Wilmington, the train was moving along and made a sudden jerk like it was going to make an abrupt stop. This isnt the slowdown during the a curve. It came to a complete stop, there was smoke, smelt like the brakes were smoldering so we sat there wondering what had happened. The electricity was knocked out so there was no pa system. So the rumors started to fly but after about 25 minutes one of the crew came back and started to explain what happened. The first two cars were hit badly but we were lucky to be in the next to last car of the train so we felt the impact obviously but didnt get to smashup that the first two cars had. They hit, it was explained, a device on the track. They were doing maintenance and of course an investigation will be to be looked into why that was on the tracks while the train was coming. You are taught at an early age in science that when an object like a train is moving 80 Miles Per Hour it takes a long time to come to a halt. Host this is around the identify where another amtrak Train Derailment took place. Outside of philadelphia. Guest it was and it leaves the question was this a communication problem . They will try to get to the bottom of the thing. Fortunately there are no injuries in our car. But not knowing what happens. In an airplane, some captain comes on saying something happened, dont worry, we will be all right. You dont come to that kind of an abrupt stop without an emergency and not knowing what it was and as time passed and they took care of the injuries to the first two cars they came back and we were let off the train. They admonished us dont leave the train because there are two live tracks on each side. Dont leave the train until we say it is safe to do so. So we made our way off, made our way through a path, and came to a church in pennsylvania with a large gym so there was plenty of room for us. There were about 350 people overall. So that was a good place to make sure way too. But by the morning, as you say, trying not to slip in the mud to the church. Host i know you have been in touch with our staff trying to make every effort to make it washington, d. C. For this three hour conversation. This is train 89 from new york to savannah, georgia. 31 injuries, nonlifethreatening. What does this tell you about the state of americas infrastructure and what the next president and Congress Might need to do when it comes to roads, bridges and rail . If we are looking at the larger picture one thing is figure out how they get more, whau what they call, publicprivate partnerships. When you get a government agencies, the problem is maintenance tends to not get the priority it should. With airlines you occasionally have access but on the major commercial airlines they are up to date on maintenance and there is no problem in terms of variability of aircraft. They are kept up to speed. Same for the freight trains. We have the best Freight System in the world. But Something Like this, we have to make sure the unglamorous things, like basic maintenance is giving a high priority. Publicp publicp publicprivate partnerships. Governments dont have a lot of money these days especially with their pension and Health Obligations so we need new ways to get the infrastructure in shape. It can be done. But when it is done you have to Pay Attention to the matrix. We have been monitoring the coverage of the Train Derailment you were part of. I want to go back to the fact it took 20 minutes to be notified by amtrak officials at the back of the train what was happening. Describe what was going on in your mind and your fellow passengers mind outside of philadelphia. We didnt know what happened but knew it was something bad. A couple passengers who were veterans of amtrak were wondering if the brake system went wrong. There was speculation. Luckily there was no panic. When the officials came back they were relieved because there was panic as you got closer to where the real hit took place. It was just waiting and waiting and wondering when they would get back and tell us what happened. We all knew dont leave the train. We didnt have to be told that. One of your recent books and we will show the audience from 2014 event at books and prose. Your book call money. Give us the series of what this book is about in the latest books you have written about the economy. Money is about a subject that is not glamorous but critical and that is our monetary system. What the book was designed to do was explain money in a straightforward way. There is a lot of history surrounding it but it is basic. Money is like a claim check. It has no intrensic value but it is based on trust and security. We made a series of catastrophic errors on monday that led to the housing debacle. The recent times now the dollar has gotten stronger but it is like a watch that is too fast or too slow. We argue from the book and our new book, reviving america we argue the feds have to go for dollar stability. What we have been doing has been a disaster and stort investment. It is like a watch that measures the number of hours in a day. 68 minutes one day, 98 minutes the next day. Life would be chaotic. Imagine trying to bake a cake. Is we know having instability in the number of minutes per hour would be crazy but that is what we do with money. We know we need 12 inches in a foot but in terms of money since we destroyed the brett Woods International monetary system, the goldbased cyst symptoms, we have had nothing but problems. In the last 15 years, it started under the republican administration, the weakening of the dollar, and the volatility continued under the obama administration. This isnt a partisan thing. There is plenty of blame to go around. We argue in the money how to get that stability back and explain simple ways to do it starting with the Federal Reserve and start reducing its oversized portfolio and let more mon money in the Banking System and explain how the