Transcripts For CSPAN2 Federal Reserve On Trial 20150927

Lets hear it. [applause] hello everyone how are you ladies and gentlemen we are gathered here in this great sovereign state to talk about the faith of the countrys banks, the Federal Reserve. We hope to discover whether the Federal Reserve kept its promise to provide a healthy economy system, full employment, stable and a lender of last resort or is it responsible for the series of the banking crisis and loss of purchasing power of the inflation in average citizen is this economy more stable or is it less stable because of the existence and did and did the fed exacerbate the crisis of 2008 or keep it from getting worse . Are we better off without the fed and if so what shall we replace it with, shall we go back to the classical standard of gold, and can i have been a plus for the classical Gold Standard . [applause] we hope to find out the answers to this most important issue and representing the defense today professor is the cofounder and coeditor of the american prospect magazine and professor. [applause] that said hes the professor of social policy at brandeis university. He was a longtime columnist of course for the business week and continues to write columns for huffingtonpost, the boston globe and the New York Times International Edition and was a founder of the Economic Policy institute and serves on the board and executive committee. Hes the author he is the author of ten books including everything for sale the limit of markets and it was a fair and the 2008 bestseller the challenge of americas economic crisis and the cover of a transformative presidency. His latest book is the politics of austerity. Its available right here at the freedom fest bookstore. I hope you visit early and often please remain standing. A very very good. The longstanding central bank and Monetary Institution into the Obama Administration since the financial crisis of 2008 eight using other establishment economists have been accused of supporting a Monetary System that field the fragile Banking System and the financial crisis inevitable fix credit policies, bailed out wall street with its quantitative easing so that the National Debt now exceeds 17 trillion has manipulated Interest Rates too long for the American Economy to recover. How do you plead . Not guilty. Ive heard that one before. We will begin with fiveminute Opening Statements first by the prosecuting attorney robert murphy. [applause] put your hands together for the Research Fellow at the institute of the acclaimed new Book Enterprise and human action. My favorite kind of action. He is president of consulting, senior economist with the institute for Energy Research and hes got so much energy he could be his own can of red bull. He received his phd from New York University and has taught economics at Hillsdale College and nyu, he has offered a dozen books and they include politically incorrect guide to capitalism, has been a longtime critic of the fed and each of our extraordinary is will be subject to crossexamination. Then each site is going to make closing statements and we will have time for table tennis and it will be quite fun. After with this handsome collection. [applause] they will rule on the case if the defendant is found guilty i will impose a very harsh punishment. So so let me give the jury a few instructions. You will listen very carefully to the Opening Statements into and to the witnesses and at the end of the hearing you will be required to determine whether there is sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the professor and the defendants are guilty of public malfeasance the decision will be based on the majority vote by the jury. It doesnt have to be unanimous although unanimity is so much fun. Is that understood . Very good. Thank you. You are very welcome. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, distinguished guests, i stand here against the Federal Reserve the federal judge has outlined. Im going to present expert witnesses stepbystep that has been exacerbated by the Federal Reserve and how the recovery was repressed by the Federal Reserve for that lets look at the 1977 categories are a fact when it was amended at that point of course the fed was more of the 1913 to 1977 it was amended that it should be to promote the goals of the maximum employment and the longterm Interest Rates. Lets look at them and see as the fed fulfilled his duty is fulfilled by the statute. I think that we can see that they have failed miserably in that regard and we know that there is constant Price Inflation since 1913 that what you dont know is that this isnt simply a fact of nature it is a fact of the Federal Reserve policies from 1790 through 1913 its hard to estimate these things but back in 1790 if you have a consumer basket that was priced worth 100 at the time in 1913 the same basket of consumer goods would be given hundred 8 so thats an accumulative 8 Price Inflation over the entire span so the point is money used to be stable in purchasing power and the plaintiffs since 1913 of course i dont need to incorporate the statistics that the dollar has lost 95 to 99 of its purchasing power since that time. Some people will say yes of course when we see stable prices we dont been stable prices. What we mean is the stable fall in purchasing cover but even that criteria field. If criteria field. There hasnt been protectable study is inflation since 