WEBVTT - Alan Greenspan 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.920 Serving under four presidents from both parties. Alan Greenspan holds 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:08.080 the title as the second longest serving Federal Reserve chairman, 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:12.520 overseeing America's economy through booms and busts from the nineteen 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.320 eighties through the two thousands. Growing up the son of 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.840 a stockbroker in New York City, Greenspan studied clarinet at 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:21.720 Juilliard's School before graduating from n y U with a 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:25.319 degree in economics. After time at the Conference Board in 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:29.360 his own economic consulting firm, President Ronald Reagan nominated Greenspan 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:31.920 to succeed Paul Volker as FED Chair, and he was 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:36.280 confirmed in August of nineteen eighties seven. Greenspan was subsequently 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.239 renominated as FED chair by President Clinton with both George W. 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.280 And H. W. Bush after being replaced by Ben Bernaki 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.040 in two thousand six. Greenspan founded an economic consulting firm 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:52.560 and wrote a memoir entitled The Age of Turbulence Adventures 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:55.200 in a New World. Greenspan has a new book on 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.040 now called Capitalism in America, a History, which he wrote 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.720 with Financial Times reporter Adrian Wooldridge. He recently sat down 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.959 with Carlisle Group co founder David Rubinstein. They spoke on 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:10.839 David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television program Peer to Peer Conversations. John 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:15.720 Kenneth Galbraith once famously said that conventional wisdom is almost 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.480 always wrong. Now, the conventional wisdom today is that the 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.720 U S economy is very strong. I think your view 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:24.960 is that might not be accurate. Is that correct? You 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:27.440 don't think it's that strong? Well, I think it's a 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:33.360 different form of what we call stagflation. It had some 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:38.600 of the characteristics of buoyancy, but underneath it is an 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:43.480 erosion which ultimately will disable the economy unless it's corrected. 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.440 Do you see any movement to solve let's say, the 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:49.440 deficit and debt problem. I'd say a lot of talk, 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:57.120 but no realistic movement. And right now we're creating a 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:02.400 deficit of a trillion dollars a year and uh that 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:07.240 is being added net to the stock of debt, and 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.919 debt as a percent of GDP is rising very rapidly, 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:17.080 and the demographics of the age groups are such is 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.440 that that's going to accelerate in the immediate future. So 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.040 if you could wave a magic wand and help reduce 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.600 this deficit and debt, what would you do well. The 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.239 question is what's the cause of it, And the cause 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:35.760 of it is essentially on both the expenditure and on 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:40.480 the tax side. I actually fully approve of the tax 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:45.720 cuts that were made, but only in the context that 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.480 it is funded. Otherwords, we went to a very significant 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.800 cut in the marginal corporate tax rate. But you can't 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.400 have a tax cut without finding the revenues elsewhere or 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:01.000 you running the problems. So the tax cut bill that 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.839 was passed in the first year of President Trump's administration 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.160 by the Congress said, in effect, that will produce three 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:10.360 or more growth for the foreseeable future. Do you think 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.640 three annualized growth is realistic over the next five or 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:16.720 ten years. No, certainly not as a consequence of the 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:22.320 tax cut. The tax cut actually did get a buoyancy, 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.560 and we're still feeling some of it, but it's nowhere 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:31.400 near enough to offset the actual deficit. So there's no 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:36.720 way around us without coming to grips with the expenditure side. Okay, 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:40.040 So President Trump called you up and said, uh, Alan, 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:42.800 you're a great u former Chairmber of the Federal Reserve. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.000 I need some advice. I wanted to solve the SOUCH 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.760 security problem and the Medicare medicaid problem. What would you 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:53.160 tell him to do else go elsewhere because you think 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:58.520 it's too difficult. I think politically we're caught the terrible problem. 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:02.240 So let's talk about another issue that you've talked about, 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.040 which is productivity. Your point is that we don't have 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:08.640 the productivity that we should have, in part because we're 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.200 borrowed so much money, and that's squeezing out the money 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.880 that would be otherwise available for productivity increases. Precisely, it's 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:20.919 the capital investment which ultimately determines what productivity will be 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.599 in factor. Our equations show that you can explain it 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:29.840 all with the care net capital stock that's built up 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:36.640 in business, plus uh uh, some measures of educational efficiency. 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:41.680 But we're not doing it now. Harry Truman, when he 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.560 was listening to his economic advisors, said, you know, please 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.760 bring me a one handed economist, because they always said, well, 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:49.120 on the one hand, this and the other hand this, 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:51.640 and he got tired of that. So, um, let me 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.520 ask you a direct question. Can you tell me when 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:59.760 the next recession is going to happen? Sometimes? Sometimes, but 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.120 we've had recessions every seven years on average since World 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.720 War Two. It's going to be driven by the fact 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:11.160 that debt is rising dramatically and there's going to be 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.640 some curtailments occurring from that, and it's going to feed 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.760 on itself. What I'm saying, we talk about stagflation. Stagflation 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:24.080 is something that happened in when you had a situation 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:31.840 where both unemployment and inflation we're high, something which the 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:37.080 original Keynesian model said was not possible. And we're going 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:41.080 into that type of period now. If you look at 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:42.880 all the guide, if you're worried that we're going to 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:46.760 go into recession at some point, um you do you 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.520 invest your money in a certain way to protect against that. 