european leaders discuss their economy in the world economic forum in douglas switzerland. british deputy prime minister nick clegg and greek minister papandreou joined the presidents of the european central bank and others on a panel to discuss europe's economic future. the panelists focused on the strength of the euro, transparency and governance and the role of the european central bank. this one-hour panel was hosted by the world economic forum and davos switzerland.

>> good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. it is a great pleasure for me to be chairing the session, not just as editor of the national times but also as a former brussels correspondent. i spent six years watching the euro created in the 1990s and now we have 10 years on. some very severe challenges for europe and we have an expert panel, a panel with different perspectives from the political to the central bank, to the private sector. i think we are going we are going to have a very interesting discussion this afternoon. now the format is that each of the speakers will speak briefly. i will then ask if you very gentle questions, and then i will open it up for the floor

for questions. we can have an interactive discussion. so without further ado, i would like to ask george papandreou to speak. >> thank you very much and i'm honored to be here this year again. i will begin by a few comments on the general theme here in davos which is on governance and equity and do we have common values in this world. why europe? what is europe's purpose and we go back to where it began. it was basically a peace project, a project for democracy and even as we see what is going on in the maghreb and and and humanitarian and the cypress in the balkans it still is a peace project, but i think the mage or challenge for europe today is to be a model of governance which is also sustainable towards

green development, which in the end humanizes our globalized economy. the thing that i just want to make three points. one is on governance. the greek pelham is not a debt problem. it is a debt problem also but that is a symptom. it was a problem of governance and we have over the last year made major changes in a system which was nontransparent, there was ways. major changes cutting our deficit by 6%, reforming our pension system into a valuable and robust pension system today. opening up professions and we are doing that right now. we are to have done some. we have change the tax system, reform the local government and reforming central government by making everything on line very transparent.

but, the markets haven't responded. the last year the question to me around was -- default? this year the question is will greece default? and the question is, we have been doing everything by the book. we have done with the recipe says to wind their markets responding? while i think the question towards greece is really looking at somewhere else. it is looking at brussels, it is looking at frankfurt, berlin paris and maybe even washington and maybe beijing but basically it is what is your doing you are doing as far as governance is concerned for the eurozone. and this is a challenge and i think there are three things which need to be done where i would say it is not simply come i don't want to use the word austerity. i would call it responsibility. there are three areas of responsibility. the first is that the member states. we have to do our homework and we are doing that. secondly, it is the financial system.

we need more transparency, regulation and possibly moving ahead in some areas where they may need recapitalization. and thirdly, the necessary tools and rules and arsenal for the european union so that we can calm the market and do what we can to calm the market. whether it is the bond market, whether it is the issue of debt and this is where the mechanism should be able to be robust and flexible enough to intervene and help in this way. finally i would just say that it means also that we need full transparency and in the last few week statistics were as they said the shortest jump and today we are at the forefront of being the most transparent country or one of the most transparent countries in the world i would say with everything on line. i think the age of transparency is very important to develop the trust and the confidence in our

societies and in the world. before i finished there finish there are two other points but i will get back to base on the question and answer. the question of equity and inequality and social cohesion are very important if you want to be managing the risk. and the question of green development and development and growth in general and how that links up with our european future. thank you. >> now i would like to turn to nick clegg deputy prime minister of united kingdom, the leader of the damp -- and a leader of the new coalition government which did next to go back to the drawing board. it tore up the rulebook of british politics forging a coalition. >> thanks. i speak as a rare british politician who is still prepared to both admit to and still defend my view that at the time

the euro was created it was something that deserved everyone's support and impact of the time i even advocated britain's entry in into the euro. when i think about the drawing board that i believed in them, however many years ago, and what is happened in the eurozone sense, i don't actually think indirect answers the question we need to go back to the drawing board. it is a question of the -- it is kind of actually returning to what the drawing board said in the first place. win the euro was first established, i remember being particularly attached in my own mind to two things. firstly, having this monetary policy straitjacket on a range of different countries, different conditions, would at least force all the countries

within the eurozone to implement meaningful and far-reaching structural reform because, so the theory goes, with the of the ability to devalue yourself and use monetary policy, in a capricious way, you have to find other ways of really hardwiring competitiveness into your economy. so, i was one of those small l liberal sort of economic from a small l liberal economic background who felt that this would be a good thing for the long-term competitiveness of europe as a whole and certainly as part of the eurozone because all of the burden would be placed on governments actually doing the kind of domestic homework that i believed and still believe is necessary for europe's long-term benefit anyway. that was the first thing in the second things was of course the flanking rules, the growth pact and so on and all the other belts embraces assurances within

the treaty, of the establishment of the euro which were designed to make sure that member states would conduct themselves fiscally and a way that was responsible, sustainable and consistent with that sort of mutual duties toward each other within a monetary union. and i felt that was a neat way of resolving this perennial debate about davos monetary union and so i kind of believed and still believe now that it is the kind of rules and discipline that but there in the first place are fully adhered to. actually you wouldn't create many of the tensions which lead to that debate. it of course is happened on both of those counts things didn't quite turn out that way. governments didn't stick to the rulebook and they certainly didn't implement a lot of the structural reforms which i thought were going to be an inevitable consequence of the creation, in part because in a meeting like this money became

so readily available and credit was so cheap. so, cheap credit kind of tapered over the cracks. it reduce pressure on politicians and governments to do the difficult controversial stuff to make their economies competitive and that is why we have these asset doubles and behead highly indebted behavior by consumers and in both the private sector and of course and governments as well. so i start as an observer if you would like the deputy prime minister of the governor that is not part of the eurozone. firstly, fervently hoping that the present issues and problems are comprehensively resolved because i am a passionate european by conviction and indeed by upbringing but much more prosaically because it is overwhelmingly in britain self-interest. we are utterly independent on

the economic fortunes and ups and downs of the eurozone. over half of our trade is with the eurozone. we have a massive strategic national self-interest to see the eurozone succeed. and my view is for it to succeed, we don't need to redraw the drawing board in full. we need to return to some of this basic insight which were on the original drawing board that you can't grow unless you come unless you do the difficult homework of reform domestically sustainable union of the basic rules upon which it was established are not adhered to in the first place. >> thank you, nick. it was very interesting you said that -- in 1999. do you still say that? >> not now, no. >> just checking. >> not now. [laughter] >> george papandreou needs no

introduction. nick clegg make an interesting point about what the bank of england called the night decayed, noninflationary credit expansion. your perspective now on the euro same -- eurozone crisis and >> first of all that i i would say even without the u.k., we are now 331 million people, the magnitude of the united states of america and i would like only before going to economic union. because it was very much what you said prime minister, deputy prime minister from the economic union. as far as economic union, we have after 20 years of the euro price stability in mind with our definition less than 2%, close

to 2%. it is exactly a yearly average inflation of 1.97%. it is fully in line with the definition that we gave and it is better than any such arranged inflation over any such. back over the last 50 years. so i can say they euro delivered would have been asked from it. namely price stability and the information that we are extracting from the financial markets and -- are crediting us from the same stability in the next 10 years. so in that sense, i would say the monetary union has delivered as was foreseen. economic unity is a different story. we have the problem of denying

neglect, which was more or less a universal problem. in many respects we have the old elements that were creating a fragile system and by way of consequences a fragile economy. so there we have a lot of work to do. but i would replace the hard work that the european -- and the european of the 27 single market endeavor have to do with within the framework of all advanced economy. we all have now to devote all the lessons from the worst crisis since world war ii, which could have been the worst crisis since world war i had we not reacted boldly and promptly and i'm speaking of central banks and governments.

so, these lessons have to be drawn by all of us and in the case particularly -- and at the european level very actively. all the enforcement of regulations credentials, permits to have a better understanding of systemic risk and macroprudential. all that is a work in progress i would say on both sides of the atlantic and to reincorporate very timidly. in the u.n. in particular that we have the need to improve governance and improve governance on two sides. what is the -- with the benefit of hindsight, it appears absolutely extraordinary that in 2004 and 2005, the major -- wanted to blow up the pact. france, germany and italy considered that the pact was

what was said by others, that the pact was stupid. there was a benign neglect which was universal. the markets were not looking at these indicators and i have to say that we have to fight very very fiercely only to maintain the pact with the small countries, small and medium countries that were in favor of the pact. now of course now it is absolutely understandable when we have against the benefit of hindsight how we could lose to that extent. the second issue which is also very important and we made the point, very soon in the course of these formidable endeavors which is the single currency, and ever, we had the idea that it was necessary to follow very carefully competitive indicators uniquely because the imbalances,

national and balances in order to be sure that we would have appropriate coherence within the u.n.. now it is work in progress, our debate between the parliament and the council, the governments on the best way to improve governance. we are prepared for a quantum leap in governance and we are descent that even the first proposal of the commission were considered by us too timid, too shy to the extent that the governments have been weakened a proposal of the commission. we are shipping our messages to both government and parliament because really, as was said by the previous speakers, reinforcing government is absolutely of the essence. it is in our case the bigger lesson to be told from across his -- crisis. again all advanced economics have their problem and europe as far as fiscal position is

concerned is the euro is in a better position at the end of the year as a consolidated position, and a better position with 4.6, 4.7% of the deficit then say the u.s. and japan. so, as a group, as a single market with a single currency, we are in a situation which is better than others, but it is no time for complacency and in some cases it is far from being sustainable, so we have to continue to work very very hard and again it is not time for complacency in any respect. >> both in the eurozone and outside the eurozone, your nordic respective here. as you are probably going to say that job creation in the growth has been pretty impressive.

>> it has indeed. it is something which is debated in many places here but if you allow me to be the sole voice of business here and just make a few reflections, putting myself in perspective i am the chairman of an investment company in sweden and our family has been in business for 106 years. we are main shareholders in a long time companies such as electrolux and -- bank. they all have a strong historical basis in sweden but today they are truly global, spanning the world from south america to asia, all around. now on the question of how to move europe forward, let me just say the obvious. politicians as we heard, have a sensory role and i would like to underlie that i think you have

done, you have done a lot. i think you are financial crisis, the kinds of decisions that were undertaken by politicians are commendable and should be applauded and i think it worked extremely well and was extremely well done. now ultimately, i believe that in order to deal with many of the challenges we have today, we have to incorporate, we have to incorporate business and politics. i guess we have to communicate and be in the spirit of divorce if you wish because now, from a business perspective the world has changed. as a shareholder, i have pushed the companies i'm involved with on a number of points. we have pushed them towards restructuring, to increase productivity, improving efficiency.

for the long-term through research and development and exports it to go global and get even closer to the ultimate client, to the consumers. that is what i pushed for and with that in mind, of course i then turned to my fellow european politicians and leaders and ask what more can you do, or mutt -- what more can we do together moving forward? and let me just say a few things. on behalf of the financial crisis, i believe that you need to make sure that we get public budget stability in europe. it has been mentioned by all of you but i really want to underline it. we need transparency through clarity, a level playing field. ultimately that we have an order in our public finances to finally create that full trust that we were talking about in the capital market.

