do is go to our panelists. i will call them one at a time. thick and very quickly quickly e themselves and this question of how we achieve energy independence. >> sure. thank you. i am the founder of an organization called gigaton throwdown, a project to encourage thinking. ..

just two small examples. there are many others like them. ls9 and many others and many that they have supported as well and i'm sure he's going to talk about even more radical ideas. but without the kind of thing that there are -- there is a possibility, and that we can scale these technologies up to the scale that's necessary, not necessarily to completely eliminate use of oil, but to give us alternatives so that it no longer becomes that strategic commodity. >> so sunil, to sort of pin it down, you're using the salt analogy, we have -- absolutely have to have more alternatives to break this focus on these single simplistic ways of viewing our systems and so we need to, in a sense, embrace complexity, which is something

that is difficult to do sometimes. >> yeah. that's right. and we need to have, you know, right now, when you produce electricity, there are a number of different ways of doing it. coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, nuclear, etc. when you want to move a car, you want to move a truck, you want to move a tank, an arm, there's only one way to do it. get stuff out of the ground. >> ok. >> gary, i'm going to turn to you next, and your focus on particularly with your experience, having run bp asia the last more than a decade, sort of what's going on globally and what that all means for us, and how there are solutions or revolutionary ideas that come at sort of changing the angle of our perspective. >> thank you, michael. my name is gary dirks, i am the director of lightworks, arizona state university. and as michael said, i spent the last 14 years in asia as president of bp china and president of bp asia pa second.

i'd like to -- pacific. i'd like to take a step back and look at this from a global perspective and build on some of the things that sunil has already said and i would like to start with a quote that i find very compelling, that actually came out of the international energy agency's world energy outlook in 2008. and this quote says, the world's energy system is at a crossroads. current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable. environmentally, economically, or socially. now, this is from an agency whose role is to look at the world's energy perspective and comment on where it's going and, in particular, the security of the system. you might ask yourself, why would a group like this say something so provocative, and i think the way to understand it

is to begin by looking at, well, what does the forecast actually say. they've updated this, the 2009 when it came out recently, and in that forecast, primary energy demand growth grows by about 1.5% per year globally. the implication of that is that by 2030, we'll have to have a 40% increase over today's energy provision in order to meet that new demand. the bulk of that demand is going to come in developing asia and in the middle east. the international energy agency projects that it will cost $26 trillion in order to meet that scale. about 50% of that is for power and more than 50% of that in the developing world. so what are the implications of that? well the implications are that we are going to see a

revolutionary shift in the india pattern away from the developed world towards the developing world. requiring, on the order of a trillion dollars a year of annual investment in economies where you have to ask yourself, where is that money going to come from? and how is it going to be mobil highed to produce not just the supply of energy, but the ability to distribute it and get it to places where it's actually needed. this is a mammoth task, and i think it creates, as i said earlier, a revolution in its own rate. -- own right. i'd like to then just leave that point for a moment and step back and say just a few words about the current energy system and i would have to say, you would probably say, well, he would be saying this, wouldn't he, having spent 34 years in the energy industry, but it is a marvel of human achievement. the energy supply system that we have today.

it's literally evolved over periods of hundreds of years, technologically sophisticated, it represents enormous amounts of support by public institutions and intervention by public institutions, and the massive amount of public and private investment. it really does what it's supposed to do. but equally, if not more important, it has co-evolved with the system for consumption. so they form an ecosystem, production and consumption, that has been designed for the purpose of reducing cost, maximizing reliability, maximizing availability, maximum highing the overall convenience of energy. i'd remind the people that service stations didn't just come in this planet on corners convenient for people to use them.

having electricity in our homes is something we take for granted. now, why is this important in the context of a revolution? well, it's important because this system is sophisticated, it's competitive, it's adaptive, and it resists change. it really, really resists change. and it has the capacity to resist change because the costs are so low. now, there is something about it that is vulnerable -- that creates vulnerablebility and this is a global vulnerability and that is that it can only be adaptive to those things that it can sense and that it can price and arguably, neither energy security,ality least not over long wavelengths, for the climate challenge can be priced. but if you look at the forecast from the international energy agency, you see that we have a

long wave length, fundamental shift in the demand pattern that will inherently create security issues. oil, for example, has to go from 85 million barrels a day, roughly today, to over 100. during this time period. and without intervention, the forecast takes carbon in the atmosphere to over a thousand parts per million. so this is the big challenge and this is what the revolution has to be about. how do we deal with the shift in demand, this extraordinary demand, in the context of a system that is deeply resistant to change. gentleman. >> so what i hear you saying, at least partly gary, is two things, first the scale is the revolutionary opportunity from an economic and an economic development perspective and scale at the same time is the barrier, because it's driven price down so far because of the wave of innovations over such a long period of time, so you have scale both for us and against us

in this, and so skip, i'm going to turn touch. a lot of people say the way to reparations dues our dependence on anything is to just use less of this stuff and to be spartans in a technological view, so skip, can you talk to us about energy efficiency and scaling and some of the things that you worry about? >> yeah. there's a conundrum, it's absolutely light. skip laitner, i'm the director of economic policy for an energy efficient economy and we do focus on that critical link between energy productivity and a robust economy and we're finding that scale is the critical issue but the conundrum is we have inexpensive energy, relatively speaking. since 1970, our economy has worked to a great extent and we've been able to bring down the amount of energy we've used per dollar of economic activity by over half. that's been a phenomenal accomplishment. in other words, since 1972 today, energy efficiency has provided about 3/4 of all new

energy-related demands for goods and services, new supply, only about 25%. but we still have essentially a supply side focus, although productivity has been the sleeper. it's been the invisible resource an we have to somehow bring that forward, and it is that incredible productivity gain that has enabled the cost to decline, and that's been an underpinning of our economy and the suggestion of evidence coming forward now, unless we achieve a scale, unless we move to about double the historical rate of efficiency improvement, our economy may not be as robust as in the past, because it has allowed other economic activities to move forward, and in fact, it's a story -- i might take a moment for devices. of i have here, four different things that tell the story. they hall look alike, they're about the same weight, they're all made of roughly the same material. this is a travel lodge toothbrush. not very exciting, it's useful

in a moment. this is a 500 mega bite flash drive. i've been using it for a while, fairly big, fairly fat for its size. this is a 4 gigabyte flash drive and the smallest of these is a 16 gigabyte flash drive much if we continue the current path, we may be tapping into the 500 meg gate conventional perspective with contingency. if we continue with an accelerated like jim and others have been talking about, we may be talking about a 4 gigabyte pattern, but the semiconductor, the new materials and few designs could get us to a 16 gigabyte path called energy productivity, should we choose to develop that resource. and that's the critical issue, taking a step back, identifying that larger opportunity, understanding the science, understanding the materials, understanding the new designs and let me close with this thought. that the president has announced offshore drilling as a possible way forward and there may be in

fact a critical link, but i'm thinking that that might get us about 20 billion barrels of oil. efficiency by 2035 could get us 60 billion barrels of oil equivalent. i'm thinking barrels of oil, kilowatt hours, burr the only way that can come forward is if we make an active choice and choose to develop that resource and not think efficiency as a 1980's technology, we think of as compact fluorescents, but we think critically about new material, new design. >> so one of the things i hear your saying is pelpour in the united states haven't fully grasped yet that innovation cannot be an episodic thing, but a perpetual thing, always moving forward, always driving if a certain direction to enhance these efernses and so forth, and how do we drive innovations with we have huge systems that are so efficient, that innovations within the system produce only marginal returns, versus -- >> exactly. i recall, kenneth bolden,

american economist, perhaps because he's married to a sociologist, images of the future are critical to choice behavior and it's going to have to be purposeful effort in hexone extent way that drives these kinds of changes and all of what we're talking about needs to be underpinned by a huge understanding of the role of energy productivity. >> lisa, you know we live in a world where both market forces and policy forces combine to create for us the environment in which we advance technology, that hour energy system is a complex array of public policies and market forces that shape and guide some of those market outcomes. one of the areas that people talk about is policy revolution, talk about pom sip. >> ok. i'm lisa margonelli, i'm the director of the energy policy initiative at the new america foundation. i come to policy as a reporter, i spent four years hanging out along the oil supply chain and watching how the sort of microeconomies of oil work together. i think one of the things that sticks in my mind when i think

about the task that we have in front of us is that the mckenzie global institute estimated that over the next 40 years, we essentially need to have the productivity growth of the industrial revolution, which means that we node of to have the industrial -- need to have the industrial revolution in triple time. that is a huge whoosh of activity, an enormous opportunity and of course, an enormous upset, the equivalent of the previous industrial revolution. and i think the real question is, how do we get to the power stick that skip talked about. how do we make sure that we're on that path. one ethics that's really a problem in the u.s. at the moment is that the issue of green house gases has become a competitiveness issue. right now, we -- which may seem strange. if you talk about it here, it seems like it's a huge political issue, a lot of people will say we don't know if it's really

happening, there's a lot of con fusion in the u.s. the problem is is that in asia and in europe, policies are already in place, to basically take advantage of this massive remodeling of the global energy system. and when you look at europe's standards for autos, you have to wonder how on earth are u.s. auto companies going to compete 15 years down the read, and when you look at south korea's initiative on the smart grid or europe has the super smart grid and europe is trying to pull together funding towards the smart grid, we're trying to get all the utilities going in the same direction, we have 50 different public utilities commissions in 50 different states and each hundred has a different relationship with their different utilities, we're trying to get everybody facing in the same direction and south korea has this kind of schematic drawn out of how much money they're going to of is a, how much carbon they're going to save, how they're going to recycle the dollars in to their

economy and how they're going to create 50,000 jobs a year, building appliances for the smart grid. and what you see is that in the u.s., we -- because we have to discuss green house gases in this very politicized way, we can't see that we're missing this huge competitive opportunity to get out and get a jump and be in the same place as the rest of the world, and that frankly, i find scary. and we need to start, i think, it's kind of a dirty word, in the u.s., but we need to start thinking about having an industrial policy and we need to start thinking about having an energy policy that's a lot house of representatives systemic, where we look -- where policymakers are willing to take some hard looks at the overall system and say these are some problems we want solved and we need to have markets to solve those problems. >> to two things. i really hear you talking about clock speed, that our decision

making apparatus in government, even in markets, is perhaps insufficiently rapid enough to engage with the scale and the speed with which change has to occur, and then you were hinting at and i hope the panel discusses later, you talked about the south koreans and other governments, i think many people are looking at the way that our democracy from its distributed, pre-1800 model competes against other types of more modern democracies or differentiated nation states that have the ability to make decisions in different ways, and so i hope we can come back and talk some about that, because i think that's a factor here also. >> i think there's this slight generational change as well, which is like if you -- most of us in this room are frankly rather old, and you know, myself included. of half of our work lives are

over. anybody graduating from college right now, that 40 years is their entire life. their entire working life and they have a different perspective on this than we do. >> one of the things we noticed with the university with all of our students, they are increasingly different from previous groups, they have a different view, a different clock speed, different ways of synthesizing information, they want to study across more subjects and more focus on duty, a different focus on environmental outcomes and so forth, so there is some chance that once we're all gone, things will be fine, and so -- >> april fools. >> and the only hope, the secretary of energy and the president bring you out from california where you were one of the leaders of the lawrence berkeley national laboratory to run this new thing called advance research project agency, at the end of the day, is it all

about what brains we have and what we can do? >> yes, but more. so yeah. myes, i was at lawrence and u.c. berkeley as a professor, but i started my professional career at a.c. as a 26-year-old young assistant professor, so thank you. and it's been -- i still have a lot of friends out there. let me just make a few point. i'm going to make five points and quickly. number one, i believe we are living in a moment in history which i believe is a sputnik-like moment. there are three issues --nd it's a wakeup call. there are three issues, one is energy security, the second is environment, and you could, you know, split environment in many different ways, whether it's green house gases or just pollution. it is just environment. and the third is technological lead and if you look around the

world, there are tom tectonic shift going on. india and china, per capita use will increase and their population is also increasing, and so they have really a double whammy and we are seeing the tectonic shifts of shifting towards the clean energy, that will motivate it to do that. i believe that's the business opportunity and for us to change our carbon profile, or how we use our energy, getting more efficient, etc., is also a business opportunity. so that's the reality today. if up ask that question, if you are to capitalize on these tectonic both hopefully and in hour nation and the other nations around the world, it's a global issue, the pace and scale of innovation that we need is something that we need to understand that. the way i like to put it is that if you look at the last 100

years of innovation, whether it's going from artificial fertilizers to airplanes to nuclear energy, all the way down to internet, all of those innovations, imagine that happening in the next 20 years. that's the scale and pace that we need. because if you -- the next 20 years, really has to be the most inventive time of our history. if you have are to take the technological lead and really capitalize and be part of the tectonic shift that's going on. so what we -- what are the strengths we have? in the united states? we still have the best r&d infrastructure in the world, whether it's universities, whether it is, you know, national labs, small industry, large industrial labs, this is the best in the world. no matter what people say. people are going short in the united states. this is the higher education system is the best in the world. that's the way -- that's the way i came in. so that's our strength.

