And the last two points I want to make are these. My background since I got out of the Navy has been as a farmer. I'm very proud that you have given … - Jimmy Carter

Our national energy plan is based on 10 fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the Government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices. The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems-wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both problems at once. The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, by making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and by developing a strategic petroleum reserve. The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, and every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve just as consumers will. The energy. producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer. The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way that we can buy a barrel of oil for about $2. It costs about $13 to waste it. The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement cost of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The eighth principle is that Government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason that I'm working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption, as we do now, when they only make up 7 percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal, while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. The tenth and last principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy that we will rely on in the next century. Now, these 10 principles have guided the development of the policy that I will describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday night.

Well, I can't say that I depended on overdrafts to run my business, but as I have said in one of my regular news conferences that was televised nationwide, yes, I've had overdrafts. Let me add one other thing. There is a fairly common practice--and I am not trying to criticize banks, because I don't know how wide the practice is-but there's a general sense at home, not because it's in the South, but because I live in a small town, that if you have several accounts and a substantial balance in all those accounts, but then you become overdrawn in one of those accounts, then that's not considered to be an illegal or an unethical act. I run, I would say in my business, six or seven individual accounts, different aspects of my farm or my warehouse business. Also, I have a personal account. I never write any checks. I haven't written three checks in the last 5 years. My wife does all the check writing. But if we should have $50,000 or $100,000 in my warehouse account, and in my own personal account my wife should buy a dress and give a $25 check to pay for it and the check bounced 'because we were overdrawn, they would not send for the sheriff or call me on the phone to say, "You've disgraced yourself by having an overdraft." They would say, in effect, "We'll honor this check. We'll put a notice in your mailbox, and then you can shift some money from your warehouse account over into the personal account." But I don't excuse overdrafts. You know, it's obvious that I would rather my own life have been completely free of any overdraft. But I can't say that it's an acceptable thing. But I still don't believe that it's an unethical or illegal thing in the banking circles in which I've had to operate.

The most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them.