On April 16, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Bernard J. ("Bunny") Lasker, Albert H. Gordon, Donald T. Regan, Peter M. Flanigan, John B. Connally, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 12:09 pm and 12:38 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 482-004 of the White House Tapes.
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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Yeah.
Eating the molly.
Yeah.
No, it's not.
The president, the last three years, the last four years, will watch it.
He's proven it.
I don't think so.
He already has.
I just didn't know what happened.
He said he had a goal.
Well, it's been said that it's one great holistic development
a year ago, and we were worried and concerned, and we all were.
You have turned things around for us.
We're grateful, and we want to tell you, we want to come down and things are good, too, and present you with the latest model of all.
Thank you.
Uh, I guess we're gonna have to do this before the press, so, uh, I think we're gonna have to do this before the press, so, uh, I think we're gonna have to do this before the press, so, uh, I think we're gonna have to do this before the press.
Mr. President has said that how grateful he is to the companion of the world
But we in Wall Street are mad here to say that that is not so, and it truly is.
Because a year ago, your friends from Wall Street came down and said, how exactly will the economy and the market?
Now that things are up, it's probably very much better.
We want to come back also to express our appreciation and our gratitude for what you've done for the country and not for the bad.
And we'd like to present to you the 1971
Thank you.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
The only thing I didn't understand about the role was, you know, nobody in the market saw me do it.
You know, I didn't understand the role of the man following me.
He was like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
and always is, and I'll keep that in mind, never in his past.
And it's quite intriguing to me.
I'm coming to tell the country what is in its prospects in the future is to continue to push.
But I've always been to say, you know, I'm the expert in this field, is that we will hear from it.
Mr. Preston, I think there are too many people who say that the market is going up because of institutional buying.
That's not what it is.
The situation is not only institutional buying, but millions of individuals.
I think it's really the individuals have tremendous confidence in your programs, and because they have confidence in your programs, they have a way to play with the things that they do.
economies and some conditions.
This is a very widespread thought in my view of what you are doing and what you have already done.
and this week we'll situate what in fact we might be getting from here.
These sort of policies that now tend to work.
But what we're trying to do is to build solid and solid.
It would be very easy, you know, to go from the beginning that we're going to, shall we say, boost up the economy for a few months and then put that on.
And I think what we're trying to do is to build solid for the future.
We don't want this to move in a way that will bring on the
the high level of the work that you want to do.
So I think the market's on a very sound ground, it's present.
It has had a, you know, we've had a strike, and it looks like the money is aren't flowing out.
So I think it's on a very sound ground.
What about this idea of institutional buyers?
You have a lot of new folks in your shop, don't you?
Well, we're saying the individual is buying goods, that's it.
It's a lucid market.
It's a lucid market.
It's a lucid market.
They're buying two stocks, and the institutions, of course, represent many, many people.
It's not their own money.
It's a lucid market.
The bonds, for example, the bonds represent millions of people that are in the bonds, right?
Right.
And so they're going to manage the bonds, the insurance companies, and the rest.
And they're approximately only 27 million in the market.
They're protected by the market.
Oh, but 30 million individual owners' bonus, that's apart from people who are in funds, or does that include people who are in funds?
No, that's apart from people who are in funds.
Including fund people, I think, well, insurance offices, like, they're easily sticking to stuff they've made in the market.
They're going to the market.
They're going to sit on the market.
Yeah, right.
What do you reject?
That's the fact of the day.
That's good.
That's the fact of the day.
I had a session with some people yesterday, and I expressed a high degree of confidence, frankly, which I think they questioned.
I think they thought I was just being overly optimistic.
But I don't think I was, and I don't think I am now.
I'm alarmed and amazed, very frankly, that in the aftermath of the
of the highest growth in oil in the history of this country that we have some economists in the country that talk about it being a very unsatisfactory performance.
This is incredible.
Well, I think Mr. Eckstein predicted $22 billion last year, not $28.5.
What does he say today?
Well, I don't know what he said, and I knew where that was about.
That's a very good question.
Well, this is great.
Now, if you get rid of bulls, you know, some people want to get into something, and they, you know, bulls are with them.
And some people have a bad marriage.
I don't want to lie to you.
I don't want to lie to you.
I got this in Hedley and they said to you that you had what?
Oh, sure.
I know.
Because you've got signs and tails, this is something that the president should take away.
Right.
Put it on top of the...
Right.
When you say that you're willing to take any goals, why don't you put them on the map?
