Authors Forum: Meltdown

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, I actually have three books that have come out since the last scholars' conference, so I'm going to have to rush through them a little bit. I'm going to spend most of the time on the one that really seems to be kind of hot these days, and that's this book, Meltdown. Now, it's my understanding that Dick Morris, the political consultant whose views on this crisis we all await with bated breath, was actually planning to release a book called Meltdown this year. It's now called Catastrophe, which is, I think, far stupider sounding than Meltdown, but anyway. So at least we won't have any confusion there. The Nation magazine released a collection of their own crummy essays that they called Meltdown.

0:49So I have to compete with that, but so far there hasn't been too much confusion. We have exactly the opposite diagnosis and conclusion. So the title is Meltdown. The book contains a foreword by Ron Paul, and it is dedicated to Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul. I wrote it in great haste. That doesn't mean it's crummy, by the way. It just means that I work day and night. I sacrificed everything that was dear to me, pretty much, in order to get this out. The events that are covered in the book extend all the way through December 2008 and it came out February 9th.

1:35So I had the cooperation of a publisher that works very quickly and that was great because my hope was to have, if not the first book, then one of the first books on this crisis. And I do think it's the first one that actually gets through the bailouts through December 2008, tells that whole story. It's not just about the mortgage situation. There are a bunch of books on that. But it goes through December 2008. I think it's the first one. Because I thought it is absolutely inevitable that there will be an avalanche of rotten books by blockheads from now until the end of time on this crisis. And I thought, wouldn't it be unbelievable to actually, before the bad guys even have time to organize, there's already an Austrian book on this subject out there.

2:24So I'm happy to announce that I've also gotten the news for a week from this Sunday. The book will be entering its fourth week as a New York Times bestseller, so it is moving. The best thing that could possibly happen to me would be for Paul Krugman to denounce it. That would be the best thing, but I don't think I can hope for that. I think they're going to try to ignore it. The last time they reviewed one of my books, it totally backfired because all normal Americans thought to themselves, Well, this must be a great book. Crummy New York Times can't stand it. Well, now, part of the author's forum involves not just talking about the book itself, but we also have a chance, if we so desire, to say something about how it's been received, what our experiences have been like and so on.

3:10Because I think you can get the gist of what the book is about. It's an overview of the economic crisis with the discussion of Austrian business cycle theory and all this stuff explained in a way that the layman can understand. And everybody's been telling me that. I've been getting a lot of comments on my website about that. I can get it. It's written at my level. I appreciate that. One of the things I did was anything that seemed too technical even to me or a lot of lengthy quotations, I threw into the footnotes or the endnotes at the end. So sometimes there actually is some good meaty stuff in those notes, but just to keep the main text flowing more easily. Well, it's interesting to note that the gentleman who recorded the audio book for this, a guy named Alan Sklar, who is a professional voice man who's done quite a lot of voice work.

4:02In fact, he's done a lot of radio ads for new paperbacks. So he'll be the guy who will say, you know, John Grisham is back, that sort of guy. So he's the narrator of the book for the audio book and he's done such a fantastic job. But he called me, or he emailed me, simply because he wanted to go over a few pronunciation issues on some of the names. And when he emailed, he said, you know, I have to be honest with you, when I got your book and I saw it's published by, you know, like a right of center publisher, I thought to myself, here we go again, another stupid right-wing book I have to read. And he said, but I have to admit, he said, you make a very strong case. This guy's an Obama supporter. So I thought that is a pretty neat little bit of feedback to get.

4:47So then he actually called so I could pronounce some of the names for him, and I answered the phone. He knows he's got this perfect voice, so he exploits it at every opportunity. I answered the phone, and he said, Thomas Woods, yes, and he says, this is your conscience. I thought, yeah, where have you been? So far the reception has been good, almost eerily good though. There haven't been any negative reviews other than, you know, the occasional one-star Amazon review. I think the most recent one of those was, you know, the Fed had nothing to do with it. It was greed. It was greedy people. I mean, honestly, that's the review. It was greedy people, and that's no joke. So I mean, if that's the worst I'm going to get, that's fine, but I actually want to get beaten up a little bit, to get a little controversy going and push this thing a little more.

