increasing cost of capital, probably by a small amount. .. >> and the average business borrower is almost unprecedented levels. that's due to risk perceptions in the economy. the perception of excessive risk brought on by the wall street

crash and its aftermath. so if we run and economy that is operating at a high level of stability, this is not appropriate, so obsessively on these tiny little differences that interact day-to-day, minute to minute. if we operate in a economy that is more focused on productive activity and productive investment, we lower the level of risk and risk perception. and that way you have a longer-term and more stable, lower the cost of capital than you would do the effect on the transaction tax alone, operating on the cost of capital. >> thank you bob. spent the prime is tax misses the target. as pointed out most of the trading is not done by speculative, not done by people who are adding volatility but by people are stabilizing the system. as said, your buyers with low price, sellers with high price, a lot of these traitors come in

between and actually absorb some of the shocks in the system. they are the ones doing most activity. they are the beneficial players that would be driven out of the business. let's talk about the role of the financial markets. icy nurses here. i want to thank you for taking such good care of my son when he was in the hospital. we are do you think the money comes from to build the hospital? generally speaking most hospitals go to the financial markets, sell bonds, and investors want to buy those bonds. investors are more likely to buy bonds if there's a market where they can sell them when they want to cash out. that secondary trading afterwards makes it much more likely that people will buy those bonds in the first place. so, same what could is the fact people by one second and sell the next, what they're doing is they're providing a service that

helps the long-term investors when they want to come in and buy and sell. so, that's where you are totally missing the boat with this proposed because most of the trading is done by people who are doing things that help investors, not help long-term price stability, that putting this a tax on really will stop the speculation or it won't stop the people you are hearing reverberations from the planet mars and saying, oh, i feel unlucky today, i'm bullish on google. know, those people won't be stopped. those are the people that add the volatility, the uncertainty, that what you're going to do is cost so much collateral damage that you're missing the target. >> well, time flies and, unfortunately, mine is gone. hopefully discussion around raising revenue would be picked up, there has been some discussion about that already. >> thanks, gus.

there's an old sport in washington where when we talk about tax increases they always most find the most sympathetic person. for example, there's been a big debate on of course extending the bush tax cuts for the wealthy. and the cut off the president obama's both are its 250,000. naturally the poster children and the "washington post" has a front page piece about this woman who supposedly is 260,000, she will be paying higher tax. that's horrible, she's not really rich. guess what? her tax bill will be $300 a year. issues making to safety and can't figure out your $300 a year, she has more problems than the tax. i think that's kind of the story here. tnt that we have this tax, some people are not wealthy will be paying that, that's the world. but the fact is the vast majority of people who do pay the vast majority of a tax shortly will be wealthy. there's another part of the augment that is very, very important to understand. i don't think we get a

difference, but i don't people get difference between jim and bob because it's well-known economic principles. elasticity that people respond to the tax. we impose a tax. let's just say we double the cost of trading. as jim pointed out trading is an intermediate good. it's not i wake up and said i wanted to a lot of triggered i wake up and say i might have a good practice, by and see. we get by from that. what we care about with trading, the whole point is at the end of the day we care about our investment income. if we get the same and doesn't income but less trading, what's the problem? we care about the investment income. there's a lot of research, they are some research that bob and i and i am sure jim estimate as well, that examined the elasticity. how does trading respond to increase in the price? most of it puts it around one. what does that mean? suppose we double the price of trading. this research implies the amount

of trading that you do would be cut roughly in half. let's just take some numbers. let's say i have 100,000 my mutual fund over with vanguard. great fun, good choice. paid advertising. know, they're not hiring. let's say turns over 1% a year, which it doesn't. let's say terms of a 1% a year. that would be $1000. let's say we tickle the government, put in the tax. we double the cost of trading. we got smart people here. it costs twice as much, we will cut our trade roughly in half. that's what the data shows. it cost than twice as much to do the trade, he's doing have as many trades. jim, give us the arithmetic. how much did it cost me? >> it's a lot more because not only is a tax going up, but by driving out that people are making trading cheaper, you will give -- race the spread. you a raise transaction costs not only by the tax, but also

the number of knock-on effects, and that you also have the wider trading costs. that's going to increase cost of capital for businesses. what that means is it will be hard for people to raise capital in the first place and they'll have a knock on effect on on the economy in terms of things like fewer jobs, less economic growth, more unemployment. >> bob? >> interesting that, i mean, you would say such a thing i miss the financial crisis caused by financial excesses on wall street, which we now have, we are expensive now. that's the reality today. the speculation that brought the economy down and we haven't recovered yet. now, dean is right. if we think about transactions costs, if you lower the total number of transactions through

the tax, yes, the cost per transaction is higher. but if you reduce your total number of transactions, then there's no increase in total transactions. none whatsoever. you could say yes, but there's all these negative effects. and jim just mentioned them. hospitals will be able to raise any money to build. that unemployment is going to go up and so forth. he of course has no evidence to support any of those points. we do know that hospitals are closing now. we do know that nurses are getting laid off. we do know pensions are getting attacked. why? we don't have enough revenue because of the financial crisis brought on by wall street. the financial crisis brought on by wall street devastated state and local governments. we were talking about raising funds for municipal bonds like hospitals. the crisis dropped revenue for state and local governments by

13%. there hasn't been anything even close to that since the great depression. in 1981-82 recession, the most severe one prior to this one, state and local government revenues fell by 1%, 1.5%. now we are at 13%. that is what is causing all this, you know, destructive politics in minnesota which was supposedly kind of a very civilized place, up until the crisis. that's the reality. >> i just want to go on, we've had this back and forth about financing and i think it's a really, really important concept to understand that the idea of an intermediate good is not providing us, whether understood are misunderstood, cigarettes obviously we might see someone is mistaken if they're buying the. but they think it is providing them well being. people don't think of stock trades as doing that. so we think of this in the

standpoint as a principle we would like to do this as done as efficiently as possible, as small a sector is possible. just talking about very narrowly, the sector devoted to stock trades, trades of commodities, trades of options, futures. that segment is a share of the economy has increased roughly fivefold from the '70s. i'm talking about relative to size of the economy. currently that cybercom not going down to the bank and checking out, not your real estate agent, talking about this very narrow section, commodities trading security brokers, investment banking, that's increased fivefold. it's now about 180 billion a year. i think the way i would at least think about that is that's similar to the trucking industry. suppose we had a number of truckers to increase relative to the size of the economy fivefold over the last four years. my guess would be most people would be inclined to say what's wrong with your trucking industry? are we kidding, is the evidence

the goods are getting from point a to point b. quicker? we are getting our meats fresher, our food fresher? are we getting something from that? i look at the financial sector and said it is increased fivefold will do to the size of the economy. my first guess is that looks like 180 billion or maybe 150 billion, 30 billion if constant share of economy, that look like 150 billion of ways. what do you think, bob, isn't? >> good question. [laughter] well, yeah, this is a point i made before. the level of trading has exploded to an unprecedented degree as result of financial deregulation. and the outcomes, want to talk about basic outcome in terms of financial stability, were much worse off. much worse off. not just talk about the most recent crisis. remember, there was the dot com bubble that burst and create a

recession. before that there was the savings and loan crisis that cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. we have the collapse of long-term capital management as result of the global east asian crisis. long-term capital management was supposed to be the top winner, two nobel prize laureates in finance, they like jim, they supposedly knew where those hidden pennies were and they knew how to deal in the markets better than everybody else. that tank the economy as well. and what has kept us afloat has been the bailout. one after another. 1987 wall street crashed, and at that point we had to bail out by the new head of the federal reserve, alan greenspan. alan greenspan subsequently himself has talked about the imposition, irrational exuberance in the markets. and infectious greed in the

markets, irrational exuberance and infectious greed is exactly what jim is talking about when people trade excessively in order to earn earnings off a tiny differences that are not going to last anyway. and there's no reason why we have to assume that the level of trading has to be hundreds of times today what it was only 15 or 20 years ago. in order to achieve outcomes in terms of stability, employment, well being, things that we actually care about. >> well, you said the financial side is bigger than it was a few decades ago. so is the health care sector. and so is the computer sector. one of the reasons the computer sector has gotten bigger is when a technological revolution and we can now do a lot of things we couldn't do before. the same thing happened in financial services. we've had a technological revolution of new products, new

services that allow us to do things we couldn't do before. in particular with risk management. so for example, suppose that you're a farmer, and you're thinking of planting a field, but because you know prices are fluctuating you don't know if you can afford to do that because if the price drives -- if the price drops at harvest time you might go bankrupt or you can in any financial transaction called a derivative that allows you to lock in the price at what you're going to get for your crop when you sell it. okay? now you know you and get a fair price for your crop you can afford to plant the fields. you have laid off, transferred at risk to somebody else. even if that somebody else is that speculator. the markets developed a number of new risk management tools, and we cannot do a lot of things. are the perfect? know. does every new technology worked perfectly? no. sometimes airplanes crash. sometimes bridges fall down.

sometimes on abuses get into wrecks. and he did we did have a massive rack in our financial markets. no doubt about it. do we need better regulations? yes. now the question of more or less. it's a question of smarter regulation. and by the way, the government has not fixed it with dodd-frank. there's a lot of work that needs to be done. that doesn't mean that just because sometimes an airplane crashes that we need to get rid of airplanes. instead, what it means is we've got to figure out why they crashed and make sure it doesn't happen again. >> you kind of took my breath away with your reference of the farmer. the derivative market for food, the futures market actually has been around since the bible or so this is not a new invention due to technological change. and you describe exactly what has been also described in the

bible, wherein farmers are able to get a fixed price so they can plant their crops and they don't have to worry about what the price will be eight months from now when their crops are ready to harvest. that has nothing whatsoever to do with what is really going on in the speculation come in the commodities futures market for food. wherein the prices, 2008 and 2009 doubled, causing, according to the united nations, 130 million more people to become malnourished because of their livelihoods, their spending is 50% on food. when you look at the price of food, you increase hunger throughout the world. that is exactly what happened as a result of the unregulated rampant speculation on the commodities futures market. we are experiencing the exact same thing again. and by the way, we are experiencing also with petroleum, oil prices. i having to report that just came out last week.

as of may we were paying $3.96 at the pump on average, and i calculated with my colleague 83 cents of that was due to speculation. i've been in debates about that. i can defend that position. there is no reason why we have to have a commodities futures market 300 times bigger than it was 20 years ago. >> a quick response? >> sure. trading is not leading to speculation. that yet. if you look at markets, even where there are no organized commodities exchanges, we still saw a price spike in 2008. so for markets where you didn't have futures, you still have the same kind of bubble occurring. and guess what? we've had these going back to the times of the bible. sometimes people acting in crowd go crazy.

markets are not perfect. they have a strong incentive to get it right to a judge or a better job in the long run than governments do. but sometimes they make mistakes. the real question is, do you want, the real problem is you point out all these problems with the markets. your solution doesn't cure the disease. all it does is cause collateral damage. >> jim, it's surprising you mentioned the comparison of financial markets to health care and computers. it's clear to me what the benefits have been from increase spending in health care and computers. a little less on financial markets. i would just as people here do you feel more secure in your savings today than you did 20 years ago or 30 years ago? that's the question we have to ask. i don't mean that to be easily answer. that's the question to be asked. one of the voyager, again i think it's important to put this in context. we've had some of this with

trembling. he made a point where talk about raising the cost of financial transaction. that's what they had been when not talking about agent history. not talk about this huge tax. that sort of a value judgment. where talk about going back to charter territory. were time roughly when you were in early 90s '90s, mid '80s and would have to look at that more closely. that's roughly the target. i find that important because again the context and a lot of the points jim is making. we carry out arbitrage. they are not evil people. there is use income you realize these markets are on the line. is using bring those into one. arbitrage isn't new. i was in grad school in the early to mid '80s. we talked about arbitrage. many other papers we are reading data back from the '60s. james tobin, the nobel prize-winning economist was a big proponent of financial transaction, the first paper he wrote on this was back in 1971 when trading costs were

considerably higher than what they would be today with the tax. and, of course, john maeda came back in the '30s talked about tackled trading costs, even that bob and i might propose. i guess what i want to ask jim, when a transaction cost at this level in the past. you talked as though they would be no arbitrageurs but there were arbitrage. award of a target of an issue that the arbitrageur johnson made when there is a gap of three-tenths of a percentage point and the price may be rather than one-tenth of a percentage point? and if that's the case, who cares? >> the question is, who cares when prices get out of alignment. i care. when i go to buy the dti, exchange-traded fund for my retirement account, i would make sure the price reflects what's going on in the underlying stocks. on may 6, 2010 committed to glitch big glitch in the market. technical story. all kinds of problems that

occurred. but one of the things that happened was because of the technical glitches in the market, the arbitrage steps to the sidelines and we saw what happened. the prices fluctuated wildly in the price of dti when all the way down to 15 cents. it's normally much more expensive item. that trade was busted after the fact. but if you get rid of this ecosystem, you're going to have less resiliency in the market and is computer-driven hma wind up with much more volatility, not less. >> i just in terms of the ecosystem i agree. we want to ecosystem but it seems to me that ecosystem is there in the '50s, '60s, '70s when we have much higher cost. i will not bother jump in on that. >> you're a good moderator, dean. [laughter] >> i tried to be.

neutral. >> the basic point is, what are the features of an economy, and economic policy that will enhance productive activity, decent jobs, stability? now, the kind of things that jim our talk about eyes have absolutely nothing to do with his long-term agendas. what they do as, at best a distraction. but more specifically what they really do fundamentally is we're assuming traders in the market will have full information. and eventually we'll get to the right point through this arbitrage. well, what we really know is bubbles that form because you have a bubble momentum with the upward price movement leads to other people thinking prices are going up. this is what was behind the increasing food prices. this is what is behind increase in oil futures markets now.

is the fact that things are going up does not mean that a speculator will say okay, the price is off relative to the fundamental right. i would drive it down. the speculator may well say, well, the price is going up and i can move it up further and make money that way. there is no reason to assume that just having more trading is going to drive the price to stability. that prices are out of alignment precisely because there is excessive speculation. so much so that it is frequently the case that we can't even observe fundamental value. again, look at the oil market today. if you look at the supply and demand relationships, supply and demand actual supply and demand are dropping together. libya didn't change supply. libya didn't change demand. libya changed what people think what supplies going to be in the future, and that led to the increase in speculation.

that is not a net benefit to society for the price of oil to be 83 cents more than it should be due to speculation. spent one last word and switch to the next. again to try to emphasize the point, the way i was your point that he will get the first question in a second. the question here is that we're talking a increasing the spread somewhat between the buyer and seller. i think no one would dispute is one of the result of this tax. raising them back to level we saw in the early '90s, mid '80s. i will raise one more point about this. jim is a very good point about liquidity. if i owned a share of stock i want to think that laughter so tomorrow i could do that. if it's a somewhat thin and marketer less likely to do that. won a nice features about this tax is that the proportionate increase in prices, transactions costs will be much, much less on the less liquid assets. what i mean by that is suppose i

own shares of general electric stock. huge company, hundreds of minutes of cheers. millions of state ever want to sell general electric stock i could do in day of the week within seconds. i was almost exactly the price i will get. there are other stocks that are less liquid. suppose i have an over-the-counter startup company. i just can't call the broker and say so this doc for me and bingo he has a price for me. the transactions costs are already much higher than with my general electric. what that means is that taxes that we want will be a much smaller share of the transactions cost. much less a fact of the liquidity that went on this already hugely liquid stock like general electric. so i will let jim take the first shot at bob and asking the question. >> so, bob, what you've done is give talked about many of the problems in the financial sector him and your proposed his tax,

basically for a number of reasons. as i see it, you want to raise money for good causes and you want to punish bad people who fought about financial ruin. and also shrink the financial sector which you don't seem to understand what it does. how much collateral damage are you willing to accept to reach your goal? because your tax will hit the target. the people who do the most trading are actually the beneficial people. that people have committed the excesses that you talk about are really more low-frequency traders. they're not doing the most trading. sell your tax isn't going to hit the target. so how much collateral damage are you willing to accept to achieve your goal? >> well, thanks for the question. i don't agree with the premises. i don't assume that it is not going to hit the target.

i think that there are trade-offs in any economic policy intervention. and this will impose costs, just like any other tax. by the way i don't think the people on wall street are -- i never said that. some of my best friends. and actually many, many of my students, and many more of my students would love to be on wall street. so i do have a problem with the people. it's up to economic policy to set the terms under which the financial market operates. i also don't have a problem with, as dean described, with having markets that provide liquidity. of course, i don't. i never said i was opposed to the. the real question, the only real interesting question is when you have excess liquidity, excessive trading, to the point that it

distorts economic activity and well being? i want to cite a study by larry summers who was the chief economic adviser for obama, was -- [inaudible] >> and, frankly, work on wall street. and james, the president of a leading research institute national bureau of economic research, professor of economics at mit. they didn't interesting study that was published in 1995, on the effects of excessive trading and speculation, on long-term decision-making of financial managers. the study was an interview. they interviewed managers in the u.s. and in other countries. and managers in the united states, according to them, said that they would invest about 20% more in productive activity if they didn't have to have the worrying over this day-to-day

fluctuations market and having to achieve some performed on a day-to-day basis and get punished on a day-to-day basis. so, collateral damage, in fact, i think the security transaction tax by no means a panacea but will actually enhance long-term productive activity in the economy. >> i will give bob a moment to form a question. i just want to say about the issue of its it is because we do have a model of the u.k. which i think most people is a pretty robust financial market. the london stock a change i believe, we should get the rest of the tax code, jim couldn't lift it. he's not big enough. [laughter] has the largest doctor shank in europe, at least until recently it certainly did. in terms of the incidents, i know roughly about their wealth distribution. i do know anything about it. but assuming it's comparable to the u.s., they couldn't possibly get that offer mom and pop

people because they don't own enough stock. and list their trading everyday there's no way this could all come from sort of middle income stockholders. a good chunk of that has to come from some of the wealthy. some of the people we might think might want to pay the tax. bob? >> well, let's start with a provocative one. if we consume come if we assume that the tax, let's assume economies like to say, assume this, assume that. so let's assume that tax could raise $150 billion a year. and let's say that as result of the tax, the level of trading went down by 15%. and then let's say that the funds generated by the a tax would come as they would be fully capable of doing, supporting education health care, public safety, at the state of local government level,

supporting environmental protection. and on top of that we can throw in middle-class income tax-cut. would you be opposed to the tax? >> yes because i think there's a better way to raise needed government revenue. when we look at taxes, once again at the beginning when you do that but what do we want from our tax system? let's look at one of the biggest problems we have. we are addicted to foreign oil. we're addicted to oil, addicted to carbon-based fuels. the amount of money we are sent outside of the country is enormous. it is jeopardizing -- jeopardizing our national security. so, one of our biggest problems is we've got to end our dependence on carbon-based fuels. the best way to do that is to impose a carbon tax. basically make people pay for using nonrenewable resource called petroleum. it's not popular, but think about what it will do. it will give us an incentive to

conserve precious resources. it will give us an incentive to develop clean alternative fuels. so, for economic security, our national security, for a climate security, we've got to stop guzzling oil. so if we put on his carbon tax, what that will do is, that will force us to conserve oil. it will force us to develop clean alternatives and it will generate more than enough needed revenue for all the good things that we need to do. >> hearing this and bob want to tax financial transactions, jim wants to tax carbon, i want to tax everything. [laughter] anyhow, no argument from me on the carbon tax. >> you mentioned economists assumptions. and you named a lot of names of people, but one of the things i've noticed, a specialist who

