WEBVTT NOTE Heckle and Jekyll: How Murray Rothbard Got the Fed's Story Right 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200 One of the advantages that I have with my last name, North, 2 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:11.700 is it is summarized in English as N.O. period. 3 00:00:11.700 --> 00:00:16.000 And because of that, I am the one person in this room, 4 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:20.000 and in fact in the world who can say of Dr. Paul, 5 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:25.500 that I am Dr. No's Dr. No. 6 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:29.200 Before I begin, I want to mention something. 7 00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:38.200 We are the heirs of Ludwig von Mises, beginning in 1912 with his book The Theory of Money and Credit. 8 00:00:38.200 --> 00:00:42.200 We are the intellectual heirs of that man. 9 00:00:42.200 --> 00:00:47.200 Pygmies standing on the shoulders of a giant. 10 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:56.200 And of course, in terms of Rothbard, we are Pygmies standing on the shoulders of two giants. 11 00:00:56.200 --> 00:01:01.200 There are a few men left who studied with Rothbard, 12 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:05.800 but we don't know most of them 13 00:01:05.800 --> 00:01:07.880 because Doug French is one of them, 14 00:01:07.880 --> 00:01:12.000 but Rothbard was not given the opportunities 15 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:15.360 to serve in a university that would produce PhD 16 00:01:15.360 --> 00:01:16.360 and advanced students. 17 00:01:16.360 --> 00:01:19.840 So not many left who studied with him personally. 18 00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:22.400 A few left who studied with Mises. 19 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:30.720 There are older men. They are retired. Israel Kirzner did. There are others. George Reisman, 20 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:36.720 Eberdine University, just a handful left who studied with Mises. There is only one man 21 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:44.720 left who taught with Mises at NYU and he is here today, one of the giants in our field, 22 00:01:44.720 --> 00:01:51.720 needs recognition. Bill Peterson, you stand up. You stand up. 23 00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:11.480 He was the one man at NYU who understood that Mises was right and who recognized that Mises 24 00:02:11.480 --> 00:02:16.480 and who recognized that Mises was the giant figure that he was. 25 00:02:16.480 --> 00:02:19.480 The remainder of the faculty was hostile to him. 26 00:02:19.480 --> 00:02:25.480 And that, again, is an indication of just how bad American academia 27 00:02:25.480 --> 00:02:29.480 has been in the field of economics and for how long. 28 00:02:29.480 --> 00:02:35.480 Rothbard, I can assure you, would have delighted at this meeting 29 00:02:35.480 --> 00:02:41.480 Because he would have understood fully what we are doing here. 30 00:02:41.480 --> 00:02:55.480 That is, we have come to a place where 100 years ago the meeting was held that formalized the foundation of the Federal Reserve system. 31 00:02:55.480 --> 00:03:09.480 And he would have understood very clearly that, ladies and gentlemen, we are on unhallowed ground. 32 00:03:09.480 --> 00:03:18.480 And it's not often that Americans will go to a place not because of the marvels of what historical event took place, 33 00:03:18.480 --> 00:03:29.480 But of what unscrupulous chicanery took place that we would come and have a conference of this type and at this expense. 34 00:03:29.480 --> 00:03:41.480 And I want you to understand that everyone in this room, by doing this, has identified himself as part of the extreme right-wing fringe of America. 35 00:03:41.480 --> 00:03:47.380 Everyone. 36 00:03:47.380 --> 00:03:49.980 You may not understand the categories. 37 00:03:49.980 --> 00:03:59.980 The right-wing fringe is the group that says that central banking is inherently wrong and 38 00:03:59.980 --> 00:04:06.320 that the Federal Reserve should be abolished. 39 00:04:06.320 --> 00:04:13.100 The extreme right-wing fringe of America is libertarians who say that the Federal Reserve 40 00:04:13.100 --> 00:04:20.180 should be abolished and have enough money to come to a conference. 41 00:04:20.180 --> 00:04:26.940 And you are part of that fringe. 42 00:04:26.940 --> 00:04:34.000 The meeting was held, as you know, in 1910. 43 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:41.520 It was held in November, and it was held in November for a specific reason. 