Tape 216 - Bad news on inflation and GNP; Carter's first budget; Congress and the Fed
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- | Hello, this is David Francis, | 0:02 |
financial editor of The Christian Science Monitor. | 0:03 | |
I'd like to welcome you once more | 0:06 | |
on behalf of Instructional Dynamics Incorporated | 0:08 | |
to a visit with MIT's Nobel | 0:11 | |
prize winning economist, Paul Samuelson. | 0:13 | |
Dr. Samuelson, February will soon be drawing to a close | 0:16 | |
and the inflation figures for January were rather high. | 0:20 | |
Are they as bad as they looked? | 0:24 | |
- | Well, I'm afraid that today it's a case of | 0:26 |
our saying first comes the bad news | 0:29 | |
and then comes the other bad news. | 0:32 | |
The bad news was that | 0:35 | |
the consumer prices rose in January, | 0:40 | |
and this was in addition | 0:43 | |
to the earlier announced wholesale price increase. | 0:45 | |
It would not be such bad news | 0:50 | |
if the increase in consumer's prices | 0:52 | |
and wholesale prices were simply a reflection | 0:56 | |
of the extraordinarily bad weather. | 1:01 | |
But the wholesale price reports, as I recall, | 1:04 | |
were for a period that preceded | 1:10 | |
most of the very bad weather. | 1:13 | |
So, we've been warned by | 1:15 | |
the Bureau of Labor Statistics that | 1:17 | |
we can expect bad news again in February, | 1:20 | |
even worse news. | 1:23 | |
I think that this is too bad. | 1:26 | |
A key variable to watch | 1:32 | |
from the standpoint of framing policy, | 1:35 | |
from the standpoint of forecasting ahead, | 1:39 | |
is the rate of inflation. | 1:43 | |
The rate of inflation, | 1:47 | |
as determined by basic underlying factors, | 1:49 | |
monetary policy, fiscal policy, | 1:53 | |
but in addition, the basic rate of inflation | 1:56 | |
as determined by so called | 2:00 | |
external or exogenous events. | 2:02 | |
And most of our bad luck in the 1970s | 2:06 | |
has come from bad luck on the inflation front. | 2:09 | |
And so, in 1977, in 1978, | 2:11 | |
we will not be immune from being sensitive | 2:15 | |
in our performance to the rate of inflation. | 2:18 | |
To give you some examples, | 2:22 | |
the OPEC had a two tier price system, you recall. | 2:26 | |
And most of us were a bit joyful | 2:31 | |
that Saudi Arabia was holding the line at 5%. | 2:37 | |
And we really thought that the countries | 2:41 | |
which were holding out for 10%, | 2:45 | |
Iran and so forth, | 2:47 | |
would find themselves with the sticky end of the stick, | 2:48 | |
that Saudi Arabia could expand its output | 2:54 | |
and the 5% would stick and the 10% wouldn't stick, | 2:57 | |
and it was the first sign | 3:00 | |
of some cracks in OPEC. | 3:01 | |
Well, the bad weather, | 3:03 | |
the cold east of the Rockies, | 3:07 | |
has so used up reserves of energy and of oil | 3:11 | |
that Iran and Venezuela and Nigeria, | 3:17 | |
Indonesia, some of the countries which were | 3:22 | |
trying to get top price, | 3:24 | |
have really been, in a way, bailed out by the weather. | 3:27 | |
So I have to say that, | 3:36 | |
although the weather will get better | 3:42 | |
and spring will come, | 3:44 | |
this really is bad news. | 3:46 | |
There've been some optimists, | 3:51 | |
as we have discussed, | 3:53 | |
on what's going to happen to the rate | 3:55 | |
of price inflation later. | 3:57 | |
Some of them have been monetarists. | 3:59 | |
Those who use the rate of change | 4:03 | |
of the money supply as their primary preps, | 4:05 | |
even their sole variable | 4:08 | |
for short term systematic forecasting. | 4:09 | |
Some have been otherwise. | 4:13 | |
The City Bank has had lower inflation numbers | 4:18 | |
than most organizations, add that for one. | 4:23 | |
Or we've quoted, I think it's from Weldon and Company, | 4:26 | |
Gary Shilling, who's often to be read in the press. | 4:29 | |
The latest account I saw out of White Whale, | 4:35 | |
there was that, the fourth quarter of the year | 4:38 | |
is to give us three and three quarters percent | 4:43 | |
of price inflation. | 4:45 | |
And that much price inflation now | 4:47 | |
results in less price inflation later. | 4:51 | |