kind of wallace in the bowels of the financial system and hang out in trading floors and watching what people do as opposed to sitting in my ivory tower and hallucinating about trading, or about economics, one of the things i've noticed -- >> that's what i do. >> so one of the things i've noticed is that there are a lot of people who call them selves economies. in their models they tend to assume away transaction costs. so, is it not true that in many economic and even many financial models transaction costs are ignored? >> yes. [laughter] >> so what? had to read about our paper which i have right here? 70% is about transaction cost. i can't speak for the entire procession, sorry but i will speak for myself. we spent a long time trying to understand transaction costs,

and here, you can have the paper. >> free copy. [laughter] spent if i must toot our horn, a new survey paper of all the papers that have been written on this subject, there are a few others but one just actually came to me via e-mail last week by someone i don't know at all named neil macculloch at the university of sussex. i don't know if you've seen his paper. macculloch said our paper takes most shows are the issues of transactions cost. so sorry if i can't speak for the whole profession but i take transaction costs are secure and acts he spent a lot of time looking at transaction cost in the range of markets, including as you'll see in the paper we love that agricultural futures, you know, pot bellies and on and on like that. by the way, i also was on the newark stock exchange trading floor about two and a half weeks ago. >> i would just say a comet, a

second difficulty we had an fine at about transaction cost, jim you're right. it's very important. one of the issues you find, i will make this general point about economic research, economic data. the reason we have difficulty trying to find out about transactions cost is much of this data is proprietary. so every day the government this way would point out the new data on implement and would just go through statistics, download tons of data, zero cost. they would make it user-friendly. you could do what ever you want with it. if you want to get data on transactions cost it's hard. we have to get a good guide like jim who will discuss it with us. it's a creamy difficult. it's not just the financial industry to go and find out about drug cost. very hard to find out that how much does it cost pfizer to research and develop a new drug? across the board it's one of the problems, one of many problems that i think people are trying to do good policy, do good

research is that it is very expensive. if you come from someone that has very deep pockets, you work for the financial industry that has deep pockets, you can get this done. on the other hand, if you're for small think tank like me or bob at a university, it's very difficult to get the data. it's not just the financial industry. it's across the board. it's something to keep in mind. >> i was very interested in your discussion on the carbon tax, which i support among many other initiatives to build a green economy. ralph nader was nice enough to mention some of my own research and consulting work for the obama administration on this issue. so, my question is, do you see any analogies between a carbon tax and a financial transaction tax? if we accept, as you seem to affirm also, that the markets do

not always operate efficiently, that they do not always operate with accurate information and act on inadequate information, rumors, stampedes, and not that we would shut down the market just like we're not going to stop people from buying fossil fuels. but we will discourage it and will have funds that can be used for beneficial purposes. do you see any analogy? >> well, i see analogies with all taxes and that they need to be considered carefully in spite of the broad tax system. once again i think you're missing the target. if you look at what the traders are actually doing, most of the trading is not done by speculators profit at the mouth, going on rumors and get hunches. most of the trading is done by people with computer models who are basically doing that smoothing out that i said.

maybe you want prices to be more jagged. i think that is your opinion. but you are missing the target. that's the big problem, and, indeed, even if you look in markets which have higher transactions costs, people are still people. that the person who thinks they are going to buy a social networking company at 80 and it will go to 500, you cannot stop them with the transaction cost. that can link instinct, people will apply in the financial market. putting a 50 basis point tax on will not stop there. what it will do is it will curb the beneficial activity. there are better ways of achieving your goals. >> okay, i would just quickly sum up a couple things and then i will let gus come in with questions from the audience. i think one of the things to focus on is what this does to transactions cost. no dispute it increases them.

we're talking increasing them back to the levels of the early '90s, mid '80s, somewhere around there. that second point again, i'm sure we differ, bob and i would differ with jim, what would it mean to have higher transactions cost. to my mind there's no doubt there will be somewhat greater wages so that the gap between the buyer and seller and a share of general electric will be somewhat higher than it would be with lower transactions cost. that's by definition. but whether that leads to greater volatility -- volatility, we might see the price go from 60, the 60.5 and back to 60. i just point out, i think is somewhat ambiguous whether it leads to greater volatility to the sort i think most of us would care about. my model here is the flash crash we saw last year we saw prices fall i believe around 15% for no reason whatsoever. no one could identify any economic event in the world. what it was hewitt program trading all of which was taking advantage of the fact that you could do these trades at virtually no cost so you could

set of these programs and they happen to be setup in a way that led to the spiral downward. i think you would see less of that volatility. it's an open question whether or not that's the case. i will put words in bob's mouth, he can disagree. i think you would see less of that volatility which i think does pose a substantial economic costs. so i will let us come in and ask questions. >> -- i will let gus come in and ask a question. >> i have a whole slew of questions. the first two are just statement of fact. so i can answer those myself. didn't the bills introduced in congress includes exemptions from the tax a regular middle-class investors? there was a proposal to exempt up to a certain amount of trading, $100,000 worth i believe. so, yes, a small amount of trading you would be exempt.

however, i would note that most investors actually do not invest directly, that they invest two other vehicles like mutual funds. 99 invested in their 401(k) plans and other investments are investing in mutual funds. they are you can't administer it. you can't figure out who has how much money and what part of the fund should not be subject to paying this tax. so that would be administratively impossible to figure out how to do. here's a question for jim angel, professor angell. even if you're convinced that the tax misses its target would you agree that it would still provide a sufficient reserve to be able to tackle the next financial crisis instead of having to burden the regular taxpayer again? or would you argue that trading would decrease so much that it

would be unimportant in the future? >> well, i've taught a course on financial crisis at georgetown university, at the heart of a financial crisis is death, borrowing the people borrow too much to speculate. people borrow too much money to buy houses. people borrow too much money to buy bonds. again, a financial transaction tax really wouldn't hit those people. some of the worst of the players, you know, would not be hit by that tax. so, there's a lot we need to do to shore up our financial structure. we need to overhaul and have deep structural reform of our regulatory agencies. we need to have a much smarter regulatory system. we may differ on the details, but the revenue raised from such a tax would basically go into the general fund and it certainly would not be used as a

buffer for the financial system. >> do you want -- >> is the reason why it shouldn't be. if you leave the imf study, which proposes a variation, a financial activity tax, the proposition there is, first and foremost the financial sector needs to be taxed in order that they themselves cover up and pay for their messes, rather than the general taxpayer be so there's no reason why some of the revenue from a financial transaction tax could not be there to help finance whatever future bailouts might be necessary. and such bailouts, the probability of that being smaller would be enhanced through having a financial transaction tax because you would have less speculative trading. >> another question here. is regarding the traders who quote unquote stabilize the system, according to jim.

you described them as trading the most, arbitrageurs who trade on tiny margins. aren't they the same people who create the flash crash? >> i'm glad you asked that question because i'm the guy who warned the sec in writing five times in the year before the flash crash that our markets were vulnerable to exactly that kind of glitch. what happened that day is that there was a very large trade that came in from a traditional mutual fund into the futures market. they sold a big basket of stocks in a sloppy way, that pushed prices down. now, then you sell this basket of 500 stocks, really quickly, and hey, we had flash crashes like that long before we had computerized trading, even when it much higher transaction costs. you can go back to newspapers from the early 1900s and read

stories that sound just like the flash crash. market to break, and then recover. now, what happened was this caused such a flood of data that the information processing systems in the markets were overwhelmed. this by the arbitrageurs to step aside. so what happened was, the people who are looking in this very tiny differences said wait a minute, i see a price in this book and that market better norm the same, and they are dollars apart. my computer must be having a connection. i don't believe that data i am seeing. so the people the hyper rational trade, the ones who normally stabilize things step to the sidelines and that is what the market really fell apart because the people who were not going to high-frequency trading kept on trading. and the stabilizers were not there. we saw stocks go up, mainly

because the big glitch caused by a big order cause problems in the system. so, if you wipe out the arbitrageurs, we see bad things happen. >> bob, do you want to -- >> well, i appreciate and i know, i've read some of your commentary on the flash crash, and i appreciate that you're calling it a glitch. these things do happen. the only problem is they happened very quickly, and each time they happen it's just some kind of glitch, some kind of -- actually the crisis of 2008-2009 was called the 100 year storm. that was the head of goldman sachs called it the 100 year storm. of course, the odds of it ever happening are so low, but look what happened. it actually happened. 1997-98. long-term capital management. that this arbitrage experts out

there almost brought the entire globe economy down because of their hubris as to the thinking that they could outguess the market better than everyone else. and these people are not evil people. so stop saying that i ever said that, or that i am suggesting that in any way. they are people operating within a framework set by public policy. it is the obligation of public policies to establish a regulatory system that delivers financial stability. if you study the history of capitalism, a classic book by charles kindleberger, the late charles kindleberger called mania, panic and crashes. if you look at that book, we have had throughout the history of capitalism a chronic problem of excessive and stability, speculation, crises, crashes with enormous social costs. we did have a period where those problems were largely cured.

that was the period where we have a significant regulatory system in the training, and in the global system, and the classical system in the united states. we need a regulatory system. and it includes control of low transactions costs, raising, putting sand in the wheels, professor tobin, nobel laureate proposed with respect to transaction costs. we need those things but it doesn't mean we shut down the markets or that people are evil. >> bob, if you have your wind back i'll ask you another question. as trading has increased in recent years, what has happened to the savings rate? if people are getting such a great deal from all this trading, where is the evidence in a median net worth? >> median net worth shot up as result of the bubble. been median net worth collapse when the bubble collapsed. measuring net worth does not mean the same thing as savings rates, if you want to get a little technical here.

or maybe you don't. savings rates is supposed to be your total income minus your amount of consumption. that number is very, very low. historically low. and a big part of the reason is that people thought they didn't need to save out of income because they thought their net worth kept going up, especially with the real estate bubble. they saw their net worth go up because there was a bubble. so they say the less. i created a distortion in the economy. so, the savings rates have to be tied to what happens in the financial market. and so the interaction between changes in net worth due to bubbles creates another distortion in that regard as well. >> and the savings rate has shot up to 6% in the last -- >> the savings rate is up, and by the way, the level of reserve, the savings by commercial banks is at

unprecedented level, a trillion and a half dollars. but that doesn't mean, that's money sitting there that also should be out there in the spending string creating investment. so having a higher savings rate does not in itself benefit they come. what benefits the economy is when people want to put money into productive activity and it creates jobs. >> jim common in the coming? >> no comment. >> next question. i agree with the tax in urgent need to curb speculation. but if it is not agreed upon at the international level, the g20, the financial sector in the u.s., outsourced to other countries. jim, do you want that? >> we live in a global world. on my smart phone, typing to a brokerage account and trade almost anywhere in the world right now. so, that's absolutely true, that if we try to squeeze the financial sector too much in the

u.s., it won't be here in the u.s. and we're going to get rid of beneficial activity, and pushy other activities offshore. divert people away from other productive activities into trying to figure out how to get loopholes into another complicated tax system to try to avoid paying a tax. >> well, first of all, we know however bigger stack is, -- >> 320 pages. >> the u.k. financial transaction tax is generating a lot of revenue and we haven't seen the collapse of the u.k. financial markets so there may be some movement out of the market but it has not been significant. secondly, the seven biggest, seven most rapidly growing financial markets in the world, including china, south korea, hong kong, indonesia, all have a

financial transaction tax. they all have a financial transaction tax. that's an interesting phenomenon, if we think financial tax -- financial transaction tax will be people out of financial markets but it isn't having. third most important. there's a very simple solution in our paper. so i look forward to getting your comments on our paper. the solution is with respect to the u.s., if you don't paint a tax, your your transaction does not have legal findings that it was not going to pay the tax? who's not going to pay the tax if they didn't have legal title to the assets they wanted to buy? so that in itself will be able to control the outsourcing of trading out of the united states because you can trade but you don't own it and to you pay the tax. >> i would like to make one clarifying comment. actually there's been an awful

lot of activity trying to avoid a the u.k. 50 basis point stamp tax that most of the eds create in europe over the last couple of years have gone to a swap-based approach, a derivative-based approach in or to avoid having to pay that 50 based tax. >> that's because it's only a tax on stock trading. so yes, you do need to have uniform taxation. that applies to all trading at the bob is the swedish case that was brought up early. the problem is the swedish case was an example -- and only apply to domestic brokers in sweden. so okay, so you go to the foreign broker down the street. why not? that's the equivalent of saying okay, as a sales tax in washington on mcdonald's but not on wendy's. so you go to wendy's and you avoid the tax. that's what happened in sweden. >> next question, if increased

transaction costs or mutual funds are passed on as higher fees to investors, i would say that they are not passed on sivs. transaction costs are not in the expense ratio that you pay, but they are in the performance that you receive. they are just not an expense ratio. wouldn't investors have a substitute to an unmanaged index fund which have lower fees and historically comparable or better returns while systemic risk is curbed? of course i love this question. but the index funds are still going to incur the transaction costs as well. in 2008, transaction cost would have been .40% for index funds if it had been levied. that's just the direct feed. that does not include higher transaction costs. here's one for both of you. bob, bob, do what you take this first? how many trades to speculate do

in comparison to your good -- well, jim's good bacteria in both sides in frequency? so how much of the trading is speculators versus arbitrageurs? >> well, you know, the issue of good versus bad, the commodities futures market is an excellent example as jim brought out. i don't see any problem whatsoever in having a derivatives market, you know, less fancy term, an insurance market. you're a farmer. let's say you're an airline figure in airline and you know you be consuming a lot of patrolling over the next year. so you want to lock in a price so you can plan for your business. i don't have a problem with that at all. okay? and again that market is specifically as regards to petrone for airlines has been around since the beginning of airlines. not a problem. they are shifting the risk. essentially the person who is selling that derivative to the

airlines is selling an insurance policy. that's all it is. now, the issue though is that the market has been overwhelmed over the last decade. it has grown by i think 400%, relative to the level of a physical commodity, the oil. and has been dominated now buys literally, we don't even have to call a speculation. we will just call them people are trading not because they have any interest in the physical commodity on either side of the insurance exchange, but they have an interest in moving the market and benefiting by having the capacity to move the market. that is excessive. what the exact number is we don't know, but that's why you have regulations, including increasing the transactions costs and earn revenue but not only that. the dodd-frank law, i heard a negative comment about it, has problems, but also has some good features if it were implemented.

including, just let me say, including the phrase that the commodity futures trading commission has the authority to quote control excessive speculation in the futures markets, and they need to exercise that. >> thanks bob. jim, any comments because if we look in equity market, it's generally considered that so-called high-frequency traders, these are the stabilizers, the arbitrageurs.com and generally do probably about 50-70% of the trading. these are the people who would be pushed to the sideline if we put on a financial transactions tax. so it's hard to get a sense of who are the manipulators which i think is what you're really getting at. i mean, we all believe manipulation is wrong and that's why we need good regulation. but a transaction tax will not really slow down the manipulated. because they're going into the

big deal. they're not going in for the half a penny. they're going in for the 10, 20, $30 get. to them 50 basis points is nothing. >> okay. we are out of time for the q&a session. we just need to wrap it up your. jim, would you like to take two minutes to summarize your views? >> so, to summarize, when we look at this through the lens of good tax policy, a financial transaction tax failed. it really won't generate the revenue that we think it will. you will have a lot of deleterious side effects, and there are better ways to generate the revenue. so, this was a bad idea. congress carefully thought about this, got rid of it, and for very good reason. now, the financial sector of the economy has grown because we can do a lot more good things. yes, we've always had commodity

markets, but we've also developed ways, you know come in the last couple decades for companies to manage their interest rate risk through the swaps market, for banks to manage their credit risk, you know, with the ability to buy credit insurance in the market. so we have developed new products to allow people to do new and better things. so, yes we've had problems. markets are not perfect. but throwing sand in the gears -- well, you've got a problem with your car sticking san in engine is not really going to fix the car. so please stand in the care of our financial system will not achieve the objectives that the proponents say it will. >> thanks, jim. bob? ..

if that tax had not been rebated, the state of new york would not be in a financial crisis at all. the level of new york state's budget deficit is $10 billion so we could fully pay off all the issues and would not be facing cuts in education, health care, public safety and the state of new york and $4 billion left over. the idea that these taxes are so

hard for financial markets has obviously escaped the financial markets that are growing fastest in the world right now. each and every one of them have a financial transaction tax. china is using revenue from its financial transaction tax to finance infrastructure in the green economy. that would be an excellent idea for this country. markets are far from perfect. markets do useful things. but only when it is regulated. when it is not regulated far from perfect is an understatement. they are disastrous. we have experienced economic disaster in this country that would be far worse if financial markets were not bailed out by the taxpayer. we need to control financial market activity. the financial transaction tax is not a panacea. is one measure among many. among the many it is the one through which we can generate

revenue and cover the deficits we face and not experience the kinds of things that are going on for example in minnesota with the state shutting down. >> bob mentioned the new york transaction tax. and ford were not rebated the revenue raised would be zero. the reason new york rebates that revenue is jobs were leaving and going to new jersey and had to stem the flow of wall street moving to new jersey. much of wall street is in jersey city so we are trying to save jobs. >> that was my final statement. maybe a little rebuttal here. the new york tax is based on the stock exchange. it is not well designed. it should have applied to the nasdaq and across the board. that is the way you design taxes so they are comparable even across the board, fair to everybody. we can do it in new york and

throughout the united states. >> i would like to turn it back over to ralph nader. thank you for coming today. [applause] >> thank you. i want to thank the participants. professor robert pollin peterson oppressor angel and dean baker for reaching a lot of dimensions of this subject which i hope will be discussed in the future and the proper arenas with the mass media, legislative arena and political electoral arena as. the audience is very interested in the subject and the audience around the country through c-span when this event is relayed to millions of people.

anyone interested should stay in touch with us. there will be future debates on taboo subject. the web site as you can see is debatingtaboos.org. we want your reaction to the overall subject of opening more and more taboo subjects which once open allow democracy to kick in and good things to happen or at least allow greater understanding of what is happening to us. there is a lunge -- lunch for those who are interested. there are no transaction costs whatsoever and today there is such a thing as a free lunch. thank you for coming. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> a story we have been falling on c-span. house speaker john major has named republicans on the supercommittee to cut the budget deficit. co-chair will be jeb and drilling senator mitch mcconnell said chose rob toomey and john portman for the committee and as follows yesterday's announcement by senate majority harry reid that max baucus and senators john kerry and patty murray will serve on the committee. she will be the co-chair of the group. they are charged with trimming $1 trillion from the budget on thanksgiving. you can follow weeks -- tweets for the list of reductions on

committee members. live coverage this afternoon to tell you about. at 2:30, john entwistle will talk about transportation security included controversial body image scanners. he will speak at the museum at 2:30 eastern on c-span. later a discussion hosted by the association for unmanned vehicles and the u.s. military use of unmanned drones for air strikes across foreign borders is well recognized. unmanned vehicles have been used in japan recently following the tsunami and earthquake and after the oil spill in the gulf of mexico. you can find out more from the national press club this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. eastern. with the senate adjourned for august recess watch booktv all this month in prime time on c-span2. today before they were presidents. starting at 8:00 p.m. theodore roosevelt in the badlands.

