Thank you, Chair.
From the sixties, I think you'd all agree, we've had a dramatic shift. Back in the sixties there was one wage earner, not both parents working. The demographics today are 1.7 compared to heaven knows what, and we have an aging population. We have a different world today.
Taking that into consideration, it's been said, I've heard, that the perfect inflation rate would be 1%, but wouldn't you agree that 0% is the perfect rate? Aren't a lot of these problems a result of pressures on non-market decisions? For instance, we do a lot of things today, right or wrong. We have the ramifications of energy production. That's not driven by market forces any more. You could even argue something like minimum wages. They're all social issues. We've put a whole mess of different things into the porridge. As a result, what should be a very simple subject, economics, now becomes one of the most complex.
I have to tell you that the more I listen to you, the more complicated it gets. I remember one time reading a book by Goodman, Paper Money. He was asking a banker about the policies of lending between banks and he asked how many people understood this. They said a handful of senators and one or two congressmen. I don't know if it's that bad today, but the fact of the matter is it's complicated.
Wouldn't you agree that the reason we are having a lot of these problems is that we've decided to just mix in a whole mess of things that aren't really what we'd call traditionally economics? I'd like to have your thoughts on that.