1913. Thereve been periods of relative moderate inflation. Im sure all of us are familiar with the high inflation in the night late 1970s and also but also from 1917 to 1920 each year the Consumer Price price index grows between 15 to 18 said they failed when it comes to the prices were stable following purchasing cover of the dollar. Lets move on to the maximum employment. You could say has the fact that a good job stabilizing the economy preventing the crisis . Theres the Great Depression thats kind of a strike against it. Theres the Great Recession thats a strike against it as well so the two calamities have been on the watch. Some defenders will go further and they would say okay if you throw out the Great Depression everyone gets the ball again. I love golf. Im glad someone got the joke. If youve heard about and look at the recession and the postworld war ii utility, just on that focus some people will say okay it was more stable but actually there is a 2012 paper that shows using mainstream economists including Christina Roemer has said a lot of the criticisms of the pre 1913 area is based on faulty statistics and they were looking more generally if you look at the output as a whole just focusing from the world war ii period and on the economy has been less stable. This is your one minute warning. They teach that in law school. [laughter] so looking at the statistics this is the statistics as published by other economists that say there is a very plausible case even from world war ii on their less stable than they were there for before the establishment so in terms of its major policy objectives, stable prices and a stable economy theyve clearly failed. Finally, let me just point out that its ironic in a meeting like this that we are arguing over do we need Central Planning when it comes to money if we are picking any other topic i wont mention his name but when he alluded for the name of the government to run healthcare they were booing and yet for some reason even freemarket economists many of them think the one area politicians are necessary and we can trust the market is money that doesnt make any sense. The Federal Reserve is an unnecessary institution by expert testimony witnesses will show that it exacerbates the cause of the financial panic and clearly they do not have the case to stand. Thank you. [applause] well done. Thank you. Now we are going to hear from the professor the defending attorney in the case. You have five minutes. Will you give your Opening Statement please. To make your head spin like youre in the exorcist. You will be spending soup in no time. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury i am not here to argue everything that the Federal Reserve does is a sound policy only that we are much better off in the central bank than without it and to demonstrate why he let me take you back to the period when we had no central bank no currency only the Gold Standard and the money supply dictated by the actions of the gold discoveries. They determined the availability of credit and this was the period when hard money was scarce and banks issued notes of the varying reliability and the money tended to call into loans when farmers needed. The quantity and the cost of credit for the relationship to the economies needs. As roger recounts in the new book Americas Bank of the economy oscillated between the credit booms and busts and fullscale financial panics broke out every couple of decades with severe crashes and in each and 73 in 1893 and the most serious depression of all 1907. They lasted four to five years all driven by monetary volatility in volatility and credit crunches and it was after the panic of 1907 at the populist world interest Business Leaders and wall street bankers who distrusted and even the test test of each other agree to some sort of central bank was necessary and so for the First Time Since Andrew Jackson had killed a second bank the second bank of the United States, we got a compromise central Banking System that was federated and based on the model of the federalism of the United States. They have three indispensable functions that markets cannot perform for themselves. First it regulates the volume at the price of credit something money markets cannot do for themselves because of their tendency to overshoot or to undershoot. This is a balancing act of providing the credit the economy needs but also taking away the punch bowl in our famous metaphor when the economy becomes overheated. Second and even more important, they function as a lender of last resort in a crisis such as the collapse of 2008 and the lesser crisis that might have blossomed into fullblown depressions such as the flash crash, the latin the latin american asian crisis, the collapse of longterm capital management, the october 1987 stock market crash. It didnt do the lender of last resort job so after 1929 at the end of the current tools but it has an institutional memory. Third the senate is one of several regulatory agencies that seeks to limit the unfortunate habits of conflict of interest for the financial engineers who often create products for their own enrichment and to see investors create bubbles and then crash. The better fed does the that job of keeping Financial Markets honest the more it can keep Interest Rates moderate to make the capital available so the real economy needs without setting off bubbles and finally since the act of 1977, 