we need to further, on the second , further focus on education and research and development. i think ultimately both the public and the private have to invest even more. on infrastructure, i think most of europe came apart as snow started to appear on the scene and i think europe collectively speaking is underinvested inroads, airport and -- and i think we have a lot to do there. labor market is something where i think we can develop a lot. we have come a long way. i think we can do more. immigration, integration are issues, part of the divorce issue and we can come back to that but i think if we summarize when we hear president obama state of the union address two days ago, and he speaks about the need for the united states to be more competitive. how well so do we hear the

president of the united states united states come forward so strongly? than i believe that europe, we don't have a lot of time to wait. i think we all see our country such as china, india rapidly becoming much more competitive. in my book they are hungry, and they are good and they want to achieve. so, believe that europe now has to be decisive. we have to deliver and we all, business as well as politicians, have to participate. i think we have to take responsibility and we have to show a sense of urgency, because if we are going to move forward i think we have to realize that this new competitive powers out there, it is not that they are going to bypass us. the risk is there going to run is over. we have a tough challenge and i think we all have to pay respect to that and debate that. >> thank you very much. i think there were three scenes that come out of the comments

which a bid made by the very speakers. what is one is obviously how to get back to growth? and not necessarily the kind of anemic growth which many countries on the continent have experienced over the past decade. second, the question of market confidence. how you actually can get a heart of the markets and convince them that the measures will work and third, this question of governance. complicated. first of all prime minister, your government as you say has taken some very belated but bold steps to both curb the deficit and to introduce very difficult reforms, articulate pension reform. but you are not getting much credit in the markets and the markets are saying whatever they do, they have got a huge stack of debt and a huge deficit and that is the combination, which

means that at some point there will have to be a restructuring and second, the growth. whatever you do in terms of growth is not going to be enough to bring these levels down. what do you say to the the market and to this audience listening to crack that? >> yes, sir. a good question and something which we see written about almost every day. i would say that and of course the question of restructuring has been there for a long time over the last few months, this last year the question of default. i also say we are not moving to restructuring. we have a very clear path, and i would say a roadmap to move out of the debt problem and i think there are two elements here. one is that we are doing what is necessary and all these major changes and they are very

painful and very difficult, but we have shown the will. last year i was getting the question, can you do it? will you do it? can people sustain the pain? we have shown we can. and we have done most i would say of the difficult things. there are still many things ahead to frontload the changes. six or 6.5 production of deficit is huge for our country. next year it will be over 2% more reduction and we are on a path where we think we can get onto, get the growth in 2012 and restore confidence and we are hoping to open up to the markets even this year. now, we are doing what we should. the other thing i was talking about of course is that, we can't live in a situation where, as the -- would say the flutter

of a butterfly in one of the -- part of the world can create a storm and the other part of the world where we have felt over this last year that even though we are on a very robust path of change in the markets are going up and down and we are going up and down with them. of course we are protected by this new mechanism but that is not enough because it doesn't create the confidence even in our country. >> at bigger mechanism. >> so i think the discussion that is ongoing about a stronger mechanism, a more flexible mechanism with all of the tools and i don't want to get into the details that are there to be able to deal with the market. there even have been discussions about the eurobond. literally that might be further down the road but still it could be a very major tool to calm the markets and deal with some of the dead goblins. for example the lengthening of the debt we have to the ims and the european member states. if you look at the graph, and i

have a graph here, it will i think alleviate a lot of the fears in the markets and the bump we would be facing around 2013, 2014. >> i'm going to ask the same question to nick so he has plenty of time to prepare, but what people would say is why is it that when contracts are being rewritten say in the public sector, where people are losing their jobs and where pensions, those contracts are being rewritten by is it that we can't rewrite in effect contracts to the bondholders, where they take some losses too. >> you are asking a theoretical question which i think jean-claude trichet could answer. i have understood with politicians, sometimes in this

world of communication have much more power to her statements then it is always needed and it can be very constructive. it? that obviously -- speak it is a philosophical question. >> not at all, but i would say we have made a decision very clearly that we are moving on a path which is, i guess there will be -- this is a decision made in the european union, a lengthening of the debt we have today imf and the european union there've been discussions about the terms of the loan also. these are in the pipeline. all will be positive, and at the same time, i would say that we have to see you have mentioned the growth scenario in the european union, which is on the one hand a new confidence by the

markets towards our country but it also is i would say using a number of methods, the eurobond. this is something that generally people have approved of as methods of investing in projects and particularly into a greener europe which i think is very important. >> up we have growth you can see on the come back to the green question in a minute. neck, a british respective here where essentially you have taken a calculated gamble or a calculated decision to act early and decisively to reduce the deficit to try and get ahead of the market to head off any loss of confidence in the bond market. perhaps you could explain the thinking. >> as you can imagine i bridle the characterization of what was a gamble.

it was an unavoidable decision. i think sometimes memories are very short. people tend to forget that when this government was first formed at me, we had one of the largest deficits in the g20, one of the largest deficit in the european union. we were spending as much per year simply on the interest on the debt on the whole of our defense budget. we are spending 120 million pounds a day just for interest on our debt so that is about to pay for primary school to be built and as i think you implied in your question, if you don't ask yourself other people will force you to act. it becomes a very fundamental issue of economic sovereignty. the government to try to impose your will on your own economic future or do you say it is too difficult, we will be forced to do it on the terms of which you have no control. i think it was exactly the right thing for a new oncoming government to say we have to seek to take control of this.

otherwise there is a point of saying that we are going to try to sort out the mess in the next five years if we don't equip ourselves with the means to do it. that is the first . it is a fundamental issue. the second one is what we have done of course is we have been opposed to sort of -- overnight. we have announced a plan which will be implemented over for five years. i understand when many people hear the announcement, they think it is -- actually what is now going to happen is the vast majority of the savings haven't even started yet and they are now being reduced in a carefully staged way over a four and a half years, and for happier period. yes that is faster than the deficit reduction plan we have introduced but i think the kind of pendulum has swung to the other extreme. it is assuming it has been done abruptly overnight and it happened at the end of this comprehensive spending review

period and 2015. as a proportion of gdp we will be spending about 41% of gdp on public spending which is about a full 5% more, for 5% more and gordon brown and tony blair when they came in to government. we will employ around 200,000 more people in the public sector than gordon brown and tony blair did when they came into the government in 1997 so yes it is a bold plan but it is not a plan which is being unthinkingly imposed overnight and when you put it in the perspective of a the pressures we render last may and the kind of context of how much we will be spending after we balance the books i can hope over time that people will see is yes it is determined and it is clear but it is also measured >> in just to see the, just briefly this point about going back to the drawing board.

clearly, the united kingdom in the previous decade has benefited from a very strong, strongly performing financial services industry. do you think now that we -- britain needs to rebalance its economy in that respect and where do you see the other growth engines coming from? >> well i think we are again an estate of having to do two very big things at once. extraordinarily difficult and complex with the first to do evidence do with excessive government debt and an overleveraged banking system and excessive traffic consumer debt. and that takes time to unwind. that itself is a challenge. at the same time we are having to do with an economic order which in the last 10, 15, 20 years was over reliant on one particular sectors financial services in one particular part of the country acting as a

locomotive of growth for the rest of the country. that doesn't mean you should try in any way to inhibit the entrepreneurialism and dynamism and growth of the financial services sector. when he can continue to need a strong financial services sector but we couldn't in strategic terms over provided on any one sector because it creates this imbalance. parts of the country which are as i say over reliant on one commercial sector than other parts of the country. for those of you don't know my constituency is in the north of england in sheffield in the part of the country that has almost become wholly reliant on the public sector. and that is very unbalanced. it is socially unbalanced and it is regionally and balance so as well as dealing with overleveraged banks and excessive government debt and debt amongst consumers, we are also having to rebalance growth which i think requires a number of things. it requires a stable environment. it requires continued investment in infrastructure particularly

transport and infrastructure, crucially involves the ability to improve the performance. skills we equip people with that have traditionally been very weak in some important respects in and provide the right incentive for growth in new areas. whether it is about manufacturing where even notwithstanding the rather disappointing figures of gdp in the last quarter of last year, there were significant growth in the british economy going, or in new sectors where we think we have a competitive advantage. >> thank you very much. jean-claude trichet you described in a graphic image that time when the two major countries in the european, in the eurozone, germany and france, the leaders, the political leaders sought to blow up in your words, the stability and growth pact. now here is a the lesson from that actually, that this curious halfway house that we have in

the european union and in the eurozone where we have a supranational european central bank, but we also have clear discretion for the nation-states to manage their budgets that actually that is not feasible. you need to move, in other words, to what the germans call a transfer union, to get the kind of economic union to match the monetary union in which he described. >> first of all i mentioned a period which has been a period of nine neglect and as i said the major countries were sharing the view that the fiscal framework was not necessary. the markets were sharing that view and even i would say other european institutions we are thinking also it was to -- but that is the past. in any case, would have been

constructed at the very beginning has an element, a component which was quite strong as regard to the constraint on fiscal policy. because as you remember, the european union members there is no sanction but for the members of the -- the recommendation, the corrections that are to be taken by the various countries where sanctioned, that is precisely at the moment where the major country has -- and they succeeded in some respects to weaken the spirit of the pact. so we have to go back to the fundamental consideration, and when you have a currency, you need a very strong economic

union with elements of, as we say, -- otherwise you would inadvertently be in a position where the configuration would lose and we cannot afford to be -- but they say that other major economies also had some problems and they were in a situation where they have to engage in correction. i think that is what the u.k. is doing, it is very important and i would say this being ahead of the curve is exactly the appropriate move particularly in this domain where you have to improve countries and confidence is a very conference of concept. if you have confidence, you have

both the confidence of the investors and we also are confident of the enterprises, and we consider ourselves in all observations in india and all europe that there is no contradiction between having a solid and sound and reasonable path towards fiscal sustainability and what is necessary to pave the way for stable growth. we see that the channel of confidence is essential to illustrate this complementarity into two goals. >> again, just a very quick historical perspective. you enter that period when essentially there was an improvisation and currency

fluctuation bands were expanded and then we went on to the launch of the single currency. here in this crisis, we have gone through a similarly severe storm and some new mechanisms have been created. what do you think is different now in the mood amongst the member states today compared to a year ago? >> compared to to year ago? >> yeah. >> well i think we are all, and again i don't think it is only the process of the european learning a lesson from the crisis that all over the advanced economies we are crystallizing our own lessons to be told. and it is absolutely clear that what was perhaps still a little bit possible year ago, namely to say after fiscal policies the

equality of the signature of the governance is not that important now nobody can challenge that and there has been a change from that standpoint. i would say it is not only a european change. is a global change and by the way, i have a side remark. we are working a lot at the global level to introduce an element of solidity in the global financial system. they are working actively in this domain and together with melvin came, we had the inauguration of the systemic risk board which has been created by the europeans. we have exactly the same kind of the entity on the other side of the atlantic at all of that being said, what is absolutely striking is that if despite all of our efforts, we had a new problem of the kind of the 2008 difficulty in the private sector, if the public authorities had no authority, no

credibility, how would we arrest the catastrophe? we arrested a catastrophe because we were credible at the time in 08/09 and they think we have to also reflect on that. we cannot let the signature of the public authorities in a situation where the market would have a lot of doubts on them. because again, we would be done in a world which would be much too dangerous. >> as editor of the financial times it couldn't possibly put words into -- batumi as an observer there is a higher level of appreciation in certain countries in the european union about the interdependency. >> i wanted to say that myself. on the dependency of the u.k. of our own prosperity and it is so

obvious. but we have to know that the u.k. is -- more important in the u.s. so we have as i said a new stake in the prosperity of the u.k.. >> let's go finally to you and then i promise a little bit more about job creation, because and growth, because from your private perspective. this is really where europe, continental continental europe has lagged in the last decade. with the exception of germany recently, but still it is a big problem. >> obviously it is a problem. it is an area where the swedish current government, the conservative one has one or two consecutive elections on the basis of job creation and so

indeed it is something which is very much in focus. i think relatively speaking, that european business has to rethink, and we have to work together with their fellow politicians as i mentioned before in order to say -- stay more competitive. it goes back to the very fundamental question of education, research and development. it goes back to having a more educated population. it goes back to moving -- i think we have to have an understanding with labor unions, with the labor movement, that it is acceptable to move job opportunities -- jobs to other places but, have some kind of flexibility in you your system like they have in denmark and like we are working on in sweden where you are actually, for you except that you can move the factory, which we have done in sweden in great numbers. you reeducate the people in

sweden and out of this, you have a collaboration in the issue, the job creation market and entrepreneurship and we re-create the new jobs but as a higher knowledge content. it works. it takes time. you need a lot of flexibility from all the interested parties. and it goes against a number of accepted premises in labor relations. >> such as? >> really, if you have a job, you don't move the factory. you don't run the risk of loosing lots of jobs long-term and they will never be re-created locally and so on. of course people are afraid that you are not going to re-create jobs. it is sort of like you have to jump and it takes a lot before

you actually dare to do it. our stance is it works, but just one example of many. my point, talking about india and china before is that they are so much on the move also when it comes to high-tech. we are not talking about the old times, when you had low cost, low value-added programs coming out of these countries. they are competitive at the highest technological level. i think we have to accept it and we have to deal with it with open eyes and that i believe means that we have to break a >> and i'm going to open it up to the floor. we don't have an enormous amount of time but would anybody like to ask a question? you just raise your hand. i can't see a thing but that is fine. the gentleman there.

