For our part, we’re vigorously pursuing arms reduction negotiations with the Soviet Union.  Supported by our allies, we’ve put forward draft agreements proposing significant weapon reductions to equal and verifiable lower levels.  We insist on an equal balance of forces.  And given the overwhelming evidence of Soviet violations of international treaties concerning chemical and biological weapons, we also insist that any agreement we sign can and will be verifiable.

In the case of intermediate-range nuclear forces, we have proposed the complete elimination of the entire class of land-based missiles.  We’re also prepared to carefully explore serious Soviet proposals.  At the same time, let me emphasize that allied steadfastness remains a key to achieving arms reductions.

With firmness and dedication, we’ll continue to negotiate.  Deep down, the Soviets must know it’s in their interest as well as ours to prevent a wasteful arms race.  And once they recognize our unshakable resolve to maintain adequate deterrence, they will have every reason to join us in the search for greater security and major arms reductions.  When that moment comes—­and I’m confident that it will—­we will have taken an important step toward a more peaceful future for all the world’s people.

A very wise man, Bernard Baruch, once said that America has never forgotten the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path.  Our country is a special place, because we Americans have always been sustained, through good times and bad, by a noble vision—­a vision not only of what the world around us is today but what we as a free people can make it be tomorrow.

We’re realists; we solve our problems instead of ignoring them, no matter how loud the chorus of despair around us.  But we’re also idealists, for it was an ideal that brought our ancestors to these shores from every corner of the world.

Right now we need both realism and idealism.  Millions of our neighbors are without work.  It is up to us to see they aren’t without hope.  This is a task for all of us.  And may I say, Americans have rallied to this cause, proving once again that we are the most generous people on Earth.

We who are in government must take the lead in restoring the economy.  And here all that time, I thought you were reading the paper.

The single thing—­the single thing that can start the wheels of industry turning again is further reduction of interest rates.  Just another 1 or 2 points can mean tens of thousands of jobs.

Right now, with inflation as low as it is, 3.9 percent, there is room for interest rates to come down.  Only fear prevents their reduction.  A lender, as we know, must charge an interest rate that recovers the depreciated value of the dollars loaned.  And that depreciation is, of course, the amount of inflation.  Today, interest rates are based on fear—­fear that government will resort to measures, as it has in the past, that will send inflation zooming again.