1978 theyve also had a mandate to try to promote both high employment and price stability. Im happy to report that janet yellin is doing that job better than her predecessors. Despite the technologies many markets cannot regulate themselves on the contrary the ability of the financial engineers to create everything from credit defaults to exporting subprime mortgages to the products so they can bet against them at the expense of their customers such techniques require a central bank to govern both Monetary Policy and financial regulatory. I say this in full knowledge of the fact that human beings and officials are fallible and can be captured and indeed ive been a critic of the fed. Theyve often been too close to wall street that history shows repeatedly and vividly that in the case of money creation and the perils of Market Access are more extreme than the risk of regulatory. Thank you very much. If you had to choose between janet and your own report. [applause] [applause] please raise your right hand and place your left hand on that copy of your favorite book. I am the reason and before that i was the chairman and ceo. I read a book on the financial crisis which is the wall street journal. They take this crisis as given so do you agree with the fact that the crisis is handled to the situation. The cycles are good. But in the last financial crisis it played a primary role. It is called the maestro and we had a little economic collection that we needed that they created negative Interest Rates which means that you could lessen the inflation rate that created a huge incentive for people to leverage. So the fed provided the money to create a bubble and it wasnt just in the Housing Market that was in the commodities market in the stock market or the monies come from it was created. As for the policies encouraging subprime to be a co subprime lending to get mortgages to people who otherwise might not have qualified. Was the. It was the on the Housing Market and it is mathematically impossible without creating the money to make it happen. Given that the housing was clearly needing to come down shortly they did a good job. This was under the administration it was the rule of law the fed for the reasons that were absolutely unclear to anybody in the market that chose to save bear stearns. But they decided to pay off the deposit into the law was gone. We needed a correction but a lot of the damage was done by the panic which is absolutely unnecessary. There was no rule of law and the beginning was as bad as the early 80s and argumentative leaders in the early 90s and yet again we have this panic. Theres a lot of big banks that made the mistake that i would have let them fail but there was a secondary effect of the crisis i wonder could you briefly comment on the notion that perhaps the banking was deregulated and that might have contributed and we are told that it was interventionist but kept the handsoff policy do you agree with that . It was a massive increase. We have the privacy act, the patriot act. It was a massive increase in regulation. Banks were not deregulated in the federal register and the maps increased regulation. The banks were less regulated not deregulated. A lot of people plans to glasssteagall and they played no role in the crisis. Washington mutual and countrywide may be citigroup was a little worse. So the industry was not deregulated. The last question that i have for you is obviously you are very familiar with the work of ayn rand. Do you think that it lives up to her idea that she expresses in her work . No. [laughter] i would go beyond that. Ive had the opportunity to talk about the reserves in the open Market Committee and ive asked them a simple question i said to you believe and price controls a group of experts in washington, d. C. Said the right price for that automobile. They say absolutely not that crazy and i say even setting the price is a group of experts in washington, d. C. No more than billions of competitors in the Global Market and is it that the most important part and the most complex price that was sent wrong tax and they had no answer. I have no further questions for this witness. Very good. [applause] you referenced countrywide and washington mutual. These were Financial Institutions that that originated in the subprime mortgages and then securitized the paper and turned it in and sliced and diced the securities that were then sold off. Would you say those securities were priced accurately by the Financial Markets klaxon i would say they were underpriced in general but primarily when you have one competitor that has 50 or 60 market share they are driving the price of the market. They were under the pressure to have the least they have to keep biting deeper and deeper to reach the politically imposed standards so that was bringing down the pricing on the whole marketplace. What you see that they were priced accurately before they collapsed or after they collapsed they were only priced accurately after the crisis was over into the market cleared. When the rule of law was suspended the price fell and they would have in the free market they were too high going into the crisis. Can you describe what occurs in the credit crunch when one institution is so uncertain of the ability of another institution to pay back its debt that things freeze up what is that like . What actually happens quite ive never been through that. We certainly didnt have