>> a question on monetary union. it is interesting that we talk about -- at the same time the federal reserve and the u.s. government have 15% of its own gdp. the sterling and the u.k. government is the same with the bank of england and the euro so far has not and the central bank has not -- if we add the greek bailouts and irish bailouts, it is less than 2% of gdp. these are a way to solve this equation when it key counterparty in pounds and dollars have been 15% of gdp, in europe with the to bailouts as in the ess. >> okay, i think i've got the trip to that question. and i think probably jean-claude

trichet should perhaps say something. >> i think the question would call for a very long response and i have to say that i am not sure that i would share entirely your presentation. you also have to take into account the expectation in the medium and long run. you have to take into account the various nonstandard measures that have been utilized by the various central banks, which were not the same as you rightly say as far as we are concerned. we did not engage in --. that being said we engage ourselves very early because it was propagating the case of our own economy and a limited supply of liquidity, which is something very unusual. by the way, we started the ninth

of august, 2007. that marked a narrow constituency of the central bank let me say that i consider that between the central bankers, we are very divided in purpose. the purpose is to solidly anchor inflation expectations in the medium term and lined with our understanding of price stability. very easy in my case. it is less than -- i think it is very easy outside the u.k.. it is 2% in the medium term. and our friend ben bernanke says himself, if i am asked what is

price stability and you say in the medium term, to or slightly below two. you see that when i speak of unity of purpose, i am clear. that being said again, i don't dispute that we have different economies, different shops, different structures. our own economy is -- at banks. the u.s. economy by markets which might explain they have constant markets. >> i think would be fair to say although the european central bank cannot be gauged in easing, the e.u. government -- there is somebody waving at me. >> thank you very much. i wanted to come back to the point that was raised first of all by mr. papandreou in his introduction on the question of social cohesion and also to take up the whole question of jobs.

i am grateful for what mr. volum percocet because he has talked about state investment in infrastructure and so on one which could be part of job creation. i think that one of the issues which is being forgotten the short term memory problem there is very much in europe and elsewhere has been that when the response to the crisis was being dealt with and assistance was being given to the markets particularly in the front and conservative area there was a lot of talk in electric at the time about a jobs led recovery, about the need to maintain social cohesion and the creation of jobs. we look at the latest figures from the aiello the job situation across the globe and in europe has gotten markedly worse and for truly there is a problem and a question that could be asked by people outside of this room, what steps need to be taken to promote social cohesion? >> okay, got it. otherwise we are going to have a legal speech at.

would you like to tackle this question of how you create jobs while maintaining social --. >> i just wanted to be controversial on this a bit by taking up with -- and economic model. i lived in sweden some years. competitiveness is absolutely essential for europe. at the same time, the fact that other parts of the world, the emerging countries is also and we have to recognize this. there a lot of ideological baggage behind us by this but want to put this out. low wages, no collective bargaining in some of these countries. a lack of any kind of a small type of pension or health services. the capabilities could easily degrade the environment for production purposes.

these all do give a competitive edge. it is not the only thing that is in place but it is part. now the question for europe is, do we emulate that model, and that is a very big political question. this is the controversial debate. what we are seeing, and i'm saying this to a group here that is representing some of the wealthiest in the world, we are seeing on the one hand the race to the bottom at the level of the middle class and they are being squeezed. and at the top, we are seeing a race to the top. who will concentrate more wealth and more riches. that is unsustainable. the question of equity, which davos has -- is very important. politically, i believe we are at a tipping point where we could

see, and there are signs in europe, more nationalism, more racism, anti-muslim, anti-semitism, fundamentalism of all types, populism and i think we need to go to -- a different model. yes it is the nordic model but the nordic model has two things. doesn't only have a leap of faith but there is a -- when you leave. and you need the flexibility but you also have been able to show the social network system and that model is important. you have been able to combine and show the competitiveness. you can have competitiveness if you invest in innovation, education, make sure that our democracies a robust because that creates an innovative spirit and i think this is where we need to go. >> do you want to have a quick word on that? the new economic model. >> very quickly i think as i said earlier if you are trying to unwind the effects of private

corporate government debt and rebalance the economy, i would say you need absolute the following ingredients in place. firstly obviously a stable economic stability and a macroeconomic plan. uncertainty means people sit on their money and it is very disruptive for job creation. secondly circling the case of the kingdom we need to do much more to release the potential for more job creation in the private sector and that means playing doing our bit to get the banks to lend money to those cash starved parts of the private sector. it means providing a tax regime which is favorable to private sector activity and the regulatory regime which is favorable to private sector activity. thirdly, infrastructure. george mentioned this earlier. i think particularly in the area reinvestment. we are establishing in the next few weeks a green infrastructure bank to leverage significant amounts of public and private

capital into new energy infrastructure, a huge very ambitious renovation of the building stock in britain that you have seen in generations. what we call the green deal could bring hundreds of thousands of jobs. they are making changes in the tax system. mostly by lowering the tax burden in income tax system for the 23 million basic rate taxpayers, people low and middle incomes. socially it is also a way of getting the wheels of economy moving. in the me say to other things. welfare come absolutely. you must remain on the european model. welfare that protects the vulnerable and protects the weak but you can and must have a welfare system that actually destroys incentives to work. that then almost becomes a self-defeating form of welfare. there is plenty of evidence that the way in which the

disincentive to work have accumulated in our welfare system needs to be change. the final point gives a real real problem. it is a crisis across europe and not just john claude's point but about underemployment of most young people. it is not actually just an issue which is acute during times of recession. there is a longer-term trend of young people leaving school and college who are not able to find work in sufficiently large -- and i think that is something that i would put at the top of the agenda. >> we have time for one more. >> i would agree with nick and we are doing this. the social welfare system should not be something where you put somebody sort of on the side in the refrigerator as we sing great if you have a very active -- on the market and so on but i think europe can also plan this is an important roll,

we are consolidating fiscally and being very robust. europe and the european union can invest in big area such as green growth and and our infrastructure opening up the market even more to make it e-commerce and so on to really make europe much more of a growth model. and under strict instructions not to go over time so i think i am at this point going to have to call it close. to what i hope you found an interesting discussion. would like to take on your behalf all of the -- for having to put up with my questions. [applause] thank you very much indeed. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] ..

now, a behind-the-scenes look of the new york times. the executive editor and washington bureau chief discuss how they operate in the digital age. this forum hosted by george washington university's global media institute is moderated by former cbs and nbc news correspondent marvin kalb. it's one hour and 15 minutes. ♪

>> from the national press club of washington, d.c., this is the kalb report with marvin kalb. [applause] >> hello and welcome. welcome to the national press club and to another edition of the kalb report. i am marvin kalb and the subject tonight, all of the news fit to print behind the scenes at "the new york times." i don't know about you, but i am grateful for three things every day. one, that i get up in the morning; number two, that i live in a free country; and three, that copies of two newspapers are dropped in front of my house every day seven days a week. more reliable i found in the united states postal service. for me, the newspaper is a morning miracle. imagine stories from all over the world all over the country, science board's, medicine,

economics, finance truly morning medical essentials of the functioning of an open and free society. one of my morning newspapers is the new york times. arguably the most respected newspaper in the united states, and certainly one of the best in the world. we are delighted to welcome the executive editor bill keller and washington bureau chief dean to the national press club and to the kalb report. bill keller has been executive editor since 2003 and he has been with the paper since 1984 and in every quarter since 1970. he's been bureau chief in the soviet union and south africa, she won a pulitzer prize for his coverage of the soviet union and is also been a columnist and managing editor of the paper. dean baquet has been with the times since 1990 though he did take seven years off to be

managing editor and editor of the los angeles times. she quit the l.a. times when he refused to cooperate order the fire or journalist. he too has won a pulitzer prize. okay, bill and dean, i've called in your newspaper a mourning miracle, and i mean it. i am always amazed when i can find in the newspaper, so how do you make a miracle and bill, i want to start with you with a couple basic questions and get the leader of the land. you work in new york which is the headquarters of the new york times. how many people work for the times? >> well, for the news room, not counting everything from the delivery trucks to the advertising department, actual journalists is a little more than 1100. >> 1100 -- >> reporters, editors, photographers, biographers, web producers, the clerks, 1100 -- >> it would be 1100 -- khamenei

or reporter sue bachelet weld because of stories? >> roughly 400. >> roughly 400 of the e 1100. and on a normal day when you get in? >> about 8:30. >> and what is your first meeting who attends and why do you have it? >> we changed the first meeting which for many years began at 10:30 and was mostly focused on some of getting ready for the next printed paper. we now start at 10:00 and we devote our time pretty much equally to things we are thinking about for the printed newspaper and for the home page of the website, and so that is a meeting where we really look out what are the stories the actual running news stories first and foremost how we are going to approach them, whether other editors of the table have thoughts on things they could bring to it. >> for the other editors? >> the heads of the various news departments, the metro, the

national, the foreign desk, the business desk, culture science and so on. >> about a dozen? >> about a dozen. it ebbs and flows. for a while we didn't have an environmentalist under the national desk. now we do and that editor comes likewise we have a media editor that used to be under the business report is now more independent so it fluctuates. people come at the head of the video unit have graphics come that's hard particularly when we heard talking about what we've got planned to keep the website feeling fresh and current. >> how many of the formal meetings just bumping into somebody in the subway >> we take the stories that are going to go on the front page the next day and now also talk about what is meant to be on the home page of the website first

thing in the morning. those are the two meetings that the day is kind of built around that all of the key players come to and i have other meetings i go to the those are the ones that affect the journalism. >> and you are representing the washington bureau. are you part of all of these that show the big ones? >> of the bureau is on the phone, on the speakerphone participating in a meeting and just to amplify what bill described each describes what it thinks are the best stories of the day for the home page and the front page of the paper and you start the process for making a pitch what you think your story should get the best place since the beginning of the competition of the day, too. >> what do you think of as your major responsibility representing washington? >> i think my major responsibility is to sift through the sort of mix of the day, before news of the day if

