Possibility. We have never had a decline of house prices on a nationwide basis. We have also said that there not printing money, but they do. Now she will be in charge. The number one most important economic decision i will make. John probably the most second powerful job in the world, yet people dont know what it is. The fed. I dont know. John a small group of old, white people who get to spend trillions of your dollars in secret. No secret to ball of government officials should have the authority to create money out of thin air. John are you fed up with the fed . Thats our show tonight. And now john stossel. John i have done hundreds of tv shows, but there is one topic i have always avoided, the fed. I know is important, more so than most of what i cover, but it is so complex injury. People in charge even work at being tall. Alan greenspan called it fed speech and tried to be obscure because he did not want to spook the market. Bernanke and janet yellen, but the fed is crucially important. It can destroy your savings, affect whether you have a job or a future. I wish there were a simple way to explain what it does which is why am thankful their is a new film out about the fed called money for nothing. Jim bruce made the film, and before we get your movie of want to play a part of the video made by the Federal Reserve. The fed is important because it keeps americas Monetary System stable and growing with low inflation was fosters further growth and helps keep the economy growing in the right direction. John it sounds good. The economy going in the right direction. You could argue the intentions may be good, but the results are not always. John you interviewed janet yellen for this film. I chose not to show any of her interview bids because she was even more boring than everybody else. You get the feeling they were get this . You know, i think since greenspan there has been a tradition of the fed trying to operate, you know, outside of the limelight, behind the curtains a little bit and not give a late its policies. John what i especially like about your film is it covers the rationale, the good intentions behind it and how they sometimes make things worse. The current fed was created to reassure people when a bank fails. Bank customers would become suspicious and they would want to pull their money out of the bank. Then some other people would be afraid that their bank would go, so people would want to pull their money out of deposits and withdraw the money as currency. The banks would not have the currency to pay out. They would close their doors. Something has to get done here. Senator nelson aldrich, a center of new yorks most powerful bankers to an island off the coast of georgia to secretly negotiate plans for american central bank. Traveling under false names and a private railroad car, the great secrecy of this expedition with foster conspiracy theories for decades to come. John why would they used false names . You know, it was done at that time that they were worried about we had to Central Banks in the country 100 years ago, 17911816. We get rid of them because there was a sense that they would favor the wealthy and politically connected. John your documentary says about ten years after the fed was created its leaders decided to sit stimulate the economy. The roaring 20s, the fed induced boom and bust. At first the low rates unintentionally helped boost stock market and debt bubbles. Alarmed fed men clamped down setting the stage for a recession in stockmarket crash. Current Federal Reserve chairman ben bernanke, as we did it, we being the Federal Reserve, calls the Great Depression. John they have wised up and learned their lesson. The lesson that they need to line is that it needs to back out of markets. Allow markets to operate more freely. John know, we can manage if we learn from the depression, the inflation. We will manage it. Not that could lead managing the economy. A more positive role. It is side it did not create enough money. Forty years later they proclaimed that the feds should also fight unemployment which cause the next crisis because they printed a lot of money. The extra money cause inflation. The u. S. Promised to be the worlds reserve currency currency. The fed created far more dollars than it could ever redeem, and now the u. S. Could no longer keep that promise. I have elected that secretary of the treasury to suspend the convertibility of the dollar into gold. For the first time in history the dollar was just a piece of paper. What does this mean for you . Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today. Of the next decade the cost of living more than doubled. The dollar lost more than half of its value. John nixon was wrong. Imagine that to my politician be wrong. We got inflation which rose up to 13 . The fed keeps making the same mistake over and over again. In the 1970s it was printing too much money. The dollar lost more than half its value. Right after nixon made that promise. Inflation is low today, and recently they had the confidence to do what they have done of the past few years contract to stimulate the economy by printing lots of money to buy Treasury Bonds on dubious bank paper. In total they have spent almost 4 trillion. A dozen people decide to create 4 trillion. They did most of this after the stimulus failed to stimulate. The fed upped the ante. With Interest Rates already at zero the fed only way to choose the economy was to print more money. A technique called quantitative easing or qe. You have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this . 