It's very hard to know what such a forecast is saying | 4:54 | |
because, of course, in any one quarter, | 4:59 | |
by chance alone even, | 5:02 | |
we might get some letup. | 5:04 | |
David, there used to be something | 5:07 | |
always talked about in New England | 5:09 | |
called the January thaw. | 5:11 | |
And I asked the Dean of the School of Biostatistics | 5:13 | |
at Harvard, what about this January thaw? | 5:18 | |
Is there anything to it? | 5:21 | |
And he laughed, he said, well, | 5:22 | |
it's a rare January in which, | 5:24 | |
on some days, it doesn't get above freezing, | 5:27 | |
and warmer than it's been, | 5:29 | |
but you can count on it that the period, | 5:31 | |
when the January thaw is supposed to occur, | 5:34 | |
the last two weeks in January, | 5:36 | |
shows up year after year on the average | 5:38 | |
as the coldest part of the year. | 5:40 | |
Well. | 5:44 | |
Mr. Shilling may be right. | 5:47 | |
On the other hand, I have in front of me a forecast. | 5:50 | |
This is a private forecast | 5:54 | |
made for an investment banking concern. | 5:56 | |
They spend quite a lot of money on this sort of thing | 6:00 | |
and presumably base very expensive decisions on it. | 6:03 | |
And as far as I can see, | 6:11 | |
the economist who made this forecast, | 6:14 | |
I think said in the fourth quarter of the year, | 6:18 | |
we're gonna have six and a half percent inflation, | 6:20 | |
and six and a half percent inflation, | 6:24 | |
which will be the highest of the four quarters of the year, | 6:27 | |
and showing really increments of a quarter | 6:32 | |
of a percent in each quarter. | 6:37 | |
Five and three quarters for the first quarter, | 6:39 | |
he probably is revising that upward already, | 6:41 | |
6% for the second quarter, | 6:44 | |
six and a quarter for the third, | 6:46 | |
and then six and a half for the fourth. | 6:47 | |
You can see there's a lot of leeway | 6:51 | |
between that and three and three quarters percent. | 6:53 | |
And I guess, to be on the safe side, | 6:57 | |
I would hedge my bets and not bet on either one of these. | 7:01 | |
I've been leaning towards the pessimistic side, | 7:05 | |
and I must say, I haven't been penalized | 7:09 | |
down in the office pools yet | 7:10 | |
for that kind of pessimism. | 7:13 | |
When we talk about the weather, of course, | 7:16 | |
we're not just talking about snow in Buffalo. | 7:17 | |
Snow in the east and the cold weather. | 7:20 | |
We're talking about the whole pattern, | 7:23 | |
and that pattern includes the drought | 7:26 | |
in west of the Rockies, | 7:30 | |
and to tell the simple sober facts, | 7:33 | |
not terribly good subsoil moisture | 7:39 | |
in the prime grain growing region. | 7:44 | |
Both in the northern part, | 7:48 | |
in the Dakotas and Minnesota for example, | 7:49 | |
but also, as you move down into | 7:52 | |
Nebraska and Oklahoma. | 7:55 | |
So, all of that is going to show itself. | 7:58 | |
It already shows itself in the future prices. | 8:02 | |
We would have a really low grain, | 8:08 | |
wheat prices, for example. | 8:10 | |
If you look at how good the crops have been | 8:12 | |
the last couple years. | 8:15 | |
How great are the reserves in comparison | 8:16 | |
to what they used to be. | 8:21 | |
But when you turn to the full story, | 8:23 | |
which of course, includes more than wheat, | 8:27 | |
includes soybeans, includes corn, | 8:30 | |
includes cocoa and coffee, | 8:32 | |
includes the metals, | 8:35 | |
the future price index does not, | 8:37 | |
to my eye, suggest that we're anywhere | 8:40 | |
out of the woods with respect to the rate of inflation. | 8:43 | |
Well, that's the first bad news. | 8:47 | |
Let's look at the second bad news | 8:52 | |
and try to decide whether it's really all bad | 8:55 | |
or whether we can get some comfort from it. | 8:57 | |
I refer to the | 9:00 | |
finally revised fourth quarter numbers | 9:03 | |
of the real GNP for the end of 1976. | 9:07 | |
That has now come in at not 3%, | 9:14 | |
which was the worst quarter of the year, | 9:19 | |
but worse than 3%, 2.4%. | 9:21 | |
If even looks as if the Manufacturers Hanover forecast, | 9:25 | |
which was made long in advance of that period, | 9:29 | |