you will and try to give bill a sense of the two or three really significant stories of the day in washington. >> how many reporters work for you in washington? >> a total of about 45 people in the your accounting reporters, editors and others and i guess probably about 28, 29 of them are reporters. >> and degette the largest bureau outside of new york? in the course of the day what do you yourself have a short field for what it is this going to be "the new york times" the next day? >> it depends. on the a week when there's just major breaking news, when a country is in turmoil or you have a state of the union address or some major event that you're watching very closely you kind of know early on in the day what are the other pieces that you're thinking about. in a slow news period i might not know until the page one

meeting at 4 o'clock, and sometimes considerably later than that we will still, you know, be looking around for something that is substantive enough. it's more an art than a science putting together the stories for the front page, but you want first and foremost the page to feel sort of urgent, and in the flow of even it's not to seem optional or lightweight. >> but at the same time there are days when "the new york times" does not have a hard leave for the newspaper, and you are now prepared to do something that you're not used in the old days would be described as a feature story. why do you do that? >> as a rule, i would rather put some enterprising reporting that isn't breaking news but something we discovered, i would rather put that at the front of the top page the in some kind of incremental development that people would look at and say so

what. it's tempting to do that. dean can tell you washington is a place it is particularly tempting because a piece of legislation passes the subcommittee and then it passes a committee and it goes to the house and it goes to the senate etc coming and you can take each of those moments as an occasion to write a big front-page story, but nothing much happened between step one and step to and step three. so we generally try to relegate the more incremental news to the inside stories and put the stuff out front that feels more momentous. even if it's not an actual event that happened, it's something we just ran across in the course of our reporting. >> i remember about 20 years ago i did some research of the shorenstein center on the front page of "the new york times" and went back 30 years ago, then 20, then ten, then five and last year. and what i found as that you used to run many more stories on

the front page. you use to run many more hard news stories on the front page. you ran a few were photographs on the front page, and they were generally small. so the front-page of "the new york times" is quite different than what was 15, 20 years ago. why the change? >> well, it's partly that it just -- in the days that they would put 12 or the day the newspaper was regarded as a sort of prestige of lots of little or not so little things were going on and even the slogan of the news that fits the print harkins back to the daily newspaper was to be comprehensive we are going to tell you may be only a little bit of a little bit of everything, and i think that

slogan may be described as an aspiration or kind of mindset, but now we tend to be more selective but give you more debt to tell you stories that are not obvious, in the days you're talking about we used to put the coming and going of ships in the new york harbor on the front page. there aren't that many coming and going in the new york harbor any more and mostly they don't matter all that much to the average reader. >> the talk about the news fit to print and you say there was a time when the times was a comprehensive newspaper. are you saying that it is and now? >> i don't think there is anything as a comprehensive -- >> how would you describe the times today? >> we try to tell you what you need to know to be well-informed citizen across the board, but that doesn't mean that every minor in criminal development or piece of legislation, every

inconclusive lawsuit, everything that is news isn't important enough. >> i accept that but - so many feature stories when there are in fact hard news stories you could cut the lead kaput on the front page? >> what do you got against feature stories? [laughter] >> some of my favorite stories are feature stories. i am of the sort who believe that the newspaper as it gets smaller, which is the times feet in recent years as it is the fate of other newspapers, too distinctive about the times because you don't have that much more room now. you have to level with the reader and give us the hard news of the day. do you really have the time to do the features of? >> evidently because we do a lot. >> i know. >> well, there are a lot of hard news stories that do not justify

the space and there are a lot of feature stories that tell you quite a bit about -- when we see feature stories it is an umbrella that covers a lot of different things, profiles of interesting people in the news and we understand because they are actors it may include snapshots of life in a community protected by the economy or by some of people over see, but they carry the values of the news, they help you understand what's going on in the world in the same way that some of the news of the foreign officials speech or the cabinet members ribbon cutting would tell you. >> i would back with bill said but -- >> that is not surprising. [laughter] acquired what i would seãprovoc. i think there's thishat i woulde something provocative. i think there's this sort of

grand image of the comprehensive new speaker of 30 or 40 years ago they were sort of a little bit fake comprehensive. i.t. give you sat down with the edit terse which i have they would tell you "the new york times" and "washington post" fronted the prime minister's speech, but missed the rise of the other parts of the world that were much more significant. they might have fronted fourth movement of a bill from the house subcommittee to another committee that the midst of the until very late the dramatic shift in the way the wind and interactive in the workplace. >> what you're describing now -- >> i would argue that newspapers have the sensitivity to hit now those would have been covered and much more significant than the announcement of the british then minister budget. >> i would argue those with been

crafted as so-called feature stories with the capture something much more significant that time. >> that is entirely possible. when you are describing or the changes in american society. the idea that we did not focus in the news business on women, children, health is simply a fact, but that does not change the point about whether you are dealing with hard news or making an effort presenting what bill was saying, which is give the reader what that reader should know on any given day about the world. >> i guess i would counter if somebody worked at papers during the period but somebody that's worked back debt papers, but that is hard news. if you ask gene roberts, who is one of the legendary newspaper editors of "the new york times" who also ran the enquirer, gene

roberts was the national editor of "the new york times" and before that, he was a correspondent during the civil rights movement. if you ask gene roberts what are the biggest stories that he missed as a journalist, which i have, none of them would have been the kind of stories that you -- people would traditionally characterized as hard news. he would describe that as shifts in the south and the biggest stories the newspapers this while we were focusing on incremental news has been the kind of stuff, the movement of blacks from the south and the north, the changes in the workplace, the event that led up to where the country wouldn't have been so stunned. >> i have no argument at all with anything you said that either one of those that have been -- every single one of those could have been and probably would have been a hard news story if 50,000 blacks moved from a small town in the south of two detroit when they got to the chocolate and the effect it had on the trend that

was a news story. >> it didn't happen that way. it didn't happen as an even the way newspapers had been trained because it didn't happen -- it sort of a boost over the years. >> when people talk about hard news the tend to mean the defense. the president did something today, something concrete happened, there was an accident, disaster of a sort. that's what people generally talk about when they needed the hard news but that doesn't cover a whole realm of enterprise investigative news that they are not lining up there to be harvested by reporters. requires time and digging, but i assure you would agree some of the most worthwhile journalism we do. >> absolutely. i completely agree. [laughter] >> what is your competition today? >> that's a really good question. it's something that we ask ourselves -- >> the "washington post," "the

wall street journal," what is it? >> it is all of the above in different ways. i still look at newspapers and newspaper web sites. but even that category has extended beyond the sort of immediate people who compete with us for circulation on the ground and in the u.s. i read british websites for example, the bbc, the guardian, the telegraph sometimes. "the washington post" is still a competitor, "the wall street journal" was very much a competitor because like the times it's a national newspaper, not a regional newspaper, but a little piece of the places, too i look at politico and the huffington post and the daily beast and so on or somebody looks at them and tells me -- >> what then at the end of that day is your feeling about the major competition? what would bother you the most

if a wind had a story you didn't have or "the wall street journal"? >> a very small margin double street journal. once upon a time it would have been a larger margin. i don't like to get beaten by anybody and the fact that somebody beats us on a substantial web site is going to be all over the place. i regard them all as competitors. >> not just for the stories. they are competing politico, huffingtonpost.com places like that competing for talent. they are actually hiring people. they are competing with us in the field of innovation, and i don't regard the huffingtonpost.com as a particularly aggressive competitor on coverage of the international affairs, but the wait a few social media is pretty instructive and we watched that.

>> we are describing and talking about a very competitive world in journalism today. does this competition mean that you have said what some people have called certain quotas through reporters that those that get more hits on a story that they've done on the web site might be rewarded financially, better assignments? >> no, we have reporters who write four or five stories a year, and they tend to be big, truly important groundbreaking investigative stories, and we have people who write 400 stories a year, obviously most people fall somewhere in between. you know, there is a sort of general question of productivity if somebody is not covering their assignment as aggressively as they should be and they are getting beaten, the net -- >> [inaudible] >> no, we don't measure the hits to their web site and pay or

promote the accordingly. >> been coming of the editor-in-chief of the nation newspaper, washington bureau chief of another major newspaper, give been around journalism awhile now. your assistant managing editor of the times says you all live now in a new time frame in which you work, no longer 24/7, meaning 24 hours a day, seven days a week. now he says its 1440/7, meaning 1440 minutes a day and then seven days a week. that describes a totally new psychology in journalism. how do you manage that at a major newspaper? >> it's a tricky. it's funny, a lot of what we do today with the balancing the website and the print paper reminds me of the afternoon paper where i started a pain new orleans it was remarkably

similar. when you came in in the morning you had to come up with a way to move for the afternoon editions and covering the story from the morning papers of there's a similarity. it's tricky to manage and requires a lot more decision making, faster off the mark decision making. you asked earlier how i described what do i see my role with the front page being, and i said i see my role as sort of taking the two or three gigantic most important stories of the day. i think this shift constantly through the day. you have to work harder to manage the white house reporters time. a white horse reporter now in the pre-with iraq the white house reporter could go to a press conference at 10:40 and go to lunch afterwards and now the expectation -- now the reasonable expectation we have

to figure to file a story for the web shortly after the press conference assuming it is an important enough press conference, and then we have to start thinking about what are we going to provide the reader for the print paper and maybe the reader for later in the days it is tricky. >> one of the things on my mind is when the congressman gabrielle giffords was shot, the times reported on its website that she was killed. you reported that not because you had somebody in tucson who fed you that information. you reported that because cnn and npr said she was killed. in other words, you use the other news organizations as your sources. now i checked this. you did say news organizations say that she was killed. technically that's an accurate statement but it was dead wrong.