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:54.400 You can't protect everything. And the point is you can't 0:05:54.640 --> 0:06:02.080 forecast a very very accurately. Right now, we've been at 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:07.800 the extreme period extremely low real long term interest rates, 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.000 and they're beginning now to move up, will continue to 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.599 move up, and that is going to cause the basic 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.920 turn in the market. Are you worried about inflation right now? 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:21.480 I think I'm beginning to see the first signs of it. 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.279 We're seeing it basically in the tightening of the labor 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.120 markets first, which as you know, getting very tight. Now 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:36.000 we'll be getting finally to see average wages rise, and 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:42.440 clearly there's no productivity behind it. All productivity increase in 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:46.320 the last ten years is averaged under one percent a year. 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:50.880 It's a historic low. Uh not, I might add, it's 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.080 not over your we it's Europe and everybody else as well. 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:58.920 You're getting into a system now which has no outcome 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:08.600 that's and equilibrium other than inflation and low productivity growth, 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.760 and that is not something which says we're going to 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:18.560 have a long term acceleration. So what would you recommend 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.000 that we do to solve the problems that you pointed out? Well, 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:26.560 the basic problem is fundamentally on the expenditure side, so 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:34.320 that the issue is if I would say ninety entitlements. Now, 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:42.000 these are as you know, basically legislated payments to certain 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:47.280 groups irrespective of what they're paying into funds, and we've 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.120 we've overdone it. Now, the question obviously is, well, if 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:53.040 we've overdone it, why don't we just pull it back? 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:59.280 That is the economic conclusion. It is not a credible 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.280 political Now let me shift for a moment. If I 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.280 could to your own personal life and career when you 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.600 were a young boy, did you say I want to 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.640 be chairman of the Federals aboard. That's the last thing. 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:15.640 I could barely pronounce the words. At the time. My 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.160 aspiration was to be a musician, so I went to 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.240 Juilliard for a few years. Your instrument was what I played, 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:29.840 the uh clarinet, ten of saxophone based clarinet, a little flute. 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:31.800 But for all of those, you weren't good at any 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.040 of them. To be a really professional, make your whole 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:37.120 career at that, Let's put it this way. I could have, 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.960 but I said, I'll only be clasppy because I sat 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.320 next to a fifteen year old by the name of 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:49.040 Stanley Gets when I was sixteen. We both had the 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:54.360 same saxophone teacher, and I said, oh my god, this 0:08:54.520 --> 0:09:00.439 kid is terrific. And I said to myself, Uh, if 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.480 you can't be this could Why do you want to 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:05.839 be second best? Why didn't you tell him he should 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.040 go into economics and get rid of him. I should 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:10.960 have done that, I thought that I never thought of it. 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.439 That would have been a good idea. So you ultimately 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.120 left Juilliard and you went to n y U. Yes, well, 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.920 I actually is very surprised. I didn't think I was 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:23.200 going to be a good student. I knew I did 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.400 well in math in high school. I did not. It 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.320 wasn't absolutely sure how all I would do in college. 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.120 It turns out that I don't know that I graduate 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.960 summer come Louder. But I had only two bees in 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:44.959 shop and Jim shopping, Jim so so He's and everything else, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.080 And there was no one more surprised than I. So 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:52.400 you graduate summer come Loudy from n y U. H 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:54.760 you've given up your music career. What did you do 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:58.120 when you graduated? Uh? Well, first of all, I went 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:02.280 to the National Industrial Conference Board for the first time. 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:06.760 I went into the business world, and I wasn't really 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:13.040 all that interested in it, and found myself fascinated. And I, 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:15.320 at a fairly young age, was like twenty two, was 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:21.320 writing articles for the Conference Board magazine, and I was 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.760 fascinated by I was getting quoted in the New York Times. Okay, 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.000 a very early age. So the New York Times is 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:31.040 quoting you, and you're in your twenties, and then you 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.040 ultimately became an fact that a well known, ultimately well 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.040 known consultant on Wall Street and on the side, you 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.640 become close to or get to know a very famous 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.400 writer named Iron Rand. And what was the appeal of 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:49.319 her to you? What fascinated was her heroes, And when 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.120 I read her books found it. And then Atlas Rugged, 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.600 I was caught up in that science thing which said 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:03.800 basically that, uh, you didn't have anything rational about human emotions. 