the innovation ecosystem or business and entrepreneurship is really the best in the world. we are the envy of the world. people are trying to emulate it. it's still can't quite get it right, because there are many factors which build the ecosystem and the third one i believe is the idea that as was pointed out, the kids in our colleges are knocking on our door, breaking down our door, saying we want to work in energy and it is a different generation, and know, tell us what to do, where to go, and you know, how to do it. and they're going to figure out how to do that, and so our goal, is to be the catalyst, is to unleash the technological in slowization in the united states -- innovation in the united states, is to harness these strengths an unleash that and we try to do that and our goal is to look for destructive technologies. it's not the business as usual incremental, because i think we are in this mode of history that i think we need to look in part

but we also need to look ahead. just to give you an example, we invented lithium ion batteries, we have 1% of the manufacture of lithium ion batteries in the world. 1%. so if we keep working with lithium ion batteries, we are feeding someone else. we need to look ahead and say how can we make that lithium ion battery obsolete and create the manufacturing for that as well and that's the kind of thing that we will be looking for an one of the things, we need to recruit the best people, partner with industry, etc. finally, i want to say, we need a policy environment that can pull these technologies into the market at cost. to look at cost as a very important factor. and performance, and pull this and stable highsize it -- stabilize and that policy environment is very, very critical, because i think from my vantage point, the ideas i'm

seeing coming out, industry, small business, large business, amazing ideas, but where will they go? the reason people are going to china is because there's an infrastructure being created, there's a demand, and how do we create that kind of a demand and pull those technologies that will leap frog over today, so i'll stop here, but i think this is -- this is a huge opportunity for us. >> what i hear you talking about, what i wrote down is high-speed innovation ecosystem. and so something perhaps we can talk a little bit about later. there's some that say, well, you know, we can create that and we can be wonderfully and powerfully innovative, but because of our government policy making issues, to take advantage of our own innovative capabilities and other places on the planet the way decisions are made might have the opportunity to take greater advantage of the innovation that is we're actually producing, so let's just come back to that when we can. jim, you run one of the country's largest utilities and

one of the most innovative producers of -- and distributors of energy. let's hear from you. >> first of all, lisa, my great grandfather lived to be 104. my best years are in front of me. ok? so let's get over this young thing. we're in a unique position -- >> jim rogers. >> yeah, jim rogers, with an old grandfather and i hope i have his d.n.a. we're in a unique position in the power industry. to deploy the solutions, to raise the capital, not raise the national debt. to do it at scale. and to do it in china town and let me put this in context. go back to 1910, i can barely remember it.

but in 1910, we started down the road to provide universal access to electricity in america and we did it. and our price of our electricity has been flat in real terms for 50 years. that scale, particularly in a world where 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity today, and we did it where the prices are lower than other developed countries around the world. and it's allowed huge gains, in the development of our country. when we started down that road in 1910, we couldn't envision what we would enable, hospital, x-rays, mr i's, laser surgery. just the ability to do things in the medical world. we couldn't envision that as a result of providing electricity to every home and business, it would lead to productivity gains of how we develop steel in this

country, with electro technology, which means our steel industry has the lowest carbon footprint of any steel industry in the world. we couldn't envision computers, the internet and all came as a consequence of providing universal access. and we did it with 50 state commissions. and we did it across this country. it transformed our country, an one of the reasons we are where we are today is because we were a high tech business. in 1910. and we enabled things that no one could envision then. my challenge to you and my challenge as a c.e.o., and this is back solution scaled china, i sat here in the 21st century and said universal access, enabling all of the things that we take for granted today was yesterday, but i believe we can have a twofold mission in the

21st century that will achieve all the things that we're talking about here. and we have the capability to do it. first of all, we can modern highs and decarsonnize our entire fleet by 2050, whether it's carbon legislation or not, we've not to do it and that's why i've been an advocate for carbon regulation, because i want a road map so we can get it done. if we do that, an we have to do it, that's going to stimulate the economy and create jobs. and it's going to create jobs that will rebuild the middle class. and it's going to be a huge scaling. so modernization, decarbonization mandate by 2050. we will raise the capital. we don't need the government to raise the capital. secondly, with respect it our second mission, i believe we're in a unique position to make the communities that we serve the most energy efficient in the

world and do it at scale. as we convert our distribution grid into a two-way communication grid, we then have the kappbility to put the apps on the other side of the meter that will allow people to reduce their energy use and have huge productivity gains and we can do this at scale. in a sense, we are a distributor for all the creative innovations that come from arpe, that come from silicon valley, because we can deploy it and make it happen. :

>> and i do in china, the reality is we can reduce our emissions close to 70%, and stimulate our economy, create jobs, create energy independence and have much cleaner air at the end of the day.

so i know what the challenge is. and we're in a unique position to go to war. what we need is policymakers in washington is to develop a roadmap so we can get it done. >> so what i hear you say, jim, is and a sense we have lived in cities and villages for 8000 years or so, and those are primarily nonelectric. the last 100 years, which is really nothing in terms of time, we built this platform which is an amazingly efficient, but it's not particularly modern and the way that you are using it. it's not sustainable. it doesn't have that kind of things you're talking about. just let the market were, let us move in real-time, and we can take that same platform to higher and higher levels of broader performance. that his performance not only to deliver what you call universal access to electricity but also to deliver it in ways in which it is more sustainable, more environmental, and all of the other things that you put on the list.

so it's a maturation process, that in what you call china time, we can get to where. the other thing we sort of lost track of how long it takes to do things. we just had this electricity for 100 years. why don't we now take the next few years and make it to the system we can now visualize that it needs to be? >> said another way, think about it, and for years, i've got to do in four years what it's taken me 100 years to do. i prepared to do that. but the other point, and i think this is the point that's really so important, from skip, is that we have the ability to provide universal access to energy efficiency and productivity gains in the use of electricity. no one else has the ability to optimize the use within the home, and a home, and a neighborhood, and a residential customer class against industrial, against our grid, our ability to optimize is

terrific. and i have a prediction. i know i will be around long enough, but i bet him 10 years that what we think of as energy efficiency today will be very primitive compared to what we will be doing then. if we can get on the road and get the work done. >> so i hear a lot of positive and upbeat thoughts. let's hear a little bit about what it is that holds us back. is it, there's been studies, every time someone tries to advance new innovations into this massively efficient system, gary, that you described, or jim or skip skip, the system that we have, they just break down. and so sunil, you're investing in companies. you are moving things forward. arun, you've got hundreds of millions of dollars down on the betting table relative to project that you of an vested in the smartest groups around the country. we get all this going. what holds us back?

>> the first two observations, and picking up on what jim said, and i think we're pretty much in sync together on this. the first as i commented on previously images of the future. we need better images that we can do, that the technologies, the behavior is available to us. so really helping the u.s., helping the global economy understand the huge opportunities before us, if we make those choices and allow that capital to be deployed. that's part one. part two, the roadmap. we absolutely do need a roadmap. we need a clear persistent increasing signal of what needs to be done to transform -- >> so the lack of a roadmap holds us back, and roadmap the folks from some of the notion of soviet state central planning. and so how do we get past that? >> if i may, michael. i'd like to pick up on a point

lisa made at the beginning, and that is when we talk about we, i think we're so substantially document the united states and not the world. because there are big chunks of the world that get it and are actively on their way. germany has done an enormous amount. the chinese are onto this in a very big way, because they see the economic potential that a number of the panelists have mentioned. britain is into this. south korea as lisa has mentioned has made it a national imperative to innovate in this area. so substantially, the we in this i think in terms of the big economies are us. the united states. for us, i agree. it is substantially this idea of the roadmap, and i think part of what gets in our way, and is both a great strength and in this case potential weakness, is we have a very deep reliance on market mechanisms. and market mechanisms cannot see

the risks that we face, because of the way they are presented to us. and they don't yet see, although they're beginning to, the opportunity where as some of these other economies don't have those same challenges. the chinese in particular do not have that same challenge. they can just go for it. >> let me say, when i say road map, say put a price on emissions, and let companies find the cheapest way to achieve those objectives going forward. i don't mean an industrial policy where you lay it out. i mean, the russians brood of five year plans don't work too well. we've got to harness the power of the markets that the government has got to pour money into the r&d. we've got to commercialize these things, but it's a partnership between government and the private sector.

and i don't -- it's not either or. and i think we need to be sophisticated enough to be able to do that in a way to harness market forces that have clear guidance from the government of where we need to go. we will find a solution in the way. we just need to know directionally what we have to achieve. >> sunil, you're going to jump in? >> the idea that government planning is the way to the future is something i simply can't abide. i mean, i may venture capitalists, and i absolutely believe in venture. i believe that american innovation can absolutely get us out of this problem of the sort of manifold problems of innovation -- sorry, security, climate and economic developme development. and i absolutely believe that markets can get there. but markets only work when the price is set and reflects what

the real scarcity is. right now we have a scarcity of energy security. we have a scarcity of a stable climate. neither of those things are incorporated into the price of energy today. in corporate those prices, and the market will work. it is the best known mechanism we've got for allocating resources. works far better than a chinese system or any other system out there. it's not perfect, but it does work. those $13 trillion that have to be invested worldwide between now and 2020, the sort of 262 by 2030, the vastly dude of that needs to come from private capital sources. the government cannot, not just here but around the world, cannot -- we cannot look to the government to be the banker for development of the energy infrastructure. we need to look, the government, to be the referee. and the rules are. rule setter for markets, rule setter for infrastructure, and building out that sort of

natural monopoly infrastructure that can't be done through competition. and we need government to set the rules for regulation of how profits are made. for example, by james company, and other utilities. things like something called decoupling. so the energy efficiencies incentive rather than simply building more power points. so there's a rule for governed. is a super important role but it needs to be a stable and thoughtful role, and not sort of command-and-control role. >> actually, secretary slush insured, the first secretary of d.o.e. had a wonderful insight in terms of the roadmap our government has set forth. that was way back in the '70s. >> no, but many years later he looked back and said our energy policy in this country swains between complacency and panic. it's never been consistent. and we've never looked at energy

environmental policy as inextricably linked. we've actually and the house and the senate it's worked in different committees. it needs to come together and we need a comprehensive energy and environmental roadmap, or rules, or however you want to describe it. because we're going to continue to do this with the price of oil is 140, we'll do one thing, when the price of oil we will swing back to complacency. >> as an economist i would be remiss if i didn't admit that prices do matter, yes, but they are not at all a matter. we do need a persistent signal. and has to grow steadily over time. and what we do what the price to help provide that signal and motivate in the direction we're discussing, we can naval the economy to respond and enable the markets to respond if we also invest in education and our laboratories and technologies