44 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:50.120 And the reason was the island shut down during the winter and did not reopen until January. 45 00:04:50.120 --> 00:04:54.760 And so there was only a skeleton staff on the island at that time. 46 00:04:54.760 --> 00:05:00.780 Every member of that staff was sent off the island, and those people were replaced only 47 00:05:00.780 --> 00:05:08.900 by people from the mainland who normally had no connection with the staff here and would 48 00:05:08.900 --> 00:05:17.460 not be able to recognize any of the individuals, the seven individuals who met over in the 49 00:05:17.460 --> 00:05:23.220 main hall for a period of between, we're not sure, between seven and ten days to hammer 50 00:05:23.220 --> 00:05:26.220 out the basics. 51 00:05:26.220 --> 00:05:56.220 As you may know, it began on a date which we remember for another reason, November 22nd of 1910 and it began in Hoboken, New Jersey late at night on a private train that was owned by Nelson Aldrich, who was the senator from Rhode Island and who was the in-law of 52 00:05:56.220 --> 00:06:04.220 The Rockefellers, and his grandson was named Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. 53 00:06:04.220 --> 00:06:15.220 Aldrich had a private train. He was a rich man. He was known, for good reason, as the Rockefeller Senator. 54 00:06:15.220 --> 00:06:25.220 And on his train, seven of them came down, and they left not from New York, where they might be recognized, but they left from Hoboken, New Jersey. 55 00:06:25.220 --> 00:06:36.220 And sure enough, the best laid plans of Mises and Men go awry, and at the train station, there were a bunch of reporters. 56 00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:42.220 Why? It's never been said. Tip-off, perhaps, we don't know, but they were there. 57 00:06:42.220 --> 00:06:53.220 And they didn't interview them, but they came down, and they landed next day at Brunswick, 58 00:06:53.220 --> 00:06:58.220 and where we, at that point, would have gotten off. 59 00:06:58.420 --> 00:07:00.680 There was of course no causeway at that time. 60 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:05.220 And they were all on a first name basis. 61 00:07:05.220 --> 00:07:06.860 Nobody used his last name. 62 00:07:09.220 --> 00:07:12.660 It was later known as the First Name Club. 63 00:07:12.660 --> 00:07:14.500 They met for many years thereafter. 64 00:07:17.420 --> 00:07:19.660 And the station manager said, 65 00:07:19.660 --> 00:07:30.940 And well, gentlemen, good to see you. We know who you are. And the reporters are outside. 66 00:07:30.940 --> 00:07:39.340 And so one of the members, most associated, or at least highly associated with J.P. Morgan, 67 00:07:39.340 --> 00:07:46.100 who probably gave the invitation for them to come, stepped outside, said something to 68 00:07:46.100 --> 00:07:56.340 The group came back inside and said they will not mention this. There will be no problem. 69 00:07:56.340 --> 00:08:00.860 And they did not mention it and there was no problem. There was no reference to this 70 00:08:00.860 --> 00:08:10.540 meeting except one brief article in Forbes by the founder of Forbes who in 1916 gave 71 00:08:10.540 --> 00:08:14.040 gave one paragraph to it. 72 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:15.340 There was no further mention of it 73 00:08:15.340 --> 00:08:16.980 so far as I'm aware 74 00:08:16.980 --> 00:08:20.300 and even as so far as the web is aware 75 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:25.020 until a biography of Aldrich 76 00:08:25.020 --> 00:08:27.100 was published in 1930, 77 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:33.180 20 years after the meeting. 78 00:08:33.180 --> 00:08:35.100 That was the Jekyll Island meeting 79 00:08:35.100 --> 00:08:37.100 as far as anyone knew 80 00:08:37.100 --> 00:08:39.820 for the first 20 years after that meeting. 81 00:08:39.820 --> 00:08:46.820 17 years then, in other words, into the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. 82 00:08:48.260 --> 00:08:59.260 Now I've entitled my speech Heckel and Jekyll. I couldn't resist. It was too obvious. Heckel 83 00:08:59.620 --> 00:09:06.620 and Jekyll were cartoon characters from 1946 to 1966, a pair of black magpies. 84 00:09:09.820 --> 00:09:17.820 We see nothing of them anymore. You don't hear about Heckel and Jekyll. They were a 85 00:09:17.820 --> 00:09:25.820 cunning couple of guys who were always running schemes of one kind or other. One of them 86 00:09:25.820 --> 00:09:33.620 was clearly a New Yorker with a New York accent and the other was British, always running 87 00:09:33.620 --> 00:09:38.620 Operations of One Kind or Other. 