at 9:00, reading obama:dream is little hope that the american political tradition. after that jimmy and rosalynn carter. the georgia years:1924-1974. booktv at primetime all this month on c-span2. this weekend on c-span2 frederick olmstead is remembered for designing the u.s. capitol grounds and new york city's central park. justin martin looks at his life as a journalist and abolitionist. booktv stops by a launch party for fox news analyst juan williams's muzzled legal the assault on honest debate. the skull and crossbones argon but pirating in the twenty-first century is the home of night vision goggles and gps units. inside the world of the pirates of somalia. sign up for booktv alerts with

weekend schedules in your in box. seen as a testing ground republican candidate gathering in iowa for grass-roots politics and festivity. starting fears they live from des moines we interview the candidate and take calls about politics and saturday we go to ames for the iowa straw poll where three of the past five winners have won the iowa caucus and two won the presidency. road to the white house and i was this week on c-span. the u.s. ambassador to the democratic republic of congo talk about preparations for the november elections at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars. other speakers include officials from the carter center of democracy program and international foundation for electoral systems. >> welcome on this hot august day.

too that you are not on vacation like other people are supposed to be. i am steve mcdonald of the effort programs and the project leadership ability at the woodrow wilson center. we are happy to host this event this morning working in partnership with the state department. glad to see you are out. it is a subject of interest. the woodrow wilson center is the memorial to former president woodrow wilson and was established in 1968 and the reason is to bring ideas and policy together so this is a good example of that, bringing significant american policy figure, u.s. ambassador to the democratic republic of congo to interact with you and the public. the public's fear.

that the arab spring turned into summer and libya slips further into chaos and egypt is on tenterhooks iraq and afghanistan visit sustained challenges with freestanding democracies. south sudan is fraught with questions of violence and even london facing rioting and mayhem. not much space in the media or consciousness for another crisis or conflict. yet one other country that was long off the world rate our garner's attention mostly focused on gender based violence that is occurring and illegal exploitation of minerals in western markets that allows certain militias and bandits and soldiers to operate freely. that country is the democratic republic of congo. the world's attention turns to the elections in november in that country because they are seen as critical to stabilizing the government and the country and allowing its international partners to move forward and addressing the issues of

violence and development but the question is will be elections provide an answer. will the results the acceptable to the population of congo and empower the government to look at instability in the country like security sector which is in need of reform and unfair distribution of resources to the population and provision of services of education and employment and border security, militia incursions' and degradation in the eastern part of the country. the key question is how will the parties behavior after the elections? will there be a winner-take-all mentality or an out reach to include them in the solution for? that is what we're here to look at. how the united states views the

elections and what actions we are taking as a nation to ensure their fair and transparent and result in dispensation acceptable to all congolese. that is the test of democracy. not with the international community clears the election but whether people have their voices heard and a fair result has emerged. we are honored to have the leading that discussion for us ambassador james entwistle, u.s. envoy to the democratic republic of congo. he was recently appointed as seventeenth ambassador of the united states to that country. he has a wealth of experience under his belt in foreign service in 1981. most recently served as deputy ambassador in thailand but surge throughout a number of countries in the east in africa including central african republic and sri lanka and cambodia.

i will ask the ambassador to give us some remarks and followed by comments from alami cyllah of the international foundation of systems and david pottie. thank you very much, ambassador. >> i am delighted to be here this morning with this distinguished institution like the wilson center. anyone familiar with my academic record in the 60s and 70s laugh at the notion i am speaking at the wilson center. it is a privilege and honor to be u.s. ambassador to the democratic republic of october. what i propose is to make general comments from 30,000 foot altitude. that is how i see things.

rather than subject you as quickly as possible get into a q&a and discussion with you. there are many of you who worked in this country logger than i have. let me cite an important caveat, just finishing a month of leisure in the states. i have been in minnesota and south dakota where elections in other parts of the world are not at the forefront of public discourse. anything that happened in congo in an july i may not be of to date on. let me make that clear. i am especially pleased to share the platform with the carter center and two partners with whom we are working closely and with whom i had the privilege of working around the world. i am glad to be here with them as well. we have to view the upcoming elections in a broader context of what are the united states's

goals and objectives in our relationship? i get asked that question all the time, what is the u.s. up to? my broad overly generalized answer is everything the united states is doing in the democratic republic of congo is designed to ensure what happened in and to that country in nearly 90s and early 2,000s the worst since world war ii to make sure that never happens again and held them recover. that is what the united states is up to win the democratic republic of congo and everything we work on whether it is security sector reform, helping victims of rape, improving the investment climate, all of that is part of this effort to make sure what happened in the 90s and the decade after that doesn't happen again and help them recover from that. we have to look at elections as the piece of that puzzle by helping them develop the ability to manage and run their own

election is part of the puzzle bringing it where it should be. let me just give a general overview how i see things and we can take it from there. like many of you who visited in recent months, tony gambino was out there. i visited a number of registrations sites around the country, some katanga and some by bicycle. i have been impressed by what i have seen, the dedication of election committee officials running registration sites, talking to people standing in the sun for hours to get in and register as clearly as they understand why they are there they understand the importance of it. i have been very impressed with the level of international community's specifically you and support to the process of registration. we have to keep in mind the

losses congolese election commission and the u.s. suffered in a plane crash some months ago that they had to factor in as they do their work. many of you have written reports about the registration process citing the difficulties and challenges, machine didn't work, centers that weren't open on time, etc.. i agree with all of that. despite those inevitable shortcomings and setbacks and rolling thirty-two million residents -- people in the congo given its history is a significant accomplishment in my opinion. regardless of the warts people see in the process that is hugely significant accomplishment. the way the world works as it has one thing is accomplished other things crop up.

other key aspect of the election are under consideration. i believe right now of this week the national assembly is looking in terms of redistricting and all those things we as americans know so well, gerrymandering and things like that. the issue of whether the presidential elections take place at the same time, the discussion in kinshasha and whether the code of conduct will be signed by all significant players. i think it is hugely important significant players abide by it and i hope they will do that. we are through our usaid mission $12 million focusing on two things. we decided not to put our money into the basket fund. we decided to focus on crucial

elements of this process. not just this election but future elections in congo. specific education and what is crucially important is helping train and equip and get out in the countryside congolese of -- congolese observers. the crucial analysis on december 6th the results are announced will be due the congolese people feel that the results adequately represent what happened? in my view the most authentic indication of that is congolese observers forming their opinion. we are working closely through our efforts with the carter center on the ground. it is going well and i am delighted to be doing that. we are hoping it looks good that we will help equip some special

police forces being trained up to help with elections security and that kind of thing and keep in mind as well your tax dollars, we cover about a third of all monusco expenses. and election logistics support as well. let me address a couple issues with kinshasha and the media. the first is there's a perception you hear about all the time that the international community is not supporting these elections at the same level it was five years ago and the international community is abandoning prc. part of our objective here is to gradually develop the congolese ability to manage their affairs and run their own elections. that is what i see happening. there's a lot of support from the international community but in my opinion if this requires

the same level of international support it did five years ago that would be failure and we are not accomplishing our tasks and helping the congo recover. it is perfectly appropriate the level of international community support is less than it was five years of low. the goal is the congolese and can manage their own elections. in the same vein you frequently hear it said the only way the results will be acceptable to anybody is if the international community certifies the results. i disagree completely. part of developing the congolese capacity is essential the election commission designate they take the responsibility to certify the results of the elections. the key element in this process of helping them build their own electoral capacity is the u.s. government and other governments and other institutions who will

be following this closely will speak in public and offer our views. it is essential that the official certification of the results should be elections by congolese and the congo should be served by congolese officials. that is a line of argument i don't have much patience with. generally i am optimistic about where we are but let me make one thing clear. in the context of what we are talking about, role of the international community. i have been impressed with progress so far and optimistic about what will happen between now and november. let me be clear the situation deteriorated. if there's a clear attempt to rig elections or orchestrate campaign by any party to disrupt the process, intimidate candidates for journalists or anything like that i and the u.s. ambassador will be first to speak out whether it is public

or private so my general positive take does not mean i am so blind to think things can't deteriorated. we are following that closely and the u.s. government and others will be first to see them. i want to assure people about that. a lot of this is delivery tough with the republic or private. we will not shrink from that. in a lot of my public comments and meetings with everyone who sees me on the political front, in public comments i have a standard set of talking points. you get this question of law. mr. ambassador, what do you mean? let me run through the points, those of you who ran through my speeches listened to me in person and heard this before.

what do we mean by credible elections in congo? that everyone else will be involved in closely? first and foremost transparency. every journalist in town, we know there's a secret u.s. candidate and my answer is we have one. is name is transparent. that is the key for us. it means an environment in which candidates campaign, voters vote, votes are tallied and announced in an open transparent process. the climate in which candidates track for and campaign without the hassle, all candidates have fair access to media and related to that than the media can do their job, crucial blood in any electoral process without being hassled or intimidated. another key aspect is men.

something i added in recent weeks before i left to go to my standard stump speech you just heard about what does credible election mean. as steve talked about, reaction to results are going to be crucial from this point. i must say it has bothered me to see a few key players, the only measure of a free and fair elections is a guideline which i think is an irresponsible thing to say in public. in a number of countries i have the privilege of working for a number of years i noticed the key benchmark of democratic development is one candidate will say i lost. i am deeply disappointed but i accept the results and thinking about my country at the nation i

will do everything i can to support the winner. in congo if the results are credible, i have been encouraging a lot of people along those lines to have a successful candidates say that kind of thing in my opinion is an incredibly powerful thing. i have seen it happen in other countries and if that kind of thing happens in my opinion it will be a crucial -- that democracy is taking root in congo. losers will say i lost but i support the process and i will try again in five years. i have gone too long. let me conclude with one observation. i have been on leave the last month ruminating on what i learned in my first month in congo. almost every election related conversation i have weather with people standing at the

registration center, you get into discussions about the elections with people. it is a common assumption that this will happen again in five years. people say 2006 was tough. we will do it again in five years. mike guy wasn't successful. hopefully will be in five years. just defect there will be another set of elections in five years is a common assumption is a positive sign. it will make it increasingly difficult for any leader or politician to support the process. what i have been encouraged to see, increasingly congolese are talking about when the next elections occur rather than if they occur. that gives me cause for hope and optimism and that thought process describes it. in terms of helping our

congolese friends slowly but steadily recovered from circumstances that the rest of us can only imagine. that is why the u.s. stance with the democratic republic of congo and i am humbled to represent the united states of america and the and 11. [applause] drc 11. >> i will make the introductions for our next speaker that the same time and have them proceed in order. first speaker will be alami cyllah. happy to have him here. he is director -- international foundation for electoral systems region and has 25 years' experience. i have run across him in sierra leone and god knows where. he has been all over the continent with an immense amount of experience. david pottie and i met for the

first time today but he has long experience as well. he is running the election related projects for the carter center since 2002. he spent seven years searching for his doctoral dissertation in south africa. he received a ph.d. in political science from the university of toronto and covered the elections in 2006 in the congo. they are going to be implementing part of the u.s. funded program for monitoring and evaluating and observing the election is out there. they will respond as they will. alami cyllah, please. you may choose. podium work --

.. >> i am very pleased to say that most of the programs that we have run in the drc have been funded by the u.s. government. lately, we have funded from the

germans, and canada. right now, we are funded by the u.s. government working on civil voter education in the congo. and we have seen exactly what we thought will happen. and that is citizens getting quite interested and take responsibility and reactive to the recent elections. drc elections for 2011, what do we have at stake was the ambassador did mention a few of those. but what i think we have to look at what we have at stake here is the stability of congo itself. the invitation for that is, for that stabilization in the legal process will stabilize the country. and more so it will destabilize the great lakes region. the potential for a spillover,

if there's any balance in congo, to the great lakes region is extreme high. and we've seen it in other parts of africa, the number of refugees that spilled over to both donna and liberia. we hope that this will not happen in congo. the stability of the country for the region with the destabilize that country would be very grateful for the region. and losing the democratic momentum from 2006 is extremely, extra make a difficult one to accept. and, therefore, looking at 2006, i think there are some minimum standards that were set in 2006 now we have to be sure that those minimum standards are met at this point in time, which gives it a lot more audience for all of us who are observing the elections processes in congo.

and what are some of those minimum standards? that were observed. the elections of 200 2006 were really stable. there was little violence on election day. a great deal of support of course from the international community, results weeding free. results weeding to represent the voices and wishes of the voters. and, therefore, there should be a minimum standards i think also for the 2011th elections. generally widespread participation of the citizens in 2006. we saw like over 80% of the regular voters did go out to vote. can we replicate that? i think those are some of the things we should be looking for. of course, given all those, there are quite a number of challenges. ambassador also mention the challenges that we have for congo. and those caught challenges

include logistics. elections have been difficult due to logistical problems in the drc. they are huge country in africa. in 2006, for example, it took approximately six months for the support from the international community to be able to distribute the sensitive materials to the various areas of the country. given the constitutional framework now, that is going to be reduced to 25 days. that is a serious challenge that we need to look at. inclusiveness, which the ambassador did mention, how inclusive are we going to be with this process. the reason, of course constitutional amendment, given just a one term, winner -- sorry. could give a little challenge to

a country as wide and vast and difficult as congo, because there could be the risk of running people, voting on their sexual grounds, or tribal grounds or regional grounds, rather than looking at the national. that is the challenge that obviously the citizens of congo, the friends of congo will need to begin to look at, that will come from that. transparency and credibility, which the ambassador mention, extremely extra import. how transparent is the electoral process? from the political parties in the process, civil society in the process, religious in the process, and, of course, very important to women's inclusion in the process of that elections would be extremely, and that could be a challenge for congo.

of course, financial support. the ambassador came to a very proper realization of proper statement that, in fact, we should be giving the opportuni opportunity, ned to various african to conduct their own elections. however, i think the parents also of stepping back and not getting the kind of explanation to particularly from the u.n., to the congolese in terms of what needs to be done and what is expected, could pose obviously gives status, we don't care, a stepping back and not worrying about what could happen the day after the election. i think those are the kinds of things we need be looking at, and making sure that the message goes out to the citizens of congo the international committees, it's not pulling back but, in fact, giving the

congolese room. entry commitment to the stakeholders. what is the relationship between electoral commission and the political parties? what is the relationship between the elections commission and civil society quick the religious organizations and all the other stakeholders involved in the country that have interest? egg us at the end of the day after the elections, it's those people have to take the question of what ever it election results that are announced. legality of the process, we still need to observe the legal aspect as to what those elections will be. and, of course, the results to be announced, and doesn't meet minimum standards of elections at administrations. i'm looking for two the 2011th elections. we have about five key recommendations. for example, the electoral

commission it released operational plan and demonstrate that it is serious and legally ready to address the citizens and various stakeholders making sure they are part of the process. because anytime you leave any of those out, the chances, question in the elections are greater. so i think inclusive the way the election commission needs to take a step and really include everybody. of course taking the international community needs to meet their financial obligations that they have given. [inaudible] they have done well in trying to give that kind of support. [laughter] but i think the whole international community and the commitments to the electoral courses in congo is extremely, extremely important in the congolese agree to get the kind of elections that we all are

looking for. and that his election that is free, fair, transparent, that meets minimum standards. because i think the citizens of congo do deserve that. there needs to be also electoral gains of 2006, that more elections scheduled immediately after this elections. we have to look at the process, of how engaged our week in italy after this election is over, or what needs to be done. somebody once said, tip o'neill i'm tempted to say, i think i'm right, that preparing for the next elections begin the day after you announce the results of the last elections. and i think, i think this is extremely important if a new elections for congo after the general elections are going to be quick. i think what needs to be done in

terms of lessons learned, looking at, do we need to look at the legal reform of that country, that also needs to be taken into consideration and electoral commission needs to really look forward. there needs to be, you know, and enforce long-term electorate observation to ensure that the civil society and the citizens of congo will be involved in the electoral process, and we'll accept the results of those elections. from international community is good, but those observers sometimes go at the light moment of election. they look at elections as a process and not an event. it is extremely, extremely import and. where you begin even during the registration process, the campaign period. these are all of the things that need to be looked at in a

pre-electoral mood to be able to assure that, and, of course, calling on political parties. if they are involved in any political violence or messages that are not proper or so we have to be sure that all of those are addressed properly. we have to be sure that the political parties are involved, and it is a process not a short-term engagement. and, therefore, we should give that kind of support to, not when the elections process, before the election or during the elections, but also after the elections. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, almami. david? >> good morning, everybody. likewise, a pleasure to be here. i am, as my introduction sick

and i'm the associate front of the democracy program at the carter center, based in atlanta. the carter center is, as you may know, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, nonpartisan. so i want to acknowledge that. an odd way to describe, we are pro-peace. non-many things. among several of our other programs, carter center is known for international election observations to this point. we have service and 83 elections in 34 countries. including the 2006 elections in the democratic republic of congo. we have thankfully received kind financial support from the united states government to conduct, as the ambassador was saying, activities before the elections in two main areas,

international election observation and technical support to domestic observers. i will say a few things about both of those. perhaps just a quick word about the way in which the cars in absurd election, there's often a lot of popular awareness and in some cases misinformation as to what constitutes the act of observing an election. i think perhaps one of the most misleading that is currently popular is the use of this word certification in which it is sometimes implied that international election observers somehow or other certified the election process, or certified the election results. we don't particularly see ourselves as doing that. certification tends to carry a certain, both have a pejorative

consultation but i also think carries a certain amount of officialdom that is not necessarily, and we don't see part of our mandate. carter center has a non-government organization, definitely places an emphasis on being invited to observe and election and participate and assist in the political process such as an election. we have been invited by the sudanese as we were by, say, the 2006 elections. beyond that we also feel that it's important to meet with the primary political actor of any electoral process, innocents to ensure that there is a broader sense of political welcome. and we have done that through a variety of assessments to the drc to meet not just with members of the political party in power, not just members of

the government, but also leaders of other political parties, civil society organizations. indeed, international community. for these elections, the center, as i said, will be deploying international observers. we're providing orientation to an initial group of 10 long-term observers today, tomorrow, and friday. today is tuesday? wednesday, thursday, friday. they have been arriving over the course of the past two days and we have a core team in place. they will be joined by an additional 10 long-term observers who will arrive at a second group in september. and much as almami was saying, we do recognize and place a premium on trying to be present for as much of the electoral process as possible. in an ideal world, this could

translate into almost continuous election observation, if one wanted to be in place, in person, for all elements of project planning, demarcation, after he delimitation, drafting and discussion and debate around the electoral law, the legal framework for elections. as well as those elements that tend to happen closer to election day, whether it is voter registration, and, of course, the political campaigns. in our case there are things that one can -- we've not been present for the voter registration, but the shortly our ways in which one can investigate and try to test the credibility and completeness and accuracy of the voters list here and we certainly will be doing so. the long-term observers are mobile. they are deployed throughout the

country. they visit many locations over the course of what will be between three, three to four months of deployment. they will be joined closer to election day by some 40, usually called short-term observers, for reasons that all of you have been to the drc will now, travel across the country is difficult. so we will call the medium-term observers. they will be deployed for some 20 days or so in an effort to accommodate the inevitable travel difficulties that will arise. the second part of our work is, ambassador entwistle mentioned, to provide technical support to domestic observers. in the case of our program, we are looking to provide training and technical support in areas of reporting, statement

drafting, media relations, communication of messages to some 6000 domestic observers. these are part of a much larger anticipated body of domestic observers. discussions among civil society earlier this year has produced a number of potential targets. the most, perhaps plausible, hard to say not also board is quite been lined up, but a plausible objective isn't to try to at least one domestic observers in every polling station, some 62000 polling stations. argument in an ideal world, civil society would join hands and everybody would be part of one big effort in the real world that almost never happens. and there will be deadly multiple nonpartisan domestic