and the invention, that process, what have you, to bring that about. if we don't whatever the price may be, we may not be able to respond as quickly as we might otherwise. we have to have both, that road that i agree with some sort of price that is clear, consistent, steady. but it ho be matched by investment in our human resources to make that response is effective and possible. >> lisa, why is this so hard? >> i think a couple of things. one is that in addition to needing a long-term roadmap, we needed to be bipartisan. this needs to be something that everyone actually agrees on. and it can't be just one party, and it can't be that one party is a my way or the highway, that sort of thing. it actually has to be a joint decision. i don't have to get behind it. i think the other thing is we have to recognize that this is going to cost us some money, and we need to recognize that it is worth it. our petroleum infrastructure was basically built like my great

grandparents, some of them could we. they came over here from starving villages and your. those people had the generosity to pay out of their paychecks and out of their lives to build a this giant petroleum and electricity delivery infrastructure is extremely moving, and the fact that we are not interested in investing in that to that similar degree is really kind of depressing. so we need to start, you know, policymakers need to start talking about the vision thing. and we need to see this as sort of a responsibility as something that we can leave to our great grandkids. i think another thing that we haven't talked about here, we've talked a lot about technological innovation. we also are going to need innovations in finance and and business models. and one of the issues, we have this enormous opportunity in people's homes to reduce the amount of electricity that we use, even to generate electricity and throw it back on the grid. and once we start using plug-in

hybrid cars will be in a whole other world in this sort of come in these terms. but what right now it's very easy to finance a new powerpoint and it's rather difficult if you don't have a pretty healthy income to start weatherizing your home. you're either, you need to get in on a government program which means you're in the lowest 20% of income for your kind in the upper part where you can throw some solar panels on the road and get a tax break. but we actually need to make it easy for everybody, and we need to start as a society, investing in private homes because they're using a lot of the power. and we also need to be investing in individuals cars or individuals commute often. maybe not car specifically but we need to start investing in that. because right now we have is a private credit system for individuals and we have a big sort of bond-based system for financing power plants and other big initiatives. >> let me just add a point to deal with this roadmap think so,

there some scholars better out there that said what we've lacked is the ability to get bipartisan consensus because we have avoided those things were actually can't agree. and there are places we can agree that there are outcomes. there are views of what america can be that people can agree to. and one of those would be, for instance, a capitalism driven high speed innovation ecosystem that produces universal access to clean and efficient energy. i would guess you can get people around that sort of outcome oriented view. and this notion that of a roadmap, it's the outcome. once you driven by that outcome thing start to fall in place. so one of the things as a policy process i think has avoided is this coming together and agreeing on outcomes to sort of gotten that to some. jim, you're going to add something. >> every major piece of environment legislation has been passed by congress has been overwhelming in a bipartisan way. it is also true with respect to energy legislation in this country. so we have to find a way, we

have to be more centrist in our approach. because that's some real progress is made any democracy. there's many great books and the greatest leaders in our country have been centrist who found the weight in the center to make progress. by want to can't comment on one thing that lisa said. and this gets to the scaling idea we did a project in north carolina when we asked permission to put solar on the rooftop. we went out and we invested $50 million put solar on the rooftop. and at the end of the day, we were able to do it cheaper because our costs to capital was much lower that our customers. and during the middle of the worst capital meltdown in the history, the depression, we raised over $7 billion in about five%. we then use the money to put solar on a rooftop. we didn't force families to make a tough choice.

when $20,000 to syndicate a college or do you do solar on a rooftop? we invested, we looked at the rooftop as if it was a power plant site. we paid them. we install it. we operate it. we dispatch it. as a consequence of that coming we had the equivalent of 1300 homes that are powered by solar. this is an example, and i can give you examples on the energy efficiency side, where we become a distributor of these technologies that are developed, whether it is a silver spring technology or grade-point technology. and we can take our low-cost capital and deploy it so families don't have to make the tough choice between sending a child to college or insulating their homes, or send a child to college and put solar on the rooftop. and it is using the same principles that we used when we brought universal access. and the last point, we use the

phrase decoupling, and i'm afraid we use a lot of different ways. but decoupling for utilities just makes us in different. and my thought is, can anybody in the room think of anything that's ever been done as a result of indifference? i don't think so. [inaudible] >> what? >> and bad things to expect bad things. >> and arcus. >> but there is a step beyond decoupling. i think decoupling is fine, but the step beyond is, is to get companies like us incentive. the same incentive we have to put 10 billion into a nuclear plant, we should have the equal incentive to put 10 billion into energy efficiency. if you get those rules right, at the end of the day on a risk adjusted basis, i'd much rather spend 10 billion on energy efficiency than on one plan.

so i think it's not just decoupling. it's getting the incentives right and letting us bring capital and the scale we have two job. >> that has been derived in economics this new way of looking at things. we have done that at the university we put in 5 megawatts of our first 20 megawatts of solar. pay for none of the capital. for a guaranteed price of electricity that fit that we need and we don't have to work about anything and others take the risk. arun, you want to add something? >> i think there were comments made about the role of the government. since i'm the only government person out here i thought i would make a few comments on it. if you look at the innovation that has happened over the last, you know, 30 years or 40 years, and the biggest player of the game is internet that you ask the question where did internet start? it started in 1968, because if darpa funding. government funding. to create an option which no one

even imagined what the world could be with internet that even the people who developed it. so if you look ahead now, what the government can do as i think jim pointed out, is to invest in the r&d infrastructure to create technological options. we need multiple options. i mean, let me just give you one example. my daughter is applying for college. do you think she's going to apply to one college? she's going to apply to 10, hoping to get one. that's the kind of options that we need in this country. and let the businesses with the right policy, with the right sort of signals, with its price array of choices knows poll, pick those which make best business sense. so i think the government can be the front end and the r&d that needs to be done, and tweaking it inight business that train moves as fast a possible. so that i think is what we

really need specs of document fast as possible. let's turn to this clock speed question, so we have his way in which markets can move very quickly when, and capital can move quickly. consensus in a 310 million person democracy is perhaps sometimes less is left. let's talk about, let's talk about clock speed. how do we speed up innovation and change in technology, and government policy and whatever they have to be, what do we have to do to speed up the clock speed? >> one thing i would say is every phd that graduates from a university in this country is from another country, ought to have a visa stapled to their phd. >> there's a lot of people that agree with that. >> that's number one. because 50% of the patents last year were really one by foreign-born creators.

so i mean, i think that is one thing. the other thing, and i think this is something that the chinese do really well. and i've been to the university a couple times. and what they really try to do is they take the r. and d. and they put it right next to commercial. and so what's happening is, rather than having hundreds of sites projects, one at berkeley, a science project at mit, a science project at the university of texas. >> asu. [laughter] >> well, i think asu would be a wonderful place to do it. but i think that it needs to be coordinating. i think it needs to be, if you're going to give money to asu and you're going to give it to mit and you're going to give it to where ever, and not to be a systematic plan what they are all working. >> rather than thousands of independent. >> and the labs. we have an incredible resource

in our labs. but we need to tie the work of the labs more to universities, and into the commercial deployment specs a one way to speedup is to enhance the network, unify the networks, tighter networks together. what are some other ideas for? >> i think what, this whole thread of conversation we're having, underpins an idea that i think is going to be very important for the energy system. we cannot step change the energy system. it is too big and it is too resistant to change. but if we think about it as an energy ecosystem of supply and consumption, and we think about it in to end, technology, finance, policy, radical innovation coming from our entrepreneurial community, we can radically evolved. and it isn't resistant to that. it will take that on board if we have the right roadmap and we have an end to end you of what

we have to find out. i think jim's example of putting solar on a rooftop is brilliant. it's not about simply technological evolution. it would be great of a inner solar panel, but you get the right finance, you get a company with this kind of very forward-looking attitude towards finance, and you can make it an important change. so the first thing i would say is that we have to see this as an ecosystem that we have to have end to enter and we have to radically evolved. the second thing, the point that i would make is about looking for ways that we can cooperate in other parts of the world, to build on strengths that we have that we can share with others. gym has raised in china a number of different times, and i had a great time over 14 years that i was there. bp spent $5 million it was great

fun. there are some real strengths that china has. i wouldn't advocate that we take their system, but they have some real strengths. and one of them is china time and the other is china costs. there's an enormous opportunity for us to cooperate with them. there is a place in the north-central part of china and the future of the world energy system is playing out their right now. and the reason that i say it is playing at the right now is partly for the reason that jim has mentioned. the chinese are able to connect rnd with commercialization, and they are really good at doing big demonstration projects. they pick a national champion. they give them the money. they tell them go away and find out what it is we have to do. they built the first thousand line doing exactly that. the world's largest carbon capture and storage projects are going to have it. they will be done by their

company and they will be done because that's what the chinese government wants. they also have a door open to the united states to cooperate in any way we choose to do it. but we have to just do two things. one is we have to be willing to cooperate with them as partners, as equal partners. and we have to be willing to pull our end of the bargain. we have to come up with our money to match up with their money. we don't have to fund them. they have got plenty of money. went to come up with our into the bargain to be willing to see it through. this is a historic opportunity that we can radically accelerate expect one of the ways a speeding up how we are thinking is to become more cooperative and engaged in projects on a global scale? >> yes. >> skippered? >> let me make this observation and then suggest five ways to achieve scale china time. first of all, the united states just as a normal part of it investing its own economy can in

the next 25 years is going to invest something on order of 65 to $70 trillion anyway. that's my in our homes, money in our hospitals, money and our bridges, infrastructure. that has to happen anyway just to maintain any kind of robust economy in the first place. that opens a huge opportunity. if we know it's going to be -- >> the number by the way, that number is larger than all of the investment of the republic from been found in other public until now the. >> it's that scale, exactly right. so we have to do that in any case. we redirect that investment away from the inefficient to less useful, less environmentally friendly through a couple of mechanism. one is to help the policy and help the public understand the imperative and the opportunity. that's step one. images of the future again are critical. secondly, is to provide that sigir. that signal is actually important. it's got to be clear, consistent and increasing over time.

>> leasable tells how to get that signal done. [laughter] >> third is to invest, make a continuing and accelerate investment and the human capital we have been discussing about research and development, our workforce, skills, technologies. the next is to align the insipid. i think jim has it right. if we made the incentives out there so he would prefer to invest rather than a $10 billion set up our plans, that's going to get us there. and it's becoming been a means of doing energy services, not any particular form of energy, but a useful energy as required at the moment and at that time, given that business or that hostile. energy sources is a critical element. and, finally, i like what we just talked to with the idea of collaboration. we need to build more collaborative models. not only within the u.s., but among private university relationships and other countries as will. >> let's hear from lisa and sunil on this question of speed. and the signals, lisa, how do we get these right? >> well, i think that we need to figure out -- one of the issues

is that jim's company, duke, is doing all this amazing stuff. but any other utility who may not be doing all this amazing stuff, who may be keeping their grandfather all plans online or whatever they're doing, they get the same perch. so we actually need to put incentives in place so that we does incentivize the bad stuff, the environmental effects, and we incentivize the good stuff. and those things need to be in place over the long-term so, you know, utilities, oil companies, all of them are thinking in 10 or 20 years time horizons. . .

>> we need long-term policies. that is really hard for policymakers to do. you know, the people who we have in office for the longest are in for six years. in fact, they are still thinking in terms of short midterm election cycles anyway. so we are kind of in a pickle with our political time being very different from energy time. energy time is 10-20 years minimum. >> one of the issues would be how do we start dealing with this? we interviewed someone to be the director of art school of public affairs.

this person had a fantastic idea about focusing reform on the design of our policy formulation structures themselves. if they're not skill to operate fast enough and then they have e rethought and modernize to some extent. i hear you are saying that is a part of all of this also. not just decisions. perhaps that system can't produce the decisions that are needed. >> well, i think that what we need to do is produce the visions and then put in place a structure for making the decisions and figuring out how to tinker with the system on the backside to make sure that the incentives are all aligned. right now we have incentives going in all sorts of different directions. >> maybe a congress that floats 10,000 bills in the session, perhaps, ought to focus more energy on vision itself and out comes that they would like the country to achieve as opposed to floating 10,000 bills.

