Conversation 086-005

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

I just pointed that out.

I don't know how they think they are.

But the only problem involved here...

is from a political standpoint and a national security standpoint, is what concerns me greatly.

Firstly, the charge that you have, and that was true as far as the gross national product was concerned, was solely due to 48 months and perhaps 24 months ago.

We are now at 6.8% of our gross national product going to the security affairs national test.

They're up to 13.2% according to the most recent CIA agreed on estimates.

This is with the CIA and CIA and their economic studies show that

They are continuing to supply all the weapons of war in Vietnam in order to keep that war going.

Eighty percent of all this is coming from the Soviet Union at this time.

They recently delivered 7,000 blue trucks.

We're requiring our pilots to go up and knock those trucks out.

And I know today four American pilots are going to be presented to the world as being captured within the last 48 hours on mission to knock out Soviet trucks.

This situation, unless we put pressure to interdict those supplies right in the Soviet Union,

and use this as a very hard bargaining weapon, I think that we're losing a very important chip in winding down American involvement in the Ryan Union's solution in Southeast Asia.

The Soviet Union is really number one as far as weapons are concerned in the strategic field today.

As far as numbers are concerned, they will be in suffering within a very short period of time.

The only thing that keeps us from being in a superior position from a national security standpoint

is the technological advantage that we have.

The Defense Science Committee believes that we have a two-year technical advantage, and I believe that it's longer than that, that perhaps we have as much as four years of a lead-on in this area.

But to supply all of this material, as well as technical knowledge to the Soviet Union at this time, without seeing...

Some concrete evidence of their winding down in this area and their being agreeable to wind down the situation in Vietnam, to see that they'd be more cooperative in situations such as South Asia, which they were not cooperative in.

They showed no real, we can try to do everything we can to say that they did, but they didn't.

Facts are, they didn't know.

I just think we have to be awfully careful in this year, 1972, that's just around the corner, to go to the Congress and make this big fight at this time.

when we're spending well over a billion dollars a year to knock out Soviet equipment that's being delivered to North Vietnam at this time?

Well, politically, from the standpoint of a person who's been in pretty good contact with some of our disaffected Republicans on the conservative side, it would be absolutely disastrous to do anything this year.

Because this truck thing has been specifically brought up as an issue to me at least six times in the past two months.

Well, you were framing the questions that I referred to at the end of my report, putting the commercials into full context.

You can only get partial answers.

One is that I think we have to decide on creating an item.

I don't know what sense it makes to refuse to sell once you can buy the same item somewhere else.

They're like the cats.

Do they get the credit elsewhere that they're asking for here?

When we're turning down on the holiday plans, they got it from P.F.

On 12 years credit.

Yeah, but that isn't quite the same.

They're having problems with P.F.

They're having serious problems with P.F.

I don't think the technology for it is...

Well, I think what you're saying has to be decided in terms of the specific issues, and I don't want to debate that in any way.

This was strictly a commercial expedition to see what was there, and now we know to a considerable extent.

I can only add one other remark, and that is, when I related to the scene the importance of political developments, and particularly the president's visit in May,

He said very directly, the political situation will be improved before the president gets here.

I didn't pursue that.

It was not my responsibility.

He had something in mind, I'm sure.

And the president will make an evaluation of his own.

It's been approved their way, all right.

The president will make an evaluation of his own when he's over there.

No, I understand that.

I feel that...

There are points that we do have to consider from a national security standpoint and from a political standpoint.

But I think the economic arguments are all on your side.

I'm not going to shout out the nationals.

More on that one.

I think the increase in agricultural products is still the only thing that suggests that you were at it here from now on.

We just had discussions with Mr. Abbott on the trade issues here.

And I think consumer oppression, and we've had a consumerism movement over there, too.

It's forcing them to reverse their priorities about the first two sets of bars you've got there.

And it's five years old.

He wants to raise the average broken component of the Russian diet by 25%.

He hasn't hit a corner, so I think he needs it.

My goal is to raise the annual protein count over the diet by 25% by the age of the nuts.

And if you soak up their dollars for that, they won't go for hard distribution.

I agree, and I think the attitude that he expressed to you, sure we'll sell these bridges as long as you have cash.

They're active.

I'm telling those bridges that we are active.

I'm telling... What is the experience of other countries in extending?

No, I disagree.

They have said, if you extend credit on what we buy from you, we'll extend credit on what we sell to you.