it in 2008. Its a huge flow of money. There is theres not a quality going on at the Bank Deposits went off when you look at the numbers. What was happening to allow the institutions to discredit the market and they were getting ready to fail how much damage would have been done its a hard thing for me to know that if we had created this letting bear bear stearns fail when they should have im fairly confident we would have had it worst of year short term correction but he would be radically better off today. I dont know what the fed should have done. Its like starting a fire maybe they kept the whole town from burning down but they burned down half the town. [laughter] what a great anthology. [applause] let me understand what youre saying. The testimony is the collapse of 2008 putting aside freddie and fannie which i agree was a badly run institution especially after they were privatized. But putting aside freddie and fannie your testimony as the Federal Reserve created the collapse of 2008. My testimony is the fed created the bubble. They took us on a party and encouraged us to drink a lot and then we had a hangover. The reason turned into a panic is because of the arbitrary lack of rule of law and the markets cant operate when you dont know what the rule of law i. People cant handle that. Maybe when they put in a bunch of money after they made a mess maybe that was okay but it was after they dont have the town down. What would have happened if a panic like this has broken out as they did break down at regular intervals and there was no central bank to provide liquidity to keep the money market functioning what would have happened . We never had a free market run bank and they were regulated in a different way and a second when they did have the panic they have much more severe corrections but they were very short. I would argue there were no banking crashes and they had no Central Bank Going through the depression. We are given so much booze that we get sick and its the thinking that they were too big to fail. Very good. [applause] mr. Steve forbes. Please state your occupation and qualifications for the testimony today. Weve been following the Federal Reserve since its inception. My grandfather wrote about the Federal Reserve in 1912, 19 of the senate was created in 1913 but the mechanism is put in place before that so weve been following for a number of years and the we coauthored a book called money on how the Federal Reserve is made worse not better the economic crisis like the Great Depression in the 1970s and the recent debacle is caused by government mistakes they printed the terrible inflation and wreaked havoc around the world. In the early 1980s they stopped it. People say that hes the head of the fed didnt he stop the inflation tax us and then he put it out. But why set the fire in the first place . And do you have it as john ellison pointed out in the early part of the last decade would when he created excess money that led to the commodity bubble into the housing bust and then the other thing that is recognized as since the crisis of 2008, 2009 if the principal reason why we have this recovery today that put in the Monetary Policy is the feed Big Government and corporations with the pricing of the credit for small and new businesses and thus oclock zero Interest Rate but as they used to sing say in the soviet union and healthcare spree its free but you cant get any. [applause] im confused. The Mainstream Media says that Interest Rates or the medicine and at the fed is doing what it can to bolster the recovery using to be suggesting the opposite. Can you explain this . Its like the days of old it ended up doing more harm than good. In this case we are wrecking the credit market putting in the rent price control when you have the apartment before it deteriorates that you dont get to properly functioning Housing Market anymore. In terms of what theyve done in the credit market by messing them up theyve made the shortterm credit available to the small and big businesses by mispricing the credit that thinks are under if you dont put the price of something as you are going to get less of it out in the marketplace. And in terms of what the Federal Reserve has done. Its risky and at the other hand they applaud with a letter to the governments of the government gets free money. He remembered at the end of the year the Federal Reserve turns over all the interest after its expenses on its portfolio so its like you have a mortgage and at the end of the year they pay you back to 10,000 of interest and you pay them the mortgage and say thats pretty good. Uncle sam gets back from the Federal Reserve petroleums of dollars of government bonds the Federal Reserve holds and they give the interest back to the treasury department. Good deal for government, bad deal for the American Economy. [applause] i find this hard to to bbq are telling me when the federal government established the Federal Reserve and predicted this cartel of banks that it did so partly to benefit itself, that seems inconceivable. [laughter] governments are always selfless. [applause] and it reminds me after world war i after i discovered this in the 1950s when the british shot me down side the navy and when the navy was being downsized the agency running the navy got a bigger and more bureaucrats. Thats what happens with government. You see it in Defense Department today the uniformed personnel. One final question