>> that is their nature. i think it is to us to come up with visions and to say this is what we want and transmit that to them. they'll listen to us, and their way. we need to send that message. we need to say, look, we need to stop dithering. >> a think the biggest thing we can do to accelerate change is to create a culture that where leaders think, leaders in the capitalistic world think about more than just the return and absolutely return on capital has to be a top priority. we are also human beings. we also said the essence of the country and of the world. their needs to be better on that front. part of the reason we created

gigaton throwdown was to create the division of for the community of clean energy to think more than just about return, to think about what of the implications for climate and energy security. it already has had some benefit at least one investor the participated, because he was thinking, this is interesting. by having that same kind of and the debate about scale it has resulted in what he thinks is the most interesting investment in his portfolio. he came in and ask the question. what does it take to get to gigaton scale? and the result after a couple of months of working on it turned into a most promising portfolio investment. i think that same kind of and vision is possible, and we should expect it from our political leaders. yes, of course they care about votes, and they should, just like capitalists should care about return on investment. it is more than just about votes and politics. we should hold them to a higher

standard and expect them to have a vision for what happens to future generations. it is not just about the next election. i would say one final thing, to accelerate what the pace of innovation and the delivery of this new world that we see of the most important thing we could do from a policy perspective is don't screw things up. things are actually moving along. because of innovation in biotechnology, information technology, materials science, those innovations, many of them funded by the government are accelerating the pace of change. the reason why there are these interesting biofuel companies, the reason why there are advances in batteries and power electronics, the reason why, you know, i have a fuel cell company that is able to deliver a return on investment or payback time of

often 12 months with no subsidy. the way that those things can get screwup are messing apple the immigration and the fact that we have got this great power house of a country that accepts people and accept t brad energy and power from all over the world. we are in the process of string that up. the kids grew up the education system. not at higher levels of education. we are failing at the elementary and secondary level because this new economy that is coming, it is a new clean economy. it is not just for ph.d. it is, requires steel and the ground, welders, pipefitters. as people need to be educated and able to perform at these higher levels. whenever you do out there in the policy world, don't screw with

the. we don't actually, we need clear policy signals and the roadmap, but more than anything else we need to not mess up the great strengths of what we have in this country. >> arun and then jim and then questions. >> let me say a few words. we need pervasive and constant innovation. i think we are hearing that. we talked about science and technology. that is sort of obvious. the we talked about policy innovations, whether it is decoupling or decoupling plus. we need innovations out there. in terms of financing, incentives, yes. let me just come to one that we have not talked about. sunil just touched on, education. i like the idea of stapling a green card to every ph.d.

i think that is a good idea. i came here because this is the place, action, where it happened. this is where the country sent the first man to the moon. so we need to create the environment. those ph.d.s that you staple the green card for, that's great. but those numbers are dwindling. those numbers are dwindling because the economy is improving. they came from china and india. those economies are improving. those numbers are going down. we need to have the human capitol in this country to be interested in science and engineering. for a while i was in the advisory committee for a national directorate. they founded the national academy to do a study of how much. other kids are interested. the number one attractive, you know, profession, this was right

after 9/11, that was a fireman. that is understandable. and doctors. etc. engineering came way down below being a priest. i was shocked. i was shocked at that. [laughter] given the current state of priesthood this doesn't make sense. [laughter] and i won't say the in between. anyway, the point is that we need to change that. again we are in a moment. if you look at the history of science and engineering after sputnik there is a huge bump. the idea of being a rocket scientist was in the jargon of everyone, of the kids. >> one of the things we have done at your old school, by the way, is gone from about eight or 9,000 science, math and engineering majors to 18,000. the reason we have done that is we have changed what is there

were focusing on. we have a challenge oriented engineering school, a school of sustainability. that is what these young kids want to be engaged in. if you go to study, you know, differential equations and need to know them, but why do i need to know them? so we focus more on the why. >> i am happy to report that my grandson made a decision to go to engineering school and not be a priest. [laughter] not that the world doesn't need more priests. i am delighted. i am a lawyer by training. my son is in. i am happy my grandson will build something. let me pick up on something that gary said that i think is very

important. there are two aspects to it. one is, when i went to change what i was struck by the fact that -- on a sunday morning, and i was struck by the fact fact tt embedded was a center where the had people there at the campus and a part of the facility working. i was impressed. it gets back to the point of the rd and commercialization tied together. the second thing i want to quickly share with you is our company is entered into three moes with chinese energy companies. one is the largest producer of electricity from coal, and they are pioneering green gin where they are doing ccs. we are doing the world's largest coal purification plant. we are going to share technology. reechoing to exchange people. we have entered into wind

whipped a state great because of their expertise. we have also entered into an agreement with the largest private company which is made up of a lot of chinese americans who get their ph.d. here and work for ge and siemens and now back working for the e&n. but the reason we are doing it is really quite simple. one, the chinese have what we have always had, a great can-do spirit. increasingly i find it is becoming more like the class of our european ancestors. we spend a lot of time talking about it and not as much can do. but the second thing is most important. we need to be smart enough in this country to recognize they have an imperative, and economic development imperative to scale

energy infrastructure as the world people who move to urban centers the way that happened in our country. so what we need to be, have relationships with that are nuanced enough, we cooperate and compete and ride their imperative because i believe there is a reason they lead the world in solar panel in production. they're building 14 nuclear plants. they are experimenting. they are doing these things and building a coal plant every other week. when you are stealing this kind of technology every plant you build your really innovate and get smarter about. if my mission is affordable, reliable, clean i increased the probability that it will be affordable if i'm working with

the chinese and i increase the probability of reliability and clean. their is a lot of political debate b ate in washington about the chinese and americans. my reality is action speaks louder than words. i see their leadership in renewables and these other areas. it says a lot more to me about them building a bridge to look green than all of the chattering we're doing in washington about cap and trade. >> let's go to questions. raise your hand and someone will give you a microphone. let's try to make sure their questions. >> yes. my question is -- >> say who you are. >> i'm chris bentley. i am with the white house. i am an intern there. all of you have mentioned there is a role for government. each of you seem to have a different perspective on that, but i am just curious. i don't really feel like i have gotten any clear-cut answers as

far as what the government should do given the fact that congress is built on individuals who are really concerned about getting reelected. i would love some comments about that. what do we need to do to make sure that the government makes these changes that you all want >> short answers. already talked a lot about focusing on outcomes, that is describing what the outcome is that we are working toward in this round which is not we will describe to be too wants to tor stab at this? you want to go first, lisa? >> what we might think of as the ideal marketplace. the ideals of the market are insufficient to allow this kind of innovation to move ahead. government needs to take a role. if we need new buyers and sellers of energy efficiency,

but they are not there then government needs to help create or incubate through training and education and technology, through the development things to give rise to that opportunity so government plays a complementary role. the ability that people have access to financial means to actually go after these kinds of opportunities. government can play a role in helping shape the design, but then letting the energy service companies deploy, use their skills, use their ability to make that capitol available. the critical role of government is to complement what when we might think of as the ideal and learn and offset the inadequacies or the weaknesses of our market institution. >> anybody want to add to that? there is a whole new literature that has sprung up. the government becomes engaged. it is a fantastic literature.

>> it is actually very simple. it is to enable businesses to create jobs and make money. that is the scale. whether it is in the front end, r&d, or aligning the right incentives and giving the right price signals. that's it. >> there is a vision that the outcome of those people making money and creating jobs will create a certain kind of outcome of the world. >> right. >> that is the part that people have difficulty adding. >> the exact mechanisms for doing that to me are putting a price on carbon. it needs to be there and stable. the larger context of incorporating these price signals. you know, create and incentivize infrastructure. electricity infrastructure as well as infrastructure in the feul regime that creates a lot of choices. for example, flex-feul cars that can operate on a mix of the ethanol and methanol. making sure that immigration

reform is there and education systems are conducive to increasing the amount of talent and expertise in this country so that we have good paying jobs. making sure we have a regulatory scheme through decoupling and adding incentives. making sure that you don't mess it up by disallowing states from being able to do the same kinds of innovations. one of the problems with the federal government is that the likelihood of action at the federal level sometimes dampens enthusiasm for action at the state level. there's all kinds of interesting innovations. we have not mentioned the pace program which is a great way to encourage energy efficiency and solar and other kinds of generation through property taxes and levies. always had some great success. >> do this within a 20 year

framework so that the policy remains consistent over time. >> okay. next question. >> thanks. >> john harper with npri. my question is for mr. rogers. if anyone else has comments i would appreciate it. barring major government subsidies or carbon regulations, do you envision a time frame for the development of commercially viable smart grids on a state or national level? >> my judgment is that modernizing our grid -- we build our great with analog because that was the technology that was available. we produced electricity delivered 99.9% of the time. we moved to digital technology. that will enable the plug-in hybrid. that will enable our ability to manage solar on the roof top. we are prepared to make those

investments, and we will make those investments. but what you find, what we are finding is that we started out looking at 900 different companies in the funnel. we dug into 250. and we tested the products of 100. we are piloting five. there are a jillion great ideas out there, but trying to get them narrowed down to the ones that really works is a challeng. the real challenge is the immigration in egration in the . no one, each company has its own deal. there is no company in the historic suppliers like ge or siemens or abb this isn't where they make the big part of their money. so in a sense we are creating a capability of integrating the technologies and actually building the road map of how you

upgrade your distribution and you create the apps beyond the meter and you tie it all together in communication. that is really the better way to talk about. i have tried to get away from using the word smart grid because everybody has a different definition. it's like 10 blind man standing around an elephant trying to describe it. i try to narrow its to upgrade the grid, come up with the apps. >> a state regulatory commission that regulates price might not necessarily be the best government mechanism for a technology company looking to advance technology. it is one of those things that is probably outmoded. >> i would say maybe not. i am reluctant to challenge the

president. [laughter] >> mr. chairman, go ahead. >> and that is, state commissions really understand the balance between affordable, reliable, and clean. you have to think about it as 50 different laboratories around the country. some of our states have been very supportive of us doing this in terms of smart, in getting the right incentives for energy efficiency. other states have said let's do pilots. other states have taken different approaches. our point of view is that if we can't convince them of the value for in the consumer then it is our fault. so we are going to prove it one way or another because we believe deeply that it is the right thing to do. but i think it would be a huge mistake, and i know lisa hinted at this, having the federal government step in and mandate things. over the last hundred years

state commissions have done it. that is why we have universal access where the real price of electricity is flat. that has been done by state commissions, and with the right charters they can also achieve this transition. >> i think this is kind of where the vision thing comes in. we don't need to know what color the cat is. it needs to catch mice. we already regulate gasoline based on performance standards. we don't tell bp which molecules we want in it. we say we want them to explode this way when they are in your engine, and we don't want them to fly off into the air when they are lying on the ground. we have performance standards. there needs to be real-time pricing for consumers. i am interested in my scripts, but i am also interested in enabling the ron popeal.