100 . John 100 confidence. Japan has been doing quantitative easing for the past 16 years. John not going well. It has not worked. The problem is engaging in experiments. You know, theyre not really watching on to that. John and they get stuff from all the time. Here is what ben bernanke said before the house and bubble burst. The problem with the sub prime market seems likely to be contained. John and they denied that they basically print money. Is sounds like they are printing money. One myth that is out there is that what we are doing is printing money. We are not. Tax money that the fed is spending. It is much more akin to printing money and it is to borrowing. You have been printing money. Effectively. John getting that one right. Why why . Treating a trillion dollars of new currency each year digitally cannot print to get anywhere. And john not exactly printing, but they are creating. Creating an affair which shocks a lot of people, but that is the fact. John the line in the movie that most test me was when you say that these two fed chairman appointed by republicans and democrats have increased Central Planning in our economy more than ever in history in secret more than 500 billion a mortgage is. A 2 trillion more of government debt, they almost have twice john Central Planning. If it worked in communist countries. The rock history we have seen that market economies to better than centrally planned ones. The question is knowing that lie in the wake of the crisis were choosing to give the fed more power and influence. In the film we argue they should start handing the power back to the markets. John thank you. Your film is great, and people can simply go to my website and find out how to see it. We will plan more throughout the show. Now, when the housing bubble burst about five years ago, the fed Committee Even more of our money to keeping wall street flow. Stocks crest today. Bank of america down. The worst day ever on wall street. A Market Driven by fear involving not just the banks the fed was traded to protect but the hedge funds, investment banks, and insurance conglomerate. John are you committing in this interview that youre not going to let any of these banks fail. The matter what theiks like thet going to fail. Theyre not going to fail. John we have the doctrine too big to fail. Implied before, but now it was real. It was believed that the fed saved us from another depression an economist from the university of georgia cities this. They say this to mind told. They did not save us. First of all, we have had a recession, and a really bad one. It is now over five years since the crash. It would have been worse if they did not bail on these banks and print all this money. As a matter of fact it would have been a lot better if they had not bail out bear stear. That got the ball rolling or all the other Financial Firms started to take greater risks, the big ones, thinking they would be bailed out. John and now too big to fail, we are stuck with that because they get to borrow money more cheaply because people assume theyre too big to fail. There is no lanes to this process unless something is done to cut the powers of the Federal Reserve. John would you abolish the fed . I would abolish it as the kind of institution it yesterday. We have a paper dollar. Something has to keep it scarce. It is not naturally so. That could be done by computer regulating the supply of the stuff according to a simple rule john like pitch. In essence. There may be a better rule, but the point is, what we have now is a fait with Unlimited Power and discretion which means that power and discretion to make huge mistakes and it shows no sign of improving overtime. John the alternative, something called free banking. Thats right. Several nations prospered and have Financial Stability without any banks. Canada had no central bank can sell some years into the depression and it did not degraded because of the depression. John a copy of america. The partly copied america. Thats right. But prior to 1914 when we established the fed, the Canadian Free currency system with a bunch of private banks supplying currency john i just need to be clear, each bank could make its own currency and you contrast it are not. Thats right. Different banks for their ious and their reputation. And there were nationally branched banks because canada allowed it and the u. S. Did not. They had a remarkably superior record to the u. S. John fewer banks failed. Many fewer banks failed. In the Great Depression it is a notorious fact that while we have the fed that was supposed to prevent bank failures, thousands of u. S. Banks failed. In canada not even one bank failed. John but people around me who say, a few marbles would have prevented the housing crash in the banking crash. You know, that is why we need this, doddfrank, all of these pages. But this is absurd. Why would bureaucrats who are supposed to enforce this have the wisdom to prevent the housing bubble when their boss had no clue it was coming . Before the crash bernanke was asked, might the Housing Market crash . What is the worstcase scenario if, in fact a much we were to see prices come down substantially . I dont buy your premise. It is a pretty unlikely possibility. We have never had a defined crisis. The fed was the last to see the crisis coming, and yet at the same time they were helping to fuel the housing boom. John now we will get janet yellen. She will not be much different than ben bernanke. If anything she might air even more on the side of easy money and he did. John that is what everybody says. Thank you. Coming up, so far the fed bond buying has not cost that much inflation, but might that change . Will we soon have to go to the Grocery Store with this . It will be awful of money . It has happened in other countries. Will it happen here . Next. Next. Coming out. This is the quicksilver cash back card from capital one. Its not the juggle a bunch of rotating categories card. Its not the sign up for rewards each quarter card. Its the nogames, nomessinground, noearninglimithaving, doilooklikeimjoking, turboboosting, heavyweightchampion oftheworld cash back card. This is the quicksilver cash back card from capital one. Unlimited 1. 