and which I think I took rather | 9:32 | |
pessimistic view of its accuracy, | 9:37 | |
will turn out to be about on the nose. | 9:41 | |
Well, superficially, this looks like | 9:46 | |
unmitigated bad news because it looks as if | 9:50 | |
we have to work harder against the lull. | 9:54 | |
But there are two aspects | 9:57 | |
that have not escaped the attention | 10:00 | |
of all of the commentators. | 10:02 | |
First, the rate of inflation | 10:05 | |
that was involved for the fourth quarter | 10:08 | |
was reported on this revision | 10:11 | |
a little bit better than in the earlier estimate. | 10:13 | |
The inflation during the fourth quarter | 10:19 | |
is now estimated at only 5.7% rather than 6.2%. | 10:20 | |
I say only because every half a percent counts. | 10:25 | |
So, prior to the really bad weather, | 10:30 | |
the reported rate of inflation | 10:34 | |
was not quite as bad as earlier we had thought. | 10:37 | |
Overshadowing this, I think, | 10:43 | |
for those looking for something | 10:45 | |
optimistic in the numbers, | 10:48 | |
is the fact that the dollar revision | 10:50 | |
almost entirely comes from a dollar revision | 10:53 | |
in reported inventory accumulation. | 10:57 | |
Whereas in the previous estimate, | 11:01 | |
inventories had been estimated at almost | 11:04 | |
an annual rate of accumulation of eight billion, | 11:06 | |
$7.9 billion annual rate of accumulation of inventories. | 11:10 | |
The new numbers bring that down to below two billion, | 11:17 | |
to only 1.7 billion. | 11:22 | |
And that's behind us. | 11:25 | |
That means that the bins are rather bare. | 11:27 | |
It probably is a reflection | 11:31 | |
of what it is that the Department of Commerce | 11:34 | |
learned about the Christmas sales, | 11:36 | |
about the December numbers, which of course, | 11:39 | |
were only a gleam in the eye of the computer | 11:42 | |
when they had to make their first rough stab | 11:45 | |
at estimating the fourth quarter. | 11:48 | |
It probably means that the consumer | 11:49 | |
was rushing the department stores | 11:52 | |
and depriving them of inventories. | 11:55 | |
Taking it away in a way that merchants | 11:58 | |
like to have happen. | 12:01 | |
Now, every empty shelf represents | 12:02 | |
a potential reorder, a new order. | 12:05 | |
And if we add the downturn in | 12:09 | |
the production index in January, | 12:18 | |
which resulted from the weather, | 12:20 | |
with in Ohio itself, almost a million people | 12:22 | |
sent home from work because of the natural gas shortage, | 12:25 | |
it makes one think that inventories | 12:31 | |
up to George Washington's birthday are, | 12:36 | |
as a stock, very low. | 12:41 | |
And this is a very favorable factor for a rebound, | 12:43 | |
for a strong second quarter. | 12:48 | |
I believe it was Dr. Charles Schultz, | 12:53 | |
the chairman of Carter's Council of Economic Advisors, | 12:56 | |
who in some public statement, testimony perhaps, | 13:00 | |
made the rough estimate | 13:04 | |
that we might lose because of the weather alone, | 13:07 | |
as much as one and a half to 2% | 13:09 | |
annual rate of growth in the first quarter. | 13:13 | |
So, if the first quarter comes in, let's say, | 13:19 | |
at three and a half percent, | 13:22 | |
that means that it would've been | 13:24 | |
five and a half percent if it weren't for the bad weather. | 13:28 | |
The first quarter really has almost half | 13:34 | |
of its time to run. | 13:36 | |
And it's remarkable how quick can be | 13:39 | |
the rebound from a strike from a weather shutdown. | 13:42 | |
So, I don't think we should bring out | 13:46 | |
the black crepe yet on the first quarter. | 13:48 | |
But it still, however the numbers come in, | 13:52 | |
can tell us nothing about the underlying | 13:57 | |
true strength of the economy | 13:59 | |
because it's all masked by weather, | 14:01 | |
depression, and post-weather rebound | 14:05 | |
from that repression. | 14:09 | |
But by the second quarter, | 14:13 | |
we should be getting to see some action. | 14:15 | |
Now, since I mentioned this particular forecast | 14:18 | |
that I have in front of me, | 14:21 | |
let me give you the numbers which show there. | 14:22 | |