he is the pocket fisherman and the stovetop rotisserie. that is exactly what we want on the smart grid. we want the weirdest possible solution to air-conditioning that pulls an electoral load off the grid in the heat of the day. it is not necessarily going to be something that i come up with sitting in an office, and it is not right to be something to end comes up with sitting at the utility. it is going somebody sitting in a trailer saying, we can do this differently. here is how. that is the opportunity. that is where the vision thing comes in. >> you started with subsidy. jim nailed it right. we need to move away from words

like subsidy and instead and investing in our population and labor force and providing the incentive. one in the front. one in the back. >> we talked a lot about increasing the speed of innovation and ecosystems. how do we enhance, improve the speed of our monetary analysis and feedback systems, so that we can also avoid some of the problems like we have seen with corn ethonal. we introduce some of these new untested technologies. >> you could have imagined the price of tortillas will be affected by energy decisions in the united states. >> actually, another example. we need to print think through e unintended consequences. you can't always identify them all. you need to have a little things

in terms of solving it. take shell gas, which everybody calls the game changer. we don't quite know what the environmental impact is point to be of that yet. we know that water, from arizona y'all really know this. we have seen it all across our country. water could be the next oil in the 21st century. if shale gas takes an incredible amount of water with chemicals and the potential to contaminate aquifers, we might find ourselves champion shale gas as a game changer. and at the end of the day find ourselves in the same trade-off. water versus fuel that we did with ethanol. so we really need to think your way through this and remember the lessons learned before. >> one of the things, i want to

add, we have been urging the economic implications of every single project idea that they advance from science forward which is a new way of engaging in some of these things to catch some of that earlier. >> can i just say one thing? absolutely think, i spent three years on capitol hill. really inculcated this idea that you have to think about the whole system and the implications of technology beyond the immediate horizon. but we also are susceptible to the way that what is sort of the convenient way to think about things. the whole corn, ethanol causing corn prices to increase is one of those little ideas that just as convenient and has stuck in our heads. every food economists that has looked at this problem has concluded that, in fact, those corn prices went up because of demand in china and india and the rest of the world, especially for their increase in need for meat and not for

ethanol. it is an idea. it is often, often repeated, but i think especially with so many press in the room it is important to understand that that was not the cause. we absolutely need to pay attention to it. there are a lot of problems with corn ethanol. increasing food prices is not one of them. >> i read one other footnote. we bought sugar-based ethanol coming in from brazil, which would have been been a cheaper alternative and a better alternative. we continue to block it today. so to your point we need to look at this comprehensively and understand if our true mission is to wean ourselves from oil then why not sugar ethanol from brazil? why block that? >> the reason -- >> i'm getting the signal.

gary's comment is going to be the last comment. >> the reason is pretty straightforward. the whole corn ethanol episode has very little to do with energy policy. it is all to do with agriculture. the wto closing in on farm subsidies. there needs to be another way to deal with this problem, and that is the way it was dealt with. no energy person i know thinks that it had anything to do with energy policy. >> there is politics around agriculture in the united states? [laughter] >> none. >> i'm sure their lobby did not have any influence on it either. >> let's thank our panel this morning. [applauding] we will make sure that everybody we have there e-mail addresses and so forth. you'll get the video. we will send you the web archive. so thank you for being here. we want to thank the new american foundation for working with asu to advance this. hopefully we have some good ideas generated here today. thanks a lot.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> it has been one year since congress passed and the president signed the economic stimulus money. of the $787 billion approved 355 billion so far committed. $205 billion paid out as of march 23rd. more about those projects and to track that spending you can go to our website, c-span.org / stimulus. a look at the white house where president obama leaves shortly for a trip to new england today. he will stop in portland, maine to talk about health care reform after legislation is signed just a couple of weeks ago. you can see those remarks live at 3:25 eastern on our companion network, c-span.

>> this weekend on c-span2 book tv rebekah on the best selling immortal life of henry into lax >> flexible policies actually make employees more, not less productive because as you all know instead of spending time worrying about what is happening at home your employees have the support and the peace of mind that they desperately need to concentrate on the work. >> watch something on an c-span that you would like to share with friends. at the new c-span video library you can search it, watch it,

clip it, and share it. over 160,000 hours of video. every c-span program since 1987 the c-span video library, cable's latest gift to america. >> all this month see the winners of the c-span's student cam video documentary competition, middle and high school students from 45 states submitted videos on one of the country's greatest strengths or a challenge the country is facing. watch the top winning videos every morning on c-span at 6:30 eastern. and at 8:30 meet the students who made them. for a preview of all the winner's visit studentcam.org. >> we will look at the justice department's antitrust division. talks about lawsuits against current mergers including ticketmaster. she is joined by several deputies during this hour-long

discussion hosted by the american bar association. >> welcome to the 60 minutes with the u.s. department of justice conference call. during the presentation of participants will be in a listen only mode. after will we have a question and answer session. as a reminder today the conference is being recorded. friday march 26th, 2010. i will now like to turn the conference over its share of the antitrust action. >> thank you, operator. i would like to start off by thanking wilma hale for hosting the event. it is lovely to come to washington, d.c. and to be in such a nice atmosphere. i would also like to thank christine varney and her colleagues for suggesting this meeting. it is part of what i think is a main part of transparency and

town hall meetings. today's format, i will very briefly introduce our panelists and turn it over to christine. afterward most of the program will be a q&a. save your questions for that part. we will have a dialogue. i want to mention the spring meeting for the antitrust here in d.c. on april 21st and 23rd. it will be at the marriott. over 2,400 attendees. it is a great chance to hear what is happening globally on competition matters. christine has promised me that she is not going to take all of the thunder away from that meeting. we will save some interesting tidbits for when we get together. coming down the train i prepared a little bit for my intro. i always like doing intros on

people. you learn something from them. you pull up their bias. you do a little bit of research. the one, and you can look at where they went to school and other things. that is what you usually hear. i saw one interesting little link that went across all four of us. that was the new york connection in one way or another. christine varney who will be our main speaker is currently the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, but she grew up in new york. a very big part of your resume. i like to think of you from your georgetown connection. before that there is very strong connections. of course before christine was the assistant attorney general she was a partner in d.c. and was a commissioner at the federal trade commission. like debbie has experience in both of our federal agencies and can have some interesting perspectives.

we also have, david was pretty much sticking to a civil matters. both deputy assistant attorney general from the antitrust division on civil matters. molly is on the phone. she is in my mind a new yorker having attended columbia law school where she won the james murphy prize which is awarded for professional comments in public interest law. did they get that right? has been a partner. has also had time serving at the federal trade commission where she was the senior deputy director and the director of the bureau of competition and now is one of your deputies. last but never least is bill cavanagh who is the other deputy assistant attorney general for civil enforcement and was a highly-regarded litigator and

pro attorney in new york with the patterson belknap firm. with that i want to turn it over to you, christine. thanks again for agreeing to come today. >> thank s very much, ilene. i am joined by my to civil enforcement deputies. i will hope to have another one of these down the road where you will get to chair questions. at some point we will do one with scott hammond who is my criminal deputy. today's focus is on civil enforcement. i thought i would run through a laundry list of where we are on civil enforcement and then open it up for a town hall q&a curtain-raiser for the spring meeting with bill and molly participating in the conversation. what i wanted to start with was to point out to you all that at the height of the merger boom in

the '90's we had about 5,000 hsr styles. that was before we raised the hsr threshold. when the threshold and up we had 3,000 filings in the '90's. last year we had 700 filings. we are on track for just about the same this year. that is to say mergers are still way down. i am hearing from friends in new york and in the investment bank community that we may see an uptick in merger activity in the fall. thus far we have not. so with that as the backdrop let me take you through kind of where we have been thus far. i have been at the division almost a year. bill and molly, just about the same. what i would like to do is kind of five buckets of activity. matters where we sued or were about to sue, settlements, matters where we took no action, non-merger matters, and then

some competitional advocacy, work that we have undertaken. the two matters where we can were going to sue on fluid milk. doug is handling that case. there was a motion to dismiss on the geographic market allegations. we have responded to that. we will look forward to the judge ruling in our favor. bill has assured me he will. michigan, flu care. the blues in michigan intend to acquire the only other health insurer in lansing. so again, we can talk a little bit more about that. i think we are perceived as

being serious, fair, and true to our word on transparency. i don't think we have seen many cases where parties have come late to an understanding of what is going to be acquired to get the deal through. we have a number of matters where we have entered into settlements that resolve our competitive concerns. some of them better known than others. let me run through a few of them. we required an aluminum sheeting facility that met all of our concerns. the two manufacturers that make coaxal cables broadband. obviously we are making a huge push. it is a very important to see competition maintained. the parties are able to reach an agreement that satisfied our concern. in microsimi, acquiring hsr.

again, we required a divestiture of a large amount of the assets where we found that was competitive overlap. a non-hsr reportable transaction. the parties did agree to the competitive problems. we get a sector settlement. last fall at&t and centennial. we expect that these are mergers we may see more of where you have got smaller, local, regional cellular carriers. in that instance we require the divestiture to protect wireless consumers and markets that were going. very concentrated. centennial and at&t agreed, and we let that merger proceed. again, we had a defaulter merger where substantially all the assets that would be acquired lead to a concentration. the parties came up with a solution where there was a

competitor remaining, and they agreed to a divested substantial percentage of the assets to the competitor. we have been very satisfied with the results there. stericycle, infectious waste disposal service that requires substantial divestitures in a geographic location. we have been satisfied with the remaining competition. the ones that you may be more familiar with, ticketmaster, we entered into a consent, they entered into a consent whereby ticketmaster agreed to divest ticketing assets. the ticketing business through comcast. they agreed to license technology to aeg out in colorado, and they agreed to what we think are pretty stringent behavior remedies, a non-retaliation standards and anticompetitive bundling, very serious firewalls between the layers of their business.

so we are going to be closely monitoring that consent. we have put together a compliance committee specifically for that divestitures to watch the evolving competition in that space. voting machines. as you may know, that was a non-reportable hsr transaction where we became involved post-merger. we required election systems and software to divest premier election solutions, hardware, software, and other assets in order to create or maintain competitional maps based. we have entered into a consent. they will be divesting assets in the protein packaging markets. that was an interesting deal. again, we see a lot of this where you have a very, very small percentage of the overall deal.

10, 12, 15% of the deal that presents a serious violation of clayton act section 7. as we are fond of saying, there is no de minimus exception to clayton 7. if you have a big deal and part of it is problematic, you're going to need to fix the part that is problematic or be prepared for the department of justice to stop the transaction. there are a couple of matters i want to draw your attention to that we examined thoroughly and did not find that there was a competitive problem and let go through after a good, thorough investigation. we think we let it go through relatively in a timely way. oracle sun. we believe that in oracle sun the merger did not have anti-competitive effects. on that one we learned a lot about working with the e.c. i hope the parties have learned a lot about working with the e.c. we have put that lesson into practice and a couple of pending matters that obviously i can't discuss because they are not yet

public. we have developed a very strong, good, and close working relationship. microsoft and yahoo!. the we let that venture get through because we found that there was not a significant risk of anti-competitive effect and that markets. at the time i think most customers viewed google posing the most significant competitive restraint. the competitive focus of both microsoft and yahoo! is predominantly on google on not each other. we will have more to say on that probably around the spring moving time. so we did not advance the closing of that one. that was another transaction where voice recognition software, we had concerns about a consummate merger. both parties disclosed that there was an investigation, and it was closed. we took no action. there were a couple of non-merger matters that i wanted

to draw your attention to. as you probably all know we fined $900,000 to smithfield in a gun jumping matter. we filed with the court in the southern district of new york on the proposed google book settlement which we believe raised potential anticompetitive antitrust concerns. our concerns are outlined in two different court filings in that case. we have entered into a consent decree with key span. we have done a couple of business review letters. let me turn to some competition advocacy matters that we have been working on. we are engaged in an historic undertaking with the department of agriculture where we are going around the country and holding hearings on the intersection of agriculture and regulatory policy, and antitrust policy and law and trying to figure out where they overlap.

as you know, we are losing small firms at an astronomical and, frankly, intolerable rate. as we said many times we are not at all sure that antitrust is the problem or the solution, but it is time to take a serious look. we have participated in three different proceedings. they are still ongoing. as you all know, and i'm sure what it questions. once again the focus there is transparency. i am very committed to showing practitioners and business people and consumers around the country exactly what we do when we go through a merger. and finally on competition advocacy we have been working with the communications commission on broadband policy.

we anticipate a continued close working relationship with the federal communications commission on those issues. with that, i thought i would open it up for questions and i nvite molly and bill to jump and depending on what questions we get. operator, could you open up the line for questions? >> thank you. ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to register a question please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. you will hear a three tone prompt to acknowledge your request. please press the one followed by the three if you would like to withdraw your request. >> did everyone on the phone get that down? >> we have it set up. >> molly, are you there? >> i am here. >> should we start out with questions from the room?