so how do you avoid committing future how do you avoid that kind of blunder? >> there's no such thing as an okay mistake whether it's, and especially one of that magnitude, even the factor was on the web site for seven minutes before it got corrected is not justified in getting that sort of thing wrong. the way you protect it is a number of ways. first call, you send a clear message to the reporters that it's nice to get it first but its most important to get it right. >> but these were the editors that made that call. islamic it was essentially a free right and it slid past and editor. the second thing you do is you have not just one usually but a couple of edit terse who will get the story before it goes up on the web site and whose job is to challenge material that isn't support it. the third thing you do i think

is you teach people that it's okay to be exclusive in the story about what you don't know, and these are things we try to do. i make no excuses for that particular blunder, and several people got a finger wagging over that, but the fact is that it doesn't happen all that often and it's just kind of miraculous when you think about that. >> how do you put out a daily newspaper with all of the authority in "the new york times" and still keep up with this daily news report when things are happening all the time, and my answer is almost every day we do. >> is the editing process for the newspaper the same as the editing process for the lead story? >> yes and no. no, it's the standards or the same and in most cases it goes

through the same glee years of editing, but it does it at an accelerated pace. it's very much like the editing that a story gets on a tight deadline. even before the internet, you always have these occasions a story that broke 30 minutes before a deadline didn't get the same editorial attention as the story that broke in the morning. they just didn't. >> let me take a minute now to remind a pretty the television and website audience but they're watching and listening to the kalb report, marvin kalb and my guests are built. dean baquet of "the new york times." on the times u.s. news and then you've got an opinion. now there should be all wall between the two. you're ombudsman's says and i quote, the news pages are laced with analytical and opinion pieces of work against the premise that the news is just

the news, in dovecote. many conservatives as you know criticize the times as being a little left-wing newspaper, and those views get into the news part of your newspaper. why do you allow this to happen? >> we don't allow it to happen. [laughter] >> but it happens almost every day. >> according to him or according to you? >> the people who fretted "the new york times" for many years. william getting at is there is more analysis stepping into the commentary, and the editorial side of reporting been a straight hard news story. >> i don't remind analysis in the pages in fact i encourage every day. i think, you know, the discipline of objectivity or impartiality is something that this natural than to american

reporters from their first day on the job. it's different from a lot of other countries where the press ochers to be partisan, you declare your by agassi's up front and people can judge it accordingly. it is an aspiration and reporters and editors bring their own beliefs to their jobs, and they are expected just as judges are supposed to set their personal prejudices side and judging a case reporters and editors are expected to leave their personal prejudice aside and assessing the facts of the news story. and i don't believe -- >> don't you believe that there is more opinion commentary analysis today of the paper however you choose to define it dillinger was ten years ago? the answer is yes, tell me why. >> i think there's a lot more analysis because i think that's

what the readers want and expect of people that have been a health and witness and gather the information. the reporters who cover -- >> or into making that assumption that's what they want? how do you know that? may be what they want is a straight news story and not your opinion. >> we give them a lot of that, too but they don't get my opinion. but if, you know, if we are going to write a piece on a particular political figure, then supply from context to the remarks were his activities is the service to their readers like. i don't think any reporter justifies and saying congressman x is wrong or he is a full or is on call will fight, but you are certainly justified and expected to say here's where these views of his come from in his constituency is coming here as he listens to, here's what he said in the past. that's an analysis and i think

it's supplies the context without which the facts are not. >> there's always been a certain amount of opinion. i think there is a fine line, a decline rather but an opinion and analysis but there's always been a certain amount of opinion in the newspapers. book reviews are opening in critics offer their opinions. >> that's different, that's different from covering the white house -- >> i guess what i'm going to argue is you are not going to -- the person in charge of covering the white house you are not going to -- i would say that he would see cogent analysis coming from the white house. you see in that tent, and in perfect feature in this newspaper. i think that there is an expectation today that the audience does not want us to any longer say if barack obama gives a speech at a certain time of

day that barack obama said this yesterday. i think there's an expectation, and i'm going to make the case again that newspapers may have failed in not doing that 25 years ago. there's an expectation the writer puts some of that in context. there's an expectation that the writer says it reminds people that, you know, it is the president who is forced to make a certain comment on the foreign policy issue because of his last foreign policy issues were struggles. but if you find us crossing the line for the net in the coverage of the speech, then i would say that's a mistake but i don't think it is the common occurrence or others might say this. >> but you are both acknowledging that there is more analysis in the paper today because your judgment is that the reader wants that rather than a recitation of the

strength of the story, the london analysis -- you're saying they want your analysis of what the president meant. it reminds me in the turn of the vietnam war there used to be 5:00 falling in saigon where the reporters would tell what is that happened the day when the reporter was there watching it that day. does it need the analysis of the colonel telling, and i am only raising the question but you've already answered it in a way that maybe what people want is less of the analysis and maybe you've done studies on this and conclude. >> one thing i may have stressed too much. what i say of the reader's expectation i guess i'm not saying there is a readership survey of "the new york times" and other newspapers i'm saying

the newspaper said changed hardly at all. the overall mission which is to explain the most important event is to describe and explain and lee of the most important events of the day before indigent roberts rustication before i think the way of doing that has had to change but it's always had to change 60 years ago so i would argue it's not based on their readership surveys, that's based on the core mission that you're responsible for it stands to reason and the way you deliver it. >> let's talk about this new thing called a pay wall. that allows me to gain access to your website if ip for that access. i would like to project say a year or so into the future. what is that he will going to

look like as best as you can estimate now? >> there are many different varieties and species of the pay for online news. the one that we are adopting leader this year is what we call the meter model which means you get a certain amount for free and beyond that point, you are expected to subscribe. the most visitors come casual visitors will never encounter that little billboard that says we would like you to subscribe. the people who are home subscribers of the print paper won't encounter it either. the need to get it for free. what we are seeing is people who use "the new york times" website tester newspaper and over and over the spend a lot of time reading it, the treasury, you know, we don't want to scare

away droves of readers and we are naturally prepared to, you know, make adjustments on the base of the we don't lose a lot of the traffic for our web site which advertisers particularly like and pay for. >> but if i had a subscription of "the new york times," which i don't, and i then have access to your web site, so as you look into the future, that kind of a business model will continue. >> i believe so. >> so you're dealing mostly when we talk about this tale of what is on the web, and i am wondering whether as you make your calculations now between the printed newspaper and the web what is more important? how many people show up in both worlds? do more people read the paper? >> they are different questions. the printed newspapers still supply the overwhelming majority of the revenue that keep the

company going but many more people come to us on the web site them in print. there are roughly speaking 1 million subscriptions to the printed newspaper each day we get by some estimates as many as 50 million people each month. it's not quite an apples to apples comparison with those are the metrics the web provides. the numbers vary. there's a nielsen rating and a couple of their ratings, but the round number something like 50 million people worldwide come to "the new york times" website every month. >> do que -- >> the number is growing. that number is growing. >> do you have a separate staff for the newspaper and a separate staff for the website? >> not any more or almost not any more.

when the website started out it was a little kind of operation even in a separate building. about five or six years ago, we decided that dow was a big mistake, then you didn't want to treat the website like an afterthought. you were cheating people who came to the newspaper on line of this kind of creative energy and this experienced news staff and we've been gradually making and into a single news room. >> i've got an old-fashioned question. the reporter to the working for the times or cbs or the post works very hard, in a way it much harder than we did 20, 30, 40 years ago, and that is because that reporter has to service so much. it's the paper, it's the website, and you find them on radio and television and it's a

big deal to be at windows eight reporter have a chance just to think rather than produce? is there a moment to reflect on what it is that is going on in the world? >> that's a really good question and it's one that has stopped all news organizations as we move into this digital realm. you don't want to turn them into hamsters on wheels constantly producing updates. we've done a number of things. we've created a kind of free right. you have to leave a certain amount of discretion into the hands of the reporters. if the reporter says i need more time to report or to think about this, you can provided and we do that. we will assign a certain web version of the story to someone else or to another reporter. >> you don't get a demerit. >> no, you don't get a demerit for that. it is true that people have adapted -- reporters don't like to let go of their story to

somebody else, and so more and more of them have come to think filing for the web is certifiably a first draft and then they continue to revise over the course of the day at the end of the day they have the story about as good as it's going to get. >> of the reporters first responsibility when he or she comes on at this a factor and insight to provide it to the web. bjerga give the can do that quickly and in a way that we can get it up from the website and liberate them to do the additional reporting to ed some dimension and some analysts to the peace, then yes, we try to keep the leverage as much as possible in the reporter wheel of wider service the the lawyers service premiums on speed.

they trust us to get it right and explain it in a way that makes sense to them. >> but i have a feeling that you are operating -- for dittman, despite what he just said -- you are operating in the world that lives by speed, this 1440/7. that's different from 24/7 petraeus ecology is different. you are asked to do something for the web the minute you have something, put it on the web. >> if you're going to read something decent, you want to sit down and talk to somebody and then write it. tax time to discuss -- that takes time. what is the responsibility of the journalist to deal with just the web at that point, does the alert being in washington if you have a washington reporter doing this saying i've got something really good but i've got to write it first for the web and you allow him to do that.

>> sure. we should differentiate between the way you described the sort of factoid. the truth is i don't think people come to "the new york times" for the factoid. we are not talking of the big john genex story of the day where the fact we did something large. if a reporter wandered into my office with a story about an on important appointment and i had to balance that against a more important story i am going to say don't push and i think bill would agree, don't put the on important factoid on the web, but if you're talking about it i will give a classic example. a reporter is competing against the "washington post" and "the wall street journal" and somebody else on a story who is ready to write this story at 2:00 in the afternoon the one that story about 2:00 in the afternoon and that is a judgment

we make all the time. >> but talked about the wikileaks phenomenon. wikileaks as we know the secret of government people's, many of them embarrassing and harmful to the united states, the times has published many stories based on these. you have written eloquently about and the decision there's a couple of questions that flow through my mind. is wikileaks which seems to have a very specific anti-american cleaver impulse, is wikileaks a legitimate source for "the new york times"? >> it is a source, and sources can come with agendas, they come with a body and distasteful by a

cs. it is true that wikileaks has a kind to the extent you can define an ideology of this sort of a little anarchist and antiinstitutions, and how important, you know, government, and i united states, but every source comes to you with some kind of agenda. when you have to do is focus on the information to you get. is the information true? is it valid, is it newsworthy? and in our relationship wikileaks we knew at the outset a fair amount of office organizations and thereby cease to be to -- by yes and agenda and we made it clear we were going to treat them as a source and nothing more than that that is we will take the information and we will provide context and sensor it which we did, we

edited any material that we had reason to believe could put lives at risk. we didn't consult wikileaks on what we would write about or about any given subject. >> do you believe, bill, that wikileaks is a legitimate news organization? the first amendment privileges that "the new york times" and joyce? >> those are two questions. i will more or less answer them in part because i'm not a lawyer and i think somebody that has a job like mine should be a little humble about deciding who gets to call themselves a journalist or who doesn't. wikileaks is not in my ball park journalism, they do not practice the kind of journalism that we practice at "the new york times" or the post series of news organizations, they are an

advocacy group for vigilante group or whatever. the question of whether they are entitled to first amendment protection is a different question because that first amendment protections are not only afforded to the press, and it's a very tricky question for lawyers and i am not a lawyer. what is the difference between somebody that takes a lot of raw material and publishes it on the web site and somebody like us who massages it and ships into the store and publishes it in the newspaper. >> in a way "the new york times" became the enablers of wikileaks by publishing ally of stories based on the cables that wikileaks provided. when i use the word in a boehler i am not using that in a positive way. >> i think wikileaks and its leaders were capable of

publishing the material on their own and it would have -- >> wikileaks would have published it? spec absolutely. they would have published it to a website available to anybody that wanted to look on it. information was circulated for the blogosphere in the day and people would have been cherry picking the information most interesting to them using it in some interesting ways and some alarming ways, but it would be published. the difference between daniel ellsberg who leaked the pentagon papers at wikileaks is that daniel ellsburg really needed something like "the new york times" hamas he wanted to spend the rest of his life in -- >> but bear in mind daniel ellsberg took the pentagon papers and went first to congress to try to get legal action against the war. he went into harvard university, i don't know why -- then he went to the times.