This was a forecast which is dated the end of January. | 14:27 | |
So, most of the information about the bad weather | 14:32 | |
was known to the forecaster's computer. | 14:37 | |
This computer, this forecast is for | 14:44 | |
five and three quarters percent growth | 14:46 | |
in the first quarter. | 14:48 | |
Perhaps insufficient allowance is made | 14:53 | |
for the weather to take off, if you wish. | 14:55 | |
1%, one and a half percent, | 15:01 | |
one and even 2%, and we have barely 4%. | 15:06 | |
But for the second quarter, | 15:11 | |
oh no, I'm sorry, that was, I misread. | 15:15 | |
I was reading the inflation rate. | 15:18 | |
The first quarter shows 4.1%, | 15:22 | |
which seems more reasonable based upon | 15:25 | |
having allowed for the weather. | 15:28 | |
Then there's a rebound to almost 6%, | 15:30 | |
5.8% in the second quarter. | 15:33 | |
And in the third quarter, 7%. | 15:35 | |
Then it lets off a little bit to just below 6%. | 15:39 | |
Would not be a bad year | 15:43 | |
if this forecast were to materialize. | 15:44 | |
In fact, for 1978, for the first half, | 15:52 | |
there would be growth, according to this forecast, | 15:57 | |
at more than our trend level. | 15:58 | |
So, some progress would be made | 16:01 | |
towards working down the slack in the system, | 16:04 | |
and the unemployment rate would get down | 16:06 | |
to about six and a half percent by, | 16:10 | |
oh, five quarters from now, | 16:13 | |
by the middle of 1978, | 16:16 | |
just before the congressional elections | 16:18 | |
begin to become prominent in everybody's mind. | 16:22 | |
So, I would say that | 16:28 | |
when we factor in, as we should, | 16:32 | |
the new Carter budget, | 16:35 | |
you and I haven't had a chance to sort out | 16:38 | |
all the details of that. | 16:40 | |
Obviously, President Carter had to work from the | 16:43 | |
outgoing President Ford's budget. | 16:49 | |
Oliver Wendell Holmes said | 16:53 | |
that continuity in the law was not so much | 16:55 | |
a desirable thing as a necessity. | 16:58 | |
Well, continuity in fiscal policy, | 17:02 | |
no matter who's elected, | 17:05 | |
is not so much a desirability as a necessity. | 17:08 | |
Where the elections count | 17:13 | |
is finally in moving the rates of change gradually, | 17:16 | |
tilting them, to use an old Nixon expression, | 17:24 | |
in one direction rather than in another direction. | 17:27 | |
Well, it's Carter's tilt of the forward budget, | 17:30 | |
of course, that interests us. | 17:34 | |
- | He's been talking about a deficit | 17:37 |
of 58 to 61 billion. | 17:39 | |
The figures of course, | 17:41 | |
final figures will be out today but-- | 17:42 | |
- | Yes, most people summarize things | 17:43 |
by saying that there's about a 20 billion dollar add on | 17:47 | |
to the Ford budget. | 17:50 | |
That's less than 20 billion when you realize that | 17:53 | |
President Ford didn't really expect to get his way | 17:56 | |
on all of those suggested | 17:58 | |
items of holding things down and of cutting things. | 18:04 | |
There were some interesting features, | 18:08 | |
interesting to a newspaper reader, | 18:10 | |
and I suppose to a journalist. | 18:13 | |
In the period of most intense Western floods, | 18:15 | |
you notice that the Carter program slashed | 18:20 | |
very many dam projects. | 18:26 | |
Now, what is one to think about that? | 18:29 | |
You have in the California Valley, | 18:35 | |
a dry situation known to everybody. | 18:39 | |
You have a dam upon which a couple hundred million | 18:43 | |
has already been spent. | 18:48 | |
But there is some question whether | 18:51 | |
that dam is too near a fault and an earthquake | 18:55 | |
could cause a certain amount of | 19:00 | |
loss of property, even loss of life. | 19:05 | |
The environmentalists are of mixed minds. | 19:09 | |
You get from some of these projects, | 19:12 | |
good recreational lakes and new wonders of nature, | 19:15 | |
but you also interfere | 19:21 | |
with the rhythm of the equilibrium of the ecology. | 19:25 | |
I heard one cynic, | 19:32 | |
in fact, one cynic explain to me, | 19:35 | |
this was not a particularly inside person, | 19:37 | |
that it must've been evident that | 19:42 | |