david. >> there have been a commentary in the past about -- >> we actually, hold on. we have to get the mic over there. and short questions. >> sure. >> i know david. >> there have been comments in the past about the different approaches to merger remedies taken by the ftc and the department of justice, tending to in many cases require up-front buyers and strong relief. in the ticketmaster matter your required both. is that a sign of greater attention to many issues? >> i think that we are committed to stopping mergers that are anti-competitive. when the parties to solve our concerns we are equally committed to effective remedies. so i think that every transaction will have its own

unique characteristic which will, of course, lend itself to its own unique potential solution. so i would not make a sweeping statement other than to say we are committed to effective remedies. let me ask molly to jump in on that. >> the division typically doesn't enter into a remedy without some assurance that there are viable buyersavailable and market-based research. in the division it does not rule out, as your question probably note, the use of an upfront buyer or identification of the buyer so i really feel that it is a matter of a concept more than substance. i think we believe that our remedies are just as effective. >> why don't you comment on why

that may have been particularly appropriate in ticketmaster? >> ticketmaster it was particularly important because we had identified, aeg in particular was a necessary participant in any relief as well as divestitures in comcast comcast we saw as a particularly important participants as they were already using the platform and therefore would be a will to build upon is to create a greater competitive effort. in that instance i think it was important for us to have these discussions early on. we identified these as important market participants. so it was particular in that matter. >> the ticketmaster matter is a very interesting consent. it is like structural plus when

you add the various conduct behavior or restrictions. i also noted that you have been divesting more assets. i guess that was to provide it a bit of a safety buffer to make sure. >> well, live nation was in ticketing, but they were somewhat uniquely positioned because of their involvement in promotion. we thought it was important to replace that competition and the potential competition that they posed by bringing in aeg, which was ticketmaster's largest ticketing customer as well as the divestiture. >> i also would note that i think ticketmaster, when you entered into that was a very good example of your endeavors to be transparent. you came out with the analysis which was quite detailed.

you even held a press conference. i really commend you for your trying to let those in the bar and practice fields know why you're doing things which we did try to draft a more elaborate cis in connection with ticketmaster. christine has made it a focal point to be as transparent so that folks understand our thinking. >> and i would add to that that not just for ticketmaster, but as a comment to other groups at other times, please take a look at our complaints and competitive impact statements in the last several months in going forward because we do intend to use those where possible as we are going to articulate the bill, nitty gritty of the bar and economic theory. >> i clearly see the role of the economists in the complaint. they do look quite different. >> right.

>> i would not give them any credit. [laughter] >> molly, you can't see megan sitting here. >> she is expected. >> is that neal back there? i'm sorry. go ahead. we will get neal. >> is there any interest in revisiting the work product of the single form conduct hearings and trying to see if there is a possibility of reaching a consensus document between doj and the federal trade commission? >> right now, as you know, we have a fairly large undertaking on the horizontal merger guidelines. i would like to get through our analysis and our conversations about horizontal merger guidelines before we take a look at what we might undertake next. there are a number of things that people have suggested that need to be looked at. ip and antitrust, vertical, single firm. there are a number of things on

the agenda that could benefit from additional work. i don't know what we will do next. >> a section two investigation single form going on right now? >> the division is quite busy. as i said, mergers are down. >> that might be another way in which your views toward single form conduct might come out. >> we'll see. >> will. >> do you feel the department of justice has enough authority in connection with the airlines and the competitive effects within airlines coming from the alliances and the slot swaps, or do you under the section 7 do you feel it is enough to have an advisory role with respect to the department of transportation and those transactions? >> i believe the congress has set up a statutory system where the department of transportation makes the decisions with our

input. we provide our input. we have a very close working relationship with the department of transportation. molly can speak to it. i think some days molly wonders whether she wears for dot your doj. keep reminding her she works for dot. anyway, we respect the congress' view that the department of transportation has a broad public interest consideration under which they make the decision about alliances. as i said, we have a very good working relationship. we bring lots to the table. we are well listened to. i think the department of transportation understands fully what the competitive concerns are. i think on occasion they are able to accommodate our concerns fully. on occasion they have a broader public interest mandate that dictates a result that embraces some, but not necessarily all of

our concerns. molly, do you want to comment on that? >> i completely agree with that. i think that they have learned a great deal of the last year in working with us and understanding the limits of our lens, which is smaller than theirs. they have a lot of different factors which they have to take into account. they are extremely interested in preserving competition. they benefited a lot from contributions that carl shapiro and the economic analysis group have made, enhanced contributions that they have made over the last year. we also started to work with them to try to anticipate the problems more, so we have done a couple of sessions where we have looked at activities that we expect might emerge and try to educate each other about what our likely responses would be if those activities were to take place. all in an effort to try to keep us on the same page preserving

this the same competitive goal. i agree with christine. that is not a community application. we are not in the amenity conventional apparatus. we are in an apparatus where doj or the faa has a certain set of regulatory authorities. we still have section 7 authorities. >> any other questions in the room? david? >> thanks. i had a question about the live nation remedy, actually. you mentioned earlier that the remedy includes behavioral restrictions and that encompasses, at least, in part

anticompetitive bundling. knowing that in connection with evaluating consent decree staff in the front office necessarily would have thought about enforcement of the decree and what terms mean. givenhe academic interest in what anticompetitive bundling is a wonder whether you could share any thoughts about when bundling is anti-competitive? >> we worked very closely with the parties. i think it is fair to say at the end of the day we decided at this juncture because of the market, the market of concert, ticketing, promotion commencement, we understand at a minimum. you can't have this act unless you use my ticketing service. i won't put your act in our venue unless you use my

ticketing service. we know the margins. everyone would agree. we want to see where the market evolves. third-party participants need to understand true economic value being created and passed along. then predatory practices that are taking the form of bundling. on that one i would say stay tuned. we will give a careful review of the academic economic system precedent literature on bundling. i think we can, we just didn't want to stick to anything at this point given the situation that we are in ..

>> i will start with the white house. we do participate in policy matters at the white house. so we provide competition advice on a variety of different matters that might be at the national economic council. so our involvement with the white house really goes from us to them. we're going to be working with them on a number of ip issues. and on the intersection of competition and ip. we've worked with them in the past. we give input on the health

reform and what competitive aspects might look like in a house reform proposal. so we enjoyed a great working relationship with the national economic council. on enforcement matters, there's a very strict wall between the white house and the department. as far as i know in every part of the department there are no conversations regarding enforcement matters. that's early to in the antitrust division. i work very close with the attorney general. he came with me to iowa. it was a fantastic trip. he and secretary vilsack came with us to iowa. on any matters of major consequence, the attorney general will be briefed. he will participate in conversations, analysis, assessment of litigation risk. you have been up with a couple times when we have taken into some of the less important matters big he is very interested in what we're doing. on both the criminal and civil

side. he believes that economic ryan is the scourge of this country, and that needs to be dealt with seriously more than any activity. there's a big play to roll there. we get a lot of support on that side. on the civil side he is equally interested in what we're doing to keep the economy competitive and strong and open for all americans of all different economic stations. so i would say we enjoyed a very close and positive working relationship. i knew the attorney general before i went in to the d.o.j. so that's i think it's a particular treat to work with them. >> we've been very active -- >> and met with our, first with a front office and leadership and met with the entire division about a month ago. and sort of daylong event that was extremely successful. and he was charming. that was excited beyond words do have the time with the. >> and answered all the

antitrust questions. [laughter] >> he's also been very active on the hill. testifying before congress. would you like to talk about that experience? >> well, you know, for julie i have done it before so today, testifying before congress is a great opportunity to advocate on competition issues in particular. so i was fortunate to go up and testify with senator reid on medicare and ferguson as you know, antitrust generally. the administration was very supportive of overturning mccarran insurance exception. so i was able to testify on the. i testify on ag issues. i testified on competition generally. i was just up on comcast-nbc that any opportunity we get to work with congress to really advanced is a terrific opportunity. >> in advocacy before the courts, in american needle, we have that coming down. you want to talk a little bit about that for a second?

>> american needle, for those who may not be the money with it, is a case in which the nfl asserted that their award of merchandise licensing was not susceptible to antitrust prosecution because they were under a single firm conduct doctrine. we disagreed. we went to the supreme court. we had a most unusual morning at the court. it was by most commentators, the most vigorous argument that had been confronted the court in quite a while with the justices barely able to contain themselves from asking, waiting until the witness finish their question. it is an extremely interesting case and very important for antitrust. i obviously, the strong view was not immune from antitrust.

and that our position is it needs to be remanded to determine whether or not to conduct itself violates the antitrust law. so we will seek. were you there that day? >> it was a very active bench. and really three different positions were laid out, for the justices to choose from among. and it will be very interesting to see how it plays out. >> it's very useful when the supreme court gets involved in antitrust requiring, law professors get involved, and hopefully we'll see an uptick of people become antitrust lawyers. >> particularly when it's the nfl. everybody knows about it. >> just like when we had the movie antitrust. but for better reasons. i would like to see if there's anyone on the phone who has questions, just so we allow some part to the nation there. >> operator: our first question comes from robert.

please proceed. [inaudible] >> we are having trouble hearing you, bob. are you on a speaker phone? >> i'm on a -- i'm in a car actually. >> that might have been more detail than i wanted. drive carefully. [inaudible] >> know, we can't hear you. sorry. okay. were going to go to the next question. maybe you will get into a better zone. >> operator: our next call, please proceed. >> caller: thank you. i was wondering how much of a focus the antitrust division will be putting up a health care industry over the next three years? >> well, it's obviously a priority for the country, and the economy. and we have a section devoted to

health issues. i imagine you will see a fair amount of attention being paid to that entire sector are both from federal trade commission and the department of justice. and beyond that i probably can't say too much at this point. it will continue to be a priority. >> christine varney agreed to be our keynote speaker at a joint program that we're doing with a national health lawyers association, and i think it is in may, if i remember right. >> right. next question? operator, do you have another one there? >> operator: i have no further questions. >> okay. >> just following up on the --

one of the things just to follow up the competitive statements as you suggest have been very, very detailed, and there are quite and array of cases, and array of industries. one of the things that does come through in each one of them, and i assume it's very case specific is if there's a fairly detailed announces of entry, reference both to chernobyl as to expansion, repositioning by other incumbents in the industry, or nearby industries. one question i would have is sometimes is very difficult to read across all of the different cases and the fact pattern is whether you see that there are either particular themes as to how you are in evaluating entry, the fact is that you deem more important, particularly in how you might be treating we positioning and whether any different or similarities in the way that you're giving to entry

in the cases that you addressed so far with regard to either the fast teachers or past cases. >> yeah, it's a great question. a couple things that i would offer, and i was going to invite bill and maliki jump in. i think there is obvious and significant division between those transactions where ip is involved and does what it is simply hard assets. when you're looking at entry and there's a significant amount of id, you're going to see very different kinds of remedies. than you are when you see straight hard assets, into issues. so that off the top of my head would be kind of a unifying theme, look and see exactly what the transaction is that we're talking about come and look and see whether or not into is dependent on anyway on ip and what the ip landscape looks like

in that particular part of the market. beyond that, i think we look at history of the marketplace. i think we look at the history of the participants in the marketplace. unfortunately, for the practitioners much of what we assessed would be in the course of our investigation and it's going to be confidential. so i think you've been on a case with us where we've been talking to repositioning, and you know that we go very, very deep on the repositioning argument. we spend not only time with those that are alleged to be in a position to reposition, but also with potential customers, past customers, future customers. obviously, looking at switching and locking. those are all important factors and we're just going to depend on the particular transaction. bill and molly, jumping to expect i would say one thing we look at this insignificant detail is how effective is that entry going to be. i mean, many times we're given a

list of potential entrants. and we will go out and interview the folks. we will spend a lot of time analyzing internally how ineffective might that entry become how effective will that repositioning be. we certainly did that in ticketmaster, and we've done a number of these other manners which christine mentioned this morning. >> molly, do you want to? >> yes, i don't disagree with anything that's been said. i think that the amount of attention, i believe in a few, not necessarily a few, but in the past that staff to readily rejects entry arguments. and some of the detail your comment on come from an effort to lay out as christine said that which with respond to the