That's right, that's right.
I love it.
It has to do with politics.
Politics is your whole goal anyway.
I don't even know what you're going to do.
I guess I'll just say it will be.
You've also been through a really hellish career.
You know, when you think of John Sagan, you all remember him.
But that day, as a matter of fact, it came up, you know, they had the big day, so the boys were feeling a little better.
But they had seen, they had seen actually 50% of their age, well, of their age, and all the houses were in trouble, not all, not yours, of course, yours, and so forth.
But, so they said, what the heck's going to happen?
And I remember just, I don't know if all this was there, so I'm just going to go over it.
Remember that 500?
I remember just that gentleman, and I said, well, I said, well, I guess I just had confidence in the long-range figures.
And I know nothing about what's in our market for tomorrow or next month or two months or three months from now.
But if you've got about a year, at that time, it hasn't been on the future.
Now, that's what it is today.
The market, as you all know, has a much better
But the long-range future of this country, when you look particularly at March, take the GNP figure, break it down.
There's a real growth of 6.4% now, right?
There's a lot of that.
There's an aspect model.
There's a lot of things.
The greatest important ones are...
Home building, the highest in 20 years.
Second, retail sales in March, and this was a bad March from a weather standpoint, but retail sales, based on the solid foundation of household furnishings and so forth, a very, very stark increase of around 8%.
Automobile sales, first 11 days of April, the highest in GM's history, the highest at a rate of about 9%.
Now, when you look at retail sales, automobile sales, when you look at those particular items that indicate what consumers are thinking, the consumer is
certainly at all the economies.
That's why I was interested in your saying that this is not simply an institutional market.
How the hell could you have 3 billion shares change hands, which they have, as I understand, this May of last year, without having some change in the market?
Right.
You take a 20 million share today now, Mr. President, 22 million today, if 60% of that is being done by institutions, which is what they claim, and 40% is still
9 million shares available at high end of the post.
Now, this, uh, by any period of this case, 66, 70, what happened?
9 million shares by individuals.
Listen, we all remember there were a lot of days there in that period.
You were going 7 million a day.
You may have a 7 million.
Well, we, in August, oh, 7 or 8 August, I was murdered.
But I think also that this market indicates tremendous confidence in the foreign policy.
I think it's true.
With China, it's just, so it's absolutely unbelievable.
That's good.
And, and, and, so do I.
So, I mean, absolutely, absolutely, you see what I'm saying.
I mean, it's just easy for me.
I'm probably going around at some of these, uh, weather-wetting lakes, you know, the Bayless and stuff.
But, you know, I don't get to be there.
I play bombs, I play bombs.
But, you know, it's just great when you think of the Phillies and how the impact of China on Russia.
I mean, it's easy market, but I've seen that.
When I go over here, I'm not very cool.
I have to.
Because you see, some of our boys, actually, in the State Department, my husband's birthday, he does make a lot of money.
Now, listen, let me tell you.
Look, you know the Chinese.
As a people, we're getting some signs.
The way not to get any from them is really anxious.
So we lay it out there, mount up there.
So we're going to say this is the first step.
We're ready to take other steps from there.
Now that also plays the Russian game.
If we make it so that the Russians, it's impossible for the Russians to make any kind of deal with us on salt or anything like that, because of our closest to the Chinese.
we have destroyed any chances of a Russian attack, which is also important.
Now, so what we have to do is to play the Chinese game, but not to do it in such an open way that the Russians will say, oh, they're deliberately playing us against them.
Now, you've got your people as statistics, but if the Russians see it that way, you as officers see it that way.
But we have to say...
And it goes to the Chinese, one of them has been on a flange, and the Russians are going to know that, and that's what it's about.
And the Chinese people were basically right in front of it.
That's what they think.
It's funny how the missionaries have been there and everything else through the years.
Well, the thing is, without raising, you should not buy or sell any stocks in Florida State.
Because we don't know what's going to happen.
Nothing can be predicted.
Uh, but, uh, we, uh, we, sorry.
Uh, good.
Uh, I can't buy it.
That's what my kids do.
No, they're not.
They can't ever go public.
I'd like to thank you.
I'd like to thank you.
I think so.
I talked to Frank.
He said, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
This was happening some time before the rest of my service.
And the whole day, he said, what do you think this is going to do for me?
He finally says, OK, let's have dinner together.
So we go out to dinner at the Coke Bath.
And he said, why do you think so?
All right.
All right.
Thank you.