it was safe for Carter to ask for these things to be cut | 19:45 | |
because Congress won't cut them | 19:48 | |
under these circumstances. | 19:50 | |
I don't know whether that suspicion is well justified, | 19:53 | |
and it isn't intended, | 19:57 | |
that one precisely asks for the cuts | 19:59 | |
at a time when many of the voters | 20:03 | |
will be outraged at the thought of the taking place or not. | 20:06 | |
We still have the perennial debate | 20:13 | |
as to whether the form of the tax cut, | 20:17 | |
the $50 rebates, | 20:21 | |
will be an efficient way of getting | 20:26 | |
an increased amount of spending | 20:29 | |
or whether it will tend to go into increased saving. | 20:32 | |
And you can get an argument | 20:36 | |
on either side of that proposition. | 20:39 | |
Not only from people in the public | 20:42 | |
who don't really know what | 20:45 | |
they're talking about particularly, | 20:46 | |
always have an opinion but is never | 20:48 | |
based upon any coach and argument | 20:50 | |
or any analogy of the evidence. | 20:52 | |
But among well-informed economists | 20:54 | |
who have displayed a certain amount | 20:59 | |
of proficiency and logical reasoning, | 21:01 | |
you can also get a divided jury | 21:05 | |
on that particular issue. | 21:07 | |
Those who believe in monetary policy exclusively have, | 21:17 | |
I ought to report, a divided jury on whether | 21:26 | |
the present targets of the M2 money supply, | 21:31 | |
the M1 money supply, | 21:35 | |
are adequate to realize the real goals, | 21:37 | |
which President Carter has stated. | 21:43 | |
I read that goal to be | 21:46 | |
in the four quarters of 1977 itself, | 21:50 | |
an average rate of real growth of 6%. | 21:55 | |
And it seems to me that | 22:00 | |
the Carter fiscal program | 22:03 | |
and the Federal Reserve's announced targets, | 22:06 | |
plus what I infer to be the underlying | 22:13 | |
spontaneous strength of the system, | 22:18 | |
all add up to not quite enough to make that target. | 22:23 | |
However, the likely numbers are so close to it | 22:29 | |
that given the imprecision | 22:36 | |
of our estimation procedure, | 22:38 | |
and given this outside fact that we | 22:41 | |
could have an inventory splurge, | 22:43 | |
the tinder is there, the stage is set, | 22:47 | |
as I've described earlier, | 22:49 | |
so that you could have for | 22:51 | |
a couple of quarters, | 22:55 | |
without stretching my imagination, | 22:59 | |
9% rates of real growth. | 23:00 | |
In which case, you go over that target. | 23:03 | |
Given all that, it seems to me that | 23:05 | |
we are in the ballpark of | 23:09 | |
achieving the desired goals. | 23:15 | |
From a standpoint of optimal control theory, | 23:19 | |
putting much more stimulus in, | 23:24 | |
I mean, David, much more stimulus than | 23:28 | |
we're likely to get from Congress. | 23:32 | |
We expect some add on from Congress. | 23:35 | |
Would begin to encounter more risks, | 23:40 | |
in terms of unsustainable growth | 23:45 | |
and overheating the economy and changing the | 23:47 | |
desire of the electorate and of the Congress | 23:53 | |
to push ahead on a sustained reduction | 23:57 | |
of the rate of unemployment. | 24:01 | |
So, I started off by saying it's, | 24:03 | |
there are two kinds of bad news | 24:08 | |
which we have to discuss, | 24:09 | |
and I really, | 24:11 | |
after taking a measured look at the developments, | 24:18 | |
have to report that I don't think | 24:24 | |
that the second bad news, | 24:27 | |
the fourth quarter revision is downward. | 24:29 | |
Bad as that may be for profits of that period | 24:33 | |
and for employment of that period, | 24:38 | |
it's, on the whole, rather better news | 24:41 | |
with respect to what lies ahead of us. | 24:46 | |
- | Dr. Samuelson, since we were, | 24:49 |
made our last taping here, | 24:51 | |
the House Banking Committee has sent | 24:55 | |
a letter to Dr. Burns, | 24:58 | |
which I believe was, partially anyways, | 25:02 | |
in response to your testimony. | 25:04 | |
Is this a further incursion of the Congress | 25:07 | |
into the control of the Federal Reserve system? | 25:11 | |
- | Well. | 25:17 |
First, let me say | 25:19 | |