5 cash ba on every purchase, everywhere, every damn day. Now, tell me, whats in your wallet . Help the gulf when we made recover and learn the gulf, bp from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. I can tell you safety is at the heart of everything we do. Weve added cuttingedge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a stateoftheart monitoring center, whe experts watch over all drilling activity twentyfourseven. And were sharing what weve learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. Our commitment has never been stronger. John do you trust these . Inflation is about 2 percent per year. Not bad. That means the dollar will be worth almost a dollar next year. 2 percent adds up. Earlier in the show we pointed out that the dollar has lost 90 96 of its value since the fed started. That means it takes 23 to buy what 1 bought 100 years ago. It could be much worse. Inflation was 10 percent when i started reporting. If that kept up for a century it will take 12,000 to buy about 1 bought. And if you think that is bad, this is a 100 trillion bill from zimbabwe. Indeed rulers printed money like crazy and eventually even this 100 trillion became worthless. But probably the most famous example of destructive inflation happened in germany after world war two. Germany lost the war, victors including the United States demanded reparations. Germany did not have any money, so the German Central Bank started printing german bonds. The fund reparations and other spending. Some familiar . Chair remarks became worthless unless. So much so that companies brought real wheel barrows to the bank to estimate their weekly payroll. Soon afterward as inflation continued individual shoppers would have to show up with wheelbarrows to carry cash to the store to buy groceries. Finally, money was a worthless people use it for wallpaper. Now, america is not opposed or germany, but might we suffered horrible inflation . May be says the author of currency wars, the making of the next global crisis. That is james richards. I assume we are smarter and different. Well, we are not, john. The crisis would blow over. The central bank getting things wrong time after time. The fed has one of the worst forecasting records in economics. Its hard to find no worse record. John fed inflation is low. Inflation is low as measured by the government, but were waiting for the spark. They think theyre playing with the thermostat. The house is to cool you die lit up. If it is hot the data down. Once they dont understand, once the behavior changes is gets out of control very quickly. The 70s. That is the part that the fed does not understand. John it got so bad that you have a bill that illustrates part of a problem. 100,000 mark note, printing so much money they ran out of ink and paper and only printed it on one side. They did not want to use the meat. That is how bad it was. They came up with the worker rounds. John people would go out to eat and pay at the beginning of the meal. It would cost three times more by the end even know over the course of an hour to. You negotiate your bit in a bill without paying in up front. People from the city. There was a lot worse than some of the anecdotes would lead you to believe. John is led to the a year and a rise of hitler. It led directly to that. The thing is that with inflation , the height of inflation which is what you get all winners and losers. The winners are people who can see it coming, hard assets. Warren buffett is a good example the railroad is all hard assets, land, money rights tomorrow, at center. He was dumping dollars. John the industrialist was okay because he still have a factory. For them dollars of liabilities, not just assets. Speculative to okay. People who buy gold. People with insurance policies, annuities, retirement income. The everyday american gets crushed. First of all, 2 , cuts the government in half and 35 years. An average lifetime it will only be worth a quarter of that. It is 2 for the time being. It sucks that way. The. Coming up we will talk to a close advisor of president obamas says many the fed. First, ron paul this year and says, abolish the fed. Which is is . It is long overdue. We need to audit the better reserve. Is past time taught at the Federal Reserve. We have a much more destructive Business Cycle than we ever had before the Federal Reserve. John politicians criticizing the fed. We never use to hear that. Maybe if you understood the fed or even economics, but whatever the reason this new interest is a good thing. That think it happened mostly because one president s of candid it talked about the fed. For decades he was the only politician talking about it. He, of course, the author of and the fed. Ron paul. So those two democrats and