Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes, Inc.: Good to be with you, Mike. Thank you.

Mike Gleason: Well there’s so much I want to ask you about and I know time is limited so I’ll get right to it. Now you’ve talked about sound money and the importance of demonstrating monetary and fiscal restraint a lot in your books, it was a main part of your platform when you ran for president those two times. So what do you make of this growing movement of people who recognize that the debt-based system we have today is a broken one… one where asset bubbles are perpetually created that will inevitably go bust. What do you make of this movement that’s come about as a result of the overwhelming discontent over where we are today with the state of our economy.

Steve Forbes: I think it's encouraging that a growing number are recognizing there is a problem. Even before you get to solutions you've got to recognize and acknowledge that the way things are being done is not working and that the Federal Reserve has been a huge factor in the sluggishness of the U.S. economy; very, very destructive actions they've taken. 

One of the things that really most of the economics profession doesn't seem to get is that money is simply a means for us to buy and sell with each other. It's like a claim check. You go to a restaurant, check your coat, the claim check has no intrinsic value, but it's a claim on the coat. Money is a claim on products and services. It has no intrinsic value. What it does, it's like a claim check on products and services. It works best when it has a fixed value.

Money measures value the way scales measure weight or clocks measure time or rulers measure space and length, and it works best when it's stable. The best way to get stable money, as we explained in our book Reviving America, is precisely to link it to gold the way we did for a hundred and eighty years. It works. Gold is like a ruler. It has a stable value. When you see the price fluctuate, that means that it's the dollar's value that's fluctuating, people's feeling about it for the present and for the future. But gold is like Polaris. It's the North Star. It's fixed.

Mike Gleason: That leads me right into my next question here. About a year ago you and Elizabeth Ames co-wrote the book titled Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy and What We Can Do About It. You proposed a modified gold standard... and I'll quote here, and then I'd like to get your comments.

The twenty-first century gold standard would fix the dollar to gold at a particular price. The Federal Reserve would use its tools, primarily open market operations, to keep the value of the dollar tied at that rate of gold.

What would be the main benefits of such a reform? And also I'm curious why you stopped short of calling for an end to the Fed all together and a return to true free markets when it comes to gold and the rate of interest?