institutions. the crisis led to greatly expanded fed emergency liquid support t. became the lender of first resort instead of the last resort. the congress passed the dodd-frank act to extend the federal government's post tarp control over the system t. ga. it gave regulators extensive new powers over the defense system. the slow recovery triggered fed qe stimulus which created massive bank reserves which required new fed operating procedures. so this morning we're going to discuss all these changes with a panel of experts. and instead of me introducing a panel of experts, i'm going to introduce our moderator of the panel. alex j. pollack is a distinguished senior fellow oh art street institute. alex was previous lly a residen fellow at aei and at the home loan bank of chicago. alex is a recognized authority on financial policy issues including financial cycles, government sponsored enterprises, housing finance, banking, central banking, uncertainty and risk, retirement finance, corporate governance and political responses to financial crisis. he's the author of "boom and bust", numerous articles, congressional testimonies and what is perhaps his most consulted work by those of us that know him well known as pollack's laws of finance. with no further ado or with further ado here is our mod mate or alex pollack. >> thank you. let me join paul in welcoming you to our conference this morning. you'll all remember the most famous line about the federal reserve from its long serving and former chairman william martin which is that the fed is supposed to remove the punch bowl just as the party is really warming up. but what about a federal reserve which spikes the punch when the party is warming up instead? or changing the beverage in the metaphor. consider the dominant personality in the federal reserve of his day benjamin strong who mem orably said in 1987 that he was giving the stock market a little drink of whiskey. what a piker strong was compared to his successor of seven decades later who gave the stock bond and house markets a barrel of whiskey. the feds long term bond and mortgage buying spree plus zero or so nominal interest rates plus negative real interest rates. as we all know has set off asset price inflations of notable magnitudes in stocks, bonds and houses. and how about what its done to the banking system? 5,787 as of june thirdth, fdic insured depos tore institutions with total assets of $17 trillion which are equal to about -- or we might argue that the banking system actually and properly understood includes the fed itself which is part of and indeed an integral part of the banking system. then we would add the fed's 4 $4.5 trillion in assets to the size and we'd get a greater banking system of $21.5 trillion or 112% of gdp. however we think about the banking system and the fed, how have years of extreme monetary and bond market manipulations by the fed changed the banking system? our outstanding panel of experts is about to tell us and let me introduce them in the order in which they'll speak. first will be chris walen who is an investment bank or, author, chairman of global advisers, focusing on financial services, mortgage finance and technology. previously chris of director of research, co founder of institutional risk analytics and was with the federal reserve bank of new york. among his books is inflated how money and debt built the american dream. and as we think about this topic today, we have plenty of money and debt to consider. second will be michelle who is heritage research foundation, financial markets and monetary policy including reform of the dodd-frank act and of fanny may and freddy mack. i wanted to say that since both dodd frank were supporters, these two issues go very well together. norbert also focusing on the best way to address credit difficulties of large or too big to fail financial companies as paul said and on the issues concerning the role of the federal reserve as we'll be discussing today. next will be nellie young, senior fellow at the hutchins. she's also a consult tant -- >> we'll leave this monetary policy discussion for today's white house press briefing. this is live coverage on cspan3. >> asy