5:41I've done a lot of radio in support of the book, a little TV but a lot of radio and I've actually been on some programs with a fairly sizable audience. So I've been on the Michael Medved show a couple times and what's very interesting is, you know, Michael Medved and I don't see eye to eye on certain things to say the least. But he's always been very generous and kind with me. So I came on and you can always tell which hosts have actually read your book and which ones are just reading off the press release that came with it. And I understand that. I mean, obviously a radio host can't read every single book. I understand that. But he does. He basically does read the books. And it was so obvious. He's citing things in here that he would have to have read it in order to know about. Callers are calling in. He's giving the answer half the time from the book. And he said, you know, you've changed my way of thinking on this.

6:29He's very critical of the Fed. He demands to know if we actually need this thing anymore. I could not get over it. And he's not the only one. I've been getting this time and again. Now, there are a lot of radio talk show hosts who want to stay in the area where they feel comfortable, which is Fannie and Freddie, Community Reinvestment Act, things like that. But I'm always careful to try to steer the conversation to the Fed and make sure we get that on the table. And I'm happy to say that's starting to happen. People are actually starting to ask questions about this institution. Now, one bit of happy news also about the book is that I've learned, frankly, and, frankly, something of how many friends I have, people who have come out to support this project. So one night I got a phone call from a gentleman who said, get on your computer and go to the following website, GetTomOnTV.com.

7:25They had designed a website where you sign up and you'll be on some kind of email thing to bombard people, to urge them to get me on the program. I have no idea this was being done, and when you go to that site, it's got a picture of me from when I was 18, they got from Facebook. And I'm actually holding a remote control in my hand, and I've got my stupid high tops, my stupid haircut. I'm wearing corduroys like eight years after people stopped wearing them. In fact, I'm sure some people in this room don't even know what corduroys are, but they made sure and used that photo. Well, thanks It's all a bunch, everybody, I appreciate that. But then, now recently on Facebook, there's the Facebook Meltdown Link Bomb you can join as a group where people are going to put links to the book and news items about the book on their site.

8:16So it's been very enjoyable, very, very pleasant and enjoyable, and I've been speaking now to university audiences, again, very favorable reception. So you know, I have no complaints. Well, I do have one complaint, and that is that I have no more time to talk about this book. The second book we have here, we don't have copies of in the store, but I have a pile of them. If you want one, you can come see me for a mere 20 smackers. You can get Who Killed the Constitution, which I co-wrote with Kevin Gutzman. And this came out in July, and it has some themes in it that are sort of Austrian related. One of the chapters deals with the gold confiscation in 1933, 1933, an episode in American history people tend to have relatively few details about.

9:04We know it happened, but how did it happen, and what happened in the wake of it, and so on and on. That's a story that I thought would be interesting to tell, so that's one of the topics that we cover in some detail there. The power to draft people into the military is another issue we look at from a constitutional point of view, and not even so much from my point of view because the Constitution is This is some kind of a sacred document, but rather because this is the document these crumbs themselves say they're going to follow. So let's show that they can't even do that. They can't even follow their own document. So when it comes to the power to draft, there's only one time that this really appears before the Supreme Court. The Selective Draft Law case is around 1919. And when you read the arguments they make in favor of the power to draft, it's unbelievably pathetic.

9:54The Empire of Russia has the power to draft. The Empire of Japan has the power to draft. So the argument basically is, look, all the cool countries have this power. What, do you want to be one of them loser countries? Come on now. This is actually seriously advanced by the highest legal... Anyway. But I think maybe the most satisfying part of who killed the Constitution is the takedown of John Yoo. Who? John Yoo. Now, if you don't know who John Yoo is, then that's good. You've had a happier life than I have. But John Yoo was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for a couple of years under George Bush, George W. Bush. Now, Deputy Assistant Attorney General sounds like the assistant to the assistant to the traveling secretary or something, but he made this office into something very significant because of the memos he wrote.