for you. You may have heard that the defense argued that the fed needs to be there as a lender of last resort to provide liquidity. If you have any thoughts on it that as a justification in the policy class if done right, yes it shows back in the 1860s if you had a credit crisis you could go to the bank and the above market Interest Rate and get a shortterm loan and then you are out of it and that could be done in a matter of weeks and in the United States and other countries not in the u. S. But other countries you have the banks coming together making emergency loans. We prevented that from happening with countries like switzerland, canada and the like so you didnt have the effect of lender of last resort for Banking Systems are quite capable of doing it if they know the rules of the game. No further questions. T. Want to to stand over here so that it doesnt look like such an analyst with . [laughter] rrw on the forbes 400 list lacks [applause] i was intrigued that you said the fed was responsible for the collapse. I didnt say that. I said great inflation of the 1970s. Okay im glad to correct that misperception. After that that collapse, then secretary of the treasury Andrew Mellon famously and infamously said that all of these cascading business failures would purge the rottenness from the system. Do you subscribe to that view . That was caused by government you can go in 1929 and 1930 that started to make its way through congress. Thats when the markets collapsed. You can go through the dalia headlines of the way the world works and it shows that when the legislation looked like it destroyed the Global Trading system the stock market recovered and when it began to become a reality that was number one. Number two is when the contractions started the governments raise taxes catastrophically. Here in the United States we raised the income tax from 29 to 63 and we wonder why the economy continued to contract so the government plays the role. I worry about what the government does when they muck up the trade. I attributed what you said the fed and i want to talk about what the government didnt and didnt do. If i read my history correctly, the 20s with the period of almost no Financial Regulation and Federal Reserve was no institution and financial engineers on wall street and into the stock pools and gimmicks to speculate where they were securitized and sold to customers where the Public Utility Holding companies wanted stock and pass the cost along to the ratepayers. How does the government implicated in these inventive to be coinvented activities . When youre in in a marketplace that get washed out if you let it. We had the stock market tumbles before 1929 and after. For example in 1962 we begin to go in and raise taxes and the market recovered so in terms of a stock market crash the stock market crashed in 1929 not because of the pools and the like but it crashed because we are destroying the Global Trading system and this is what happened. So it wasnt a bubble in your view . Then you have the correction and it goes back again. For example in the early 1980s we had great enthusiasm for the personal computers. Everyone knew this was a big deal so everyone piled in and theres a shakeout. We have had over a thousand automobile manufacturers. People solve a great opportunity so it gets flushed out and they go on to prosper but thats normal. You will always get ups and downs. Get over it. [applause] where is the inflation that folks have been predicting as a result . Have you seen the price of arugula where is the catastrophic production . The youve had some inflation but what youve also had and this is the difference between us in the 1970s and enormous regulation on banks. Thats why the money supply number has been anemic even though the reserves have fallen twice the rate they did in the 1970s so you have a combination of zero Interest Rates that benefits the government into the big companies. And so again you allow the markets to operate and they usually work pretty well. Thank you so much. [applause] any more witnesses . The prosecution rests. That means its now your term. I would like to call mr. Alex. [applause] on the communique where your face is apparently on xbox two political trick of the truth and nothing but the truth . Would you state your involvement in wall street . To i have to start with a confession . I spent years as a money Manager Research analyst. Would you say that you are a left winger . Libertarian. That is a meeting call right there. Given your views and experience do you think we are better off with a central bank or without one fax im not going to argue that we are better off with a central bank but because of the central bank did during the financial crisis we are better off. And why is that . Because cash and credit are the lifeblood of the economy. They grease the wheels of congress. I will decrease love the greasy feel i dont know why. [laughter] where am i . Thats what i said this morning. [laughter] so in the Financial System breaks down to the point that Morgan Stanley doesnt trust enough to lend money overnight the whole system is in danger of imploding and so if no one had stepped in and had done anything and we had a collapse in the Financial Market and a deep deflationary depression and Business Owners and investors in Everyday Americans would have suffered more. That but you heard the witnesses for the prosecution say this is no