your son want to audit the fed. You want to end it. How can you be so short when so many smart people say we need the fed for stability. The mess that we are in now is consequence of the fed. They have been getting away too long. They create the artificial baubles and get a lot of credit for that. The crash comes, the correction comes. Then they claim printing money faster will keep you out of it. No secret to balt of bankers were government officials should have the authority to create money out of thin air. They will destroy the money. It has been known for a long time, way back through ancient chinese history. They tried it and it does not work. This is what the constitution said, nothing but silver and gold could be legal tender. Maybe the best transition would be to legalize competition. The book is written john currency competition. Currency competition when the market, you know, maybe between offers competition, which is legal. But the government does not like it. We have to see what they do about it. John when you say attach it to gold, i look at gold prices commanded asthma and a stable currency. If you want to look at purchasing power, like get it over 500 years. An ounce of gold has maintained a fairly steady purchasing power john this group of men has created 4 trillion. People seem fine with it. If you have a problem, you just print more. A problem with that, you spend more. Any type of slow down, you are supposed to spend more money. People do it, the government has to do it. They try to borrow. If there is no money tomorrow, they printed out of thin air. John this will lead to up rampant on inflation. We have not had it yet. We have not had rapid inflation but a lot more than they will admit to. A lot of the nation now. The whole weight of austrian economics is when you destroy the currency of printing a lot of money youre in the middle class, really help the wealthy. Money goes to the wealthy class. Right now today the money is in the top one or 10 , and it is not because of the freemarket, capitalism. Is because of the distortion in the currency. The rich get richer. The middleclass is being wiped out as a consequence of the money system. John when you say we dont need a fed, but most every country has a central bank now. Bubbles and inflation because of the fed, but we had bubbles and inflation before we created the fed. If you look between the time we went back on the Gold Standard in the 1870s up until world war one it was stable and could john nine recessions from 1883 to 1913, three recessions in the years up to now. When the feds eight of these recessions were minor. The depression lasted for 15 years and look at what is happening in japan. They are not a booming economy. Like what is happening to us now john Central Banks would be booming. I believe that they would be. There really do you read it would not be perfect. Dealers of government. Of the marketplace handles these things, there will be distortions, but they corrected quickly, and the people who overextended themselves, their other ones that get punished. John thankyou, ron paul. Up next, adviser to president obama is says ron paul is just wrong. n c cpcpcpc÷noxmhmhyhyhyhyh john some people are fed up with the Federal Reserve, some like ron paul want to abolish it, but plenty of smart people defended. Economist Austan Goolsbee who until recently was chair of president obamas economic advisors said, we need the fed. Why . It basically does two things that matter a lot for the country. The first use in normal times it is controlling the money supply is interestrate decisions. By doing that and by doing it independently of congressional control it is kept inflation at manageable levels for the most part in the United States. The second is coming times that are not normal times by a big financial crises, the fed is the only thing that pervades the entire system from exploding. That is partly why they invented the fed. And we did not have the fed and we had these big financial crises it would bring down the entire economy in Great Depressionlike Great Depressionlike defense. John we have the Great Depression after we had the fed. Before we had the fed there were plenty of recessions, but they were over quickly. Well technically true on the first, but the fed did exist. The best system as we have a dad did not. It was like they were reversed printing money. That is what led to the depression. John learn from that. Smarter now. I think they have learned. Theres certainly more educated. And none of their more intelligent. We had the fed in the 70s, 13 percent inflation. And is not necessarily caused by the fed, but it is true that until paul volcker comes in and says to let the mayor were going to squeeze inflation out of the system no matter how bad it hurts, we definitely had our rising inflation environment. That was pretty is a dark spot on the history of the fed. I am not mean to say in any way that central bankers are commissioned or the only view what is right. Im just saying it is important to have the fed there. There is there really an alternative. If he say, well, if the fed were not there would we not have had an inflation in the 1970s . I dont know. John what about alternative currencies, it can print the bill. The stossel bank in print, and people would choose. Between. We went through a time like that in the United States. That is the way that it used to be. There was no fed. Every bank printed its own money. As you might imagine, if you dont have an Oversight Authority and