10:47and he's significant because he basically wrote legal briefs that said exactly what the regime wanted to hear about the powers of the president in war and what the president can get away with constitutionally. But John Yoo is actually of the opinion. The president is almost completely unrestrained in what he can do in terms of foreign policy. He actually argues that the president can in fact initiate force, the use of force The framers intended the president to be, in effect, unrestrained in the conduct of foreign policy, including the initiation of hostilities. And you may say, well, how does he get around the declaration of war by Congress thing? He explains that a declaration of war is just a declaratory thing. It's really just an empty gesture.

11:37Just saying, hey everybody, just so you know, we're fighting a war. It has no other effect other than that. He says that in the 18th century, that's all it meant. But in the 18th century, it could mean that, but it could also refer to the initiation of hostilities themselves. And his interpretation is totally unsustainable, because the Federalists, at the time the Constitution was drafted, who were trying to convince skeptical anti-Federalists, don't worry about the President under the Constitution. One of their arguments was, well, don't worry, because only the Congress can declare war. So don't worry, this president won't be like some crazy king. Well, what kind of assurance would that have been if the declaration of war was just simply a note that meant nothing? What kind of assurance would that have been if the Federalists had said, oh, don't worry about the president because the Congress will have power to write a little note saying, hey, the president has taken us to war.

12:28I mean, why would that comfort them? So there's no way this can be acceptable. And you, of course, as the guy who, when he was asked, suppose the president decided that he wanted to crush the testicles So, it gave me great satisfaction to go through line by line, as if this were necessary, and smash this guy to smithereens. So, anyway, a mere 20 smackers, come see me and we'll make that happen. Finally, We Who Dared to Say No to War is an anthology that I edited with Murray Polner, a guy on the left, who is an absolutely great guy.

13:13We got to know each other on Long Island and we decided we're going to put this together. We're going to put together the best, most compelling anti-war writing from all the major American wars from 1812 to the present. We've got people all over the spectrum here. The only thing is you can't be a fascist or a commie. Otherwise, we'll put you in there. These are not just, oh, aren't these pretty speeches, and that's wonderful. We've got speeches, articles, book excerpts, poems, cartoons, whatever, all this stuff in here. But it's not just that they're beautifully written, which they are, these pieces. But the content is great because they'll also expose where the propaganda is in all these wars and what the real truth was about these wars. In fact, for example, we've got Congressman Samuel Taggart and his Denunciation of the War of 1812 in Congress.

14:01No one's ever read that. That's not available anywhere. But he is repeating arguments we hear all the time about the Iraq War. And so he's got to answer those arguments even then. The argument that, well, as soon as American troops march into Canada, Canadians will rise up and welcome their liberators. But if they don't, well, then they're just a race of debased paltrunes who deserve whatever American troops shall out to them. I mean, it's the same thing over and over again. In 1849, the Congregational Minister William J. said, We have been taught to ring our bells and illuminate our windows and let off fireworks as manifestations of our joy when we have heard of great ruin and devastation and misery and death inflicted by our troops upon a people who never injured us, who never fired a shot on our soil, and who were utterly incapable of acting on the offensive against us.

14:48That's from 1849. So this is one of the few anthologies that would include, basically, Murray Rothbard and Eugene B. Debs in the same cover. And as you go through it, it's not just something that you can use as a reference on your shelf. Actually, we picked things that people would actually want to read the thing all the way through, all through the major wars. And as I say, these are long forgotten things. Some of these are old, ripe people. Fascinating stuff. We were so delighted to have the opportunity to do this project. And I guess I'll just conclude on this by saying, you know, I hope you enjoy this as much as we did putting it together. And I was kind of on the fence on intellectual property till I realized how hard it is to reprint 20th century material when the people are dead.

15:36You don't know where their heirs live. You don't know what to do. So that's why Norman Thomas isn't in here. All right. So thank you all very much. See you later.