are you and the amount of work that goes on around. so far the world is speaking for a unifying theme. i would suggest that if the merger guidelines are updated to reflect current practice, they will be the unifying document. >> well, that for me at least i was waiting for an opportunity to ask you whether before the next month before the spring meeting, will we see draft horizontal merger guidelines? able to be an opportunity for a public comment? >> well, as you know there've been lots of public comments so far. as a matter of fact, there's not a day that goes by that i heard something from someone that you want or don't want. so we've had a lot of hearings. we've gotten a lot of public comment. we've got a terrific team across both agencies that is working now and has not yet made a recommendation to me are as far as i go to the chairman. so stay tuned. i mean, we are committed to an open and transparent process and we want to get as much input as we can. i have to wait until i get a

recommendation from the team before i can say what we will do next. >> you are not sure whether we will see something before the spending? >> i would hope that we will be in a place where we will have some staff recommendations before the spring meeting. so we will see. >> other questions from within the room? well then, i'm going to ask you -- good. meal, good. >> there have been speculation at one point about a year ago when you were first appointed that there may be some progress on an agreement with commission was some sort of global clearance agreement. i haven't heard anything on that and i don't know if it's quite a problem that was when there were 5000 filings. but any thought given to going down that road at this point? >> well, at the moment i mean unless you all tell me

otherwise, we have i think a very good process in place where we are clearing mergers and very quickly. and as far as i know the process we have in place right now is actually working exceedingly well that and i'm not, i've got enough to do. i don't feel like i need to fix things that don't appear to me to be broken. at the moment clearance seems to be working just fine. molly, bill? >> i would agree with that. >> molly? >> i agree with that too. >> do any of you disagree with that? do you have anything where you couldn't figure out lex tell me because i haven't heard of any. >> i think we're going to be setting up a meeting to have some people have had some expenses come in and talk to you, because i know you're open to discussing how to make the process work better. >> definitely. because i have to tell you, somebody just recently said to be lastly, it didn't happen to be but i heard somebody had, you know, 45 days. i said calmly, go find out who it was. commie back.

tell me. tell you what transaction did not get cleared for 45 days. days. the person called back and said oops, i was wrong. it wasn't a transaction. so i lean i'm happy to hear if people have specific transaction laughter that they do not believe they were cleared anytime at way. i would love to hear about it because i don't know of any. >> i think you're right. the best thing we can ever do it said that because i think you fix whatever you find out about. which is good. >> exactly. >> any other questions? yesterday if you could identify yourself to. >> bill at bingham. this question is very much in the weeds, but a sword comes from the fact that i was at d.o.j. >> bill was the chief of staff and was quite helpful in the transition. so thank you for everything you did. >> but i wasn't going to ask this question until everyone else had a more substantive ones

done. [laughter] >> we love to talk. >> sort of the broad statement is how is the budget? and more granular with and that do you feel like it comes from noticing that the ftc resort has gotten some large budget increases, and in particular has a lot of support of its foreign commerce program on the hill. and i haven't seen coverage. i may just have missed it. if you're getting the same support from the d.o.j. site. iid is a have seen the leadership is out making speeches and is being supported, but are you getting enough support to kerry on the the foreign commerce side, on the staff level were a lot of the effort takes place? and a second sort of budgetary question is, how is the new

building working out, which people spend a lot of time getting that consolidation working. arthur benefits from the consolidation? >> let me take the second part. the entire d.o.j. antitrust act, other than the regional field offices now sits at liberty square. which has been terrific. the amount of interaction you can have between the staffs. we can spend whole days over there doing meetings that i have an office there. i am they're frequently not as legal as molly and bill. i think those guys are there almost every day. so i think having one building has just been terrific. it must have been exceedingly difficult when everybody was spread all over the place. so the building is great. on the budget, the obama administration i guess he has a different set of priorities than their predecessors. our d.o.j. budget is terrific, and we are very focused in enhancing those areas that are important to the president and the attorney general, civil rights. and natural resources.

criminal program. our budget and antitrust is more than sufficient. as i said, we have gone from a point where post hsr we had 3000 mergers filed down to a place where we've got, you know, significantly less. so i think our -- and we did experience, we have had no cuts for quite a while and antitrust. so we are feeling pretty robust on our budget. on the foreign commerce question, the congress has been very generous to the ftc. supporting them in their mission to provide technical assistance to emerging antitrust regimes around the world, which we think is terrific. it is an area they have historically done great work and. they have a strong staff to provide technical assistance to the emergency democracies, emerging markets. and we are very supportive of the. our work on the international

front tends to be bilateral. tends to be transactional, and that's where we focus our efforts that we are always available should the need arise. i think bill, you led a delegation to china, so it's not to say we don't do any. why don't you comment? >> i think we tried to be very focused. we focus in certain parts of the world that we think are important. as christy mentioned, i went over with two federal judges, members of our foreign congress staff. we spend 10 days working with judges in china who will be handling china's anti--- new and time another law. these were judges who were previously handling intellectual property cases and they were being introduced to have to do with the antitrust principles. and we found to be a very useful exercise. i suspect a group of those judges may will come over to the

united states. they expressed some interest in and have federal district judges handle their doctors day in and day out. and so i think we're very focused in certain areas of the world, and it's been very useful. >> let me just also -- >> a very strong performance international outreach. >> that stretches going to add, market would do if do a lot of work on the criminal side. so we're constantly doing international cartels were, both training and prosecuting. we also at the d.o.j. as part of the executive branch have a different ability to interact with the department of congress on commercial diplomacy efforts with the usgr, with the state department. so we are active around the government in the executive branch capacity. >> what are you doing with the attorneys general? i see this seems to be a lot cooperation on merger matters. also know you've been speaking

may be taken want to talk about that. >> sure. on a lot of the antitrust issues we thinka monotonous with the big national or international mergers, but a lot of the smaller regional mergers, or criminal activity or not merger activity that might be regional, the attorneys general are on the front line. they often have the ability to start an investigation to spot issues, but don't always have the resources to take it to the next steps. many times you'll see regional activity that crosses state boundaries. so you have attorneys general looking at the same thing, and they will come to us and say, cuba, can you help us with this. and our answer is almost universally yes. we will do whatever we can to assist the attorneys general. and we've gone to them when we found some things through better investigations that maybe state specific or regional, and said to the attorneys general, you may want to take a look at this. if you can't or have no interest, let us know. but again almost universally they will pick it up and then go

with it. we are very committed to a close working relationship with the states attorney general. >> we're also trying information sharing with them so we smooth out some of the bugs that existed in the past. >> that would be very useful to work on of the protocol and similarly for the bar to work on what they can do for the protections of the information, especially it varies from state to state, as you know, it's ours what protection you get understand you. >> exactly. >> david? >> just a question, have you observed any change in what you perceive to be the level of anti-competitive activity in the economy in light of the economic problems of the last year or two? >> david, great question. will look, mergers are down.

so you know, it's part of we're not seen as many mergers. therefore, we're not seeing as many mergers that present anti-competitive concerns. conduct, hard to say. i mean, i can't, you know, comment on what we're doing. that's not public. i just -- look, tough economic times lead people to be innovative, but that can also lead people to other places that maybe are so competitive. and we got our eye on a. we take it very seriously. i'm not really countable singh whether i think there's increase or not. i wasn't in government until a year ago. biller molly, do you want to comment on the? >> i don't think i'll be in a position to say that i've seen some seachange as a a result of certain industries facing greater distress than others at this point. >> what are the proactive -- >> christian, you may want to

comment on little bit on the criminal program, the training program. >> go ahead, molly. you can go ahead and do it. >> well, the criminal put a program for the possibility that you could see, especially than infusion of money into the public sector for public works and related project. for instances some of the kind of criminal behavior we see in the industry. he and his staff have gone around to inspector general and other government and had been training for them on how to detect if there's something anti-competitive in their procurement processes, which i think was a wonderful first step, and something i think that my other government agencies to make the governmengovernment has created a task force which the

everett mall it was just thinking about is now part of. where the entire government across a dozen agencies, the irs, sec, citf, d.o.j., hhs, it's a very large undertaking. is working on financial fraud across the whole economy. so what we start as procurement fraud training has now been subsumed into a much larger government wide effort on fraud in the state is spending, and other kinds of potential fraud in government spending. >> about a month ago, the section had a brown bag with, is that jim? >> john, and also debbie majoris and john thornton the private sector. talking about the partnership that we can form in going out to detect fraud. and basically when you look at businesses, they are major

consumers and the justice department is really, although this was supposed to be only about several matters, i want to make one play. there are wonderful mentors on the justice department website for who you can contact and what you can do. they will more than welcome your phone calls if you, as a customer, think that there might be some bit of reading going on. so i encourage you to do that. i don't want to and financial distress, but i'm going to ask one question and hopefully get to another. have you seen financial stress be something that's come up in the merger setting? either the parties raising as a justification for the merger, or perhaps your fears that there will be entry due to financial distress? >> know, we've seen it a little bit in newspapers. whether our joa's and newspaper cities with two newspapers, as

everyone knows, a difficult problem. but in other industries i don't think we have seen that much. occasionally we will see folks talking about economic distress, that there it is to is facing. but given that mergers are down, we just haven't, we haven't confronted the issue as much as i had anticipated we would. i did think we would see quite a bit of that in our discussions with parties. but we haven't. >> molly, do you want to comment on that? >> i would just add that where i see the impact is in very tight financing terms, that merging parties haven't. >> and i guess it's also use it in financing terms, i guess it's come up also in just the for review when companies have been in bankruptcy. [inaudible] >> the point is when the financing may not be very

long-term -- it means -- [inaudible] >> molly, are you in a car as well argue we have a broader problem with our tele- seminar folks? [inaudible] [laughter] >> i have no idea what the answer was. we have time for basically one or two more questions. are there any from the audience? how about from the operator, are you holding any? has bob reappeared? >> operator: we have a question on the line. please proceed. >> hello? bob, are you going to try again?

>> yes back in the tunnel. >> operator: the lines are open. you may proceed. >> okay. >> operator: we do have a call from nicole. >> before, just occurred to me, would reduce the financial distress, and the icy seizures. >> oh, yes to expect so we see a lot because we do participate in the divestiture of seized bank assets. so we have very short turnaround. we are 24, 48 hour turnaround on those, and i have a swat team that goes in very quickly. and looks at the market, looks at the acquiring party and will give the fdic, occ and the other authorities our input which is where they really good team on the. and that is the one place where we do see a lot of financial distress is in bank mergers. specs are, nicole. >> caller: hi, everyone. my name is nicole brown.

earlier, i can never who, but as a result of american needle there might be an uptick coming out of new image of lawyers. i don't know, maybe it's just wishful thinking. so i don't know if you have noticed that there has been a downturn or a stagnancy and the number of new interest into the field to i know at my school there's a small cadre of people are interested and antitrust. they don't seem to know about each other. so i didn't know if you at any plans or ideas for targeting the new generation of lawyers coming out? >> well, that was my comment, the nature of the antitrust section and having practiced for 25 years. back at time i start at the federal trade commission when today's after i arrived they decided to rip most of the lawyers, but me. for julie i got to stay. but we've had ups and flows. and just the numbers of graduates have expressed interest in antitrust, a low

point may be about 10 years ago, we've seen a slight uptick. and we as a section have tried to do a lot with wide antitrust and law schools, we have a young lawyers division. for those of you who are interested in our newer lawyers, you don't have to be just young, just as you are new and want to get involved, we have lots of ways you can get involved. please feel free to shoot me an e-mail and i will pass it on and make sure that there is follow-up expect no coal, we are actually having an open house at the d.o.j. and about two weeks, and maybe you could put this up on our website. so people can access it. we sent a letter to your dean, nicole, and it's in about two weeks. we have invited people from all over the region here in washington to come to the department of justice to the great hall, to be with the antitrust division. we have six of civil sections,

and the criminal section as well as an appellate section, policy section, who will all set up tables in the great hall. and we meet with law students all afternoon. and talk to you about what we are doing and what the opportunities are at the department of justice for recent grads. we would love you to come over. >> caller: great. i did look at the website and i think it actually said that it was for -- >> you can come anyway. [laughter] spirit if they give you a hard time, so i invite you to. >> you just got the aag exemption. [laughter] >> , glad to have it, thank you for a much. >> that concluded 60 minutes with the justice department on civil matters. i am going to take you up with your opening statement that perhaps we would do something similarly on criminal and also on a policy matters. after the spring meeting, in the meantime, stay tuned for the spring meeting. please come. thank you.