They're talking about reciprocal terms, but they've got no place to help you by starting meditech.

But what is the experience of other countries in extending credit more?

A few years ago it wasn't very good.

They got a bartering, I don't know what it is now.

The reports we get, all the information in the government is that they've kept their word on every deal.

In the commercial field.

It was a very locally orchestrated time to get it.

Most of the ministers are on the upper 80 bracket, about 55 or 70.

Only one minister I met was under that.

They're all part of the civil powers all the time.

Any other comments?

Well, Mario, we really appreciate it.

It was very valuable.

Nobody's questioning your credentials as far as what happened to the National Security.

It was a hard event.

It was very important.

It's good to see you again.

I know you.

I like to hear those briefers, those tough-tongue over there, how they go in the room.

You know, they've all got their briefers.

I like to hear those briefers.

I agree with you.

A circle.

Right.

There's still a ballpark down there, but we wouldn't believe it.

We go over and study this when we put it online.

Buck 20 in MC, and again, that guy's, that's Texas, he has to do his bicep.

You know, I'd rather go to a, I'd call you and say, you know, I think you're very good.

That's the only story I've ever talked about, that's the only story I've ever talked about.

We have 200,000.

Thank you very much.

I know we had a debate today on education, and said we could make the deadline before the year was up.

Before the year was up.

And you've done it.

You've done it.

You've got a week to dig off.

All right, good.

Well, it's been a remarkable job.

Also, you've done it in some share of discretion.

It's important you've obviously had a few questions, differences and so forth and so on, but you've kept them in mind.

I suppose that's due to the chair.

I haven't had a hammer that big.

So that's the way I feel.

A lot of it should get us to run down, get me to run down all the stands.

That's it.

That's your copy.

It's still got to improve.

It's a better copy than what's been finally printed.

It was a very broad range of people.

It's a great group of people.

One of the most controversial questions.

Thank you for watching!

Well, I think the commission member is all that has to reply to that, but the other kind of controversial recommendation would be the one that opens up the transfer mechanisms to other institutions that are now precluded from making money transfers to third parties.

I think that's an element that takes a technique out of it.

It allows them to act like person-backed citizens.

They're very good at this.

Right, for the sake of rights.

The question of NCA is a principle that says there shall be freedom in markets, but that all competitors shall bear all identical burdens when they compete in that market.

And that's the guiding principle under which Congress is.

We might find that numbers of homegovers and people indirectly associated with the residential construction industry might consider that our recommendations didn't fully construct what they would consider.

Well, I would think so.

In fact, that was the basis of my additional views that I had to report.

I just think that we really, even though we put a lot of time into something, we really discussed it and evaluated all the various problems, but there will be a lot of people, and I myself am one of them, that don't think that we really can't adjust to this problem as well as we could have.

And I don't know if we could have voted much more times than we did within the time frame that we set for ourselves to work on in this whole area.

And I agree with the general trust's report, but the additional views that I offered that are in the report cover this particular area.

But I believe that the home building industry and housing industry is such that one thing they are going to be served with more than anything else is the six-storied barricade hill of mortgage funds.

And I believe that we still are going to have that situation even if these, what I refer to as overhaul and restructuring of the manufacturing business, it really comes about as a result of these recommendations, which I hope a lot of it does come about.

And I think we need to really find out if it will work.

But now then, I think this will be the biggest collaboration report.

I might ask the people, I presume the majority, but the majority is you, that you have made sufficient alterations in the nature of the mortgage instruments that will meet the requirements, hopefully as far out as you can see,

And a number of us, I think, are perhaps concerned that the problems in home building are not so much going to be the mortgage problem any longer, but definite possibilities that we may be overbuilding this age.

What is the evidence?

We're looking at now does begin to show many areas of the country, specifically Southern California and elsewhere, that we're now getting very heavy petitions in the home building area and a marked increase in vacancies.

I suspect that the problem of shortage of mortgage funds to facilitate housing, which is supposed to be in short supply, is last year's war.

I don't think it's this year's war.

Mr. President, I have a judge and opinion of mine that I agree with more than Ernest.

I would say this without reviewing our means.

I think we've measured unanimously the possible exception.

It feels that we have made these institutions more viable.

We have therefore increased the role of savings to the savings bank over a period of time, and making that more viable on a voluntary basis, so that the end result would be that funds for residential mortgages will be available under $250 billion worth of residential mortgages today.

That money comes from some savings alone, and certain institutions have provided a major portion of that.