civil society organizations, networks, many overlapping networks who will be deploying observers. and i think i absolutely agree that defining domestic observers can often, and should be, the most important assessment from a nonpartisan point of view, and certainly should be taken into consideration along with the observations of political party representatives, or candidate witnesses, who also have a right to be present at polling stations. one important way in which i think that international and domestic observers can collaborate, we certainly plan to do so, is due the fact that at least in our case, the carter center, we try to place a premium on long-term election observation. this isn't always necessary the focus of over the priority for domestic observers, or in some cases they even lacked the

resources or have chosen not to focus on longer-term pre- and postelection assessment. and so again, much of what almami was saying, we share the view that the elections are part of a broader election cycle of me disagreed, albeit linked up, constituent parts. in terms of how we arrived at an assessment of an election, we do invoke the line which i've election standards. we do so from a particular perspective, that of international democratic election standards, which are premised on a country's own commitment, democratic republic of congo is signatory to many international treaties, agreements, and declarations. which operate at different levels of international law, which would establish for the government of the drc certain obligations, these are the

fundamental, political and democratic principles. in turn, the congo's own national law, national institutions and procedural frameworks provide a second register against which one can assess the election process. certainly can be the case, and often is, that there may be mismatched or some lack of synchronicity on the finer points between the international framework that the country is obliged itself to, and the way in which the domestic framework has been articulated or engaged in, is articulated. perhaps just to gesture rack words in terms of some issues that were up most serious concern in 2006, in which it certainly inform our assessment as we move forward in the election cycle towards november,

first i think was centered around the elements of logistics planning, and in particular, management on the part of the election management body. in virginia as a relay to the voters list. the management of the voters list is a crucial element. it's on par with the training, recruitment and training of election workers, pre-positioning of election equipment, materials, ballot papers, inventory and stock control and so forth. the voter list can provide in, let's say, a very right opportunity for electoral fraud. it certainly was the case that there were abuses associated with several categories of voters in the management system

for the voters list in 2006. the carter center looked at this very carefully and compared to the results, and we found that especially in the second round runoff, there have been significant abuse. some of the special categories, this abuse amounted to about 400,000 votes. not a small amount, but compared to the overall number of registered voters, 25 million. in a second round of 65% voter turnout. when we looked at the distribution of where those likely abuses occurred, especially in places that have 1995 or more than 100% voter turnout, these are pretty obvious red flags. based on our analysis, we felt

that both parties have manipulated results and/or abuse elements of the voters list. but in relatively equal measure. in some sense this as an echo in the 2008 elections in ghana, where the head of the election commission also noted john said in the fray of the runoff, look, come to me with proof and then we can talk. and it was a bit of a game of chicken. in in that a candidate came with any proof. a very close election, a very close runoff. came off well at the end of the day. a secondary out that i think has potential for conflict, in particular should political parties and candidates choose to politicize the technical

operation of the preparations for the elections. is this the whole realm of the positioning, location, many of polling stations, as well as the recruitment and training of election workers. it's all well and good to certainly to have domestic observers and political party agents, or witnesses in polling stations, but it is also i think a fundamental lesson from 2006 that well-trained polling station officials can prove to be absolutely crucial. in particular, through the closing counting and eventual tabulation of results. the tabulation process was an extremely weak point in the first round of the elections in 2006. there were many improvements that were introduced with the runoff election. and we should hope that many of those lessons have been retained, and will be in evidence on election day.

perhaps one final point, in terms of what we as both international and domestic observers, and people are interested in the drc can really contribute is to remind ourselves of the importance of having the ability to observe and verify these processes. i think this really does, comrade to the ambassador's name of transparency. it is often treated as a buzzword, which it can be, but i think the principle of transparency can also be evident in what may have seemed to you, the training of workers, how important can that be, or the control of the voters list, or the sighting of polling stations. anyone of those individual ingredients may seem to be excessively election nerdish, or policy geekish. it is, but taken together, this

many of constituent parts, as assessed against the national legal framework, as assessed against the congress international obligations, does provide us with a verifiable means through which we can assess your it holds us accountable as observers, and i think ultimately will build in an important mechanism the drc itself, for the government and the election members abide to be held accountable. people of the drc and the broader community. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, david. thank you all for your presentations. i think you set the stage for a good discussion here. lots of information. lots of insights there. even the expansion of the vocabulary. i mean, i am now locked into elections nerdish. i don't know about the rest of the. this is remarkable.

most of you know the rules. we will open it up for discussion. we have microphones on either side. when i recognize you please wait for a microphone because we are being broadcast, webcast live, and we need to have you on the microphone to be heard. second of all we welcome any question. we welcome very short statements. i know you all come with a lots of patient and a lot of information and experience yourself. and it's quite all right do something to say, let's keep it short. so what we will do is field question. you can drag them at anyone, at the ambassador or trendy or david. or just to the panel and jenna. so shall we begin? a show of hands. i have one right here. >> thank you. tony, independent consultant. thanks to all the panelists for really rich excellent presentations. i was lucky enough to spend much of june and july in the congo. i got back just less than the

legal -- less than a week ago. i have two questions. first, i want to stress the importance of this concept of transparency that i don't think it is a buzz term at all. i'm glad you all of you use it. and initial test now will be how we look at the voter rolls. i agree with ambassador entwistle that registering 32 million congolese is an accomplishment, but having under age, how many are dead? how may we know this is a concern? went ahead with and in a few months ago, he spoke about the process of publishing those roles. i do not know where that process stands today but i am certain that we do not have published rules for all of us as. and i believe we are well behind schedule. so i would like any comments people would have to make on have to do that and how to make that fit, particularly i think

what david was saying in the context of international standards and meeting some of the minimum requirements that almami spoke about. .. >> al ma'ammy talked about some of the ways the schedule has squeezed between 2006 and 2011. i will tell you that now, as of a week ago, every close observer that i talked to across the

spectrum does not believe technically that it is possible to have the kinds of elections that you all endorseed in late november. >> uh-huh. >> but this will create a political crisis in the congo, that is certain. any comments that you have on how to handle what is, i think, sure to be an extraordinarily difficult but essential challenge would be appreciated. thank you. >> thank you. you took two questions. i'll only take one more. right on the edge there before you get some responses. >> yeah, i'm goinged to same way. >> identify yourself. >> i'm jack, i'm from congo, i'm a taxpayer of america. >> thank you, jack. >> i'm surprised to hear from the ambassador that he's doing very well. because he's the only person who knows exactly how there is that number.

he's hiding, and giving access to the position. there is an issue of the code of conduct. that code was not signed by the opposition. he's still struggling to get opposition signature. he presented it in meetings some time back. at that time, the opposition quit the meeting. so the concern is the constitution i'll quote which is supposed to certify the election is not just appointed, i'm very surprised to hear from mr. ambassador that the commission is going to certify the results. >> okay. thank you very much. responses? reactions?

>> that on? >> yes. >> i'm glad to go first. you said the constitutional court, you are right. you got me. the larger point that i was making it's the congoese responsible to certify whichever government does it. where are the electoral rules? will they be published? to be frank, i've been away. i'll look into it. you talk about the software. it talks about the important, and just encouraging them to keep doing the difficult but essential tasks when it comes to currency. politics aside, it's going to be difficult to meet the timeline for technical reasons. if a determination is made that the elections have to be postponed, obviously that's a

congoese decision. the key factor will be how is is it done? if it seems like the elections are being postponed because someone is pulling a fast one to their own advantage, that's one thing. if pastor melunda and others explain why for technical reasons they can't get it done, who would argue with that if it's done in that fashion. i yield to anyone that knows more about nigeria. i understand in their elections, even on election day itself, the equivalent came out and said, you know, we need another week. they were able to do that. if the delay -- and this is a hypothetical. i have no inside knowledge there's going to be a delay. if it is couched and it is one for terms of technical reasons after consulting all the parties and we need whatever the length of time is, that's perfectly responsible. i don't see any ground for objection to that.

again, that's hypothetical. as you saw when pastor melinda was here, he has a tight schedule, he's very optimistic about it. you know, let's see. >> thank you. david? >> thank you very much. i think one the thing that is we need to look at also is again what we continue to see looking at elections, not the event, but the process. i think there are so many things that we have to look at now. that should be a lessoned learns. for example, i mean this commission was just set up, i think, in february of this year. when, in fact, in the moment where something could have been done to begin to look at lessons learned and how do we move forward? and the law reform and all of those looking at those. everything is dropped until the last moment looking at elections. then we comment and being able to achieve the same goals.

in nigeria, for an example, i think what happened again when we talk about transparency is the decision by the chairman of the electoral commission and his colleagues to be open to the society and to the various stakeholders every step of the way, starting at even announcing the election leading into the election. some of us, in fact, worried that it would not be able to do it in april. but with the support and getting the support from the society, they were able to do it. and it is exactly because of their transparency and their being fair that's when they decided to postpone those elections for another week. there wasn't enough. we have countries like ghana with the electoral commission is very much -- the electoral commission is very independent. that has not come with a night. we started working with a guy in the electoral commission in 1993, and red in 1998. and that's independence and way

that the commission was appoint and the fact that is you cannot fire a commissioner, particularly the chairman until he has to be there until they are retired. these are all -- unless he commits reason. these are all of the things that we need to look at with the electoral commission leading. it should be for us to help the congoese after the scenario to look at what is there and where we can go. >> maybe a couple of additional points. tony, i agree completely in terms of the importance of being able to assess a complete and public list of registered voters and know it has -- it's not available publicly at this point. the figures as of the 27th of july range in terms of the treatment and for the

centralization and tabulation of verified voters from the providences range from a low of 78.5% verified to a high of 100% from bacongo, it's the only providence that is complete. there are problems with corrupt cds, lost disks, and electronic voter registration manifests themselves strongly in the drc. whether or not the list, the final list will get to the announced figure of 32,240,640 remains to be scene. but absolutely -- i know. the timely release is important as well. when i was referring to some of the ways of looking at or trying to assess the role that the voters list played in the 2006 elections, we were only able to

make that determination in late november, early december of 2006 because the data that was pertinent to the july first round election was not made available by the july election. i think that also highlights the importance of long term assessment, waiting until the process is complete before arriving at a final judgment. if we had known some of the -- some of the data or some of the issues around that performance in july, we might have made slightly different pre and post election statements. certainly being there longer term and through the second round enabled us to modify that assessment as we got more information. second point, in terms of the code of conduct, you know, i agree it is important. it's important to note there are

494 political parties registered. 478 for present at the end of the july at the parliamentary event. getting agreement from 278 people is a little more difficult than getting agreement of five people. as we know, five people -- two people is difficult. certainly some parties are bigger than others, certainly some parties are more important in terms of being relevant or producing credible, relevant candidates. i agree wholeheartedly getting agreement among those primary actors is going to be very important and shouldn't be under estimated. i would point out that we did have codes of conduct in 2006. we had confidence building measures and all sorts of integrated forms of management. and yet we still had the two leading candidates after the first round, fighting in the streets and exchanging artillery

fire fighting for the announcements and the results. i think that congoese live with that kind of violence every day. that should be formost in our minds that confidence building measures, yes, are important, but there needs to be a whole other menu of options and activities that bind these actors to what will be a collective outcome through the elections. >> okay. thank you. all right. let's take another round. i saw a question right here. >> i forget the administration. from what i've seen from the previous -- from all three speakers that we care about the elections in the congo because it is good for peace internationally. it's also good for peace in the region, which is very important for international investors and bilateral partners of the congo.

but i'm very worried about that assumption, the assumption that conflict were to originate from, necessarily from national elections or something. the way the prime source of conflict is that is my source of worry. in afghan societies, it's not really the lack of democratically elected national government that cause conflicts or puts countries intortor mail. -- into turmoil. if you go deep, the lack of accountable governance, that leads to frustrations among segments of the population. that leads them to a line along ethnic lines to take ethnic likes which eventually is the national levels on the outside elections or any other time. if we really do care about conflict and care at the average citizens be the democratic congo or whatever, we must try to look at what are the prime sources of

this listing? many my view, i would think the international -- if that we do care about that is then we should look at ways of ensuring effective evolution of power in this power in this country and societies. it is a crucial issue. the international committee needs to support the conflict through constitutional reforms to ensure it is the evolution of power at the local levels. and also before that, being sure that elections also are hard at the local and municipal levels in the free in the week. this would resolve the marginalization and frustrations. >> thank you. and they extent it right back there. and then derrick right down here in front. >> thank you, steve. i'm will davis with united nations office here in dc. just a wick -- quick question for the ambassador. does the u.n. peace keeping

mission have the resources necessary to carry out the role that's been asked to do this support of the elections particularly since the indian contingent has announced they are taking home their helicopters. are they going to need to divert resources from the already mandate occupying activity of protection of civilians in order to help on the election front? thank you. >> thank you. yes, sir. right in front. >> herbert. i wonder whether one could get the members of the panel to talk about politics. in other words, why have we moved from a top round -- two round to a one round system? why are the election lists unavailable?

isn't it a little bit almost unrealistic and perhaps even demeaning for the congoese to assume which is the -- seems to me the assumption behind some of the statements made that this is all inefficiency. coming late to the table. as if there's no system behind all of this. and i think if you were to pay more attention to politics, the picture that might emerge would perhaps be less pleasant. but would that at least compliment the congoese actors for knowing what they were doing for their own purposes. >> okay. thank you. let's deal with the question about the primary source of

conflict and evolution of power to the local? >> i agree with your analysis. that in many countries what really is driving conflict is dissatisfaction at local levels with local lack of resources and politicians and that kind of thing. i would not suggest that national democratic elections immediately solve such things. but they are a crucial part in solving it. remember in my comments, i talked about the large mosaic. you raised something that i should have mentioned in my comments. coming down the pike, we have local elections, municipal elections, whatever you want to call them. in many ways, i think those rounds will be more important than the coming rounds in terms of effecting the lives of individual congoese all over the country. times are hard budgetwise. i'm hoping that the u.s. government will play an active role in those elections which frankly will probably not get the same level of international attention. as i said, i would argue would

be more important in the lives of congoese. >> just to go back to the others. >> that is very encouraging from the ambassador looking at local elections and hoping that's going to support that. for those of us technicians in elections with those of us we've heard after the national election, everything goes back and nobody case about the local election. until our people are able to associate with their own local elected people, i think it's going to be difficult. and, of course, you are absolutely right. that brings some of the dissatisfaction with folks. but i mean we -- so you mentioned about the political. it's difficult to talk about elections and other politics of it. we'd look at the technical angle of it. but we are absolutely right. i mean i mentioned one area when during my talk in terms of

moving from the two round system to a one round system. that's a challenge. because there is a reason why in many countries they have the tour system. it's exactly to prevent the ethnicity type of voting so that you'll be forced to reach out to older ethnic groups in a second round to get votes. but i think, you know, again it's also expensive for, you know, two round system. and so given the fact that the, you know, the support coming from particularly the international committee may not be there from terms of the resources, sometimes it's a matter of convenience. sometimes, of course, it's a matter of politics. where, you know, it's easier. but then the disadvantage to that also as i mention is that you will get a minoritily

government. that may not be accepted by all. that's a challenge that would pose difficulty down the road. >> yeah, i guess i feel i can speak pretty frankly. yes, i think absolutely there is direct political cullability. the government dragged it's feet on the establishment of sanie, it was appointed extremely late and in close proximity to the election date. the government of the drc also sought and has the right to seek to control more of election operations planning and budgets. and that has been achieved. they will fund 60% of the election. cost with the international

donor providing the other 40%. the drc has only released about 5% of it's funding commitment thus far. the late appointment resulted in the extremely late and terribly tightly compressed conduct of voter registration which has occurred within a terribly tight calendar which leaves no room for margin. the electoral calendar itself was announced late in the process. all of these look like technical operations at one level. of course, there are political reasons behind why they happened. so you -- on top that one introduced the constitutional amendment that changes the electoral system for the election of the president from 50% plus one majortarian run off to a single plurality. so the election of an electoral system also has, you know, both

have origins and enduring political effects. and whether this constitutes abuse of the power of office, power of incumbency is for one to decide and argue about. i think that you know, that conduct of the package, does it seal the fate of the elections being a political lockup and, you know, technical knock out victory for president cabela? perhaps. that's been a discussion and with my senior management as to whether or not the carter center should even observe these elections. my standard answer to my bosses and external audience is, well, we reserve the right to pull out should the conditions appear to be such that, you know, there is

not even a chance at some kind of credible contest. it may also be the case that even a contest that is greatly lacking in credibility may still be worth observing in terms of witness, documents what has happened, and being present to support other issues. and another hat of the carter center, we've been working for many years also with u.s. government support and that of other governments to support human rights defenders, we've established a human rights house based that has more than 150 human rights organization members, we've worked to take up cases of intimidation, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and death of human rights activist, journalist, media owners, and so they are not unaware of what is often a life and death political reality in the drc. >> thank you.

thank you. ambassador, i'm going to give you another shot. so your response on the politics question and don't forget the united nations. >> yes. good question. i find many times when you talk to them, it's a violation of the sovereignty. they need to do more. i think you are right to highlight the role. it's in the middle like all u.n. organizations that are driven. budget times are tough. roger meese is an old friend of mine, he was my first boss 30 years ago. he spends a lot of his time on budget figures and trying to figure these things out. as you noted on the military side of the operation, helicopters are being taken back by contributing countries and so on. so the long way goes to say it's

in a massive budget crunch even without having to provide elections and so forth and so on. i think they are going to be stretched. i'm impressed with the dedication. they are going to be stretched to do their jobs and someone mentioned the vast daily challenge of getting from point a to point b anywhere in the congo. in terms of how they deploy their resources, there's been a lot of discussion about that. people have said, you know, there could be post election violence, so they should move a budge of their troops out of the key. i personally don't believe all of the troops are there for good reasons. the fact remains they are looking closely at how do they deploy the troops to other areas, working with the congoese who have the primary responsibility for election security. those are going to be tough decisions, because they have no new troops coming in in terms of expanding numbers.

obviously they are troop rations. as with many aspects of budget issues on the whole process, we are dealing with very -- we and others in the u.n. are deals with very mixed budget that may not expand as much as we would hope. i must say i'm a fan. i think they do a great job. they have, you know, a massive set of challenges. so this, i think i said in my comments, but in the comes months as we watch things closely. if i see, you know -- if i see malfeasance, cheating, whatever you want to call it, i'll be the first to speak out. i was talking about things like clear political manipulation and stuff like that. you mention an assumption. i forget exactly what it was. i must say in talking about assumptions in what's happening in the congo and so on. i talked in my remarks about oh they have to have -- the international community needs to do more. i find there's almost unspoken assumption among many of the --

behind many interactions on elections in congo that somehow the congoese aren't capable of managing their own affairs. i disagree with that complete. in my month i've had the privilege of being the u.s. ambassador, i've met some of the most amazing people in the 30 years i've worked around the world. we need to help the brave, dedicated congoese get resources and training to do the jobs themselves. >> okay. thank. we'll bring it to a close now. i don't think we have time for any more questions. we have to cut off because the broadcast cuts off. we have a couple of minutes if anyone would like to have closing remarks. >> well, i first particularly what i would recommend is the fact that given what we see on the ground now, it's a real big

challenge for congo. we should be able, and hopefully be able to talk to the congoese. after this set of difficult moments in the history of that country. let us hope that things go well enough that we'll be able to get back there and be able to talk to them beginning to reform and looking at lessons learned to move forward in the democratic process. and also i'm hoping that the political landscape will be open enough for all participants, not only in civil society, to be able to express themselves and be able to complain and raise the issues that are extremely important to them. that in itself, i mean we always see one or two elections and it does not democracy make a process of talking to everybody, a process of allows the landscape to be open for people to express themselves.

that makes democracy. and i hope we will be committed to and encourage not only the government, but the various political parties and the various stakeholders in congo to continue in that election as they move forward. thank you. >> yeah, i think i echo those remarks and the defense why i think the elections are so important is that if you remember the threshold of what would constitute success in 2006. it was largely predicated on, well, what was the alternative? the alternative as the ambassador has said was the worlds worst conflict since world war ii. and in some ways the most silent or hidden by it's very magnitude and size and the fact that few -- relatively few paid attention. you know, makes it very difficult to get your head around the concept of, you know,

what are the sources of that conflict, what sustains and fuels that conflict, much of which continues today? and what will constitute success in an electoral or peaceful democratic context as measured against the obvious and daily horrors of that conflict. in some ways, the congo has achieved a great deal. through a national voter registration exercise which was one the few national binding events in congoese postindependence history, conducted a successful constitutional referendum, and in some ways, constitutioned a successful election in 2006. the bar is and should be higher this time around. and i think that that accountability, hopefully you've heard something from all of us, that points to some ways in which we are all trying to hold ourselves accountable, whether as a government or as

nongovernmental actors to try to support that process. i don't have any illusions that there are doing to be massive problems. whether or not the sum of those massive problems will be enough to totally under mine the credibility remains to be scene. certainly hope that that is not the case. but we will try to refer to evidence. and through observation in order to make that case. thanks. >> okay. thank you. well, i -- this has been really enlightening. i think it sets the stage for all of us to be able to watch in a much more formed fashion. the next few months unfold. the months that will be fraught with danger and tension as we move towards the elections. i think one the key points that comes out in my mind about what's happening in congo and getting to the point of

addressing the real causes of conflict is to look beyond these elections, not just to one five years hints but to those local and prudential elections which are critical, and did not come off in the election sickle, and i think that's contributed to the violence that we've seen over the last five or six years. i hope that's something that we'll all push for. and i'm encouraged here from the ambassador says about the united states government looking at supporting those. with that said, will you join me in thanking our panelist? [applause] >> and yourselves. [applause] [applause] >> coming up this afternoon at 4 eastern on c-span, a discussion hosted by the association for unmanned vehicle systems international. while the u.s. military's use of unmanned drones for performing airstrikes across the foreign borders is well recognized, unmanned vehicles have been used

in japan following the tsunami and earthquake. live coverage from the national press club at 4 eastern again on c-span. with the senate adjourned for the summer break, watch booktv all this month on primetime in c-span2.