[applause] >> this weekend john dean is our guest on both tvs and death. the former white house counsel and author of 10 books including an updated edition of blind ambition. we will take your phone calls, e-mails and tweets sunday at noon live eastern. flexible policies actually make employees more, not less productive. because as you all know instead of spending time worrying about what's happening at home, your employees have the support and peace of mind that because we need to concentrate on their work. >> watch something on c-span that you would like to share with friends at a new c-span video library. you can search it, watch it, clip it and share it. over 160,000 hours of video from yesterday or last year.

every c-span program since 1987. the c-span video library, cable's latest gift to america. now a discussion with ironic photojournalist hasan, who recently moved to the u.s. after iran's government refused to renew his press pass. from the national pss club, young members committee and reporters without borders, this is close to an hour. >> thank you all for joining us tonight. my name is evan. this is the inaugural event of the truth teller series, and i am more than happy to have hasan sarbakhshian speaking to us tonight. i am chairman of the young man was committed here at the national press club. and we are the only age demographic-based committee at the club representing everyone from the ages of 18 to 35, including our student members,

anyone who is in journalism schools more than welcome to join, certainly. and thank you all for coming. it is something i've wanted to see done here since i was actually in journalism school myself. thank you. and to introduce hasan, thank you. >> thank you very much. it's actually a great opportunity to be here at the national press club to talk about press freedom. today is iran and we hope we can raise awareness in lots of countries of the world where press freedom is threatened. you might all know it now, but iran is at a very, very bad point at its history. the reporters are fleeing the country.

some of them are just afraid that some friends or the families have been found by the government so that i'll be leaving facebook profile. can you imagine being as a journalist forced to delete your facebook profile because your friends are at stake. it's really a critical moment right now. and i'm really honored that hasan is there. you might not know that name from here, but believing, and iran he is a well-known photographer and he has done a lot of things for the press freedom. that's why he's here today and he cannot speak from tehran because he fled the country. reporters without borders is one of the organizations talking about the situations of press freedom in iran day by day, since this generates first southern india. we are updating our website with the latest news. so you might heard that with the

new year's coming, on march 21, that some of the reporters were freed. but today, you still have more than hundred of them in jail, reporters and bloggers, because of what they do online. and because they gather and they publish articles on what's going on with the regime. and it's not even information on naming only mama didn't shut. it's not that. it's simply saying what is going on in the country. so thank you, hasan, for being with us tonight. it's really important. and we will make sure that your friends in iran will get what you're saying tonight. and we know that the message is getting there and we know that the message is getting out because our researchers are in contact with them.

and we still get the message out. that's what we are able to inform you of the memories of prisoners there and have a situation in the country. newspapers are being closed, and journalists are being harassed every day. they are being killed. they are being threatened that their families are threatened. it's really hard to figure out what's going on, but thanks to hasan we will have a real overview of the situation there. thank you very much all. >> thank you very much for coming here and listening to my situation and all the issues which happen in the past 10 months. i am representative of my colleagues if they cannot work

now in iran freely, and even they cannot carry cameras. i'm not, you know, the speaker actually. i'm a photographer, but i will try to do the best job because of my colleagues situation. i think now the time i need to speak about some issues, some facts actually. i was a photographer for 10 years, and now i am speaker and just looking for background and what i did before and situation in the country now. i need to show some pictures and just looking for the text because my english is not good enough for speaking. anyway, the press and media are not enough to answer all needs of human beings.

the people living in european and united states usually use their blogs to write about their life. their profession, and sometimes their opinion about social life and political ideas. but in countries like iran where blogging plays an important role among the young generation, as those in middle age, openly express during this medium take and political voices and message. in iran it is no place for circulation of information as there is no freedom of speech. of course, you can try and say anything you like. but your fate will be unknown if you criticize the supreme leader, or islamic issues. i would like to tell you about a

man who support the supreme leader for 30 years. he was a filmmaker and writer for a newspaper. as he found out the results of the june 2009 presidential election, he began to criticize the internal policy of the supreme leader. he asked him to change or limit his power, and also asked him to following postelection turmoil. sadly news now, he is in prison for four months. two weeks ago, he said new result does not stop and change his beliefs. he will not be permitted to see his family. this is just one example of the

fate of hundreds of journalists, even if they haven't spent their careers supporting to the islamic government, but turning criticize to supreme leader and it was unacceptable, even for supreme leaders supporters who they believe. following the june 2009 election, journalist can be compared after iran's 1979 revolution. in that time, journalists fled the country. but the generation that grew up after the revolution, and establishment of the established and for the republic of iran demands freedom for the call maybes, slogan. khomeini was the founder of the revolution. he said that time our fathers cannot decide for us to remind

current politicians and the foundation of the co-main is republic. and 2009, the young generation use khomeini's challenging words and demanded their rights to decide for their future. let's see some pictures, and i'm just trying to speak over the pictures, and you can compare the situation, how was before the election how and how was after that. >> this is kind of pictures which i took during the 10 years and iran, and you can see some contrast of the pictures and

some lives in the streets during universities and some demonstrations. and you can find my words, how was situation in iraq. now one -- down to one release mahmoud ahmadinejad was justly elected as a by the people. since the supreme leader, he went before the guardian as a result of the election that the guardian council of the constitution is an appointed and constitutionally mandated 12 members council. that is influential in iran. on june 15, 3 million iranian protesters, they came out of

homes and they protested in the streets. they were in peaceful remark in iran, but killed seven people's. by the hands of the militias that after the demonstration, reporters, journalists and photographers said all photos to the media around the world. the islamic republic saw the loss of the power and legitimacy. through works of these photographs and restricted the media by creating an atmosphere of fear. these pictures action which are looking now, these are for the demonstration on 1999, which was the biggest 10 years ago, it was the start of when the government

banned reformist newspaper, and then students started that time to came out and show their protests. and some people got killed. so still people are blaming nowadays and also the demonstration after the 2009 election, it was begin during at that times demonstration. that was the time which the people started to show they were not satisfied with the regime, and this is the result of the 10 years ago and the demanding their rights. the regime banned all journalists and asked the foreign media to leave the country immediately. it was three days after the ju june 12, and when the government said to the journalists, you need to flee the countries come and all. they got only the one week visa, and they flee the country.

and in order to to working in iran and avoid coming into conflict with the iranian government, some international news agency preferred to cover stories from the third country. in the last 10 months, a company all the photos on iran published by international news agencies, stands out telling of the blogs on the international media's access to new sewers and use photos from unknown photographers. the fact that the photographer of, photos of unknown, extent to which fear of intimidation, dominate the atmosphere of the iranian photography community. we refer though to all has been said, we realize the power of picture in the age of the technology, and at present and

understand iran's are not in a by of images posted by people in news and social networks sites, as such as youtube and facebook. at that time when the old newspapers have been cut from the outside world by the government. these peoples you are looking now, they are the older journalists. i think five years ago. there were association of the iranian journalist, and they show the protest for the banning and shutting down the newspapers and attending in that association places. but even the government, they close the association of iranian journalists in 2009. and there were no people to support the iranian journalists. with reference to all that has been said, the regime has published images of the people.

this is the new story which iranian regime's use of photography as a power to identify the people who they were demonstrate their protest in the streets. and it was really dangerous for the photographers, even you cannot carry your camera on the streets because of the people who they were on the streets and they show their protests against the government and the result of the election, they identified by official site to establish security, maybe police, maybe other official like a link to the iranian revolutionary guards. they showed some pictures of the demonstrators, and circle, you know, their face that they ask the people to identify them. this is really dangerous for the photographers. they couldn't even say we are from the press. and the people even, they can't trust them. this was one of the situation

which the photographer, that time saw with the regime. through the regime, the regime has published images of the people on websites connected to security centers and stand out with incidents in an effort to identify them. and in selling doing, use photos not to the dissidents. and the islamic republic has also changed from the greater intimidation by the meeting of the voters. a few days after their election, june 2009, would be enough for the government to still search for pictures 10 months later in a way photos have became the hills of the government of the islamic republic. all were severely punished by the government, including

journalists and photographers. protesters were killed and prisoners tortured. forced into first confusion on tv claiming that they were -- these actions led many journalists to play the coach that a clear example of this is an iranian canadian newsweek correspondent who was arrested on june 21, just a few days after the election. and after -- a few days after his arrest, he was forced to confess that he acted against the islamic establishment by working for western media. after he was released, he wrote an article in newsweek about the direction of his detention and iranian president article mentioned how his was accused of spying for newsweek.

about 30 journalists are held and iran's prison. you cannot speak about freedom of speech in iran while this regime is under power. in this situation of speaking about the trust is not easy, and next to impossible. according, of course, according to reporters without borders, 100 reporters and photographers fled the country after the june 2009 election in iran. most of them have left the country without any support. some only speak persian and has serious financial problems, while living in exile. they have had to pay smugglers to help them leave the country. meanwhile, they were well known professional journalist in iran. now many of them live in turkey a way to receive support from

human rights organizations or u.n. they will try to shut down the association of iranian journalist, and with the only organization that could support their rights disappeared. only in the past 10 years more than 300 newspapers, magazines or websites were closed down. which means there is no job security for the professionals and journalists, photographers, other workers also. in 2009 alone, 20 newspapers after election and magazines were banned from publishing. sometimes the publishing of the just single vote or character or photo was the reason for shutting down the news source. in mid-march, a cleric who is the head for the shia muslims, he issued an announcement, and

he said any connection with the western media is in direct opposition to islamic laws. they know some iranian journalist who left the country, they are working in some persian-based tv channels in the europe or america, and they know some influential like this channels, and they want to just give serious times for the journalists who are living in exile. and filtering the internet, this is very important. filtering the internet by the government hasn't stopped iranian from having access to freedom of information. and the situation discussion -- decision sanction our service, export to iran. it's very important to support.

this is the pictures which i mentioned to you that's informing the people's, which is coming from the official site of the sites name is linked to some security organization, and they are showing the picture of the demonstrators. and this is a important to support peoples to these countries to reach their universal right to free speech that even the foreign journalists that travel to iran to cover the ceremony, commemorating the 31st anniversary of iran's revolutionary on february 2010 did not have chance to interview people, even industries. they had only one podium in front of the mahmoud ahmadinejad speech. and they did only that in ceremony officially. however, iranian people have used citizen journalism during the past 10 months am and as an alternative to fight against the

regime, censorship to social networks like facebook's and twitter. this is an important effect to inform the world about the truth and iran. i think professional journalism in iran, change face of citizens of journalism. this is very important after the election, which all the people that are using their cell phones. and we saw the picture which shocked all the world. and it came even until now unknown, the person who shot that picture. and it was for us. it was like terrified moment. actually, i was exactly 12 days before the election, and by the intelligence ministry, they asked me to stop work, don't take a picture. but i did a small camera. you saw some of that result of them, my pictures during after election. actually, i showed some footage is and i am documenting some of

those. nowadays, journalism and iran, i think phrases very dangerous situation. some journalists who fled the country, they are waiting in turkey and other countries to get a time to interview by the u.n. and to get some chances to u.n., get some help with human rights organization or the u.n. this is i think the important point. if some organization or even once they have the iranian journalism, freedom of speech and the country, this is the moment. i think for 30 years that was enough. in 30 years, in my experience, actually when i was 10, it was happen that revolution happen and iran. after that, one decade, around one decade, 80 years war with iraq in state and all the medias, although newspapers controlled by the government. all the