88 00:09:38.620 --> 00:09:43.780 And the New York magpie is almost the incarnation of Murray Rothbard. 89 00:09:43.780 --> 00:09:45.400 I could not resist it. 90 00:09:45.400 --> 00:09:53.280 And not only in terms of what the magpie did, but in terms of what Rothbard did. 91 00:09:53.280 --> 00:10:06.680 Murray Rothbard, as a PhD economist, stood in the true fringes of academia, a pariah 92 00:10:06.680 --> 00:10:18.920 within the profession, and constantly reiterated the economic logic that was presented in 1912 93 00:10:18.920 --> 00:10:23.280 by Ludwig von Mises and The Theory of Money and Credit applied to the Federal Reserve 94 00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:29.640 system saying it is a cartel, it is not for the people, it is for the bankers that this 95 00:10:29.640 --> 00:10:38.640 exists and only for the large New York banking establishments, that it is counterproductive, 96 00:10:38.640 --> 00:10:46.100 that it is not part of a free market social order, that it was an inside operation from 97 00:10:46.100 --> 00:10:54.900 from Day One and that it is getting a free ride within academia. 98 00:10:54.900 --> 00:11:04.620 Murray Rothbard's book on America's Great Depression was published in 1963 because he had been 99 00:11:04.620 --> 00:11:08.500 associated with the Volcker Fund and the Volcker Fund money was still being used to publish 100 00:11:08.500 --> 00:11:11.700 his material. 101 00:11:11.700 --> 00:11:17.840 About six months before, maybe a little longer before, his book Man, Economy, and State was 102 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:23.580 also published by Van Nostrand, also funded by the Volcker Organization. 103 00:11:23.580 --> 00:11:28.440 And in Man, Economy, and State, there is a chapter on money. 104 00:11:28.440 --> 00:11:35.680 And I contend that in any book that is of major importance, that is a comprehensive 105 00:11:35.680 --> 00:11:45.480 or treatise on economics, that is the clearest, most cogent, most definitively argued presentation 106 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:53.600 in favor of free market money and opposed to central bank money that had ever been written 107 00:11:53.600 --> 00:12:02.980 at the time. The book was unknown for years. It was not known even within libertarian circles 108 00:12:02.980 --> 00:12:09.700 for many years. I was fortunate to get a first edition within really a few weeks of its publication 109 00:12:09.700 --> 00:12:16.140 and in 1963 I sat down, I read it, and I also read the book that he had just published called 110 00:12:16.140 --> 00:12:25.940 America's Great Depression in which he blamed the expansion of monetary reserves by the Federal 111 00:12:25.940 --> 00:12:55.940 The Federal Reserve in the 1925 to 1929 period as the basis of the bubble of the stock market and the basis of the misallocation of capital that resulted from that bubble and therefore when he came to discuss what we regard as the Great Depression, the period from 1930 to 1933, he blamed Federal Reserve policy not of the 1930 to 1933 period but Federal Reserve policy 112 00:12:55.940 --> 00:13:01.380 from 1925 to 1930. 113 00:13:01.380 --> 00:13:11.100 And in that same period, in that same year, in that same town, was published a monetary 114 00:13:11.100 --> 00:13:16.260 history of the United States, published by Princeton University Press, co-authored by 115 00:13:16.260 --> 00:13:24.020 Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, who also talked about the causes of the depression 116 00:13:24.020 --> 00:13:31.400 and they blamed the failure, supposed failure of the Fed to expand monetary reserves from 117 00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:38.520 1930 to 1933 as the reason why the Great Depression became a catastrophe. 118 00:13:38.520 --> 00:13:47.020 And it was that argument that was picked up by virtually every school of thought of all 119 00:13:47.020 --> 00:13:53.060 economic persuasions by the media and it has been reiterated ever since that it was the 120 00:13:53.060 --> 00:13:59.060 It was a failure of the Federal Reserve to expand monetary reserves from 30 to 33. 121 00:13:59.060 --> 00:14:06.060 That was the cause of the Great Depression and it was not true. 122 00:14:06.060 --> 00:14:12.060 Especially in 32 and 33. It was not true. 123 00:14:12.060 --> 00:14:18.060 They expanded reserves. The reason was the banks were collapsing. There was no FDIC. 124 00:14:18.060 --> 00:14:22.060 That was why you had the contraction. Nothing to do with Federal Reserve policy. 