for but there's an increasing shift to paying to shifting two fees. right, we pay for water fundamentally as a commodity. we pay for transit fundamentally as a commodity. there are now cities across. country kansas city in a numbers that are making transit free because you know, we don't pay to drive to the grocery store. why should we pay to take the bus to the grocery store? so but the more you shift to fees the more the distributional challenges happen on black and brown and brown and low income people and you see that and over again. so i it was a whole other stuff with us. i'd like to yeah a couple things. i we have something in the county called game sharing where the employees have an opportunity to bid on projects. and i think it's a really creative. opportunity and and allows those employees to really think creatively and outside the box as well of how they could offer a competitive service. so, you know, i think that kind of levels the playing field a little bit and and allows the workers not to lose out if you will they have an opportunity. but it also makes sure that there are efficiencies and economies right and not just status quo. so a well i'll just give that example. you're just a prisons, which is actually now let me let me just get that person. can do what kind of? problem. can you? okay. yeah. yeah. so for example, they wanted to the county privatize some of the bus routes that were lester used roots. they wanted to use smaller vehicles less expensive and and so the bus drivers were in the opportunity presumably they don't necessarily feel they had the full opportunity but they were technically given the opportunity to say. no. we'll we'll take our existing workforce and come up with a proposal. in lieu of sending it to a private contractor. also in the water and sewer department projects sometimes for well even repair a vehicles county employees are allowed to say, you know, we'll take it in the shop and we'll we'll provide the maintenance instead of outsourcing the maintenance things like that. there's a number of cities and local communities do this local jurisdictions do this. so in some places called managed competition. it's a slightly different thing from the game sharing program, but you know to the point of the public sector needs to continually improve it's not you know, i always get the question. well you know pretty private enterprise and more efficient than government, isn't it? well, that's sometimes yes sometimes no, that's not the point but it's our institution which means we have to be continually improving it governments in america. are the most you know, if you take it as a big picture, it's the most complex human or institution in civilized history. you gotta always make it better. so we're gonna wrap it up. we've been together for an hour. hour. it's been really enjoyable. you're going to wrap it up, but i just wanted to say thank you so much to everyone for being part of tonight's discussion. and of course we want you to buy the book. and donald will be here to sign it. all right. thank you. we took the words right? i know i could get a job here. >> there are a lot of places to get political information but only at c-span2 you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if that happens here or here, or here, or anywhere that matters, america's watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> be up-to-date and the latest and publishing with both evs podcast about books with current nonfiction book releases plus bestseller lists as well as industry news and trends through insider interviews. you can find about books on c-span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> hi, mr. forbes. thank you so much for taking time to do this any good. i wonder if we could start it really brought because your book obviously is about a pressing topic of the day, deflation. and youou define inflation different in the book than it is traditionally talked about in america. when he couldo