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:11.840 And I had an argument about uncertainty behind Rand when 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:17.920 ever since I met her, and I kept saying that 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:25.440 human values are irrational, you know, there not conceptually put together. 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:31.560 And she then proceeded to take me apart, piece by piece, 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:36.719 showing the contradictions in my position. But did you think 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:39.839 she was smarter than you? She demonstrated she was smarter 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.680 than and we actually became very close. You obviously built 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.200 a very good reputation in Wall Street because Richard Nixon, 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.240 President United States, UM asked you to serve as the 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:55.360 head of the Council of Economic Advisors, and you actually 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.160 had agreed to do so. But then something happened to 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.080 President Nixon. Is that right? Something I've forgotten what it was. 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:07.840 Then Nixon resigned and Ford, as vice president, became president. Ultimately, 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.920 you got to be close to President Ford. But Ford 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.920 lost the election to my former boss, Jimmy Carter in 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.360 nineteen seventy six and you went back to Wall Street. 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.559 Is that right? You're pretty prominent now as the former 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:23.280 head of the Council Economic Advisors and then ultimately President 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:25.320 Reagan says to you, why don't you come in and 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.120 be the chairman of the federals Ave Board. Did you 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.400 meet with Reagan before you accepted the offer? Well, I 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:36.800 actually had met with him quite often during his campaign. 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.400 I was part of the Reagan for President campaign staff, 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.560 so that stuff. I got to work with them fairly closely. 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:48.680 So you take the job, and you held the job 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:54.120 for eighteen or nineteen years, eighteen and a half years. 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:56.320 You were called by many of the maestro and you 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.680 were given a lot of credibility for the U. S 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.080 economy being in such a good shap. Did you ever 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.280 think that people were giving you too much credit for 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:05.959 being such a great maestro of the economy or do 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:10.439 you think they were pretty right? I said, wait, it 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:19.920 won't last. Uh, you can't. Popularity in Washington is basically 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.360 related to what it is you do, and if you 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.959 have no if you don't have a hundred percent control 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.520 of what it is that happens as a consequence that 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.320 you're doing you get caught by the fluctuations up and down. 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:36.000 My major concern, and I was cutely aware of it, 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.680 as I was getting much too credit, too much of 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:43.839 the credit for what actually was going on, And I said, 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:47.600 don't worry about it. It'll come out on the other side. 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:53.320 In those years, um, people often uh would say, let's 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.080 photograph Alan Greenspan walking into the Federal Reserve building. If 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.079 he has a big fat um set of books with 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.040 him or papers, that means he's about to make a 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.640 historic decision. If he has nothing very much, it means 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.400 no historic decision. So was that there any truth to 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:09.360 the validity of your carrying a lot of things into 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.040 the It was my brief, briefcase, depending whether my wife 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.080 made me lunch. So it really was nothing to that theory. 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.440 Well everybody knew that, of course. What about the theory 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.520 that you made your key decisions in the bathtub in 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:24.200 the morning because you had a bad back. You would 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.040 take a bath every morning, and that you would write 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.720 notes to people and it would come back kind of 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:32.440 with a little water marks on it because you were 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:34.640 doing this in the bathtub. Did you make good decisions there? 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.280 Do you think? Oh? Of course, And I was. I 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:42.880 was writing speeches in the bathtub. Uh. The backwards is 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:49.480 still bought. Obviously still a problem. Was quitely on my 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:56.720 back full time for six weeks by an orthopedist. I 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.600 ran my business looking up at the sailing. All right, 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:01.960 so you're step down and all of a sudden everybody 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:04.480 in the world wants to get your advice on things. 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:07.640 Was it a shock or you actually anticipated that would happen. 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:11.840 I was shocked. I was shocked that the price that 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.280 they bit up on my first book. I was shocked 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:21.360 by the fees I was getting U uh pretty much 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:24.600 for number of years. So things went very well, and 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.520 then the economy collapses, and so all of a sudden, 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.000 are people were saying, well, it was Alan Greenspan's fault 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.920 because he should have anticipated this. Did you think that 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:36.200 was fair? And were you surprised by how much criticism 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:39.160 you perceived at that point? One. I did not think 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.600 it was fair, but I never expected it to be fair. 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:45.600 And Uh, I anticipated that was going to happen. I 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:49.640 just didn't know exactly when. But nobody forecast the two 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.200 thousand and eight crisis. One of the things I put 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.840 in a second book, I wrote, UH was how the 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:01.840 I M F missed it, the deserve missed it. Uh, 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:06.840 you go down the whole series of the major forecasting. 