125 00:14:22.060 --> 00:14:52.060 everything to do with the fact that 9,000 banks went belly up, 4,000 of them in 1932 and 1933, period, really most of it in 1933, enormous contraction as a result of collapsing banks, which had nothing to do with Federal Reserve policy because the Fed wasn't in charge, there was no FDIC, the banks simply went under. So Rothbard as the 126 00:14:52.060 --> 00:15:22.060 The ultimate heckler, the ultimate master of the heckle, spent his career in the wilderness, academically speaking, bringing accusation based on cogent presentation of facts and theory, to explain why it was the prior Federal Reserve policy that led to the bubble and it was not Federal Reserve policy in terms of contraction of the monetary base from 30 to 33. Both arguments presented 127 00:15:22.060 --> 00:15:28.020 The same year, the same town of publication, Princeton, New Jersey. 128 00:15:28.020 --> 00:15:33.780 The academic world simply ignored America's Great Depression for 20 years and it was not 129 00:15:33.780 --> 00:15:38.560 until finally one of the great historians of the 20th century, and I would almost contend 130 00:15:38.560 --> 00:15:44.020 the greatest writing historian of the 20th century, Paul Johnson, in his book Modern 131 00:15:44.020 --> 00:15:51.020 Times, went back to the discussion of the crisis of the 30s, found Rothbard's America's 132 00:15:51.020 --> 00:15:57.300 This Great Depression and relied upon that presentation to explain why that there was 133 00:15:57.300 --> 00:16:01.940 the collapse of the American economy from 1930 to 1933. 134 00:16:01.940 --> 00:16:08.820 That was the first academician of any reputation who accepted Rothbard's thesis. 135 00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:10.700 And for that I am exceedingly grateful. 136 00:16:10.700 --> 00:16:15.700 It was a very strange thing as I was reading, and it was a magnificently written book, as 137 00:16:15.700 --> 00:16:21.780 Because I was reading this book and I got to the section and I'm saying this narration 138 00:16:21.780 --> 00:16:24.420 is extraordinary. 139 00:16:24.420 --> 00:16:28.840 The only person to write this would be Rothbard and I turned to the back where the footnotes 140 00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:31.940 are and there he cited Rothbard's America's Great Depression. 141 00:16:31.940 --> 00:16:39.380 I was stunned, first time in my career, first time in my career that I had seen that happen 142 00:16:39.380 --> 00:16:45.420 from the time in 63 when I read that as a man just out of college until I had received 143 00:16:45.420 --> 00:16:52.420 With my Ph.D. I found no other case of a mainstream, respected academician who took seriously Rothbard's thesis. 144 00:16:52.420 --> 00:17:01.420 Rothbard was the ultimate heckler and destroyed his career as a result of it in terms of fame and fortune and potential reputation. 145 00:17:01.420 --> 00:17:09.420 Now with respect to Jekyll, why Jekyll? Because of Jekyll Island. 146 00:17:09.420 --> 00:17:13.860 they think well everyone in this room is here and so everyone in this room 147 00:17:13.860 --> 00:17:18.700 thinks well of course Jekyll Island 100th anniversary of course capital O 148 00:17:18.700 --> 00:17:26.580 capital C of course I challenge you go back to your rooms if you brought a 149 00:17:26.580 --> 00:17:33.660 microcomputer along to plug into Wi-Fi or do it at home oh I challenge you to 150 00:17:33.660 --> 00:17:46.380 Do the following test, interesting test. Type in to Google the words, Federal Reserve, Jekyll 151 00:17:46.380 --> 00:17:54.300 Island. You can do it two ways, as four words, click, or you can do it the advanced, super 152 00:17:54.300 --> 00:18:01.940 duper way, quotation mark, Federal Reserve, quotation marks, Jekyll Island, go click. 153 00:18:01.940 --> 00:18:10.020 Now here is my challenge to you. Find one link in the first five pages that is not to 154 00:18:10.020 --> 00:18:21.700 extreme right-wing fringe. Look for a CNN, an NBC, a CBS, a Time, a Newsweek. Look at 155 00:18:21.700 --> 00:18:28.260 any conventional mainstream media link at least in the first four pages of Google. Now 156 00:18:28.260 --> 00:18:35.500 What you will find is link after link after link to G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from 157 00:18:35.500 --> 00:18:42.220 Jekyll Island, which by the way is a book that is as good as the title and from a marketing 158 00:18:42.220 --> 00:18:49.940 standpoint the title is magnificent. I say that as a marketer. And Ed Griffin wrote a 159 00:18:49.940 --> 00:18:57.500 fine book, but he is not a Ph.D. economist. He is an extreme right-wing fringist with 160 00:18:57.500 --> 00:19:05.500 and Card-Carrying Capabilities, and he is not considered anything except a crackpot within the academic community. 