>> republican presidential canned days stopping by the iowa state fair. tomorrow morning a conversation with mitt romney. live on 11:30 on c-span. friday herman cain, mr. mccoter, ron paul, and tim pawlenty. and we'll return live at 5 in the afternoon to talk with michele bachmann, that'll be live on c-span. standard and poor's on monday cut the aaa rating of

government-backed mortgage financier fannie mae and freddie mac. after the downgrade, the chairman discussed the downgrade at an event hosted by the chautauqua constitution in new york. this is about an hour and 10 minutes. >> i thank you very much. i've often thought with that checkered employment career, you are going to introduce me as a guy who's had a lot of different jobs but somehow always manages to get another one. when i was asked to come and speak at chautauqaua, i decided you are my kind of people. you start at 10:30 in the morning. i've always thought the early bird gets the worm is told from the bird's perspective, not from the worms. on behalf of those of us who like to start later, i'm

delighted to be here. things have gotten more interesting in the economy in the last few days. i must admit part of this is maybe my fault. if you hang around washington long enough, you get to know people. i thought it might help generate interest if a few friends of mine in washington and wall street could shake things up. i think they got carried away last thursday and friday. before thursday it was noted, the deficit debate was not democracy's finest hour as the old churchill saying goes, americans make the right choice after they've tried everything else. now that the stock market has unsettled everybody's nerves, i know there will be some who can't keep away from the blackberry and ipad. to help all of us and cut down on the background noise, i've come up with a plan. every time the market goes up today while i'm talking by 100 points or more, it's thumbs up.

when it goes down by 100 points or more, smack your head. let's practice. everybody's blackberry's ready? people on this side of the audience are the happy people. they are going to be responding when the market goes up, and people on this side are going to be the unfortunate ones who respond when the market goes down. are you ready? okay, the market is up by 100 points. very nice. very nice. a lot of blackberry owners over here. on this side, unfortunately, the market just went down by 100 points. very good, very good. for those of us don't use blackberries or ipads, there will be sales men available afterwards. we'll also have teenagers that will show you how to turn them into game boys. everyone knows we're in the middle of the worst economic downturn in 80 years.

what surprised us is how long it's taken to recover. the combination of a slow recovery and deficit growing to unmanageable levels, coupled with an apparent inability or unwillingness to solve either problem has caused many americans to worry about our future. after a career in the public and private, i'm optimistic we will make it. in the interest of full disclosure that you should know that every crisis manager is optimistic. it's the only way to get through the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that you face. to understand why the future of the economy looks better, start with a discussion about housing, it's historic role in the economy, the role that it played in getting us into the problems we face today, and the policy choices that we have to make about the future role of housing and the economy. we'll explore the obstacle that the economic recovery presented by the deficit and talk about

one the most significant factors that will not only positively affect housing in the future, but also the economy generally, population growth. the most stunning number that i've discovered in preparing for this discussion involves population growth. stay tuned. you'll know more later. a significant part of that population growth is derived from legal immigration. while it's clear that educating immigrants and all of our children is increasingly important, a critical factor in our past economic success is the role that immigrants have played in the development of the intellectual capital in this country. the question is whether we are making it more difficult for this to continue in the future. let's start with the role of housing and the economy. the numbers tell it all. if you go back as far as 1959, you find that housing is typically accounted for 16% of our gross domestic product. peaking not surprisingly at 19% in 2006, and falling to 15% in

the first quarter of 2011. housing has typically led in economic recovery, but this recession is different. housing led the financial crisis and is following the recovery, not leading it. to understand the policy question that is we face about what support that we want or need to provide to housing going forward, it's helpful to understand how housing is financed in this country. years ago, you got a mortgage from your friendly local banker, savings and loan, and they kept it as an asset, collected your monthly payments, returned your note, and canceled your mortgage when you paid it off. the problem is limits the amount of capital to the amount that the banks and s&les have available. to deal with the problem in the depression, fannie mae was formed to buy mortgages from lenders for cash and turn around and raise cash by selling the

securities, selling securities, secured by pools of these mortgage to general investors. so a rich investor or a central bank and a country aboard right not want your individual mortgage as security, but they saw a pool of mortgages as an attractive investment, because the risk of pooled together and diffused. it also helped that fannie mae guaranteed the credit risk and agreed to buyback any mortgage that defaulted. the government stood behind the guarantee because fannie at that time was a government corporation. fannie was privatized in 1968 by president johnson in an attempt to cut the government's deficit. to show how quaint the times were, the federal budget was about $160 billion. that's not the deficit. it's the entire budget. freddie mac was formed in 1970 to provide competition. the two have competed vigorously for the last 40 year.

while now private companies, investors assume should either run out of capital, the federal government should support them. it was the implicit guarantee. while the official washington position was not so, the assumption turned out to be correct. even with fannie and freddie and business, many institutions still kept a large number of mortgages on their books. but by 1999, residential mortgage debt outstanding exceeded all total bank deposits. at the same time, as the dot-com double was building and then bursts, investors around the world for looking for something else to invest in. housing started to attract attention as house prices began to expand faster than incomes in 1999. this is actually my favorite slide. if you ever wanted to see a bubble in action, here it is. unfortunately, very few people watching recognized the bubble

for what it was. which is the problem with bubbles. they are always obvious after the fact. when you are in the middle of one, it's not clear whether you are dealing with a bubble or economic progress. some how people that looked at the graph every year as it unfolded, thought it was possible for the houses income to rise. there were a few people against the conventional wisdom. they made a lot of money. but they are not giving it back. so we are going to go on with the story. the apparent ever increasingly made mortgage securities look attractive. banks and wall street compedded to provide so-called private label to distinguish them for sale across the world. the theory, or at least the assumption, was that any delinquency would result in little or no loss since the house could always be sold for more than the mortgage. with prices escalating, houses

had now become a high return investment for many owners, rather than a vehicle for savings. when i was young, just a few years ago, if you lived in a house for ten years and sold it for what you paid for it, you felt like a champion. you got shelter for then years for free and forced savings to boot for paying down the principal on your mortgage. now with housing prices taking off, everybody wanted in the game. the increasing demand for housing was preceded by the increasing demand for mortgage securities. if you follow the red line on the chart, you'll see the private label security market more than doubled in one year from 22% to 2003 to 46% in 2004 and peaked at 26% in 2006. it then declined close to zero and now it has come up to 6%.

to meet the demand though in during those periods of increase, from wall street, for more product to sell, you needed more people to buy houses to generate the mortgages. to qualify those people who hadn't earlier qualified, the standards had to decline. you ended up with the famous no doc lones, liar loans, or fraudulent loans that were fed into the system. now as an aside for those that maintains all of this was brought on by fannie and freddie, i would note they have the lowest rate of seriously delinquent loans among the large financial institutions. as of march 31st, the default rate on freddie's mortgages were 3.6%, and the markets rate was twice the amount at 8.1%. put another way, freddie and fannie have am of the mortgages in this country, and less than 30% of the defaulted loans. the other guys have the other half in 70% of the defaulted

loans. in case you didn't notice, that was an unpaid commercial announcement. but you couldn't resist, because there's important information to bear in mind when we think about how to deal with the housing market going forward. i should also note while the overall quality of their mortgages were better than the banks, it would have been helpful if freddie and fannie hadn't rowered their standards. it's hard to swim against the tide and risk moving market share. either was able to do that. back to my house as the atm. the fact to pay attention here in 2000 to 2005 while wages were increases modestly and the bubble was developing, housing wealth increased by almost 85%. it would have been different if the increased wealth has stayed as a paper item. in the old days, it would have. because you could barely get a second mortgage and if you got

one, it was a sign of financial trouble or weakness and nobody advertised they had just taken out a second mortgage. as banks allowed buyers in the '90s to refinance with a bigger mortgage in light of the increased value and take the additional amount out as cash, someone said why require people to go through all of the complications. and so the home equity loan was born. under a home equity loan you could treat your house as an atm, draw money done, and increase the mortgage as prices went up. extensive use of home equity loans led to an increase in annual personal consumption of almost $600 billion a year. it was great fun while it lasted, and then the music stopped. housing wealth declined by about 30% between 2005 and 2009 which translates into a reduction of about $240 billion annually in consuming purchasing power. the loss of the spending power is part of the reason that the

economy is having difficulty recovering. and for future planning, it's clear it's going to be a long time before houses are going to be able to provide people with excess funding for personal use. another thing that you need to know when looking towards the future is notwithstanding all of these numbers, it's a mistake to assume that the decline in the housing market in the united states is what caused the collapse in the world economy. the housing bubble was not unique to the united states. many eu countries saw greater house appreciation than the united states with the declines that were just as large or larger. denmark experienced after 103% rise in price appreciation and a fall of 20%. ireland saw an appreciation of 182% and a fall of 37%. spain, an increase of 117%, and a decline of 15%. some of those countries may ring

a bell. they are the ones in deep trouble with the sovereign debt. the policy questions that we face about what to do about housing in the future are obviously important ones in light of the role housing has played in the economy in the past. to begin, we have to decide how much support as a government we want to provide to our housing to attract capital to the industry. we provide incentives in a lot of different ways. particularly, incentives for home ownership through the tax code. the deduction for mortgage and property taxes cost us about 1.4 trillion over a ten year period. ten years is the relevant measuring time. because a lot of the debates is about what happens. talk about cutting or ending was always one of those third rails in politics, until the debt crisis came crashing down around our shoulders. now the debt maybe around the table. the next question is whether we want to have the government guarantee some of the securities

in the secondary market. the government guarantee of fannie and freddie security which is moved as i noted from being implicit, after they privatized to being explicit, clearly attracts capital that the lenders cannot provide themselves. if we are going to provide the guarantee, we need to charge for it. without a guarantee, we are unlikely to continue to have 30-yeared fixed mortgages. investors are not willing to take the interest rate risk and default risk over that lengthy period of time. but that's not illegal or immoral. canada does just fine without a guarantee program and has home ownership rates about as high as ours. in canada, you had 15-year mortgages with variety interest rates and prepayment penalties. people have talked about covered bonds as an alternative. for this product, the bank takes

it's mortgages and sells bonds directly to the public, secured by the mortgages that stay on the balance sheet. while there's experience in europe with covered bonds, there's never been a covered bond market the size of or mortgage market. give you a feel for the magnitude of our market, the annual size of our mortgage-backed securities market is about $1.3 trillion and it dwarfs off of the securities of this type as you can see. the size of the cupboard bond market is relatively small compared to the $1.3 trillion number. even though in some countries within covered pond make up a reasonable percentage. they are much smaller than in the united states. there's also the question of how to resolve the conservatorships of fannie and freddie. some way she should go to a purely private sector without

any involvement obvious guarantee, and we should simply wind down or end fannie and freddie. they would be known as republicans. [laughter] >> because the question is what happened during the next crunch. there's been no private mortgage support -- i'm sorry, there's been no private market support of the mortgage market for the past three years. without freddie, fannie, and fha, there would have been no mortgages during that time. fannie, freddie, and fha are now 90% of the market. isn't a good thing. the question is how do we restart the private market? one possible move suggested that would be a good indication of what appetite for mortgages exist out there would be to lower what's called the conforming loan limit that caps the size of mortgages that freddie and fannie can buy, yet in the areas is as high as $727,000. it is set to go to $625,000 this fall, and we'll see what happens

at that time. because every mortgage above that size will then have to be financed in the private sector. a final question is what support, if any, should housing entities provide for so-called affordable mortgages? there's a theory extent that it was the drive and the push for affordable mortgages that encouraged freddie and fannie in particular to issue mortgages to people who otherwise were unqualified. some years ago, under the community reinvestment act, lending institutions were forbidden from redlining urban areas from mortgages and excluding them from financial activity. a clinton administration, while i was there, decided that since increased opportunities for home ownership was an important social goal, why not require freddie and fannie to ensure that a given percentage of their purchase is supported of that goal. the initial affordable housing goals were in the range of 30%. but the theory was if 30% was good, why not 35 or 40%.

since the goals were set by the administration through hud or the congress through legislation, it was a free good since no one had to answer the question, how much, if anything, does this cost? nobody ever delivered a bill. to the its credit, the bush administration delivered a society. and they were above 50%. they noted nobody ever sent a bill for this until recently. we've now sent one. but it's probably not the way we ought to do it. part of the problem has been solved by the passage in 2008 of the legislation that gave the government the power to put fannie and freddie into conservatorship. for the first time, the legislation also moves a setting from hud to the newly empowered regulator for the two entities. this queens -- means that the agency responsible for the safety and soundness of the companies is also the one determining what affordable housing goals are consistent with that safety and soundness. barney frank, that's fall when

he was running under some pressure for reelection, kept talking about the progress with the legislation. i kept thinking don't say that. keep quiet about it and include the provision which is significant in whatever legislation is finally passed to resolve the conservatorship and point to the approved system. the way that politics work, they'll have to come up with another way to change the requirements. some change is going to be rider. but at least we ought to get credit for the changes that we made. our position at freddie mac since i started three years ago with all of the questions floating around has been not to have a position. once you have a position of what ought to happen, you are discounted on any views because you are the supporter. we are fannie mae have more information about the housing market than anyone else. our models weren't always

perfect. we could tell you a lot about how mortgage perform in economic circumstances and in markets all over the united states. but to be honest, brokers have analysis of the various options proposed, it seems to me we ought to be very careful not to have a proposal ourselves. we have prepared and have been prepared in discussions with the administration and the congress to consider any option from one end of the spectrum, while putting everybody into the federal corporation, to the other end which that we totally go away and you have a purely private sector solution. thus far it's worked reasonably well. people have increasingly been comfortable that we will give them a straight answer as to the pros and cons of any permutation on those themes across the spectrum. what's clear in the politics of washington, and has been for some time, is that there won't be much movement on this question until after the presidential election which means we have another two years to go. even the republicans talking about let's get rid of freddie and fannie always have a footnote that says we shouldn't

do to too quickly. everybody is concerned about the fragility of the housing market. everybody understands the numbers we looked at today about the critical role that housing plays in the economy. notwithstanding our no position position i think it's clear we will end up with a secondary market and appropriate for housing. the challenge for freddie mac is keeping 5,000 employees happy and productive while the congress and even the administration continue to talk about the need to wind down the companies and it's clear that the state of limbo is going to continue for another two or three years. i think the only reason the company has imploded is the supporting people across the country and the fact that we keep them busy and hope we are not paying close attention to than. even resofting the question won't be enough to guarantee. there's the $14 trillion in the deficit growing as we speak.

as noted, we now know a lot more ab the deficit than weeks or months ago. we are also confronting that government spending is critical to the economy at this time, but we can't keep spending at the races that we are. government spending accounts for about 20% of the gross domestic product. interestingly enough, it's just more than housing. deficit spending, presently accounts for about 37% of those expenditures. when i was at omb in the mid 1990s, when we were confronting $200 billion as far as the eye could see, we cut federal employment by $200,000, we worked to make the agencies more efficient, we cut nondefense programs, and none of it made much of an impact on the deficit. today we're in the trouble that we are in to some extent because in the first time in history during the 2000s, we tried to run a couple of wars without paying for them for the first time. as the wars wind down, at least the expense side will shrink.