>> we certainly gave a lot more attention and currency along with the other news organizations that published and wrote about it. but i think it also came out in a much more, you know, publicly soluble way. disconnect not arguing that point at all. i totally agree with you. the question i am getting is this if "the new york times" had published all of those stories and it had been left to the guardian in england and a couple of other newspapers around the world, it would have been reported in the united states on page 16 of the times -- >> you are so wrong. it would have been on the front page the day after the guardian published the story, the versions of the story would have been on the front page of every newspaper. >> do you believe that you broke many news stories? do you believe that wikileaks

gave you one new saying that you didn't know about afghanistan? >> yes, actually. i felt i learned a lot from those reports. the fact that i realized one of the criticisms has been launched because they didn't tell us anything profoundly knew about the world, most news doesn't tell you something profoundly new about the news moves and inches and feeds and increments. wikileaks told us, for example, the people who are running of the war in afghanistan have grave misgivings about the rolph of pakistan place in the region. >> i can point to plenty of stories in "the new york times" that said the same thing. >> not one of them was based on the -- >> very good digging, talking to secretaries of state and defense the middle of the guys working for dean in washington reported

that excepts here's where i think you're wrong. i actually think this is why the news doesn't go over big in washington. it's an an important argument. the debate over whether or not wikileaks had a dramatic new factoid and by that i mean the dramatic new factoid took a bribe and you didn't know about it, that is a sort of argument. there is no question that somebody that has edited and has been involved in a bunch of the stories before about afghanistan and iraq. there is no question that the in to add tremendously to the understanding of anybody who cares about the war in the world. it's one thing to have sort of second third hand reporting that says the rulers of countries and the same region as iran who are afraid to see a publicly are very nervous about the rise of iran and the nuclear capability.

it's another feint to have it in the words of the diplomats talking to the people. so i would argue that those are rich documents, but what i would slip back this put aside the the date over what wikileaks provided. isn't it unimaginable to anybody that "the new york times" would have had the year against to have the stuff and not publish it? to me whenever the question -- whenever the question has been raised to me of "the new york times" be hitting in an arrogant way or flaunting its ability to publish this stuff, enabling and working with wikileaks, the most unimaginable arrogant thing "the new york times" could have done is to have this stuff look at and say this is interesting let's have an ethical debate, let's put it back in the computer and have lunch. >> you misread me. >> welcome a no, not misreading

you, i think i'm using this as an opportunity to address other people. >> i do understand what you're doing but please understand the thrust of my question is based on a profound respect for "the new york times" and the position of "the new york times" in american journalism and global journalism so that when bill kelliher makes a decision he is making a decision not just of the times, you're making a decision of american journalism, too. now that puts you in a very special position, and i think that we have done that subject and i want to move on. [laughter] rupert murdoch -- >> who? [laughter] >> well, he's spending a lot of money and leading journalists,

so in that respect, particularly the way the market for journalists has been over the last few years i have to applaud that. i think he loves news of a particular kind including -- he's often said his personal pace is more for "the new york post" tabloid kind of journalism. but he has bought a wide range of journalism and invested in a wide range of journalism and i think that is a good thing. i'd think that his most lasting effect in this country is fox news. >> what is the effect of fox news on american journalism? >> the effect on fox news on american public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general. it think it has contributed to the sense that they are all just

out there with a political agenda whether fox is just more overt about it and i think that is on hold the i think fox also -- we have had a lot of talk since the gabrielle giffords attempted murder, about civility and national discourse and i make no connection between the guy that shot those people in tucson and the national discourse but it is true the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past and to some extent i believe that it to defer part murdoch, yes. >> quick question. you set of bob woodward of "the washington post" that he wrote, quote, all but authorized accounts of the innermost deliberations about the government. if the times had a chance to hire bob woodward what it? >> in a heartbeat. the point of that remark is

>> [inaudible] [laughter] >> i have enormous admiration for bob woodward and what he's done and i read an awful lot of that. the point was that in washington officials complain of secrets when they don't like them, but the collaborate in the dissemination of secrets when they think it will serve their purpose and of course people talk to bob woodward because they think it's a way of furthering their agenda. >> we have about a minute and have left so the question was to build. there's a lot of journalism students out here. would you encourage them to plunge into it despite all of its problems and go to law school? [laughter] >> you just made the choice real easy. [laughter] you know, with all due respect for the legal profession of course i would encourage them to go into it. first call, there are a number of places that are hiring again, not for large sums of money, but

then most didn't start out giving large sums of money in this business either, and what i generally tell aspiring journalists is let's say the worst case scenario happened and news organizations to solve and it becomes a kind of free-for-all, nobody is paying for people to be reporters. if you could master the skills you're supposed to master gathering information, sorting it out, making sense of this, writing and presenting it in a way that is accessible and you can engage you can find work in a lot of fields. there are a lot of fields from bill law to academia to science where those skills will serve you well. >> dean, do you buy into that? >> sure. >> he would tell these kids to do it? >> i would say with the arrival of the rise of the web it's probably more of a blast now for kids going into journalism than it would have been ten years

ago. >> will that's fantastic. our time is up i hate to tell you. i want to thank the radio television and internet audiences all over the country and for that matter all over the world and i want to thank to guests, bill keller and dean baquet, two remarkable reporters representing the new york times. thank you for being with us. [applause] and to all of you out there, all of you in the free press and free society, i martin kalb and i like to use that last line good night and good luck. [applause] [inaudible conversations] look, ladies and gentlemen, we now have an opportunity for you

all to ask questions that you wish. when you have to do -- where is that microphone? back there. and the like microphone right over here. please, go to the microphones, ask a question, identify yourself i am going to cut you off. so i'm alerting you right now. go ahead. >> i am a journalism student at george washington. my question goes back to the wikileaks but in a little bit of a different direction. mr. keller, when you were originally per padilla published the first round of wikileaks information i believe in july, you include a fairly comprehensive editors note and he leaves unanswered personally answered the readers' comments and questions. do you think that in the changing media environment it's important to open the door in the editorial room and decisions like that?

>> yes i do. to some extent it is unavoidable, but it's actually useful to do that. i mean, you know, i'm sure marvin can cite you a show of the steady decline of trust in the american media and i take those with a grain of salt. the sort of lump together all of the media into one basket. it's like members of congress of the house what they think of congress, it sums down if you ask what they think their own congressman it sums it up, and the less there has been a steady erosion of trust in the media and i think it is a useful way to help regain some of that to explain what we do and why we do it. >> are you going to be doing that, bill, on a regular basis, every month are you going to mccollum? >> we have been doing it on a

fairly regular basis and try to mix it up. different people in the newsrooms will take questions, sometimes reporters, sometimes editors. we've done them just with no particular prompting and around particular stories that generated a lot of controversy. ..

>> you know, i think any kind of sweeping generalization is probably unfair, but, no, i think the blog as a form is exciting and allows you to do things that more conventional journalistic formats don't, and i think the blogosphere as an entity has drawn a lot of people into journalism. >> bill, do you have a blog? >> no. >> dean, do you have one? >> no. >> are you going to have one? >> they are very time consumes. >> and both of us have full time jobs. [laughter] >> the most effective blogs have something to say, and it's not just somebody who sort of, you know, throws out whatever ideas are off the top of their head. the one dawn side of being an end tore, i think, is that

you're further and further away from the news. >> the half dozen times i've gone online to have an open discussion with readers is pretty much a blog experience, and it's kind of fun. >> when you say there are 50 people as the times who have blogs, you mean reporters? >> yeah. >> in addition to everything else they do write a blog? >> some are just hired to be bloggers. >> oh, i see. >> tara parker hope is a blogger. we take her blog material and print it in the paper, but her job is the health blogger for the "new york times" >> i see. >> student at george washington university. over the course of history, the new jersey times was awarded many honors. with print newspapers fading, how does the new "new york

times" plan to maintain its journalistic edge in the digital age in >> well, i think we are already doing that. much of the conversation tonight, i think, touched on those aspects. moving from princebly print to principally digital presents some challenges, the pace of everything is accelerated, so there's a danger that you make stupid mistakes. you have to build safeguards against that. the internet is a ferocious venue for opinions. we talked about the difference between news and opinion online and the temptation to slip into the voice is a danger that we have to guard against, but at the same time, you know, there are tremendous things you can do online that you just can't do in print. if you look at how the "new york times" covered upheavals in egypt, there's a videographer on

the ground doing the kind of television work that i think most television networks would be proud of. >> you know, it's a particular melody of the darnellists that we -- because we do it in the way we cover things that we jump right to the negative result of events, but the reality is, the rise of the internet and newspapers has been or is like the greatest thing that hit us since sliced bread. far more people read us online than before. far more people are reading us. if you read culture criticism in american newspapers, when i was a kid growing up in new orleans, if you read, you know, a review, you're only having access to the times, but now you can read the times, the guardian. the world has gotten bigger, and

it's largely a good thing. we shouldn't focus just so much on the pressure to maintaining our standards as much as we should focus on this explosion that made us more reel vaunt, better, better read. >> i think news gathering tools are tremendous the stuff that comes in through social media. we does a series on putin's russia, and before we published each article in the series, translated it to russian, posted on the russian sites, and harvested the russian responses and translated them back into english so the russian relationship enriched our stories about russia. the guy who came up with that idea is a traditional print journalist who just relished the possibility of the new tool we have. >> bill, something that just occurred to me, the bloggers who

work for the "new york times," are they encouraged to give their opinions? >> no, they are not. >> well, most of the columnists who are opinion writers have a license to, they have blogs too. the people who blog for the news reporter or the "new york times" are not sanged to give opinions. some of those blogs are the work of individuals and some are collective endeavors. >> that's great. >> michael is the lead reporter who follows the same standards who works for me and follows the same standards. he's a traditional washington reporter. one of my students?

yes, i can't see you, but please. >> good evening. i'm ethan and i second the call to go to journalism school. regarding wikileaks, to me an interesting question is i'm a big open government guy. i firmly believe in open government, and i think that as journalists, as reporters, you clearly have a very strong interest in open government, and i'm wondering about the cost to open government of running with the wikileaks material because at least to some extent it seems to already have and be likely to continue to have the effect of reaction, of people in congress, people in government saying, wow, this leaking, this transparency was a bad thing, so we won't necessarily support things like posting documents, reports, to government agency websites.

>> you're asking a question; right? >> sorry. i guess the question is do you think there has been a reaction, and do you think it was worse than the benefit of running this material? thank you. >> well, i share the concern, and the one fear that has sort of been at the back of my brain throughout this process is it might become a pretext for people who don't like the freedoms that the press has to essentially criminalize the publication of secrets. for example, amend the espionage act or make criminals journalists, and so far, you know, i don't know, i can't tell the future, but there's not been a serious effort to do that, and, you know, clearly, i think it's safe to say that diplomacy

hasn't stopped in its track as a result. there's not that dire consequence that some people were predicting, so, you know, there's been a cost, so far i don't see it as a cost that would have justified with holding the information. >> yes? >> first, thank you for the excellent publication and the very interesting evening. i'm dan diamond, a loyal subscriber and i visited the side 50 million times last month so it felt. [laughter] it was moderated by another brother on a similar topic, and that conversation, the question came up of the front page as tonight too, and two years ago the question was there's a story on the front page about a tv network's decision to move one of their shows to a certain hour, and was that worthy of front page coverage. well, that show was the jay leno

show moving to 10 p.m., and in retrospect, but in terms of this week with the turmoil in egypt, i'm curious what the competition is like getting other news fronted and if you hold off on enterprise reporting if it's that much more what the call calculus is. >> well, yeah, it's been a very hard week for nonegypt news to elbow its way up to the front page, that's for sure. i don't think anybody would argue egypt is not hugely important, and we have a lot of good reporters on the ground there, you know, doing great work. you know, yeah, it probably means some stories that have been on the front page got played inside. it means that some stories that

are holdable are being held. you know, that's the tradeoff you make. you know, i've spent my life trying to assure reporters that the front page is not the only page of the newspaper, not a one of them believes me. [laughter] >> if the story is being held, wouldn't it be put on the web? >> it depends. if there's a competitive piece, i mean, sometimes we do break investigative pieces on the web, but if we don't know how long it will be until it gets to print, we may hold it for a week like this. >> yes, please. >> i'm with pbs media shift. i'm wondering about the future you see for collaboration with web only organizations like propublica and journalism schools and a collaborations with schools, and do you see that happening in the future and

what other organizations are you looking to work with to benefit coverage? >> yeah, i think so. i've we've moved into that realm. working on an investigation in new orleans, that piece that won a pulitzer prize, doing business was fairly easy. the people who run the place are editors that we've known and respected for many years. they didn't have to a proving period to did through. we have collaborations in the fries bay area, chicago, and texas with online journalism organizations. well, we basically provide space in the printed paper to create a local edition a couple times a week, and we think those have been successful.

we don't hire them or run these organizations, but we have their work done very carefully and read their stuff before we put it in our paper and subject it to the editing rigors of the "new york times". these days, we're at an era of experimentation. if we can undertake on an experiment without risking the paper, we'll try it. >> i'll start my internship tomorrow with the hill newspaper. my question is with you have two people applying for a job as a reporter, one guy working at a daily paper for a year and another got a masters in public policy. who are you going to go with? >> was that from you? [laughter] >> why don't you take that last one?