161 00:19:05.500 --> 00:19:18.500 This story is no more known 100 years later than it was in 1915 prior to that one article by Bertie Forbes about the meeting. 162 00:19:18.500 --> 00:19:23.500 This is a blackout, and it is a blackout of monumental proportions, 163 00:19:23.500 --> 00:19:28.660 is one of the most important events of modern American history and ultimately, really, given 164 00:19:28.660 --> 00:19:33.380 the power of the Fed and the American economy, this is one of the most important historical 165 00:19:33.380 --> 00:19:39.620 events of modern times. And it is blacked out. It is not in the textbooks. It is not 166 00:19:39.620 --> 00:19:48.780 in the mainstream media. It is limited to peculiar, fringe groups like this. 167 00:19:48.780 --> 00:19:55.420 So you've got Heckel, and it cost Rothbard his career, and you have Jekyll, which is 168 00:19:55.420 --> 00:20:03.620 still buried, and if you ever go public with it, you are immediately automatically classified 169 00:20:03.620 --> 00:20:09.460 as right-wing fringe member. And there are very few economic historians or conventional 170 00:20:09.460 --> 00:20:18.580 historians or writers of textbooks who have any desire to wind up like Murray Rothbard. 171 00:20:18.580 --> 00:20:24.020 Now what does it mean? I would say, you people, because of who you are and where you are and 172 00:20:24.020 --> 00:20:29.340 what you've read, are in a very special situation. And because of that, there is no escape from 173 00:20:29.340 --> 00:20:35.540 personal responsibility. Because you don't get anything in life without personal responsibility. 174 00:20:35.540 --> 00:20:40.380 If you have received the benefit, you are responsible for doing something with that. 175 00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:46.960 And that, I think, any ethical system that I've ever seen, would accept. So you have 176 00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:52.060 have enormous responsibility, though you think it's just a small little group coming together 177 00:20:52.060 --> 00:20:58.520 for a peculiar discussion, listening to academics chatter on about an event that has essentially 178 00:20:58.520 --> 00:21:02.360 been buried for a hundred years. 179 00:21:02.360 --> 00:21:06.480 Now there is an attempt to get this story out by people who clearly are part of the 180 00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:13.480 right-wing intellectual fringe, but are intellectuals indeed, and that is most of all, of the Mises 181 00:21:13.480 --> 00:21:15.200 Institute. 182 00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:19.640 And I would say, if you have not read the background of the ultimate heckler, if you 183 00:21:19.640 --> 00:21:25.800 have not sat down personally and read the heckle, then it is time that you do it. 184 00:21:25.800 --> 00:21:27.480 And here's how you start. 185 00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:33.360 What has government done to our money, 1964, as fine a statement as I have ever read in 186 00:21:33.360 --> 00:21:38.040 my career, and I've been reading this stuff for over 50 years, the finest statement on 187 00:21:38.040 --> 00:21:51.040 The monetary theory that I've ever read, written by Rothbard almost as probably an afternoon, I suspect, maybe two, probably did it in two afternoons. 188 00:21:51.040 --> 00:22:03.040 The next thing you do after you read that, and I suggest you read it, is you get Man Economy and State and you read the chapter on money because that's going to give you the background, the real background of monetary theory. 189 00:22:03.040 --> 00:22:05.040 And you need to know that. 190 00:22:05.040 --> 00:22:09.040 It's not good enough to be a heckler if you don't know why you're heckling. 191 00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:15.040 It's not good enough to know about Jekyll Island if you just know about Jekyll Island 192 00:22:15.040 --> 00:22:20.040 and the meeting. 193 00:22:20.040 --> 00:22:26.040 And once you have done that, you can then, in good conscience, 194 00:22:26.040 --> 00:22:31.040 sit down with Rothbard's book on the case against the Fed. 195 00:22:31.040 --> 00:22:39.040 And if you don't want to do that, and you want to do the real hardcore stuff, get his book on the history of money, because it's all in there. 196 00:22:39.040 --> 00:22:46.040 That section is found inside that, but it takes you all the way back through the 19th century. 