as a legal commitment to china focus on price stability the way the fed has in its dual mandate, i think you run the risk of big problems john ron pauls is argued that the fed fears that worked. You get credit for the boom and then the bus tappans and ease credit and get the recovery. It is some element of truth and i think a much of the view that if Central Banks do things wrong they can inflate bubbles. It is rather important to emphasize. There is absolutely no evidence that there are more bubbles are more intense bubbles under Central Banks then there are when there were not Central Banks. John to you get worried about giving a dozen people so much power over some much money . Sometimes i think that we all shared. We are americans, the most suspicious of Authority People that there are on a. That said, i get over that suspicion when i start looking at countries where they dont make the fed independent. Easy much higher average inflation rates over time. John it confuses me that we have a dozen old white people that have the power to spend 4 trillion. Yeah, but be a little careful that. In normal times of theyre doing is deciding whether the Interest Rates there no there lending money in buying bonds. Buying securities. What i was going to object to a little bit is this saying that theyre spending money. We do it in an environment, what we call that zero lower bound environment where you cannot lose in Monetary Policy because youre already at zero. The fed is trying to figure out how you loosen Monetary Policy when you face that kind of thing john you dont worry about sudden, horrible inflation . All of this money sloshing around. They printed it. I worry about many things. I am an economist. We sit around every night worrying. But of all the things i worry about, rampant, immediate danger of hyperinflation is definitely not in my top ten. If you look economists tell a lot about well least a high inflation. It is not just the expansion of the monetary base. The gold bugs, the people afraid of in the inflation like the expansion of money in say, hey, Milton Friedman taught us expansion of money was inflation. What they are forgetting is that in that formula, what matters is not just the monetary base. Its also the velocity of money. I that someone signed the fed is printing money, but for every bank that is not lending whereas in the 2000s there were, that is doing the reverse, that is the printing money. All the fed is doing is making up for all of the the monetizing that is going on in the fundamentally broken credit system. As that starts the heal the fed will get out of the position it is in. John i hope you are right, Austan Goolsbee. Thank you. God bless. John up next, fed governors being tortured and murdered. It did not really happen, but it is a new best seller about the fed. John i hate to admit this, but as important as the faded and i have avoided doing shows about it because the fed is, well, boring and confusing. But i ask people what it was, this was really a typical answer. What is the fed . The fed . John the fed . Ftdfed, the federal government . John people know very little about it even though it has the power to play around with trillions of our dollars. So i should report on it, but that details are boring, and i work on competitive television. Its time for you and you stop watching and use my job to mind is the show, which i would like to keep. So i avoided the show on the fed until now. After all, you dont see any riders putting a best sellers about the fed. Well, actually, you do. One. His latest book, hidden order, is about the fed. Why did you put in this boring institution . It is actually not that boring. My job is to give you a great page read from cover to cover. If you walk away from the book having learned more that is icing on the cake. For me the fed is fascinating, particularly how much secrecy which surrounds himself with on purpose. John the form it in secret. Absolutely. A bunch of bankers with the few government officials that stole out of new york city one night in 1910, did not even use the train station. They went to hoboken. There are going and a duck hunting trip. They went down to Jekyll Island off the coast of georgia and hats this big plan to launch the third biggest bank in americas history. John to previous ones have failed and been killed. You make it sound sinister. Maybe there were just trying not to rile the market. Central banks were incredibly unpopular with the american people. All of the participants that went down to Jekyll Island used assumed names of first names because they did not want this to get out. The new was of going to go over well with the American Population because hes in bankers were hated to monday as manipulators, not ordinary people. And you had banks booming in the south and west of business is deciding we dont need the banks. It will take up profits and reinvest them in our own businesses. This kabob got to get it to save and monopolize the Banking Industry for themselves. John the first one was in 1791 and lasted about 20 years. With the award date taking care of people no longer see a need. Congress closed it. It did not want to central bank. The second bank, 1816, Andrew Jackson close did and said it was susceptible to corruption. You can look at thomas change who with his parents put commonsense said that central banking was the surest route to despotism and not a loss of liberty. John but today most of the socalled experts say we need a central bank. [laughter] john make sure