And we felt that by restructuring the system and making them more viable in the future, we could more assuredly provide a response to the method of how to accomplish this objective rather than differing on the goals.

Mr. President, back to Mrs. Morton.

One question that relates to your opening remarks about the President's Commission.

Really, an inherent philosophy of trying to move the free market into financial areas, so that institutions do that appreciateably.

One of the, in your opinion of the commission, one of the greatest factors in the last few years, the credit crunch of 66 and the 69-70 trip, the distorting factor was the heavy impact of regulation Q, which is interesting, which is distorting and which is,

It has lost much of its impact as a monetary tool.

In fact, most of the listeners would feel that it is doing more damage today than it is helping the monetary world instead.

And in the future it will be even less of a viable tool.

And so much of what we have done is the development of a mechanism

That moves to, as an orderly movement, toward a free market that will allow, really, the institutions to be viable in the coming years.

This is, I guess, the same thing we started with, Bill, is not exactly.

I think, Mr. President, this will do on the domestic scene, which is the key to our national scene.

I think it's a great public appeal in the sense that the public understands that the trust it is, even though we've discussed in-house problems here.

The great trust of this is to permit the financial system in this nation to better serve its people.

And if the reason for five years, or maybe next year, is to provide capital for jobs, it can flow there.

If the system would work as freely as it's required, the nations already can flow to the cities for the sewers and the means they have for the various greatest needs of the people.

I believe that the implementation of this report was of great service to the public's dismay.

You don't go into the problem of the Fed.

It's internal structure.

We've had some recommendations for a reorganization of the regulatory system.

We've had a change in the functions of the Fed.

For example, we recommend taking the Fed out of the examination position entirely.

We find to a great extent that there are areas to the monetary field to play a part in.

Mr. President, as a controversial issue, I think not so much within the commission, but certainly within the government, those recommendations for restructuring will be controversial.

Good job, I hope.

There are quite a few things.

As a matter of fact, all the people of government have a vested interest in the chaos in the city.

The program is designed basically in two parts.

The one that relates to the financial mechanisms and the depository institutions.

...will work even within the present supervisory structures.

The student supervisory structure area is something that the opinion of the commission will feel would be an improvement, but it is not under dependent with the section on the depository institution.

For the organization, of course, it's important to say, and the reason I know how difficult this is among the many programs that we submitted to Congress last year, is that the recommendations that he has, you know, is one of the organizations, you know.

It ought to be done.

I hope that every I, every T, it ought to be done across exactly the same way.

But the UCS cabinet table is bigger than it used to be because we've always had more cabinet people.

And the cabinet today is irrelevant.

Irrelevant not because each cabinet member may not have very significant responsibilities, but because

Because government is a runway in Canada, and because it's become so big and so unwieldy, it is a little empire, that it no longer serves as many, of course, as it would like for it to serve as a...

The president's advisors in all fields, whatever, you break it off, you break off the police here, you set up the police there, and this is a process that you can't consider unimportant to people.

So the head council tried to, in fact to get some programs, you know, to read the situation.

Which is what it was, approximately, at Lincoln's time.

I suppose they could go to where that could be, where it would be, without going into details, where each department would have some of the answers.

Well done, and you wouldn't have a cabinet officer becoming basically the representative of a special interest group.

Wow, so much for that.

But in terms of getting that true, our major problem is really not the Congress.

It's a problem.

It's a problem because the Congress is in parallel ways with the cabinet.

And so you've got the Economic Committee, you've got the Labor Committee, you've got this committee and that committee, but they see the cabinet changing.

the executive branch, and they think they've got to change.

And the Congress just don't like to change.

Because each of us has been here 15 years, and I'm ready to be the subcommittee chairman of the source of overgrown lands.

And I said, no, no, no, I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to do it.

But this is really the reason that I speak so strongly about the government side.

I refer to our cabinet officers, all of them, around this table, three of them.

But believe me, the bureaucracy sabotages, denies, drags its feet, finds every possible way to keep things as they are.

As I've had business people, I know you all smile when you've done the same process.

The real problem is if the bureaucracy were all enthusiastically for something, the Congress would respond.

Because the bureaucracy goes on and on, and the Congress is not always here.

I mean, they can be defeated, they can come up and so forth.

The bureaucracy can grind away.

But the problem is that you have to have enthusiastic support.

And believe me, it's something.

Now I'm coming back to this.