197 00:22:46.040 --> 00:22:57.040 Tremendous presentation of the history of the war between central bankers and free market economics and free market banking policy. 198 00:22:57.040 --> 00:23:02.900 Policy, and you'll find this war, this was not a recent event. This has been going on 199 00:23:02.900 --> 00:23:11.360 in the United States since 1790, and it keeps coming back. It keeps coming back. It is the 200 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:16.400 creature from Jekyll Island, but it started really much earlier than Jekyll Island. Now 201 00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:23.440 for those of you who are really hardcore types, who really want to get the full story, then 202 00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:30.420 Then you go to Rothbard's book, The Mystery of Banking, which is the only upper division 203 00:23:30.420 --> 00:23:39.240 level textbook for an upper division college class in money and banking in which he says, 204 00:23:39.240 --> 00:23:49.520 the author says, that fractional reserve banking is immoral, a matter of fraud, a matter of 205 00:23:49.520 --> 00:23:54.440 and Forcible Wealth Redistribution. 206 00:23:54.440 --> 00:24:00.720 That kind of language does not appear in academic presentations, certainly not in textbooks. 207 00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:07.160 But the mystery of banking is a very clear statement of how the process really works. 208 00:24:07.160 --> 00:24:09.880 And I commend it to you. 209 00:24:09.880 --> 00:24:19.400 Now finally, for those of you who said, I think I'd rather come here and listen to economists 210 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:26.400 I want you to get out your checkbook and make another decision, and that decision is, for 211 00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:47.200 the same amount of money as buying a bullion gold coin, how many students could you bring 212 00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:56.200 We're turning this summer to one of the Mises University seminars, week-long seminars, either undergraduate or graduate. 213 00:24:56.200 --> 00:25:02.200 If you wrote a check for that one ounce coin, how many students could you bring in? 214 00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:07.200 You can drop Rockwell a letter and ask him. 215 00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:12.200 And when there's a thousand bucks on the line, Rockwell will respond. 216 00:25:12.200 --> 00:25:24.200 Because it's not about just buying one ounce gold coins to cover your backside when this monstrosity, 217 00:25:24.200 --> 00:25:28.200 and by the way, Murray would have called it and did call it a monstrosity, 218 00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:34.200 when this monstrosity brings disaster to this country and the monetary system, 219 00:25:34.200 --> 00:25:38.200 what will you have done to put on the brakes? 220 00:25:38.200 --> 00:26:08.200 And more important, long-term, what will you have done to train the next crew of academic economists who will go out and shatter to understand why it was that this monster, this creature from Jekyll Island, was able to get away with gigantic fraud, with the absolute silence of the academic profession and, understandably, the absolute silence of the major New Yorker 221 00:26:08.200 --> 00:26:19.000 of Banks. Because ultimately we do face one threat within the Fed, and it is a threat. 222 00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:25.280 And that is there will be enough votes to say, end the Fed, and Congress will say, we 223 00:26:25.280 --> 00:26:38.120 will absorb the Fed. And we move from Bernanke to Barney. And that scares me. 224 00:26:38.120 --> 00:26:45.120 Bernanke wants his reputation as an economist not to have presided over the destruction of the dollar. 225 00:26:45.120 --> 00:26:51.120 I guarantee you he wants that reputation. He does not want the footnote as the man who destroyed the dollar. 226 00:26:51.120 --> 00:26:56.120 And I don't think Barney Frank would care. 227 00:26:56.120 --> 00:27:03.120 It is not enough to end the Fed, it is enough to end central banking, 228 00:27:03.120 --> 00:27:09.120 But not at the expense of having the United States Congress take over the function of the central bank. 229 00:27:09.120 --> 00:27:15.120 That would be a catastrophe laid on a catastrophe. 230 00:27:15.120 --> 00:27:25.120 So, you have come, you have, as we used to say in the right wing, you have come to eat, meet and retreat. 231 00:27:25.120 --> 00:27:32.120 And now it is time to go back and if we come again, eat, meet and defeat. 232 00:27:32.120 --> 00:27:34.120 I wish you well.