inflation is moderate canals with employment. That is the smoke that comes out of the Federal Reserve. John more than the Federal Reserve. Talk to any sport financial person. How about this. Youre a capitalist, i am a capitalist. We both like freemarket. Everything has to have some kind of litmus test. The dollar hasslost 96 percent of its value. John many years ago. Twenty years after. John freeman pointed out and made a mistake and have learned. The fed has reached redefined the term inflation since the 1970s. Theres a lot of things. I read thrillers. Epic the fed begins at about the shadow we all of the step that seems to the Conspiracy Theory was well researched, data and history about the fed than i think people will find Fascinating Group brought in a great thriller. John one thing about her book is that you have the hero read economics in one easy lesson. It really is economics in one easy lesson. The founders award as the greatest threat to our liberty was ignorance of the currency, coinage, and have a Monetary System works. As american it is important for me to at least raise these issues in the public square. John im glad you brought your talent to this important subject. Thank you. Why would you give this woman permission to spend 4 trillion of our money . Secretly . When we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. I can tell you safety is at the heart of everything we do. Weve added cuttingedge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a stateoftheart monitoring center, whe experts watch over all drilling activity twentyfourseven. And were sharing what weve learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. Our commitment has never been stronger. John over the next weeks we will hear more about janet yellen, the president s nominee for fed chair. Some praise to mothers attack. I say, i dont much care who the chairman is. She may be scarier than some because she has pushed for more stimulus, but all of the candidates share the same belief that day, a dozen people, can manage our economy. What conceit. Our lead is voluntarily give them this unbelievable power. Lets put it in perspective. Our bloated government will spend three and a half trillion dollars this year. This is a crazy amount of money. Almost double what we spin when bill clinton was president. Also this year quietly the fed bought government bonds, bank paper, some of which is junk, lent money to banks raising its Balance Sheet, our Balance Sheet to over three and a half trillion. Just as much as our whole government spent. Most of what the fed does it does secretly. I want to trust them, believe their brilliant people in know what theyre doing and meanwhile, but know 12 people know enough. Knowledge is dispersed throughout the economy, throughout the world. When central bankers try to manage the usually make things worse. In the 70s that fed wreck lives by enabling doubledigit inflation. A movie about how the fed governors felt pressured. They would tell each other, we are not going to let the inflation get out of hand this time, and in the Unemployment Rate would rise. Though climate of opinion was against them. John years later after the dot com bubble burst they brought easing money back again. The fed softened the dot com crash but aggressive interestrate cuts and now the same cuts set off another bomb. We found it was interesting and stimulated. An unsustainable bubble in housing. We ended up the courage in a housing boom. Ben bernanke, were not going to let prices fall. We will create the nfl of bills to lift the prices of everything by a little. Did not want to see people out of jobs. Wellintentioned. The consequences are recreated three incentives to borrow. John the housing bubble, the housing bust. 7 Million People will lose their homes. This is crazy. Textbook when you take rates that low youll have a boom and bust that will be likely to follow. And dont think any of us to ever worked with the fed take comfort from the fact that somebody screwed up. Everyone wants to go back and say, things are fine now. Were asking for another crisis. We have never done this before. We have never been here before. The Federal Reserve is opeting by the seat of their pants. They were supposed to us these people. Most recently that fed printed a trillion dollars to prop up failing banks, some in foreign countries. More money than the bailouts which congress at least voted on, but the fed money was secret. It became public because of the freedom of information request. Austin stepped up, but it was hard to find someone and i thought it would be. Libertarians like ron paul criticize the fed. No authority in the constitution authorizing a central bank which means there would be no Federal Reserve system. John well, there is. Today they spent trillions of our dollars, often in secret, and people have no clue about it. The fed to my dont know. The fed. I dont know. John at least a few people pay attention. The central bank. John what does it do . Determines Monetary Policy. What is Monetary Policy . How much money is allowed in circulation. John three cheers for that guy. Were talking about trillions of your dollars year. That is our show. That is our show. See you next week. Hello, im dave gentry. Welcome to small stocks and big money [music] [music] [music] [music] first, a redchip nation update. Chromadex the chart looks very promising. It has been trading in a narrow range between 60 cents and 85 centsover the last 12 months the 24 month high is 2. 00. I put a buy