>> i mean, everybody's got their own hiring formula, and bill's could be different from mine. i don't think that -- it's hard for me to discern between the resumés. i think you look at somebody's writing. you look at the way somebody thinks. you look at the way somebody talks when you sit down and talk with them. it's hard to know. if the "new york times" hired someone like chris shivers who was one the best reporters at the paper, i mean, just really what i would argue is that the goal should be, you have to be able to write, not only because for obvious reasons, but the ability to write reflecting an ability to think with clarity to my mind. you have to be intensively curious about the world. to me, the resumés are less important than what your work

shows about those skills. >> dean's reference to chris is before he got into journalism, he was a marine, and there is, i think, there huge amount of hiring these days in the state of the larger economy and the newspaper economy, but one thing we look for is a diversity of experience. there are not enough people with military experience, for example, or people who come from rural backgrounds. there are not enough people are evangelical christians in the newspaper business. we're not going to go out recruiting at churches or at the marine recruiting center for journalists, but somebody who comes in and their background gives them a different perspective on the world, then that's a plus. >> as you said a moment ago, journalism right now is in an experimental stage, that the

kind of ideas or the beliefs we might have held 15-20 years ago may not be applicable today, but how do we at the end of the day, how can we be comfortable that the solid aspirations of journalism of years ago are going to be continued today in the rush to get things on the air, to get that television radio now, but to get things on the web, the pressures on reporters to get something. it would seem to me that you got a huge responsibility now way beyond anything that an editor of the "new york times" 20, 30, 40 years ago had. do you feel that? >> gee, you make me want to go take sleeping pills or something. [laughter] that's a really depressing

question. [laughter] >> well, we'll leave it with that. >> well, i think we have to constantly remind ourselves. when i say we, the quality news organizations, the places that have i standards and high aspirations. we have to remind ourselves that just the facts, raw information is a commodity. it's out there all over the place. people have a lot of places they can go to find out whether the stock market went up or down today. they come to us because they want something more than that. they want to know if it's the stock market they care about, they want some idea why it went up or down. they'd like us to be delving into the fundmentals of the economy and why it works and why it doesn't. that takes time and reflection. we have to keep telling the world, this is what we offer you. we have to keep reminding ourselves to do that. >> time and reflection, of course, is a terribly important

thing. gents, you've been terrific. thank you for being with us, and thank you all for being with us as well. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> next on c-span2, senators discuss how food safety is litigated. next is the social security security program and the world economic forum in switzerland.

this legal panel discussed how food-born illness is little gaited. we'll hear from a litigation attorney involved in the nation's food safety lawsuits, and an attorney who defends the food industry. this was part of a symposium at northeastern university law school in bossing. this runs just under an hour and

a half. >> okay, hi, everyone. welcome to the last panel of the day in this room inside food foodborne illnesses. he respects national hospital, and partners in the health care entities in proceedings before the mcad. in addition, he's also an adjunct law professor. welcome -- help me welcome josh abrhams. [applause] >> thank you. raw milk, sprouts, petting zoos, eggs, cruise ships, and

jack-in-the-box, are incompetitivewords when i started looking more into this area. i was asked to moderate this panel just a few days ago, and my first reaction was why me? it's true. i work in a health law setting, and teach health law and disability law, but this is certainly not my field of expertise. that being said, i don't think it's a lot of people's field of expertise, and, in fact, we have a pretty good representation of the best in the field up here on this panel. more on them in a moment. i want to start out by saying as i did research into this area over the last few days, it's some pretty scarry stuff. i can understand why attorneys wouldn't want to make this their calling. it really impacts every one of

us in a way that almost no other area of the law does. we all eat, and there's no other way to put it. we are all in danger. what each of the attorneys brings to the table, though, is an interest in trying to make the world a safer place to eat. whether from regulatory standards enforcing food safety laws or holding bad actors to account or a defendant's stand avoiding costly litigation, each plays an important role in making the food market more accountable. they have so much information to impart about litigating foodborne illness issues, but before i do, some quick introductions. jason sapsin is currently out of

denver colorado, but he was formally chief counsel in the fda's office of chief counsel and currently advises clients in fda inspections and enforcement actions and counseling. as an in-house attorney, i can tell you i know firsthand of the value of this expertise. nothing like a former regulator in your corner to avoid costly mistakes. we're lucky to have him here as well. shawn stevens is a part of gass weber mullins, llp with food born illness litigation. he's one the best defense and brings a wealth of information to us today on how to defend and as we all know is even more

important to avoid having these suits. finally, fred pritzker. from pritzker olsen pa. i googled subject, and i was halfway through it before i saw it was the website of our speaker. he's a leader in the area and a food advocate for food safety nationwide. there couldn't be a bet ere member from the bar representing the plaintiff's view. without further adieu, i want to begin by turning the microphone over to jason sapsin. >> all right, thanks, josh. if we weren't being recorded i'd keep my mouth shut and keep the

promotion, but for the sake of the record was chief counsel. i think ralph would be offended as well as my former colleagues. i want to take you quickly on a lightening tour on food and food safety not with standing the absence of the afternoon coffee service, i'll move along quickly as we can. you're talking about possibilitily the oldest, and in fact, the oldest federal agency charged with protecting public health. fda, just to give you a sense of the scope and scale represents .25 cents of every consumer dollar spent in the united states, and .10 cents of which every dollar is spent on food. fda has 80% of all food consumed in the u.s. with 160,000 domestic food registered

establishments in the order of 231 foreign food facilities. it has currently about 9 million import entries in food alone on an annual basis with 15% of the u.s. food supply being imported, it's higher as a percentage of particular food subgroups. fruit and vegetables can reach up to 50% depending on the cat category. i think it's important to think of agencies like it is as any large structure as organisms. i think agencies like other significant entities and accumulations of people have penalty, characteristics, they have a type that changes in its expression over time the way something in the natural world might change its expression over time, and it's important to understand the history of fda. it all started with a analytic

keep mist hired in 1848 who sat, i believe, in the basement of then department of agriculture, and his job was to perform analytic chemistry, and what was the new growing field at the time, and then came dr. wily. he was active in the fda around the beginning of the 20th century, and wiley's commitment to public health and safety were his hallmark characteristics, and that's what he attempted to bring ultimately to this organization that would in time grow to become the modern fda. i don't know, you may be familiar with the good housekeeping seal of approve. i didn't know very much about the seal, but dr. wiley did because he helped to invent.

after he left fda, he worked for the good housekeeping organization, and he helped that really consumer advocacy organization to help identify for members of the public what was saved, what was good, and what wasn't. that was aceps of what he was about. maybe the best sense in part of what he was about and what the early agency was about has to do with the poisen squad. the poisen squad was something that came to be called the poisen squad in the press. this was a group of young male, healthy volunteers who basically sat in the basement again, spent a lot of time in the basement for some reason in the early years, in ag eating stuff, and the goal was to see what would happen. remember, we're in the early 20th century. there's a lot of excitement about advances in chemistry, better living through chemistry, the idea that the life of foods

could be extended, foods could be made better, and improved, and so among other chemical compounds that many manufacturers were experimenting with at the time including fee meld hide. they had the idea that was not a good thing, but regardless, it was something people should know about before it was tried out in food. in a series of studies, which would not pass modern human subjects protection, these guys sat and would eat. actually, if you look in the back of the picture, there's a gentman called william carter, one the first african-americans in the history of fda. he was hire the in 1902 as the cook and waiter of the group. he went on to get a degree if chemistry and worked in the labs

for 42 years. wiley is referred to as the father of the fda, and it was wiley's add advocacy that led to the act. that act is the act in which the agency still functions. it deep in the dna of the agency. why do i tell you this? i tell you this because there are aspects of fda culture, i think, that can be traced back to this form of highly interventionist, highly active agents and government employees attempting to do what they think they are of course legally empowered to do and what is in the best interest of public health. the agency is at some part in its core a public health law enforcement agency, and that is an important part of the

mission. now, that emphasis waxes and wanes over time. we've been through a period where the agency focused more on market facilitation, and now the pendulum is beginning to swing back, and the agency is turning more towards some of its original roots. what does that agency look like today? that's the new office building. it's one of the two new headquarter building. why do i show you that? one is it's just attractive, but the other is the reason the building was build is what the agency hopes to be going for. it is recreating a campus model like cdc or nih, and the goal, the long range vision, has been to pull in fda resources and encourage communication between the component parts, make it a

science-based organization, make it collaborative, make it able to move quickly. six centers in fda, drags, bilogic di vices, vet med, advances in tobacco, and -- anyone want to hesitate a guess to which center is not going to be on the new campus? foods. foods is not going to be on the new campus. foods was moved to a beautiful facility near the university of maryland in college part, and that's where it sits, and in some ways, again, this is my personal view, and in my mind, at least, # this reflects a distinction that existed in the agency between the world of food and the world of drugs, devices, and by logics.

everybody but foods is over there. why do i say one office, really two? the most important office in fda that if you're not familiar with the agency what you need to know about is the office of regulatory affairs. these are the guys, and i say this mostly joking, these are the guys and women now today who would be in wiley's poisen squad if he were here. they are the approximately 3,000 plus field force of fda, the people who stand at the borders, the ones who conduct inspections and the investigations. now, there's approximately 10,000-12,000 employees with a budget of $1.3 billion and monitors goods worth over $1 trillion every year. i want to mention the important role of two other offices. one is the office of chief counsel which i think many people inside fda and outside

fda felt played an increasingly important role and from various perspectives. sometimes too much of a role in the operations of the agency. the other office i want to mention is the knewly created office of foods which is formed in part to try to address the met metaphysical problem which the plant is trying to address in the new environment. the office of foods headed that is supposed to be talking to ora, the center for foods and vet med and coordinating the food safety activities on an agency-wide basis. when fda looks out at the world of food in the united states and food safety, what does it see? there are two accepted, i'm not going to comment on the

reliability because the statistics are too complicated to draw firm conclusions, but for most of the last decade, in fact, all of the last decade, fda's relied on a cbc estimate from 1989 suggesting there's 89 foodborne illnesses. that's the scope of the problem we seek to identify. by the way, the little mousy guy, that is a real photo, and that's an example of the kind of thing that the agency frankly doesn't like to find very much, and that's one of the reasons why we tend to think as public health people, i used to be a public health person that regulation is a good thing. , but in any event -- >> [inaudible] >> yes, that one, but in one or

two cases was similar. that was revised, and there's some discussion of that this morning. it's important to understand where these numbers come from because it's tempting to arrive at easy conclusions regarding the agency's estimation of foodborne illnesses. neither came from fda but by other teams. if you look, for example, so if you add up the figures for 2011, you're looking at approximately 47-48 million foodborne illnesses compared to 76 million. in the 1999 estimate, that seems like a big difference, but as we know, you have to understand where the numbers come from, so both of these estimates are birth built on best estimates, best guesses, best assumptions

on assumptions to the point that if you were to take the 38.4 million unidentified cases of -- i'm sorry, unidentified source cases of foodborne illness, the confidence interval is actually extends i believe down to around 20-25 million to as high as 60 million, so be careful when you look at these numbers, but nevertheless, the new estimate published by someone i know who used to work at cdc, now works at the university of colorado, best statistical analysis hit that approximate number. you see this is lot in this field. it's very difficult to figure out how many people get sick from food. why? because we rely on a passive surveillance system.