I give you that only to put your job in perspective.

You could be more right, you know, to reorder the state, and you suggest it will be very controversial, very difficult.

Those who will fight it will be not the people who really fight the chairman of the fed, or this and that, or the other thing, but the little boys down in the woodwork.

Because, you know, they don't want to change their lives.

They have to go there.

We have here no idea how they're going to change anything.

You know, whether you're going to sit in the executive mass, or you're going to sit in the...

I like that one.

One of the things in the report I mentioned too is that it does recognize duality and emphasizes it in terms of the state's role, and I think it will be a real challenge to the leadership in the states in dealing with financial structures therein, and certainly fits with your emphasis, which I agree with very much, in revitalizing the states in terms of the federal-state partnership.

But what we will do, what we would like to do here is, as with all such reports, of course, this will be published.

Correct.

Yes.

As when?

It was briefed.

The press was briefed on it yesterday with Marco till after this meeting.

So it will become public.

Did anybody at press understand this?

Yes.

Well, anyway...

The work on depository institutions in the very essence of parents and moving

The specialized institutions and the multi-person institutions that the commission has put together a package program to fit in these and to look at it less than a package could really create some burdens in areas and marked disadvantages to certain institutions at any given time.

So we really have built a package program.

Thank you.

I'm interested in George, also sitting in Georgia.

Your shop will take the organization.

The only thing I want to say is that if you prepare a paper for me, I'll do another.

I want you all to make it.

It doesn't take me half the time.

This is mine.

Don't let bureaucracy write for that paper.

You've really got to get at it.

I don't think that there are any wonderfully devoted, dedicated people in bureaucracy.

But I'd like to have a point of view that is not insensitive.

The worst thing I can accept, believe me, is that the children are falling out of that.

But, uh... And now that COVID-19 is true, usually...

Yes, I certainly was.

to get as early as possible some kind of an honest bill appeared in the HAC, so that we will not have a lot of interest groups running away in different directions, taking pieces of it here and pieces of it there.

And even though

Each industry may not have to agree, I think it's the best of all to have a single umbrella under which to work.

I hope that we can see that kind of development.

and all the rest are just life and death struggles.

It's that good, but the struggle's only about who's going to kill them.

They all want to kill them.

There is one apparently, but it's the dumbest thing of all my style.

It is one advantage, though, in the sense that the legislation which now governs our institutions is really high-dimensionalistic, and the law that really serves nobody's particular purpose except, as you pointed out,

Some bureaucratic elements are very meaningful for the administration, which is very important.

So that there is a great deal of legislation which could actually go through with very little impact against anybody.

It's not that they can pick out those things that maybe we should sort out.

You also want to remember, if you put the probably ominous approach, then you combine that...

And they kill it all.

And I think we should sort out here some things that are relevant every time.

Because it ought to be done.

That are relatively uncontroversial and give them the very great life.

And some of the other things we put them on.

Would you think so, Jerry?

Yes, sir, we will.

But shouldn't we all get up and over all the evaluation and then look at it from the standpoint of the...

It seems to me very significant all over, and I will speak back to the team.

You commented in your report on domestic international front of the state.

These are just completely, rather, sorry, the exchange in our international, as far as the international is concerned.

You know this is the first significant change in the Bretton Woods.

They opened the Bretton Woods because then the United States was the only major economic power in the free world.

Then, as follows, I can lose that in most agonizing meetings with a group of techs, and finance ministers at the Central Bank, which is very small, and NASCAR, the Smithsonian Institute.

When it's a call around that table, and organized against the United States, it's pretty tough.

But in any event, in terms of an achievement, when I stop to think, I think you might hear something.

And because we had governments, and some of them, we should say, the Canadians, who agreed, was unbelievably massive.

I think Paul agreed, and he bartered the chance for that, and he was the only one outside, and he turned it down.

He said that had Connolly not been at the head of that table, ran and drew.

He said, I've got to stand the British, and they're kind of in Europe.

They were not always very helpful.

They certainly in Rome, they were very dense.

But he said that Connolly sat there, and he said, I asked John Connolly how he did it.

He said, well, he said, I threatened them, and I controlled them, and I drove them.

Nobody else takes any leadership.

Yes, just a couple of minutes.

We have this meeting where most countries are trying to talk, and do as little as possible.

Somebody has to be there for the audience.

Of course, he is in the position of chairman, which has its advantages, but also its disadvantages.

