Remarks Opening the Conference on Inflation.

Good morning:

It is a pleasure to be here with the distinguished Members of the Congress, both Democratic and Republican, and the very eminent group of economists and guests.

I look forward to a very beneficial and fruitful meeting this morning. This meeting marks the start of our national Conference on Inflation. I have called this series of working conferences in response to a bipartisan recommendation by the United States Senate and with the cooperation of concerned citizens representing all elements of our American society.

Our purpose is to find ways by which we, the American people, can come to grips with our economic difficulties and surmount them.

This has been called a summit conference. Maybe that title is a bit misleading. Recent summit conferences have been held between leaders of international adversaries with the hope of reducing their differences. Around this table there are no adversaries. We come together as allies to draw upon, or to draw up, I should say, a battle plan against a common enemy, inflation. Inflation is our domestic enemy number one.

Battle strategies are usually devised in secret. At my insistence, this is a typically American open meeting. Some skeptics have warned me that putting 28 of our most distinguished economists and eight Members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, on public display with live microphones would produce a spectacle something like professional wrestlers playing ice hockey. [Laughter] But I am ready to referee this opening match.

It is not widely known, but I started out in college very much attracted to economics. Later I switched to the law, probably because the legal profession seemed a better path to success in politics.

Having come this far, I can see why no economist would ever dream of wanting to be President.

But if we succeed in the job cut out for us, I can promise you there will be statues of each of you in every city park throughout the United States. Economics will never again be called a dismal science, nor will politicians, if we succeed, dare again to hide behind the old alibi that the people just don't understand economics. The people understand economics very, very well, and they are sick and tired of having politics played with their pocketbooks.

This Conference on Inflation is a joint enterprise of the legislative and executive branches of our Government which can become a monument to politics in the very best sense of the word. It unites Republicans and Independents and Democrats in an election year against a deadly enemy that doesn't recognize one political party from another.

The President cannot lick inflation. The Congress cannot lick inflation. Business, labor, agriculture, and other segments of America cannot lick inflation. Separately we can only make it worse, but together we can beat it to its knees.

These meetings are not going to be empty exercises in economic rhetoric, neither are they going to reveal any quick miracles. There is no quick fix for what ails our economy. I, for one, refuse to believe that the very best brains in America and the smartest, hardest working workers in the world cannot find a workable way to get the productive machinery of this great country back on the track and going full speed ahead.

Let me say, or set out, if I might, a few ground rules at the outset. We can't waste time stating and restating the problems. The problems are obvious, painful, and perplexing.

What we want are some right answers, not a long list of alternative answers, theoretical and hypothetical, good and bad. We need to have attainable answers sharply defined and carefully sorted out with the pluses and the minuses of each clearly stated.

We are looking for action that is practical, possible, and as rapid in its effect as we can reasonably expect.

I don't have to tell all of you experts that there are many answers, most of which have been tried at some historic time. But before this conference ends, I would like to see and to have set before the American people a consistent and considered package of the most promising answers that you can find, some of which, or all of which, will restore economic stability and sustain economic growth in these United States.

If our country is economically healthy, the whole world will be economically healthier. Inflation is a world-wide epidemic and we will quarantine it in collaboration with our friends abroad.

As you test your answers against the hard rock of economic law, as you discard beguiling, instant cures for reliable remedies, as you try to treat the cause rather than the symptom, I ask you to bear in mind that no solution will work without a lot of willpower and individual sacrifice. America has plenty of both-a capacity for both.

Sacrifice is easy to ask of others. It is harder to demand of ourselves. Burdens never fall equally on everybody's shoulders, but we must seek to share them as widely as the prosperity we hope will follow. The burdens of battle against inflation will be lighter if every American, all 210 million of us, lends a hand.

There will be 10 more specialized meetings over the next few weeks culminating in a final 2-day session on September 27 and 28. When we are done, there will be some things we can agree on.

I hope these areas of agreement will be greater than the areas of disagreement. But it is a fact that our economic system, like our political system, is based on competition in the honest conflict between different interests and different opinions. So there will be some things about which we cannot reach a consensus.

This would be a dull country without dissenters. But fortunately that is not a foreseeable danger in this case. Where we disagree, it will be necessary for the President and the Congress to make some very hard decisions. Our political system is designed to do exactly that, relying in the end on the ultimate good sense of the American people.

That is why these conferences must be open to the public. After all, it is their business we are really talking about.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let's get to work.

At this point I would like to ask our newly sworn-in Chairman, Mr. Alan Greenspan, to give his outlook on the economy.