there are not armies of people despite what some portray, there are not armies of people across the country asking individual americans did you get sick, when did you get sick, can we see your lab results? number one, there are not people to do that, and number two, there are not lab results. it's difficult to estimate. in each case, the number before of foodborn illness, and the second case it's an identified bug. that's roughly the picture. let's go ahead and look at simple enforfor the -- enforcement metrics. that is taken from roughly the second bush administration from 2004-2008. it's publicly available data reported by the fda itself. as you can see, generally a decline in easy metrics. foreign and domestic inspections from fiscal years 2004 and

2008. this is also the period, roughly the period by the way in which import lines of food were roughly doubling, okay? there's inverse slopes on these two angles; right? more food coming in, in theory, more complicated more distributed ways of bringing food into the market statement that fda was able to unfortunately accomplish fewer and fewer inspections. there are lots of reasons for this. some of them are frankly political, some economic, and some have to do with the difficulty of getting a pure bureaucracy with the number of responsibilities that this one has to be able to change and keep pace with the changing demands of the marketplace. if we look at the same here, important domestic samples,

again, here are the changes that are not quite as obvious. you see there was a huge effort to keep import sample ling up at the same level as the previous four to five years, and towards the end of the period, an increase in domestic sampling as well. again, this is the same period of time in which the volume of imports, for example, coming into the country was doubling or by some estimates, quaddrupe ling. this is representing roughly the number of, or actually exactly, the number of injunctions that the agency undertook during a period of time. part of the reason for this is because up until recently in the passage of a new food safety modernization agent, there were not recall authority.

it was forced to rely on the threats of legal action in the form of injunction and get them to comply with federal law. we're not talking about big numbers here obviously. much of the agency's enforcement work happens below this level, okay? changes in it because the numbers are small, changes in it can feel, at least from inside the agency to industry as a fairly particular, and fred and shawn may have more to say about that. this is my personal view and has nothing to do with the agency other than the fact that i once worked there. this is what i would characterize as a generally declining enforcement environment toward the end of the 2010 decade.

it was the environment een counter by the new administration, so let's take a look at some of the critical players for a minute that the new administration brought in. first is dr. margaret hamberg, former city health commissioner for new york. what, in my mind, one of the things that is most admiral about commissioner hamberg is that she was a city health commissioner. city health commissioner in my experience in public health are people who are action-oriented and friendly. if you're a city health commissioner in new york or baltimore, i had a chance to work with the baltimore commissioner for a little while, it is not unusual to get calls from people in the city complaining about rats in the garbage cans or food that they think they were served that was

spoiled from the restaurant, and their inclination is to do something about it and take action relatively quickly, and that is tempered by an acknowledgement that she's presiding over a complex organization, the kind of personality that hamberg brings. this is one of my old bosses brought from the office of chief counsel an now is acting director of sapsin. there's cfsan, the aves commissioner, officers of chief counsel, that's may taylor, the office of regulatory affairs and

its ralph taylor, and ora's new directer. there's an hhs attorney and a former partner at porter. one the things to observe from your point of view since this is a law school is that many of these people are former attorneys or practicing attorneys. this team in particular i think has an unusual amount of legal understanding and sophistication. there are -- they are also inclined to be more proactive which is part of the point. the gentleman to the left of dana is dr. sharpsteen. he just left before commissioner hamberg was appointed, and he was probably one the most

energetic leaders in the fda for a long time. very enforcement oriented. he wrote in the new england journal of medicine, possibly the journal of record for medicine, and she talked about what the medical profession expected of the fda. she wrote about education, regulation, and enforcement. you say to yourselves, why is that significant? it's significant in part, i think, because it's not that often that a commissioner of fda writes an article and has it put or offers it for publication in the new england journal of medicine, but she mentioned the role of enforcement, and this had not been an emphasis in the public's statements to that degree in the last 5-10 years, and so as fda often does, and

part of its coordinated efforts to industry and the consuming public and to the medical profession, it then followed up in a more formal statement at least internally in 2010. in in it it talked about enforcement. this document from which this is taken is a combination of the input of multiple components of the agency. it's ora, director of compliance for drugs, food, pet-med, and others and the office of the commissioner. it's a big deal because you got to go around to every one of the centers and the directors and the compliance directors and get them to agree on the things they are all going to say publicly they are about, and with respect to enforcement in setting the enforcement philosophy say said it's one of their highest priority, and then they explain

way and the agency's theory of the market, and that is in simple terms that most industry players are going to comply with the law because they think that's the right thing to do. it makes not only business sense, but human sense. there are some, and it's difficult to tell how many in an accurate sense, but there are some who simply will not, and for those actors, they need to be put on notice that the agency is watching and the agency is prepared to take action, and frankly, the companies that comply and take the appropriate safety precautions and regard the rules and the laws need to be protected because that's costly. it costs them money to do that, and so the agency and our society as a whole needs to make sure that they are not unfairly disadvantaged, so that's the rational. okay. i want to give you a sense, quickly, of where fda has been

going and where it plans to go. the work plan is a document that the agency sets approximately a year in advance. the numbers that you see there reflect something called fte's or full time equivalents. not quite the same as full-time employees, it's a complicated personnel calculation, but it's full time equivalents. i'm sorry, i apologize. that's not that. i took that slide out. okay, bear in mind the full time equivalent thing. that number declined as have the numbers for inspections. i apologize. this is the raw number of inspections the people perform. you notice from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year' 11 they have a planned slight decrease in domestic inspections except for

food. the agency feels, i think, strongly that food is one of the areas of greatest as a vulnerability, and so to the extent that it has been protecting any of these numbers or increasing any numbers, one of the two areas it's been doing that is specifically in food, okay? all right. fiscal year 2008, the total number of inspections was 15 thowrs. you can see we're roughly increasing by 20% in the years. how did they do it or what are the results of the inspections? these are the agency's four main enforcement tools. the inspection, dfa arrives at your plant. it's an ad hoc or planned inspection based on a report or emergency. they can send you a warning letter is an option. they can see a problem in the plant, they want to notify the

company that action needs to be taken, and then they conduct an injunction. these are the basic authorities that the agency relies on today these things. food drug and cosmetic act, still basically the main enforcement tool of the agency supplemented for records access for the diseases and of course, the code of federal regulations, and then finally this, the last slide, this is the new food safety regulation that has been talked about a little bit. as has been correctly pointed out, there was no mandatory recall authority. i can tell you from personal experience there are companies that refuse to withdrawal or hold their products from the marketplace. it is not the case that the market exercises sufficient discipline to enforce voluntary compliance, and the agency can

spend a lot of time, frankly, in the state of uncertainty negotiating with companies when the evidence is fairly clear. this attempts to remedy that. records, tracking, and traces again, the goal is to find the contaminated food, find it and get it as quickly as possible. there are inspections under the new legislation, and finally the concept of the international parity in which the agency says we've looked at the products coming from this particular country. we think that that country lacks in adequate enforcement mechanism, and so we are putting the agency, putting that country and producers from that country on alert. finally, i know shawn is going to talk about this i think, has to, for everybody, has an analysis critical control point except for small establishments like small farmers. the goal is to require every

food producer or manufacture to go through and identify potential sources of problems in its operations and to address those in a written plan. that's where fda is today. thank you, and i apologize for running a little over. [applause] >> i think we'll -- fred, you want to come up? there you go. >> thank you. good afternoon. i'm fred pritzker and i represent people who were harmed by foodborne pathogens. shawn and i are last because we are involved in the place where

the rubber hits the road so to speak where everything kind of comes together and where companies have to decide how they compensate individuals who harmed by foodborne illness. okay, there. really what is comes down to is fical matter in food, and it's something people find distasteful in food, and frankly it is. whenever you can talk about a corporate wrong doing causing fecal matter to be in your food, you're a leg up in the proceedings. that's why very few of the cases get tried. what i want to talk about

briefly today is how do we as food safety lawyers evaluate cases? what constitutes a good case? what can we do? what can't we do? our firm is involved in just about every national foodborne illness case that you've heard about. we've been involved in the spinach litigation, the poultry and steak litigations, the steaks you get at chain restaurants, and there's one i want to just touch on briefly, the bravo farms, the raw cheese causing costco stores on the west coast talking about raw milk. raw milk is like drinking liquid

tuberculosis. it is one of those things where the, and i realize i'm talking to you now and there's some in the audience thinking my, god, this guy doesn't get it or understand there's virtues of health, but i'd like to tell you about that, and i'd like to do it in the context of a case that we're involved in right now, a raw milk case where a man who was sixened as a result -- sickened as a result of drinking raw milk at a high-end pittsburgh area is still basically a quadriplegic or the functional equivalent of one from a disease resulting from the consumption of raw milk, and i'd like to talk to you about the lady i'm representing in phoenix who is basically bedridden and near death as a result of eating the cheese that was made from a small grower,

but who is now near death as a result of eating this food that about which science has been subordinated to belief, and that's a lot of what drives a lot of foodborne illness issues is the difference between science and belief, and one of the things, the great things about our system, and if any of you lawyers or law students planning to be lawyers, this is an opportunity to go before people and present actual data from experts where all the hype cuts away, and everybody has the opportunity to present to a jury of your peers what the facts are and then let the jury decide. it's a great opportunity. i mean, i'm talking now to the law students where if you ever wanted to effect change, this is the place to do it. this is the place to do it because between money and representation, that's what drives food safety.

the foodborne illness outbreaks that you hear about are those in which companies are horrified to know that their products of implicated, are fearful of paying out millions, tens of millions of dollars in compensation, and that's what really drives food safety as much as regulation does, this is what drives it in the public mind. that's the pennsylvania raw milk case i just talked about. national steak and poultry, if you go to any one of the national chain restaurants what they are serving you if you order a steak is mechanically tenderized meat. it's a cheaper cut, a rougher cut of meat that goes through this little needle device that softens it up, and what happens oftentimes is what's called translocation where you have the pathogen on the surface of the meat that would normally be

killed out when you sere the meat on the surface, but because the needle is penetrated in the middle of the steak that when you order something medium or rare like we like to do, it's not cooked to 160 degrees to kill it off, so you are still consuming beefsteak which is thought to be safe is filled with e. coli. one was in applebees celebrating her 4.0 high school quarter, and had mechanically tenderized steak that she did not know about. she went on to develop e. coli poisenning and developed another syndrome that and now as 50% of kidney function at age 18, and