big deal at them take care of themselves and shakeout are normal. Why is this sort of credit crunch different when the whole money market diseases that . Because extraordinary circumstances require these measures. When you have a situation like this where for instance in a the memoir they mentioned that at the height of the crisis we were less than three days from the banks not being able to distribute cash from the atm. You are talking about pandemonium. It would have been bad news. So the fact that they stepped in and provided liquidity and supported this Important Bank is a good thing not a bad thing. This is an interesting philosophical question. What is it that is different about the money market if we believe that most other markets are self correcting . That is the heart of this debate. They take advantage of the prices and the buyers buyers stepping within the system freezes up and there isnt that cash or credit available for people to take the steps that need to be taking you end up with a sort of long dangerous deflationary situation of japan has suffered with for 26 years now and that is what scared them and its difficult once deflation takes hold to turn things around as they took extraordinary measures to keep us from getting into an extraordinary its like economic herpes. [laughter] would you like to cross . Whether to go. Its like frozen. Go for it. Very surprising was i surprised to hear you say that you are not good to sit here and argue we are better with than without they understand you correctly . He realized that would allow you to sit on the jury . [laughter] i hope that your next witness agrees with you. [laughter] given what they did is absolutely necessary. Yes it is in my judgment. Is it better than having done nothing . Absolutely. Are you saying that you are open to the idea that it would have been better had they not even been there in the first place. We had to do something rather than nothing but it is achievable in the situation itself because of the existence that the fed. Can you repeat the question . After co the witnesses were saying that we shouldnt take the crisis as the fact they were leading the markets to believe they are going to rescue us and to shock everybody by saying youre going to let them fail do you agree with the general spirit of the criticism . They didnt leave Interest Rates too low for too long going into the housing bubble is created by both Political Parties encouraging people people that could in no way afford the home to buy one. They also ask also extended the first 500,000 fueling the state and then the bubble got underway and people started getting things up to the crazy prices. When the bubble burst into the market collapsed that was the true cost. Quick question. Youve been to a bowling alley. They rented shoes, right tax . Would you trust the officials to regulate the quantity of bowling shoes . Probably not. About you with money. What kind of a libertarian would say that . [applause] do you have a second witness that you would like to call backs i will call the professor thank you for joining us. Can you tell us [inaudible] the grand theory is i came. Do you swear to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth . Could you describe the nature of the Academic Work . Ive been doing this for 45 years and more recently i have been doing work on the volatility of output growth. I first did it by the United States and japan and a bunch of countries basically the world war ii data. The most recent was from 192012 over a century of data and the result of that Study Suggests the samples divided into four different periods postworld war ii up through 81 to the present. What would you say the economy was more volatile back when we didnt have this central bank . The measures i looked at suggested it was output growth in the Gold Standard. Go into the war. Code they decided they wanted to go back and it didnt work. Why would the economy be more volatile in the period there was no central bank . Here we are. Great. Did we have more financial volatility before the cardassians . I think they shifted into the commercial volatility. Fair enough. [laughter] what was in the period that we we had a financial have a financial panic of the late century every ten or 15 years what was the role of the absence of the central bank and the credit . We could prevent it from getting out of control if you look at the time. Co. You notice we had many more cycles after world war ii that tended to last about four years. Since world war ii the expansions have gotten longer and recessions have gotten shorter and i will remind the audience we are now looking at the seventh year of the current expansion which is the average. I take it that you do not endorse every single thing that the fed has done that do you think that we are better off having a central bank than not having one . Theyve done a lot of things that were not correct. Its like an insurance contract. You buy insurance on your home because there is a probability that you might lose your home and missed the whole investment so it gets the fire in the economy. [applause] can i plead the fifth . You can take a fifth of jim beam if you want. When did the Great Depression had been . For the Great Depression happened on their watch. Said followup we should give them a pass they were responsible for the Great Depression. Im sure that you are aware of this that on his 90th birthday he