I'm John Batchel. I welcome Professor John Cochran of the Hoover Institution to take us to

memory lane, a time machine. It is December, 1950 at the White House. The president,

Harry Truman, makes a phone call to the chairman of the Federal Reserve. The context is that

the Chinese have launched on a massive counterattack across the Yalu River

against the Marines at the Chosun Reservar and the army along various roads leading from Seoul

to the North Korean frontier. The massive counterattack will overwhelm the Marine Corps and

lead to a crisis internationally. The police action

is now losing badly. The president knows this and is anxious about the crisis economy that resulted

from the Japanese sneak attack in December and that we will see happen again during the COVID crisis

of these last years. John Cochran tells me, though,

that Harry Truman had a very different understanding of himself and what he wanted to achieve

between December 1950. The phone call to the chairman of the Federal Reserve giving him a direction

that the president wanted him to take. That's right. The so-called independence federal reserve chairman was getting advice, guidance,

lobbying from the president of the United States.

Many years later, the same Harry Truman, now a former president I learned from John

Cochran, in a wonderfully romantic detail, is walking in

Manhattan, and he comes across a man named Martin, who was the replacement for Chairman McCabe

when the crisis of 1950 was resolved.

The president, the former president said one word to Mr. Martin, who was the chairman of

Federal Reserve. He said the word traitor. All right, what's happened? John, this is wonderful.

Congratulations. You've taken me to a story. Not only did I not know who it existed. I didn't

know what they were debating. What did the president

...