but there is no easy fix. the simpson-bowles commission was artful and balanced to the tough issues that no one wanted to touch. unfortunately, when it came out, no one wanted to touch the report either. there are only six or eight thicks that -- things that you can go to deal with the deficit. you have to do them all. social security and medicare account for 33% of our government expenditures. defense is about 20%. medicaid is about 8%. so the short answer to the debate is that if you set aside social security, medicare, medicaid, and defense and sell the rest of the government, you still have a deficit. and if you decide not to sell the rest of the government and only deal with entitlements, it's clear you cannot cut enough from entitlements and defense alone to solve the problem. you'll have to end up with cuts to entitlement, cuts to defense,

and tax reform with improved revenues. the ticking time bomb, in fact, is the interest cost that has to be paid on our debt. the biggest beneficiary, is the federal government. even with these interest rate that is are low and in some cases, people are, in effect, paying the government to take their money and keep it and give it back to them because it's easier than putting it on your mattress and making it lumpier for sleeping. the present cost is $250 billion a year. the cost easily could go up another $200 billion a year if interest rates return to just normal levels, not exaggerated levels. i think the public is ahead of the politicians on this issue. when you read the polls, they are always asking the wrong questions. if you ask me, would i like to pay more taxes, the answer is no. if you ask somebody, would you like to get less social security or get it later in life, the answer obvious is no. but the real question is if we

have an attractable problem that needs to be dealt with, that can only be dealt with across the entire spectrum in which everybody needs to make a contribution, would you be willing to make your fair share? the answer from the body politic and the vast majority is yes. : [applause] >> as long as it's fair and as long as everybody plays in the game. with a little luck, standard & poor's rate cutting will cause people to soften the rhetoric and work together to find a solution which i think the public will support. beyond that, why am i optimistic? because of the attention i mentioned earlier in terms of population growth. we will now find

population growth. the census bureau projects that the u.s. population will grow faster in the next 20 years than in any other major economy. i knew we were doing better than japan in this area, because everybody is better off in japan in population terms. but growing faster than mexico, brazil, india, and china, i must say i find that really amazing. legal immigration is an important driver, legal in the decades of the 90s and 2000ed -- 2000s exceeded the immigration wave. without the immigration, we'd be more at risk looking like japan, italy, and europe with a declining population, increasingly asian with not enough people working to support growth in the economy. one the most important impact a population has, along with household information is the

creation of a more dynamic and expanding housing market. the data shows that echo boomers, i love the way that people get generational names. why don't we ever hear about the baby busters in any event, they have delayed household formation for all of the obvious reasons. eventually they will form new households once they have more confidence in the economy and get tired of living at home with their parents. judging by the generation here, i assume those are parents who are applauding. [laughter] ironically, we'll also get increased sales when prices go up. i learned when i was the chairman in the downturn of the 70s, when housing prices decline, as they have recently,

people stop buying to wait for even lower prices. of course, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, that has fewer people buy, the price goes down further, and that's how you get to deflation. the problem for the last three years for the first time in history, house prices and origin rates have been declining at the same time. usually house prices decline because interest rates are ricing and mortgages are more expensive. so people have had two reason to defer a house purchase. and they've been rewarded for waiting. with lower house prices and lower mortgage rates. once prices start to price, people then want to buy to avoid having to pay more later. oddly enough, we should be rooting for not only higher prices, but higher mortgage rates to get people who have been waiting on the sidelines for a better bargain to understand that bargains are behind us. now is the time to buy. back to the increase. recent immigrants will account for about 1/3 of the new households in

the decade. which will average growth of about 1%. to keep pace with immigration and population growth, housing starts will have to average about 1.7 million a year. to give you an idea of the impact, housing reached $29,000 annually to tell how far down we've been. at some point, we're going to increase housing starts by $1 million which will provide a stunning increase in economic activity. the only things in our way are about four million homes -- [laughter] >> -- still in foreclosures or past due in their mortgage payments by 90 days. while the rate of delinquency is declining, the overhang continues to be a drag on housing prices and new construction. they are firming and the housing will move through the market one of these days. but it could be another 12 months before things begin notably to pick

up. that may not seem like such a long time in history, we are very impatient people. pushing for things to be done faster is why productivity goes up. expecting or demanding the gang of economic downturn that dwarfs thing we've seen in 80 years can lead you to make more policy prices. there's risk as we gear up for the 2012 elections. this bring us to the role of education and the future of our economy. this country has always met it's economic challenges through the development of intellectual capital that allows us to lead the way in areas, such as building cars, planes, trains and electronic limit. as they caught up, we moved on. the irony is as education becomes more important, we are more challenged to provide it. we've all heard for years about the challenges of educating students in our inner cities. when i over saw the daily operations of the

city of washington, it was clear that poor schools for a pipeline to crime or welfare for our graduates. either way, many of the studentses were lost to our economy in terms of becoming productive citizens. our economic future depends on more than solving energy problems. 27% of degrees with the u.s. awarded in 2007 and 2008. 51% of math and statistics doctorates. historically large numbers have opted to stay in the united states and have made contributions. civil can -- silicon valley is full of them. they have made it

difficult to come to the u.s. and stay here. in the inevitable that more fortune graduates would return home as economic opportunities expanded. as foreign universities get better, they will attract more of their st. s to -- citizens to stay home, rather than come to the united states. we have exacerbated the reversal of the drain brain, by pois -- policies in particular. when bill gates said they might have to open an office in canada to be able to hire the skilled workers he needs, you can see the problem. the intellectual ability needed can be kept by the schools, of course. they still produce bright, energetic college students that move into productive roles in the economy. as the irony is that as the need for more education as the age of technology grows, the cost of higher education is moving beyond the

ability of many studentses to afford it. tuition growth has out paced inflation, growing at an annual rate of 7.9% since 1979 compared to overall price increases of 3.5%. when i was chairman of the board of trustees in the mid '90s, we worried because it was obvious even at this time that it was $20,000. we had a vigorous debate as we set tuition levels. arguing about whether we were giving away a product if the tuition didn't go up. on the one hand. and on the other hand, were we going to lose that provide not only through the university, but the economy, by foreclosures the possibility of an education. our debates got to be so regular, i suggested this we assign numbers as the joke went that people in favor would get numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7, and people against

would have acts 2, 4, 6, and 8 and we'd have a speedier decision. the rate doubles in nine years. so in 2020 at this rate, private school college education that costs $50,000 today will lost already $100,000 a year. those are after tax dollars. change may not come in forcing tenured professors to teach more than one course a semester. [applause] >> i assume that laughter and applause is not from anyone in academia. there are developments going on in technology and web and information flow that are exciting and may prevent an revolution. there's a young man that's not a educator, he's a graduate from

m.i.t., educating his niece. he was giving her advice and sending it to her by e-mail. he discovered it was easier to send it over youtube. everyone on youtube saw the lessons, 10-15 minutes solving a particular problem. and the audio began to grow and grow. there are now -- he quit his job, started doing it, there are now 2400 microlectures on the web for free from his site. he's had 69 million visits. at the same time, major europes are making videos of their best professors teaching important courses and making them available. with a little luck and continued growth of our intellectual capital and innovation, the education students need maybe as available as youtube videos. there will be appropriate concerns about quality, but my hope is that we won't let that interfere with the development of this

new technology in way of pursuing education. ultimately, in the long run, it's going to be critical for us to provide as much education as we can to those that are able to absorb it. notwithstanding the people that maybe something their what happened, i don't see anybody. we must be all right. some the things we need to do in the country in the days ahead are clear. we need to support the return of a vibrant housing economy. we need to take realistic steps to solve the growing deficit problem, and we need to do whatever it takes to continue to develop the intellectual capital that will allow us to lead the way into the future. :

[applause] [applause] [applause] >> those of you need to go to children, please do so quietly. those of you have questions, please give them to the ushers. you'll note the ushers i wouldis tom calls natalie attired inm ce their lovelyd marin theiss. they will bring your questionsty to emily, who will bring them uo to me.e. i must confess that i was a little questioning how you are going to tie housing education and immigration altogether. you did. and in a wonderful package. but where do you start? >> where you start is -- and that works. magic. see, technology. we have to start across the board. as i sit, population will not

happen unless we some how take some of the measures, and that will influence the housing market is effectively over time almost no matter what we do. again, we need to be patient and make sure we don't screw it up in the meantime trolleying to come up with short term solutions that actually aggravate the problem over time. the deficit obviously needs to be dealt with and is an important warning and hopefully this isn't a harbinger of things to come. this morning and got a note that freddie mac securities in the aaa and aa platform and the risk is the standard and poor's is correct, that is that we are unable politically to deal with the deficit problem at which point things will get much more difficult. and in terms education and the capitol, people have been dealing with that problem and we need to understand that it is a high priority. i used to find when i was running washington that everybody knew the schools needed to be fixed but we also

moved on somehow something had happened. and my view was a few convicts one thing in the city of washington there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed i said i would fix the education system because the critical role that it plays in preparing young people to be productive members of society. [applause] i would say my philosophy and the question and answer sessions as the nice people bring them and there's no question is off-limits so feel free to ask any question you would like and i will answer it. now i've done that for years ever since i went into the government 20 years ago, and i decided that what happens is i've never gotten into serious trouble with an answer which leads me to conclude nobody is paying attention to the answer. [laughter] so until that changes, have at it. >> this person notes 71% of college students have student loan debt of $55,000 asks want

this damned in the housing recovery since graduates have less money to pay for a home mortgage? >> we are all worried about the dead students have and especially at the graduate level if you incur a lot of it as an undergraduate and in business school kuhl law school, medical school you end up with a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. not only does it impact your ability to have a house but in practice your ability to buy anything. so while universities increased significantly their financial aid -- deutsch is one of those that still has the admission -- the way that happens is because people take out a lot of loans. and i think is going to be a drag. there is no simple answer to that except i think having spent a lot of time on higher education we are going to have to figure out a way to make it a less expensive undertaking because if you measure it by the relative cost -- when i went to duke for four years i once on a

scholarship and i can't close track because the a.d. $800 for four years. there was a long time ago but you could have brought for chevrolet's for that amount. now it's 200,000 you can buy a lot chevrolet's we have to come to grips with that problem. >> freddie mac and fannie mae have also just been downgraded by standard and poor's. can you comment as to what this will do to the home market? >> in the short run, it will increase incrementally our borrowing costs and therefore it may increase mortgage rates. a will not i don't think have in our analysis of a significant effect by itself. the risk is as i say that if we get another of the two remaining agencies that as a downgrade and investors start to not flocked to the treasury's but go elsewhere and rates go up, that in the long run is a problem. as i noted ironically, i thought that if we could get mortgage rates to stabilize and increase

somewhat it might get people off the dime - talk eclectic. my daughter but her first home this spring with a mortgage rate of 8.5. she left the house and they don't think of it as an investment so they aren't paying attention. i hope they aren't listening. when their rates are back down to 4.5% your fault is i should have waited and bought a house with a mortgage rate lower. so we've really got to break that cycle of the people who are waiting on the sidelines, get them out of the habit of making them think they will go to 4% slide on wait another year before i buy a house. >> this person says i'm not planning to move for my home and i'd still working on my job. why should i be so concerned my mortgage is temporarily under water? >> you shouldn't be. there was a good question. all right. actually, most people -- notwithstanding their experience with the house as any team -- most don't calculate the value of their house every year, every week or every year. you get an assessment from the city every year and they tell with the assessment is because

the people that bought the house are going to live in it, they live somewhere and understand values go up and down, so if you're going to be in the house a while, house prices will rebound over time. so i've always thought that the idea that men and somebody's house is under water they are going to walk away from it is a failure to understand human nature and how people respond to these things be big if you are way under water and there are condos in florida you might have a $250,000 mortgage on a $100,000 house some people have a legitimate question july keep paying on this mortgage when i'm going to end up owing the think a lot of money but we didn't see a significant increase in people walking away. those do terrible things to your credit. but most people are comfortable in their houses and are not going to in fact be microtimers and say i'm getting out of this house and then i will wait and get back into the housing market another time. >> this probably falls under that category of "ask anything." >> walz. i was just kidding. [laughter]

>> is anyone going to be held accountable for the economic problems? [applause] >> for those of you that saw the documentary quote coat the inside job," -- [applause] which i thought, by the become a was a very thoughtful analysis of the entire suite of the problem. obviously everybody has this everybody ought to suffer. one thing to bear in mind is a lot of people have suffered who worked in the companies. most of the people for instance which as i see participated were not necessarily a leader in this, had that compensation in their savings tied up in their company stock, which at one point was at $70 a share and is now about 70 cents a share. so a lot of people have had significant declines in the personal wealth because the invested in their 401k and pension plan and the company stocks and if they are in a financial institution, they got wiped out pretty effectively. the other problem the sec and

the justice department has is not a crime to be dumb or ignore what's going on. you have to intentional we intend to commit, lead a criminal statute and so there have been very few successive prosecutions. tayler whiteaker is going to jail for clear fraud. his was not the question of just ignoring the bubble gum it was actually fraudulent beating at freddie mac and others. i think in some ways it's been aggravated by the fact that after the bailouts in the t.a.r.p. program which is making money for the government in the long run, bankers and investment bankers and wall street were tone deaf enough to decide the issue large bonuses. and i think people have actually

paying a really large businesses and lobbying against the regulation and i think that's fair. [applause] estimate my advice would have been to keep the bonuses down and the argument is if we don't pay them somebody else will pay them it is not the most astute political move on their part. >> this person wants to know an irony in the title is a non-executive chief executive officer. [applause] >> good corporate government people have argued for years that the ceo of the company ought not be the chairman of the board at the same time. [applause] that's an investor and not a ceo who is chairman. the argument is the board ought to be independent and run by an independent executive. about 70 per cent of the fortune

500 companies have the ceo and the chairman has the same person and about 30% last 15 years or so have segregated the duties. fannie and freddie have a combined ceo chairman. so when zakaria calls and asked me to come in and restructure the board and to go for the company as they went into conservatorship, the regulator asked them that they wanted to segregate the title for the first time so you will see the determination and the chairman of the board the vana executive chairman which is i'm not the ceo, the executive leadership of the management is the ceo, chief executive officer. the, executive chairman is an independent board chair who actually controls the operation of the board of management. i've never seen the term either until i was one to be on was the chairman of the board which is what i normally see people and don't know we might the ceo or just the chairman of the board soon on executive is in fact diminutive and i am just the chairman of the board.

>> what do you think about reverse mortgages offered to senior citizens? >> well reverse mortgages to the senior citizens are attractive, a little like the trademark phenomenon. you've got an equity built up in the house and you would like to rely on its for retirement planning to read it think the property is well structured they work well for people and i think they are an attractive way to enhance retirement. your children may not appreciate it that much, but it does seem to me all we have to do is be careful and some people did get caught. you don't get carried away and suddenly the government to create a mortgage significantly under water and at some point you created interest rates that are going to shoot up more of the equity in you plan on. >> what about the credibility? >> another discussion can be what about the rating agencies

clacks as people discover the rating agencies, standard and poor's, moody's and fitch, all else this debacle and sold it were paid by people to read the documents and securities and that sort of sounds like a conflict if he says here is my security give me a reading and i will pay you would not lead you to expect you're going to get a bad reading. so as a result, she's very complicated securities, straightforward. i have mortgages it to the medical it's pretty easy to understand. it's when you start slicing and dicing them and leaving the securities on top of those securities it's hard to figure out what they are worth. clearly the rating agencies would tell you they didn't really understand the level of risk and clearly provided ratings that they quickly tried to unwind all through 2009 and 2010. so the question as how credible are the ratings. people noted much of the guys in new york who were they to say that the rating of the united states credit rating of to go down and there is a move by some

people who say we should get away from credit-rating agencies doing that. in this particular case the reason it's thoughtful and sound and it doesn't tell you anything it doesn't know basically we've got this huge deficit that's growing at a rate that is unsustainable and we have a political system that seems on capable of dealing with the of the fed therefore, sooner or later the treasury securities are not going to be as risk free as they used to be so whether they are credible and other ways or not the reasoning was sound. >> apparently david brooks has written that fannie mae is the greatest political scandal since watergate. would you agree with that? [laughter] we competed vigorously for 40 years against them. so now is my chance. i think there is a book out that gretchen has that takes jim johnson who was the head of

finney in the early 1990's who built the political machine to task and what they did if you haven't read the book is basically if they were purely a private-sector company and said what is wrong with because everybody else is doing it, you provide the financial support to the campaigns for legislature, legislators, you announce programs in the districts and try to ingratiate yourself with them and fight against stronger regulation of try to get people to leave you alone. you wrap yourself in the mantel of homeownership as the public good and try to preserve the bargaining advantage you have over to slightly lower rate because of the implicit guarantee. if you are a private sector company everybody would say that's what they all do. i think what discourages people that are not happy about fannie mae is there was an era in the kind of what we are really doing god's work, the ship is important people should leave us alone and the implicit guarantee

of their relationship was such that people felt they ought to be held to a higher standard. so, i don't think it is the greatest political scandal since watergate. it's a little light penalties. when you have the president of the united states conspiring against the country that is when you call the scandal. what fannie mae was engaged in you might say was disagreeable, ana fortunate, and why is that it wasn't the watergate scandal. most of my friends appreciate the fact that i did not go forward. >> why are we talking about growth and the sustainability? [applause] >> gereed question. >> i think that's the right question. the way that we got out of the problem in the 90's was true growth the and in my years as a managing turnaround you can't shrink your way out of a problem you have to grow your way out of it so the question was right we

ought to sustain where we are and not go backward if we can afford it but what we have to figure out is what is it that will move us forward and how well we grow everybody knows we've lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and we need an appointment to sustain that growth, and that's why i think you're going to hear a lot about -- you heard about job creation and you're going to hear more about it and infrastructure development and infrastructure banks but it's one of the reasons i feel strongly that the intellectual capital. we formed a lot of companies and a lot of jobs by being smarter and being the first mover in a lot of areas. and if we don't pay attention to that and lose that vantage that we are going to have trouble sustaining growth. >> some questions about unemployment. how can we look at growth of the housing market with so much unemployment, and what you equalize the gap between the minimum wage salary earners and professional salaries clacks spin a lot of questions here,

all right. the problem with unemployment for hiring is not just the number. although it is larger and clearly over the last year, year-and-a-half the delinquencies we've had in the mortgage market have not been the subprimal and the lighter ones, those all got washed out some time ago. the challenge now comes to people who've lost their jobs or had some normal reason they can't pay their mortgage and the unemployment problem has exacerbated that. but my experience watching over the last 30 or 40 years as the the actual number is not what is important. what's important is not who was unemployed, it's how many people think they could become unemployed. and when you have going now -- there are not a lot of people very secure that they can guarantee themselves that six months from now they necessarily should have a job, because companies continue to retrench and continue to reorganize and continue to restructure. and so, until you can get people confident that unemployment is stabilized and coming down as a general matter, and therefore, they are more secure in their

jobs, it's going to be harder to get them comfortable making a major commitment. so i think we don't have to worry about can we get on the planet from 9.2 to five before everything starts. all we have to do is start to show progress and growth in the economy where people feel, after comfortable and confident things are great to get better. in terms of wealth prosperity, we are back to wall street. and to a large number of companies where everybody says you what to measure the gap between the guy on the front lines or the woman on the front lines and whoever the ceo is. and clearly the last 20 years that gap first hatfield has widened substantially and if we take a harder look at what we are paying people of the entry-level do have to be competitive worldwide and the other issue is we ought to look at what the people are worth the multi millions of dollars they are paid costs and that is where part of the regulatory reform is getting investors say on pay and telling them to voice their views and hold them accountable because they set up the ceo pay

and everything else follows underneath that. so my experience on the different parts is that directors are starting to take that more seriously, but likely to have more focus on that and again, the public needs to what people understand that it's hard to know who's worth $30 million a year. [applause] >> we have an announcement here with a thing to do half of the market has increased by 50 points since you started speaking. [laughter] >> well i will be invited back tomorrow. [laughter] >> the question is will you continue to speak for another six hours. [laughter] >> how should underwater mortgages the results from of

the freddie mac prospectus? >> that's a good question. you've heard a lot of what can we forgive debt or should there be a way to recognize the debt goes down. there's the question on the moral hazard in that, and that is how do you distinguish between the people who are hard working and paying their mortgage even if it is under water and sustaining their obligations from the people what the reason the site to throwing the towel. one kind of behavior and not another. i've always thought, and we've done a lot of that and we can probably do more that equally important for people a lie for them to refinance even if they are under water as significance because we are exposed to the mortgage as it is now. you can refinance your mortgage to buy tickets now 120%, 125% under water. but there's no reason you shouldn't be will allow wider body to refinance if they are too wondered% under water because we are stuck with that on any way and might as well have somebody that has a stake

in it. [applause] >> and the advantage of that when we have done literally hundreds of thousands of refinances under the president's program the average refinances saved people $200 a month in the mortgage payments which is a 2400 dollar and that is an ongoing stimulus for an answer to some extent if you want to get more money into the hands of people, you would in fact refinance the mortgages. the question is why doesn't everybody do that? the only people unhappy with the better the people who bought the mortgage securities and assumed there would be a certain flow of income out of the securities and if it gets refinance down their income goes down. but on balance i think we've moved to some extent in that direction and i think that is an easier way to proceed pish than trying to figure out how to write mortgages down and to get interested get the money back of the house goes back up. >> there are several questions about people who are being left out of the system and there are some disagreements about who

they might be. whether it is the lower class, lower and middle class will citizens need fuel to have food and these questions are asking if the population increase really is a solution. you have said it is that people want a little bit more clarification. >> well obviously one of the issues about particularly immigration is the concern that immigrants come to this country from mexico in place great demand on the social infrastructure increase the cost of food stamps and other issues and at the expense of people who've lived here longer who have the same challenges and i think those are significant issues also historic plea the lesson and that immigration has been that anybody who has the wherewithal, the initiative and the strength to lead their home and leave all of their friends

and families and move to a new place to start a new life generally make a significant contribution to the economy. and i think over the years -- over the years i always thought, and it's not coming true, we had a great advantage over europe because we were a much more open society. in europe immigration and citizenship have been much more tightly controlled. it's very hard to break into the system and therefore their societies stagnated in a lot of ways. we had a tremendous amount of energy flow into our economy with immigrants and the guy that does our yard is from central america and started to years ago and he has three huge trucks and seems to stick of the world. he's bought houses had made investments and he's the guy that came with nothing, spoke broken english but is a wonderful human being and has

made the most of his opportunities and has hired now he's got i don't know, probably 30 or 40 people and seems he is kind of a role model flight that kind of infusion of energy will continue to help us as we go forward. >> these folks the que are very smart about the issues that you've spoken about, but you haven't spoken about the deterioration of the environment and health care. so i think there are folks who want to know everything. [applause] scud freddie mac is wonderful when you read each week the mortgages put together she's helped me with the information to read i told him i was going to have a slide that says the satchel information and the presentation was prepared by intelligence people if it got lost in translation it's not our fault.