economy was small in new businesses. Government no problem getting credit. But the guts of the economy, small and new businesses, very difficult. That has been damaging. We explained it in the new book providing america there is a section on it as well. A lot to talk about when we get you back here in washington, d. C. To talk about your books. One question is donald trump in an extensive interviews published on the front page of the Washington Post calling for what he says will be a potential financial collapse and catastrophic collapse of wall street laying ahead. Do you agree with those concerns by donald trump . You never rule out anything these days and in these times. But i dont think barring a disaster overseas we will have problems. We are stuck in second year. A good record like we did on friday and followed up by a disappointing report. It is like a patient who has a bad cold and not enough to be in the hospital but you feel punked about it. We are about to begin the baseball season and like a batter we should be hitting. 350 but he think not hit. 250. The 20022009 panic was a big down turn. A disaster. But since the early 2000s, we should have recovered. But we havent. When things start to get better they are still not at the pace of the past. That is putting a lot of anxiety, worry, and frustration which is now expressed in both parties but donald trump on the republican sides and Bernie Sanders on the democrat side. Steve forbes was on route aboard the amtrak that crashed outside of philadelphia. He is on his way back to washington, d. C. And we will reschedule this event. We look forward to another time here on cspan. We want to continue with our Coverage Today of an event we covered two years ago at books and prose. The book is called money how the destruction of the dollar threatens the Global Economy and what we can do about it. We are privileged to have a recognizable figure in the media and business world. Steve forbes is editor and chief of the nations biggest economic magazine and head ad company that includes asia and european edition but a number of Web Properties focused on politics, sports and financial markets. Many of you will also remember steves Spirited Campaign for the republican president ial nomination in 1996 and 2000 during which he promoted the idea of, among other things, a flat tax and a new social system, medical savings accounts, term limits and Strong National defense. Steve comes to us as an author this evening which isnt a new role for him. He has cowritten and written five books. His sixth and latest one, money how the destruction of the dollar threatens the Global Economy and what we can do about it, is every bit as reasoned and clearly written as the earlier works. Anyone familiar with his free market libertarian views will not be surprised to read his criticism of existing banks and monetary policies. Steve sees an opportunity to rethink our monter system and insure a better standard returning to the gold model. He writes freeing the United States from gold was supposed to make the country stronger but instead it made the country w k weak weaker. Something has to be done. Along with steve is elizabeth aims, his cowriter, and here is steve forbes. [applause] thank you very much, brad. And i thank all of you for coming out. The book is about money, Monetary Policy, and money and particulary Monetary Policy is one of those topics that seems to intimidate a lot of people and as a result the Federal Reserve, for example, has less formal oversight from capitol hill and congress than do our intelligence agencies. The thesis of this book is that the topic of money is very straight forward and simple even though it is hidden in jargon and equations. The idea of money is basic. We have gotten away from it. Our policymakers today know less about Monetary Policy than they did a hundred years ago. Since the 1970s overall our growth rate since going off the old Gold Standard system in 1971 the u. S. Average growth rates are less than what they were before 1971. If he we maintained the growth rates on average the u. S. Economy would be 50 larger than it. 40 years of reverse compounding ads up to a lot. Saver having 50 higher incomes, what it would mean for the deficit, what it would mean for social security, what it would mean for a lot of social divisi divisions today. This over time adds up. It is why it takes two incomes in a family to do what one family could do before this. Taxes are a big part but the basement of the dollar since the 70s is a critical part as well. When you dont have a stable curren currency, you end up with people not getting ahead they should, median incomes not growing the way they should, and leading as my coauthor elizabeth will talk about fraying of the social trust and more divisions. As cane said it is a process nat thought one in a million will be able to diagnose. Since Monetary Policy doesnt get the heart beating flutter some way some reality shows do i will begin by giving you an advanced reward and that is to give you a travel tip. If you ever find yourself in an airplane in coach, middle seat, on the runway watching your life pass away, and you want a little bit of elbow room, Start Talking about Monetary Policy. They will cut you a wide girth. As a result of the chaos that we have had slow moving for most of the time since the 1970s, the Federal Reserve has gotten up in terms of more and more power. The thing is the more power it gets the worse we are. You take quanatative easing, which i will discuss in the moment, even though they are tapering it, which is good, it ended up contracting the economy rather than stimulating the economy. The thing i understand about money is it is basic. It makes transactions, buying and selling, which is how we prove our standard of living which is how we exist, makes buying and selling much easier. In the old days, we had barter which was very inefficient. Lets