00:00President Trump has offered his opinion about what you ought to do with interest rates. Is that right?
00:05Senator, he has not made his opinion on that a secret to anybody.
00:09Yeah. And every president has that you're aware of.
00:16Yes. And they all tend to be in the same direction, Senator Kennedy.
00:19Okay. Now, the problem is, can we agree that your credibility as Fed Chairman is the most important thing you
00:27have?
00:28It's the most important thing to me. It's the most important thing to the institution.
00:32And it's the most important thing to the successful conduct of policy.
00:35Okay. That's a yes, right?
00:37Yes, Senator.
00:38Okay. The problem is that President Trump has said he's not going to appoint anybody who wouldn't agree to lower
00:46interest rates.
00:49Have you agreed with the president that you're going to lower interest rates?
00:53Senator, I'm glad you framed it that way.
00:55The president never asked me to predetermine, commit, fix, decide on any interest rate decision in any of our discussions,
01:06nor would I ever agree to do so.
01:09So the president has never sat you down, looked you in the eye, and said, here's the deal, Scooter.
01:15I'm going to appoint you, but you got to agree to lower interest rates.
01:19That didn't happen or did happen?
01:21The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period, and nor would I ever
01:31agree to do so if he had.
01:32But he never did.
01:33I was honored he nominated me.
01:35Like everyone else in the committee in the world, I've heard his view on interest rates.
01:39It sounded very similar to me to every other president in economic history that I've studied.
01:44How did I vote?
01:44He worked.
01:45How did he know that he was born?
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