now what's the question? [laughter] >> they want your comment. >> i told frank tiahrt for here was to speak fast enough and get off the stage before people figured out how really delighted know. i actually know something about health care and on the positive about health care i grew up in ashlawn kentucky, a small town of 35,000 people on the ohio river which it had a huge rolling mill, six chemical plants and turn out to be a terribly unhealthy place to live, but on the other hand it was economically dynamic and all that industry has gone away. what saved the city is it has become the health care center for all the appalachians and what was once a half block castle has to get over two blocks and there's clinics on every street corner so health care has been a great job creator and it's not just an ashlawn kentucky but it's been in cities across the country. on the other hand, health care costs are obviously rising

exponentially in a way that is not sustainable and that we have got to deal with and it's not again one of those if you ask anybody would you like to have a constraint put on what to do with health care the answer is obviously know if you ask somebody to see the whole system is collapsing and here's a rational way across the board you are more likely to get positive response. it clearly is a challenge. on the river had, what you need to understand is we pride ourselves on our health care system. it used to be the best in the world but if you look at the industry's, we are in the mid teens in terms of dealing with children's illnesses that generate the body politic and so it's not as if all the money we're spending has us number one in the world. all the money we are spending in the world has us in the midteens so there is a lot of work to be done. the environment on the board of a power company international power company in 29 countries so we spend a lot of time investing

in or developing solar and wind power and a lot of alternatives to coal and gas there again looking for a quick fix if it were only that simple. a significant amount of power produced in the country by coal and if you shut it down everybody would actually get to sit with no electricity so you have to move in a regularly from here to there. a lot of power plants are now closing which out of the oil deposits is better than coal but still provides about half the amount of co2 but that's a lot better than the coal so you see a lot of closing of the coal plants if they are not closing just for a final reason their closing because they are no longer economic in the price of gas. so the markets to some extent are helping but it is clear if we don't do something about it

and in an organized way over time we will live to regret it. the biggest problem is we got people to quit driving them all morning. we would solve a significant percentage of the environmental problem. one way to help it is to get the 50 miles down in 2010. all walk around rather than driving their car. but they are both big problems. the of the potential, tom friedman years ago talked about the environment and the potential to be sources of growth rather than decline if we are creating an imaginative and how we deal with the problem which means we need to support here development of energy and put more intellectual capital into the fields of those are both worth 50 minutes of row so we will stop there unless you are ready to go for the six hour version. [laughter] >> there are so many wonderful questions here. i'm going to ask to more by going to announce to the group

that she will be of the women's club on wednesday so some of the questions that you have that didn't get asked can be asked that time. 3:30 on wednesday. a short question, how much money as freddie mac to lead to political candidates and lobbies? [laughter] >> zero. [applause] >> i was disappointed i told the ceo who was with me for six months before he left i said koschel kitfield for your grindle to the perks of the there were no country clubs or airports or stuff we could get rid of and claim victory because they were running a tight shift. >> you asked to be have the will and the patients. what do you think? >> i think we do. i spend a lot of time in the government and the senate at the white house. i worked in the private sector and i do have a strong view that

the underestimate the intelligence of our body politic. i think the people fortunately don't spend their lives the way we would washington reading the paper to do not who is ahead of how first base politically. but with the vendors to the issues costs to the two and people generally come up with a pretty good dancer and they are willing to do whatever it takes to go forward. it's one of the things that has made the country great is that people are willing as long as the system is fair to become to be sure we have moved away from that. we generated kind of an entitlement society that everybody wants everything now and nothing should ever be taken away. but that is to ask the narrow question would you like another flat screen high-definition tv answer is yes. we all grew up with one if we had one instance four or five every house has a tv it seems. so people will win that maximize their own situation she but if you ask people direct questions

broadly people are prepared and willing to make the tough choices to be patient with them and to see us through what i think will be a better future for us and more important for a were kids and grandchildren. thanks very much. >> ladies and gentlemen, john [applause]

>> an event hosted by the second amendment foundation is too dense for concealed carry on campus, two organizations advocating student can possess concealed weapons on school campuses held a forum this week. during this portion will your personal stories of the ones from gun violence in a debate on the issue between author john lott and colin goddard of the brady center.

this is an hour 10 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. welcome to the students for concealed carry 2011 convention. my name is daniel crocker, president of the organization's network to carry as we refer to it sec. i want to offer a warm welcome to every joining us today as well as all of our viewers of c-span and enters streaming. even exciting afternoon ahead with an array of speakers that should give you a full picture of the campus carry debate. our speakers today include people who were personally experienced the tragedy that

results from the criminalization of south to send. we will also have a debate between renowned economist john lott and colin goddard from the brady campaign gun violence. our keynote speaker, glen caroline from the national rifle association will speak this afternoon and cannot each of academics, state legislators, campus activism in student lobbyists. i want to begin by introducing our organization for the benefit of our guests here. students for concealed carry is a national nonprofit with this goal object is. to allow adult who possess the state issued concealed handgun license the same measure of self protection that they enjoyed virtually everywhere else in society. simply put, we believe those individuals who carry a handgun daily for personal protection should not be denied that option for self-defense only because he

secant education or work in the collegiate and dictation. this afternoon is exciting for supporters for several reasons. first all spent three years since we last met in washing in the the and we've made a lot of progress in that time. over the last years the hard work of scc members has doubled the number of colleges that allowed concealed carry on campus. due to a lawsuit by organization in conjunction with several friends almost all college in the colorado's now allow effective self-defense. the status of the remaining schools will be settled in the next month or two by the colorado's current quarter. these advances in colorado's increase the number of u.s. college campuses throughout the day kerry 271 in colorado, utah and virginia. scc litigation has also been successful elsewhere. in texas we establish federal

precedent that our trademark empty holster protest is a legal exercise of free speech and we prevent cary county college from being the only college in the country to prohibit that. nor have the success of students were concealed to been limited to courtroom. in the legislative arena there's been a number of notable that trees, particularly in 2011 when both michigan and wisconsin removed several legal prohibitions against campus carry in oklahoma removed restrictions against firearms and vehicles. it follows earlier victories in georgia and south carolina that allows storage of firearms on campuses. while the media has fixated on high-profile bills in arizona, nevada, florida and texas, much work has been done in many other states in more than half the states in this country has considered kansas legislation. we have a number of announced to make that we also hope to make you excited to be here at this

conference. the most obvious of courses are named. most of you will be familiar to us being referred to as students for concealed carry on campus. while we retain that name come was also transition to using students for concealed carry for brevity and ease-of-use while we still maintain our focus on concealed carry on college campuses. we hope this new name is a streamlined set of practices, package implements double move forward in the legislative and campus arena over the next few years. during the rest of us the other announcements that are coming forward. when people discuss concealed carry on campus, and often appeared to be a theoretical debate. often framed only in the context of the statistical anomaly of a mash shooter or street killer. 110 minutes massacres such as that we saw at virginia tech is the worse the tragedy.

realistically it is not the most likely occurrence on the college campus. our university environments are not removed from the real world. rather they are open institutions that are often the cornerstone of local communities their integral part of american society that play host to every type of violent crime found in the rest of american society, including, assault, armed robbery and murder. sadly, crime does not take a holiday from college campuses and removing the option for self-defense only gives criminals a governmental guarantee of design that sounds. our next speakers understand the truth a lot better than most. nikki goes there and amanda collins will be speaking about their personal experiences with crime and college campuses. nikki and amanda, would you join us at pier? currently amanda collins

resided -- [applause] currently can't amanda b. sides and reno, nevada with her husband come and make as if this of residence. she's been a concealed weapons permit holders in 2007. in a 2010, amanda obtained her bachelor degree from the university of nevada. in january, nate and amanda had their first daughter, annabelle. nikki glaser is from nashville, tennessee and works in the tennessee legislature at the legislative aide has spent much time in the last two years working as a second amendment and with that, nikki and amanda. >> thank you. the majority of university campuses responsible law-abiding citizens denied their constitutional right to defend

themselves. when i was 22 years old i never thought i would find myself needing that comes dictation already. my story starts out rather ordinary. it was just a regular monday night and i was headed to the university to attend my evening class. that night i part don -- excuse me, that meant i part in the parking garage located across from where my class was held. a deliberately did this so that it wouldn't have to walk across campus at dark. my class got out at 10:00 p.m. and so, when my class was over at 10:00, i left with a group of students that it also parked in the parking garage we made a habit out of doing that because we were always told there was a d. in numbers. as we walked, we talked about the extremely justified. we just taken our midterm and we

compared our answers, trying to figure out what exactly the professor was looking for. as we approach the parking garage i was the only one apart on the ground floor so he broke away from the group. as i approach my vehicle, i surveyed in and around and under my car to make sure that there is nobody underneath it. in the manner in which i was doing that was not something i had to think about. it was second nature for me because of the martial arts training is used when i was younger. and i was really confident that i just passed my exam and is anxious to get on the phone to call my boyfriend who i knew would be my in a matter of days am and who is has been. but my blissful carefree train of that was abruptly ended when i was suddenly grabbed by a man who is much larger than me and he pulled me down between a truck a truck into data very quickly put a pistol out to my temple, clicked off the safety, which is a sound that i knew

well and demanded that i not say anything. as i lay there on that cold cement, straddled to the ground while this man's brutally me, i wondered if i was going to die because i saw in his eyes he has a propensity to kill. tara thought in this moment followed me for the next 13 months as the man who attacked me remained at large. however, i was never afraid of a gun. i was afraid of the man holding the gun and the nightmares that i had about the incident were never about the web in being used, but about the man who is using the web in -- the very weapon that was banned from campus. in november 2008, the man who attacked me was captured by the reno police and the name that had haunted by nightmares finally had a name, james b. loves. james p. lewis later convict

dead for not only raping me at gunpoint, but also kidnapping me and i second the down and murdering a third whose name became well known in our community as briand adenosine. on october 22nd, 2007 my right to say dell was taken away by both james d. the end of nevada legislature. at a system of higher education he decreed my body by raping me and the nevada legislature rendered me defenseless by denying the right as a licensed concealed carry permit holder to carry my weapon. had i been carrying that night, i know at some point it would've been able to stop my rape in the case would've had a very different outcome. as part of the trial preparation, i was asked to go back to the university and that to the corinthians. i've seen the effort that

particularly the university of nevada reno has made to improve safety and they remain inadequate. they have split up the parking gods significantly and installed these call boxes where you push a number if you have an emergency. a call box potentially located above my head while i was being straddled on the ground would have been no more help to me than the police for that night. i should probably mention that i was rape less than 300 feet away from the campus police office on the same ground where they park their patrol vehicles. my case is a perfect example of that despite the lot enforcement's best efforts, that they cannot be everywhere at once. all i wanted was a chance to be able to defend myself in campus kerry would've given me that chance. participating in your own self protection should be a choice that is left to the individual in that choice should not be

mandated by the government. as a woman, i believe that is the ultimate choice because as women we tell the government to stay out of our bodies and to not mandate what goes on internally. and then some women are willing to hand over our own self protection and allowing them to be the arbitrator of that and i'm not one of those women. if the government is going to deny as the ability to participate in or as self protection and they should assume that response ability, but my case is a perfect example that they are failing miserably at that task. i'm speaking today, that for you to remember that the majority of rape go unreported as it might initially. so while i'm talking about about one case involving or my incident involving two other cases we have no way of knowing just how many assaults occur. i obeyed the law and left my ccw

permit at home and the fat purpose of a gun free zone is to maintain safety, then it's not serving that object to. i obeyed the law of the first year as losing my permit and been expelled from school. but that night, my education and ccw permit were only important to me. and he was intent on committing a crime and assaults anyways. ..

it is a question that keeps me up at night as they replay the worst 10 minutes of my life over and over again and there have been several different possibilities that one outcome for me and that is the to whether race would have been prevented and a gun life would have been saved. i never thought in my wildest dreams that i would need a constitutional right that was denied me in order to defend myself and ultimately save a young life. and i would just like to leave you with one question for you to think about. just how does rendering me defenseless protect you against violent crimes? thank you. [applause]

>> hey there everybody. i am a little bit taller than you. my name is nicole goeser and i'm from nashville, tennessee. my husband and i were both victims of a gun freeze on. you may notice that my husband is not here with me. back in 2009, i was a permit holder. i still them, but i worked into gun free zones. my primary job was working at a college everyday as a financial aid adviser. my secondary part-time job was running karaoke shows every

thursday night. my husband and i would run our mobile karaoke business out of restaurant called johnny sports bar. on april 2, 2009, my husband and i were running our business out of that restaurant. it was just going to be another night of karaoke fun until about 10:30 p.m. rolled around. it was at this point that i noticed a man out in the crowd that my husband had previously asked to leave me alone. this man was stalking me. i had run some karaoke shows for various bars in downtown nashville and this man was one of my karaoke customers. he used to come in and he would sing, and he would drink, but he was awkward. he was what i would call

somewhat socially stunted. he was just different. he never threatened me. there was no restraining order. let's face it, restraining orders are worth about as much as the piece of paper they are written on. this guy was just odd. he would stare at me. but then again, like i said, he never threatened me. when you work at a bar you come across plenty of strange people. it is a huge melting pot of all walks of life, and when you work in one of these places you just learn to deal with different people. this man found me on myspace.com, and asked me to be his friend. i added him just like i add anybody else, all my other customers. his first few messages were quite normal. hey, how are you doing? i had a great time tonight at the bar.

you sounded great. progressively he started saying things like you are attracted. again, you work in a bar, you hear those things, you know? you just say thank you, be polite and move on. then he sent me a message saying you should consider leaving your husband. maybe he is too old for you. have you ever considered having kids? you know it is okay to admit that you may have made a mistake. i believe somebody wants -- one's really loved me and i left him and hurt him but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. of course i show this message to my husband. he was like, what in the world? obviously this guy has a crush on you. yeah, i'm going to take care of this. so, like i have done before the bar i tried to set the gentleman straight. i sent them a message and just said look, very firmly but politely, i am happily married. what you are saying to me is inappropriate and you are basically fishing in the wrong lake.

i thought well, he will take a hint. there are other fish in the sea, right? he sent me a message back that was basically the complete opposite of what he had just said. just basically belittling me, whatever. should this message to my husband and we both agreed that this man needed to be to leave it. i didn't respond. i just deleted him and i blocked him from my accounts. he ended up coming into one of the bars i worked at downtown and just stared at me and of course now i'm really starting to notice him because i realize there is something not right here with this guy. i will never forget my husband telling me of this conversation. i went up to the bar to get a bud light and tapped him on the shoulder and said hey, how are you doing? like nothing ever happened. then ben was not an instigator or fighter.

he was just the guy that wanted everybody to get along. ben just said look, read the messages that you sent my wife and i read what you said about me. you are scaring her. please leave my wife along. he goes into a frenzy and says, what is she mad at me? i swear to god it wasn't me. i have a crazy ex-girlfriend who knows how to hack into my account. it was her. it was her. ben was like whatever. obviously an explanation. he joins the crowd and then goes on we go home. a few weeks later he comes back in. the same stand and stare routine. and months pass by and we did not see this man. and then, on april 2, 2009, i look from the karaoke computer and there he is, standing in the crowd. johnny's is nowhere near down town nashville. it is a good 35 minutes away. asked them to leave me alone and

what is he doing here? this is not good. this is in just a dedicated karaoke customer. this is an someone who just have a simple crush on me. this man is stalking me. it was at this point that i talked to ben and we both agreed that he needed to be removed, so i asked management to remove him. keep in mind i am in a restaurant that serves alcohol. i am a law-abiding citizen. my legal permitted gun is locked in my car out in the parking lot. s. management proceeds to confront this man to ask them to please leave, i stay about 15 feet away, something told me not to get involved and let management handle this. just let them handle this. i try to stay where this man could not see me, but i could see him.

they are obviously asking him to leave and he pulls a gun from under his jacket and proceeds to shoot my husband from behind in the head. he then stands over my husband's body and continues to pump five more rounds into him. he very calmly puts the gun back in his jacket. he just starts to walk out like he is just going to leave. nobody's going to know that he is the shooter, right? i am running to get to my husband. he turns around the corner to leave and the moment i get to ben i realized that realize that he is dead. i later learned that there was a united states marine that just happen to be in the crowd. of course everybody is gathering, screaming and running but there were a few people who i suppose they were in as much shock as i was. this marine tackled him and disarm him and a few other guys jumped on top of him and they held them until the police came. he is now sitting in jail on

second avenue in downtown nashville, which i pass by everyday going to and from work to the legislature. every day i think, you fool. look at what you have done to your life. but i do want to say this. this man could have just as easily come to my college to attack. the day after ben's death we learned of the blood he had written and in the blog he bloggie said predator versus prey. i know who you are, run. where will you be where i can find you, at home, at dinner, in your sleeve every waking moment. this is going to be very painful. what kind of life do you have now? then, a few months later i learned of evidence in his truck through a search warrant.

initially i thought he was just after ben, but after he learned what was in the truck, i realize now that he was most likely after me as well. they found two more guns, a baseball bat, binoculars, gloves, rope and a knife. that is not a medical kit. that is entirely different kind of kit. i shudder to think what my co-workers and those students would have gone through if he had chosen not this gun-free zone, but this gun-free zone. they would have witnessed either my kidnapping or my murder and i would not be standing here before you today. speaking for both ben and i. gun-free zones are dead zones. bad guys don't care about the law and they don't care about the signs they posed as a no guns allowed. the only people that pay

attention to those signs the signs are law-abiding people like myself. those are places where they will go to get the highest body bag count. it is extremely naïve to think that gun control actually works. bad guys do not care about laws. laws are made for the law-abiding. i appreciate your time. thank you so much for the second amendment and thank you for the conceal carry on campus and thank you for inviting me here. [applause] >> thank you very much, amanda and nikki. very powerful, very powerful

testimony. we are going to move now to a debate between economists john lott and colin goddard from the brady campaign. john and colin. >> john lott jr. is the author of more guns less crime a greatly expanded their diction of the book really/or by the university of chicago press as well as the bias against guns. lott is held positions at the university of chicago, yale university, stanford, ucla, wharton and rice and was the chief economist at the united states commission during 1988 and 1989. lott has published over 90 articles in academic journals.