said he gave an address to back that Milton Friedman said that we have my talk as an official representative id like to say regarding the Great Depression youre right, we did it, we are very sorry but thanks to you we will not do it again. Do you think that is something that they are particularly proud of in that statement . I think that he was accurate because the fed hasnt caused another Great Depression or recession. Its a lot shallower than it would have been. But the collapse everyone in this country was guilty. [applause] [laughter] one of the witnesses eluted it to the time of crisis [inaudible] [laughter] sorry, go ahead. The financial crisis it should lend freely in the penalty rate of interest are you familiar with that . The number one job at the central bank is to be the lender of last resort and theres a lot of other things that we do to focus on the inflation control and not get involved in on climate and output. That was the last question. One more. My spanish is no good. Given that they will provide a letter of last resort to using that they have oversight or do you like the current arrangement when Congress Calls them up in late 2006 to say who will you give these two and bernanke says and this is a pair of phrase i cant disclose the recipients because they will focus the issue is whether they need to be independent and if they are hanging over the fed the regulation might be changed after might be deciding to do this in the fed. That is implementing the policy in my view. Thank you very much. Doctor murphy you may be excused. Any further witnesses. We have closing statements to the jury and first we are going to have doctor murphy and then doctor connor. We dont have time. What about like a minute . We dont have time. This is out of my hands. We dont have a have it is good to have been a freedom fest. Thats why its such a beautiful banana split. So what would you mentally translate your thoughts to the audience into the jury. Very good job. Thank you very much. Okay ladies and gentlemen you have heard various witnesses. Its now up to you to decide. It is your job to determine whether the preponderance of evidence supports the prosecution. That is the federal balance is a dangerous and powerful institution that they are a powerful institution in todays economy that has encouraged the responsible thinking practices to allow them to grow by leaps and bounds all the while depreciating the value of our currency or are you to decide if you think that they have done a credible job of keeping the economy strong and stable protecting us from another panic on wall street for another Great Depression. The person will tally the vote and announced the verdict into the decision the jury can be by a majority vote. I think thats what everyone has to ask. [laughter] you know what im saying, come on now. Youre the best judge ever. Ever in the world . Even better than last years judge . Who was last years judge . I was. [laughter] see . I think you might be the best libertarian judge on planet earth. Oh, brian [cheers and applause] [laughter] shes counting. Its like prom votes. Whos going to walk away with the big crown . We need, like, the jeopardy theme music. Give it to the judge. Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict . We have. Very good. Will the defense attorney [inaudible] will you stand and face the jury. Defense counsel. Thats okay. [laughter] im not madam foreperson, how do you and your fellow jurors juricize . We have nine in favor of guilty, two not guilty, one abolish the fed. [laughter] wow those are powerful votes. Madam foreperson, thank you so much. There you have it, the fed is guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty [laughter] all right, professor cutler, you ask your fed supporters have been found guilty of failing to limit the powers of the Federal Reserve. Therefore, by the powers vested in me, i hereby condemn you and all said support us to the fed debtors prison where you will be under obligation to pay the toxic debt of all freedom fest attendees here tonight [cheers and applause] yeah, thats right. They have lost their collective shirts at the craps tables at planet hollywood. You can only get out of debtors prison if the Federal Reserve final raises Interest Rates. Marshall calle, take it away. [inaudible conversations] im a lawyer. All right. Hes a lawyer. The night is young. [applause] professor cutner, dr. Murphy, jurors, and, of course, our star witness and our freedom fest attendees, thank you very much court is now adjourned. [applause] God Bless America and may you always ride on the eagle of freedom. Hallelujah and good night. [applause] this is booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our prime time lineup. Up next, damon tweedy discusses his perspective on race in america. At 7 45, evan osnos takes a look at the future of china and its impact on the world. Former congressman alan west talks about his book, guardian of the republic. At 9 p. M. , Oreilly Factor Host Bill Oreilly discusses the reagan presidency following the assassination attempt with bay buchanan. Then at 10 eastern, Greg Grandins new book, kissingers shadow. And then coming up at 11, a collection of firsthand accounts from Holocaust Survivors by anthony pitch. That all happens next on cspan2s booktv. But first, damon tweedy on race in america. [inaudible conversations] so welcome, everybody. So im, my name is damon tweedy,