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:11.120 Everybody got wrong, let's say every every I mean. But 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:17.160 the purpose was I didn't find that surprise. You can't 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.760 have a crisis of that nature that that is not 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.800 a surprise. So you look back on your term as 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.520 the Federals chair, would you have done anything different in 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.760 light of events that happened after you left? Would you 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.760 have done something differently enough that I'm aware of now 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.480 when you testify in Congress? You were famous for not 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.120 being that precise in terms of being clear clear. Let's 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:41.560 say you were used what I would call fed speak 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.000 because you were off your skating a little bit? Was 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:48.600 that on purpose? In other words? It was a general 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:54.120 rule uh at that time that the Federals did not 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:58.960 make public what it was going to do. We do now, 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:03.600 but not not back then. And so the question was 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:08.520 what ways could I figure around answering certain questions or 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:14.000 not answering them? And I had I worked up means 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:20.680 to vote vocabulary, which M quite understand. How we're too 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.280 ashamed to say that, don't understand? All right? So it 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.080 was on purpose? Why do you think it is that 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.840 we're not as creative as we were before? And for 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.160 any coming up with new companies and so forth. There's 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.960 more to it than just strictly the issue of a 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:41.159 simple capitalist thing. We're getting more and more regulation. So 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.760 let's talk a moment now about your book, Capitalism in America. 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:46.960 One of the key points of your book is that 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.760 we have something in the United States called what you've 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:55.639 called creative destruction. Creative destruction essentially means that entrepreneurs starting 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.359 new companies. But you're worried, according to the book, that 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:00.439 we're not doing that as much. Now. Is that right? 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:02.840 And why do you think it is that we're not 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:06.080 as creative as we were before? For any coming up 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:08.359 with new companies and so forth. There's more to it 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:13.479 than just strictly the issue of the simple capitalist thing. 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:21.320 We're getting more and more regulation. In fact, the one 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:25.879 thing I'm I'm waiting to see the consequences of what 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:35.240 the current administration's deregulation operations are doing, because, ah, what 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:41.919 we show in the book is examples of the extraordinary 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:50.840 broadening of controls, which ah, I mean people listening seems 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.679 strange to use this example, but to be a florist 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:58.680 or something related which has no effect on human life 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.640 or health. W you need you needed, you need a permit. 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.760 That never was the case. So your point is there's 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.840 too much regulation. What is remarkable about the United States? 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.840 We went up and down? What would have thought that 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:25.480 after the nineteen thirties, UH, that capitalism was shot gone, No, 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:30.680 not coming back, And ironically it got resurrected during World 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.199 War Two, where it was very obvious at the private 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:43.080 sector was what essentially won the war. And UH today 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.240 the ownership of capital is not as unequivocal as it 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:52.520 used to be. The regulation and the UH taxation and 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.879 the culture is not what it used to. The main 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.240 point of your book, I thought was to say, we've 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.119 had a uni capitalist system, but maybe there's some dangers 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:04.119 that what we've made us so unique aren't going to 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:08.080 be available in the future. Is that exactly right? So 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:12.439 you're now in your nineties and UM, did your parents 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:16.520 lived to be this age or you have long genes 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:23.879 or mother? So the success other than good genes is 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.280 what would you attribute to? It's? Um, eating well, exercising 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:32.440 a lot, UH, reading a lot of productivity data reports. 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:37.760 What is it that you attribute your longevity product reading 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.159 a lot of productivity data reports is probably What's it? 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:42.760 One of your great accomplishments we haven't talked about is 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:44.920 you've been married to Andrew Mitchell for quite some time, 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:49.040 a NBC correspondent, among other things she's achieved. So anything 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.159 you would like to say about your marriage to Andrew Mitchell, 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:56.000 It's been wonderful, okay? And does she give you advice 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.879 when economic matters? Ever you give her vital media matters? 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:03.760 Ever advice on everything? Okay? Sometimes? I take it. You've 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:07.399 met a lot of famous people, UH Presidents United States, 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:13.160 heads of state from other countries, UH, finance secretaries, ministers, 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.400 secretaries of treasury, secretaries of state. Who would you say 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.960 among the most impressive people you or privileged to meet, 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:25.320 let's say the too smartest, too smartest were got impeached, 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:32.240 Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. I mean they, I would say, 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:36.439 on a strictly i Q basis, those two, but they 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:39.639 had other flaws obviously. Do you ever have any regrets 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.560 about anything you did in your career and do you 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.560 ever regret not going into private equity? Well, I'm an 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:51.680 economist making money, per se. It's never been my interest. 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.920 It turned out that a good full out rule, but 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.560 it was never my real purpose. We ever want to 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.159 rein it yourself as a private equity person, let me 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.400 know you could, you know, learn this business and still 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.199 be very good in it. After I run out of economics, 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.560 my problem basically, economy keeps fascinating me.