that I have read in the Christian Science Monitor | 25:21 | |
your story on that, | 25:25 | |
and it's interesting that | 25:26 | |
you were one of the few journalists | 25:30 | |
to pick this up. | 25:33 | |
This has tended to escape attention. | 25:35 | |
The fact that a congressional committee, | 25:40 | |
for the first time, I believe, | 25:43 | |
and by 31 out of 32 of the Democratic members | 25:46 | |
of the House Banking Committee, the Royce Committee, | 25:53 | |
that's 31 out of a total of 47 | 25:56 | |
Republicans and Democrats on the committee, | 26:00 | |
have written a friendly letter to the Federal Reserve, | 26:03 | |
telling them, Big Brother's watching, | 26:06 | |
and we're expecting you to behave in a certain way. | 26:10 | |
Now you ask whether that is an incursion on the | 26:13 | |
rights of the Federal Reserve. | 26:21 | |
I presume that when I reach into my wallet | 26:23 | |
and take out some money to spend on, | 26:29 | |
for my daily bread, | 26:34 | |
you don't call that an incursion | 26:35 | |
on the rights of my wallet because | 26:38 | |
it's understood that I am sovereign, | 26:40 | |
and not my wallet. | 26:45 | |
I would say that for any illusion person | 26:48 | |
who believes that the Federal Reserve | 26:54 | |
is a sovereign unto itself, | 26:55 | |
and has the right to independence | 26:57 | |
of decision-making, of discretionary | 27:02 | |
monetary policy determination, | 27:06 | |
and has this right not only day to day | 27:08 | |
and three or four weeks | 27:12 | |
to three or four week in the Open Market Committee, | 27:15 | |
but has been appointed for a long period of time, | 27:18 | |
each of those governors, | 27:23 | |
buffered from politics to do the right thing, | 27:25 | |
in terms of fundamental economic principles. | 27:30 | |
Anyone who has that illusion view | 27:33 | |
must find this a disillusioning action. | 27:36 | |
I don't think that, however, | 27:42 | |
is a realistic view or has been for a long time. | 27:44 | |
Now let me, in the interest of truth, | 27:46 | |
say that I did, my testimony did encourage | 27:50 | |
the sending of that letter. | 27:56 | |
But the idea of such a letter | 27:57 | |
did not originate with me. | 28:01 | |
I was asked about its wisdom by Chairman Royce, | 28:03 | |
and I think that the staff of that committee | 28:09 | |
probably was very keen on it before | 28:13 | |
the idea had even occurred to me. | 28:18 | |
Furthermore, I don't think we should | 28:21 | |
make too much of this. | 28:24 | |
This is, it's like going on a diet. | 28:25 | |
When you go on a diet, | 28:30 | |
you go on a diet for the rest of your life. | 28:32 | |
This is a long time relationship, | 28:35 | |
and it's not this first shot, | 28:38 | |
but it's just indicative that Congress | 28:41 | |
is taking a closer interest, | 28:45 | |
and since somebody has to take an interest, | 28:49 | |
I mean, somebody who's elected politically, | 28:53 | |
I think that this is probably a good thing. | 28:58 | |
I also think that the Fed is gonna be able to | 29:03 | |
live within the general guidelines of this letter. | 29:05 | |
Dr. Burns has replied according to the press | 29:14 | |
by pointing out that what's gonna happen | 29:19 | |
to interest rates doesn't depend only on the Fed, | 29:22 | |
but depends on what's gonna happen to prices, | 29:24 | |
and also, what the real strength in the economy is. | 29:27 | |
And I think that's true. | 29:32 | |
And my own counsel to Congress | 29:33 | |
is not to send letters which are empty rhetoric | 29:36 | |
asking the Fed to do all sorts | 29:40 | |
of impossible things simultaneously, | 29:42 | |
but to tell the Fed how Congress | 29:45 | |
wants it to resolve and compromise | 29:48 | |
when unexpected developments do come up. | 29:52 | |
- | Thank you very much. | 29:56 |
If you subscribers would like to ask questions | 29:58 | |
of Professor Paul Samuelson | 30:00 | |
or suggest subjects for him to discuss, | 30:02 | |
please write to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 30:04 | |
450 East Ohio Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 30:08 |
Item Info
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