He just did it beautifully, picking up the ones that were lagging, and turning this to another, and saying, well, we're going to get some agreement there, and the United States doesn't care much what you do, but the other good thing they've been done is there, and put it off, it's your turn now.

It went around the table.

One of the reasons I said that is because you know that it was, of course, it was a mission by the protection of the French.

Convertibility is almost theology.

and if it's also a major trust for the British, they all want, of course, to keep the monkey on our back, but it's magic, and yes,

We could possibly go back to convertibility now, and I don't see a time in the future that it would be in our interest to do so.

That's about it.

Now what convertibility means, that's why we're able to write and communicate.

It means something different than writing in British.

Perhaps to us, but we know that word, that code word, is not in the name, right?

Well, it's in the communique.

In one place, but it's in the context of long-term reform and related to everything else in the monetary system.

So it's no promise or obligation to anything.

So look at it.

Long-term reform?

If you don't want it, it takes a very long time.

Because the main thing is that we

And now that these are now big bullets, they are in Japan, in the United States, in Germany, in Europe, the 300 million in Europe, it's going to be a tremendous economic force.

All the kids in the German colony, more than I do, all the wives today are probably proposing the right to that economic force, and inevitably we'll be lined up very much against it.

They'll be trying to do us, and we'll try to catch them.

Anyway...

Our problem is to keep these free world economies competitive in a constructive way rather than destructive, whether that's possible or not.

But as we look at that situation in the future... No, they've not grown up.

The responsibility cannot be totally put on the United States.

That's what you get down to.

It's a question of whether we're going to just take all the heat that had it all here.

That's the point we're trying to make when we talk about compared to the mess we just...

We have to recognize that the world has changed in the last 25 years.

What the United States can do in terms of aid, what the United States can do in terms of a big oil overboard, in terms of trade concessions, what the United States can do.

in carrying the responsibility, the sole responsibility for maintaining stability of currencies around the world.

The market price is the dollar price.

The power price is always the dollar price.

Everything that happens, we're to blame.

What we're trying to do today, what we have come out here, is for a realistic realignment to begin with, but also even more fundamental, I think Paul would agree, a change in attitude.

We are simply saying that now in the future, boys, you better carry some responsibility here too, right?

That's not easy because there's no other... We are there.

You know, you stop to think that every year we grow in England.

Economically.

More brands.

Virtue.

Not quite, but a hundred billion dollars.

We grow next year.

That's virtue.

Professor, what do you think about all of this?

He's the expert on the council.

He's got two hats.

I'm delighted.

I'm delighted with what happened with the commissioner.

What I was going to say, your report in terms of the domestic economy, what it exposes, is more significant than the other one.

When we think, for example, about the effect of trade and all that sort of thing, well, a lot of people in New York are concerned, and the stock market calls us up and down and so forth, but what is our trade?

4% of our GDP.

And when you think of the Japanese...

Where it's 30% white, or the Germans.

The French can be very, they're pretty self-sufficient.

They don't worry so much about the rest of the world.

The British, right, are very important to them.

But what you're talking about here is 95% of the American economy.

Correct.

So you weren't so important after all.

Ha ha ha!

I know a man before this was.

We're not going to take this picture if you call us over for Christmas.

All you're going to get out of this, we will send each of you the copy of this picture that he took from the book.

I'm looking like you're all agreed.

We did this with our motor, and we did it with the aid guards, and we did it with the factory.

We did it with the farm.

Yes, sir, I did.

Thank you for watching!

Thank you.

I don't know why I didn't take the job.

I don't believe you.

Except for one reason.

I didn't think you had a reason.

Well, we had to have you.

You were the right man at the right time.

At this point, frankly, he was the only son.

He's a really grand truth, and you can't have the court...

with no southerner on it.

None.

Because after Blackstead, there was nobody that represented.

That's 35% of the country that represented.

So he went all the way around and around and around.

He's the best.

But I said to him, I said, are you the first Virginians?

I mean, I was the only Virginian last in the court.

It's very interesting to see.

It's interesting.

He said the last time at 8 o'clock he was taken was before the war between the states.

So you're a southerner.

Well, we'll send you all copies of the picture to prove that you're wise and that you're worth your time.

As long as you get pictures, not images.

Pictures are you.

We're going to suggest charging the reporter, if you understand, for $50,000.

And on the other hand, don't be crazy.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, and just have a great time.

Christmas, New Years, Merry Christmas.

Teksting av Nicolai Winther