say i sold an ad in forbes and how would and i get paid . Perhaps with a herd of goats. Lets say i went to the apple store 3,000 years ago with my herd of goats and the apple store owner says i dont want goats i want sheep so i have to figure out how to swap for sheep and maybe hire a sheep herder because you dont want the wolves to eat the sheep. Imagine trying to deposit a cow in an atm nowadays. Money doesnt have intr intrins value. Money measures value. That is all it does. The ways clock measures time. Scales measure weight. Rulers measure length. Money measures value. So because it represents value it makes transactions easier and in that sense it is a form of communications. It lets you know information to do all of the billions of transactions we do around the world each day. Money is not health but it represents a claim on products and services. Think of it as you would a coat check. A coat check has no Intrinsic Value but in a restaurant you put your coat in the closet and get a coat check to represent it claim on the coat. Money represents products and services that have been produced already. So the idea of stimulating the economy would be like a restaurant saying if we create more coat checks it will stimulate the production of more coats. It does not. It is a claim. It represents a claim on a product or service; money does. Money works best when it has a fixed value just like a clock has 60 minutes in one hour. Imagine what your daily life was like if the Federal Reserve did what it did to the dollar. 60 minutes in hour one day, 22 the next, 80 the next. You would have to hedgers to figure out how how many hours you are working each day. Lets say you are baking a cake and it says bake the batter 45 minutes and you would have figure out is that inflation of real minutes . Or adjusted minutes . Imagine what happens if they changed the number of inches in a foot . You learn it is now ten instead of 12. Money works best when it has a fixed value. Then the question becomes what is the best way to do it . Even though it is absolutely out of fashion still in the economics profession the way it worked for the first 180 years of existence in this country is you fix it to gold. Why gold . Because more than anything else in the world gold keeps its Intrinsic Value and has for 4,000 years. Every ounce in the world that has been mound is still in the world today. You cannot destroy it. It is hard to make but not too hard. So you dont get too much of it at a time and because you cannot destroy it if you find a big gold mine you dont get a glut of cold. Even the California Gold rush only increased the annual supply about 34 percent and taperer down to the average 1. 51 percent. You dont have to worry about storage and mice eating the gold. Whether you freeze it, eat it, beat it up, you cannot destroy it. It has very unique properties and stood the test of time for 4,000 years. People think if you mention gold does that mean gold coins . Think of gold like you would the ruler. It is just a mixed measure of value. We fix the dollar to gold at 1200 an ounce. All that means if it goes above 1200 an ounce the fed is creating too much and making less because below 1200 means you need to create more. It lets the marketplace determine the need of what is needed in termdz s of money. If you have a vibrant any you will create a good economy. You dont need very much gold. You just need to know what you are doing and respond to signals in the marketplace and it worked up until world war that blasted that and other things. Gold is like a ruler. The fact a mile hads 5,280 feet doesnt restrict the number of highways you build. Just one fact you can use at a Cocktail Party to show you brilliant you are. Go back to the evolution war when we were a Small Agricultural nation up to 1900 when your population increased 25 fold going from the small agriculture nation to biggest industrial nation in the world and during that time the amount of mine golding only went up three and a half fold but the money supply went up 60 fold. Gold just makes sure the value stays strict. It doesnt restrict the supply. Vibrant economy meets the needs of the marketplace, stagnent economy you dont create t. People lose sight of that and go from one price to another. We had a terrible decades in the 70s and got it semi right in the 80s and 90s and we moved ahead. But in the last decade we went backwards and starting, and this is not a partisan thing, started in the bush administration. Treasurey department and Federal Reserve started weakening the daughter thinking that would stimulate exports and that is how he got the housing crisis. Any time you undermine the integrity of the dollar people hood assets. It was a little over 21 a barrel for oil now is up to 90 a barrel. Back in the 70s, none of you are old enough to remember the 70s. It is called pandering. Tried it in politics and it didnt work which is why i am pedaling books now. Back in the 1970s oil went from 3 a barrel to almost 40. Everyone thought we were running out of oil and going to be up to 100. Reagan came in and he killed the inflation and oil crashed down to average 20 25. It is like putting a virus in the computer. If you dont trust the investment, you get Less Investments and that is not productive because you get less in the future. You dont know if you will get back hundred cents on the dollar or 80 sent cent dollar and adds more uncertainty which is why we have been stagnant by our histortic standards. Money represents value. Gold is the best way to fix that value. If we understand that we can move ahead and get back the kind of growth rates we had before 1971. Obviously there are a lot of other things we have to do but experience shows us if you dont get the money right in terms of a fixed value you can get other things right; taxes, spend, regulations. But if you dont get the money right it will undermine everything