he is also the author of "freakonomics" as well as three other books and two other upcoming books. lott is a foxnews.com contributor and has a weekly column for them. opinion pieces have appeared in such places as "the wall street journal," "the new york times," "the los angeles times," the "new york post," "usa today" and the "chicago tribune." he is appeared has appeared on such television programs as the abc and nbc national evening news broadcast, "fox news" and "the today show." he received his ph.d. in economics from ucla in 1984. in addition, colin goddard from the brady campaign to prevent gun violence is his biography here. colin's os change colin change after surviving that virginia tech massacre on april 16, 2007. the were shooting in american history. born in nairobi kenya to english and american parents, goddard

lived in somalia, bangladesh, indonesia, usa and completed high school in cairo, egypt. after graduating with a b.a. from virginia tech he worked in virginia state government and spent a year teaching english in a high school and friends. while liberal is a fourth-year student virginia tech pursuing an international study degree, goddard was shot four times and was one of seven out of the class of 17 to survive the shooting. goddard had three bullets still in his body as well as a titanium rod implanted in his left femur. working at the brady campaign to prevent gun violence, goddard now uses his experience to educate others about gun violence and the weaknesses in u.s. gun laws. gothard sheered an interview with me -- numerous media outlets radio stations and talk shows and writes a "huffington post" blog. it is documented in the sum --

goddard lives and works in washington d.c. for the brady campaign to prevent gun violence. we will have a debate here and each side will speak for 18 minutes followed with a four minute rebuttal from each side. dr. lott will lead us. dr. lott. >> it is great to be here and i'm glad to see the crowd here. you know, guns make it easier for bad things to happen, but they also make it easier for people to protect themselves and prevent bad things from happening. i think the ultimate question that concerns everybody is what is the net effect? and when we are talking about these types of gun-free zones where you plan -- ban guns from places there is a large variety of different types of gun-free zones that we have, but i can't find a place where we ban guns whether it be city or state or

country tithed area where greater rates have gone down. you think you could at least buy one place where we had a ban on guns where we could point and see. we see time after time at lease some small increase or sometimes very large increases in murder rates after bans the come into place. and, there is a large variety of gun-free zones that we have. i mean, americans are familiar obviously with a gun bans we had in washington d.c. here and chicago for decades. but there are other things. pilots were for example for a wild were not allowed to carry guns on planes. i was a consultant for several of the pilots unions after 9/11 when they were trying to be able to carry guns on planes. it taught me some things about the debate because what you would see is people what kind of assumed that whenever the rules are right now that are in place, but those have always been the

rules. and in fact it takes something like pilots -- pilots were mandated. commercial airline pilots were mandated to carry loaded handguns with them when they flew from the mid-1920s until 1963. from 1963 to 1979 there were about to carry concealed handguns with them and according to the pilots unions you would have about 10% or so of the pilots with regular carrying handguns with them. you going you listen to the debate about concealed handguns on planes and a lot of the discussions would be well, what would happen if? what would happen if a pilot would lose his temper and shoot the other pilot on the plane? what would happen if a pilot accidentally fired his gun and put a hole in the fuselage? the thing is, for a lot of these questions we didn't have to guess what would happen. we had 40 some years where they were mandated to do it and another couple of decades after that where they were allowed to do that.

every commercial airline plane for those decades would have a pilot on it that was able to carry a concealed handgun are mandated to do it and get if you went through the old civil aeronautics reports or faa records despite those decades of experience you cannot find one single example where something bad had happened. you know it takes something like bands in d.c. and chicago and we will go through more detailed numbers in a minute but i think a lot of americans realize that those experiments did not work very well. crime rates went up immediately after the bans went into effect and they had fallen immediately after the bans have been rescinded. now a lot of gun control advocates will claim that those gun bans really burned -- because much ago and ban guns everyplace, criminals will go and get guns from some other area and take them into the areas that have the gun bans. the problem is, but they explain

why you didn't see a -- but it won't explain why you saw an increase in crime. in both of those places we saw a huge increase in violent crime of kerning. the other problem is there are lots of places around the world where entire countries, indeed the entire island nations have gun bans. there is no neighbor that they can do one blame for being able to supply guns and yet you see the same pattern occurs time after time in terms of the increases in violence, murder rates and other types of violent crimes. you know there are many areas in life besides pilots that we see these gun-free zones. college campuses are one particular area. i've been an academic virtually all of my adult life. i have a couple of kids who are at universities right now, so this isn't something that i take her ticket and the lightly. but the question again that we have to answer is, what types of factors are going to be most likely to route use these

attacks? i'm going to show you some data. we had a powerpoint and if we had more time i would go through a lot more slides, but just look at d.c. and chicago. d.c.'s hand -- handgun ban went into effect in 1977. if you look at the top 50 cities prior to the ban going into effect d.c.'s murder rate would rank someplace between 15 and 20 in the country. after the ban went into effect half the time it was either number one or number two among the top 50 and over two-thirds of the time it was in the top four. there is no comparable time prior to the ban where it was anywhere near as remotely high as it was. so another way of looking at it is just to see how these murder rates compare relative to the average for the other 50 cities.

prior to the ban going into effect d.c.'s murder rate was falling. the ban goes into effect right here on this line and it rises and for the period after they banned it is about 40% higher on average than it was prior to the ban going into effect. this takes it right up to the early '80s. there is a huge increase in d.c. murder rate compared to most cities in the late '80s. you basically have the epidemic that affected the see much more than other places and we can go through a lot of arguments. it could be that a lot of people weren't able to defend themselves that could've costa but even ignoring the crack-cocaine epidemic you still have even before that and 40% increase in the murder rate after d.c.'s handgun ban went into effect. what is interesting is what

happened after the supreme court decision in june of 2008? in 2009, d.c.'s murder rates have fallen by 23%. in 2010, they fell by another 8.4%. these are large drops. d.c.'s murder rate went from 186 murders a year in 282,144 and 2009, to 132 and 2010. that basically brought the murder rate back down to where it was in 1966. nationally, we have dropped the murder rates over the same period of time that they were just a fraction of what they were in d.c., about 7.3% in 2009 and about 4% in 2010. the interesting thing, if we actually look month by month and compare the first seven months of 2008 right before the ban, 2009 after, the first seven

months of 2010 murder rates vary over the years. there were a lot more murders during the summer then the fall or winter. you want to compare apples-to-apples but if you do that in the two years after the ban, d.c.'s ardor rate had fallen by 36% relative to what it was prior to the ban. it is dramatically outpacing the drop by over fivefold you see in the rest of the country. the other interesting thing is, crimes involving guns fell much faster, several times faster when you had crimes with guns during the same period of time or supposedly it was easier for people to get guns. it wasn't just the gun ban the change because its license to many people to have handguns. the big thing there i think was that you no longer mandated people to keep their guns on

operational, locked. before it was a felony to actually load a bullet in the chamber of the gun in the district of columbia and 72,000 people have registered long guns in the city. amazingly about a third of the adult population. after the supreme court decision it then became legal for people to be able to use guns defensively where was not beforehand. now in chicago you see very similar patterns. chicago's handgun ban went into effect in november 1982. if you compare chicago's murder rates over time to the other 10 largest cities, you will see in the gears prior to that, chicago's murder rate was falling dramatically relative to these other cities, basically going from about 50% higher than those other cities to being slightly below the average and the other top 10 largest cities right before the ban went into effect. after the ban went into effect it stopped rolling and there is no year after the banned went into effect at the murder rate

was this low in chicago as it was prior to the ban going into effect. much higher and was doubling over that period of time. and you can also compare chicago's murder rate to neighboring counties. there are six counties that border chicago. not all counties reported murder rates in 1983, or in 1984 -- excuse me but you can see prior to the ban in chicago, chicago's murder rate was falling relative to those other counties and then afterwards, it rose dramatically. you can control and d.c. and chicago's case for many other factors, hundreds of factors and you are still going to basically get the same pattern. as i mentioned it is not just d.c. and chicago. you can look around the world. time after time you are going to see increases in murder rates. here is ireland's murder rate. ireland's gun ban went into effect in 72. you can see how the murder rates

would bounce around before that but within a knit relatively narrow range. as soon as the ban went into effect you see a huge increase in murders and by the end of the period it is about eight times higher than it was prior to the ban going into effect. you can look at jamaica. jamaica's murder rate now is about 10 times higher than what it was prior to what it was when the ban went into effect. you can see the huge increase that started right at the time that the gun ban went into effect. sorry about that. this is finally the united kingdom.

you can see how it's ban went into effect in january of 1997. the murder rate was fairly flat prior to the ban going into effect, or the homicide rate, excuse me. on average it is about 30% higher afterwards than it was prior to that and if you come down at the end here, the still slightly higher than it was in the beginning. there is obviously some increase there. now, you know, we can go on and look at other countries. you are going to see the same pattern time after time. not just in the u.k., jamaica, ireland and these island nations who have complete bans on guns. but it raises the question, why do we see these increases in murder rates? the problem is and you have to ask this when you do with gun control questions generally, is who is going to obey these laws? if it turns out that basically the law-abiding good citizens obey these laws and not the

criminals, what you unintentionally do is make it easier for the criminals to go and commit the crimes because they have less to worry about in terms of a potential victim being able to defend themselves. just as you can deter criminals with higher a rest raids or longer prison sentences the fact that it would be victim would be able to defend themselves could also make it costlier for criminals to engage in crimes. the problem is rather than repelling crime by having these bans, you actually make it more good for criminals to go into commit these crimes because they have less to worry about. list is taken -- think a tiny bit more about who obeys these gun bans. take something like the virginia tech case would call and we'll talk about. if i have a permit for a concealed handgun in the state of virginia, i can take it virtually anyplace in the state. 99.8 are sent of the state i'm allowed to go when take the concealed handgun into. there are very tiny areas within

the state university property being one of the few areas where i'm not allowed to be able to take it. if i'm a professor and i take it in there and i get caught, what is going to happen? i'm going to get fired. getting fired for firearms related violation by university. what you think that would do to that person's academic career? it would be over. the likelihood of that person getting another academic job in the united states would be essentially zero for that type of violation. that is a huge penalty. for a student if they got caught doing that they would get expelled. good luck trying to get into another university in the country with the firearms related violation on campus on your record for why you got expelled him another school. those are real penalties, life altering penalties for those individuals. think of the situation though for the killer who killed 32 people and virginia tech. that person in that case, you

know, it is hard to believe that even if we had a three-year prison term like we have for other types of gun-free zones, and even if you lived, which he didn't in this case, something like that could matter. era somebody who if he had lives would have been facing 32 death sentences or 32 life sentences plus other additional penalties. the notion that somehow even we have been if you had a three-year prison term it would have said that three-year prison term or let's say just the threat of expulsion, saying 32 death penalties but i just couldn't tell my parents that i have also gotten expelled from school. it just wouldn't be a real penalty for this person. when we are talking about crimes, the notion of marginal deterrence, how much more we can penalize that person for the additional crimes that they do is extremely important. bill landis and i looked at all the multiple -- at the university of chicago all the old sopel shootings in the united states from 1977 through

1999. and, what they found was pretty dramatic. we look at 13 different types of gun control. we looked at many different types of law-enforcement policy strategies. normal law enforcement -- and there is a simple reason for that. 75% of the times these crimes are committed the killers themselves die. the other 25%, few look at interviews afterwards, they all thought they were going to die. the reason why they didn't die usually is because they couldn't bring themselves to commit suicide. and so, law enforcement works by punishing people after-the-fact. so, if you are one of these criminals, and i go when i tell you well, the probability of execution is going to increase or the length of prison time upon being caught is going to increase, they don't think is relevant and it doesn't have a deterrent effect because they don't receive themselves being around. they have to face that type of penalty.

the 13 different types of gun control laws that bill and i looked at come only one affected the rate of multiple victim public shootings and that was the passage of the right to carry law. there was about a 60% drop in multiple victim public shootings to a 70% drop in the rate of which people were killed or injured in these attacks. to the extent to which these attacks still occurred, they overwhelm only took place and the gun-free zones such as virginia tech. in fact, if you look over the history of these things, there was only one multiple victim hoblick shooting for more than three people that it had killed had taken place in an area where permitted concealed guns are allowed. you can find lots and lots of cases where you have large multiple victims in shootings and time after time they are taking place where permit concealed handguns are not allowed and where you have gun bans were so-called safe guns

zones are occurring. europe's most people may not realize come even before then the region attack, europe has had over the last decade about the same rate of multiple victim public shootings per capita as the united states does. it is just that most people don't realize it because they think of each country separately there are. so finland has had a couple of big shootings, university in a mall shooting within the last 14 months -- i guess 60 months or so. you have had big attacks -- a big attack in norway but about a year ago you had over 10 people killed in england with a taxicab driver shooting people. you've had multiple attacks in france over the last decade, italy has had a couple of attacks. even switzerland has had a couple of big attacks. one case 14 people were killed at a parliamentary campaign. one thing that is interesting, is one of the few gun-free zones in switzerland where those attacks occurred.

so, how much time do i have left? let me just summarize one thing. we should have something to warn people of time. you know one of the big things is the behavior of permit holders and what you find is permit holders are extremely law-abiding. hundreds and thousands of percentage points off arms violations. that rate the replication is the same across age groups. it really doesn't matter. anyway, i will let it go. but the bottom line is the people who benefit the most from carry concealed handguns are typically the most vulnerable. women, such as the one to talk on the first panel are relatively weaker physical, the elderly as well as high crime urban areas. thank you very much. [applause]

>> good afternoon. i might feel a little better knowing there is carry and conceal them here. it is interesting fundamental divide on this idea. my name is colin goddard. four years ago i was shot at virginia tech. i believe i was a victim of this gun crime because of a missing record in our back round check system. i am not a statistician or an academic. i don't have a nice thing to bring up here. i just speak from personal experience from the past four years. what i experienced that day was not like people see in movies. it was not like you can imagine in your mind. it is actually very easy to imagine what you do in a hypothetical situation when you are calmly sitting in a chair as opposed to being in the middle of one yourself. i have thought about that day

transpiring every single which way, from a saving the day to me getting killed. and the sooner that i can understand what happened, come to terms with what happened, the sooner i can move forward. i can relate to what people said earlier. like i said, i spent almost a whole year thinking about that day over and over and over and over again and like i said, we can hypothetical situations to the end of time. and they won't get us anywhere. so, think we should move forward from there. i have heard quite often the statement that if somebody would have been in there with a gun, people would still be alive today. people are so sure what they would have done in that situation when they have never been among themselves and i find that somewhat offensive. the fact that you can so surely tell me when i guarantee you you would lose your mind was something like that. your body undergoes

physiological changes when you are in a high stress environment. and that is not something that you practice while standing comfortably at a range are even while watching a one-hour video on line. it is very different than in real life. it was a normal monday morning class for me. i was late. i got to class 5 minutes into class, about 20 minutes later another girl came in into the class even later. this is a girl who is always on time, one of the best students in the class in the and the sooner she sat down in the front he went up to her and we were like rachel, what gives? class is almost over. she turns back and says there was a shooting in my dorm this morning in bed the whole place on lockdown. they wouldn't let me leave despite the fact that was telling them i had class. i do go to class. finally they gave me the clearance and they left in here i am. we all turn to each other and we were like what? there was a shooting on campus?

i had been off for almost an hour and a half at that point. why haven't i heard anything about it? way she the one telling me what is going on? eye candy and then remember, probably five minutes after that we heard a banging noise. something you would immediately, oh grace raise alarm but we had heard banging noises throughout the semester. there is a building being worked on right next to ours and we heard jackhammers and all sorts of nail guns and things like that and we chalked it up to more construction noise. then they got much louder and much closer and that is when somebody started thinking maybe this isn't what we thought it was. and by that point the teacher was thinking the same thing. she went to the doorway to look into the hallway and sooner she opened the door she slammed it shut and she said everybody underneath your desk and somebody call 911. this total disbelief. i'd never been in a situation like that before. i had the phone there and i dialed 911 and i was in norris hall. then we had a look come into the door and everybody at the floor.

i remember thinking for a split-second i split second i should made a move for the window because that was a way out. there was only one door in our classroom. if i had been going to that window i do believe i would have been killed because the windows are not easy to open and within seconds he was in my room shooting. so, i didn't have an understanding of what was really happening however until i was shot the first time in my knee. that is when i came full circle. that is when i understood what was happening. before then, i was in disbelief. i didn't understand. it was the stress and the intensity was beyond anything i could have imagined and it was that gunshot, that feeling that brought me back to reality. you know, there were other people however, that do different things in norris hall. people who realize what that was and were actually able to stop joe from entering the classroom by pushing doors in the way. my friend erik laid on the ground with his feet against the door and saw bullets come over his head and he actually stopped

joe from coming in and shooting another kid in his class because he understood what was happening. he had information that we didn't have and didn't understand and couldn't analyze. so people think that you are a sitting duck and everybody like me. no, not everyone was like me. some people actually stop themselves from getting shot and were actually able to do something. i unfortunately and some in my class, we didn't have time to go anywhere. like i said, i generally don't like looking at this whole situation again with hypothetical situational scenarios to try to deal with the situation at the last possible second. we should be looking before this moment happens. in this moment happens it is that the point where it becomes the most uncontrollable and i don't know why we are trying to control an event at the point where it becomes most uncontrollable when we can do things beforehand that we are not doing here.

it is dangerous to take a very complex situation and look at it very narrowly and say the shooter on campus, disturbed student shooting of their students and say that there are -- somebody's going to come the door and shoot you, do you want a gun or not? you miss a whole bunch of that scenario when you look at it from that very narrow perspective and i'm saying we need to broaden our perspective. we need to look past the last second. when he to look into the days and the weeks beforehand at the points where these persons purchase weapons in these people put their plans together where we could've endocrine. when mental health officials actually spoke with individuals in the case of virginia tech and chose not to fully follow up with a student until he no longer posed a threat. i am not comfortable with the status quo on college campuses right now. don't think that i think

should -- thing should remain the same. absolutely think things should get better. what we need to do more is preventative work. we should be proactive instead of reactive. proactive in measures like i said with mental health, making sure that the students are followed up with. we should be preventative beforehand. like i said i was the victim of somebody whose background check record was not given from one agency to another agency. that record would have changed hands he would not been able to purchase the gun from the store down the road from the internet. where would he have gone though? i know he is gone to the gun show in roanoke, gone to private seller and purchase the exact same weapon with no background check and no questions asked. that is what i'm trying to say. if you want to try to deal with shootings anywhere in our country not only on colleges campuses anywhere, we should be doing background checks on every single person. since the beginning of this issue i hear guns don't kill

people. is it is people that kill people. if you agree with the general statement, and they do, does not guns that kill people, people kill people you will agree that we need to be checking those people. and we don't do that every time. it is ridiculous the factor you can literally be denied from one guy to gun show walk two tables over and purchase that same gun with no background check. when i did that with an undercover camera on my chest i found out those would charge you a premium for that gun being bought without a background check. they will charge you more because this one guy said there is no tax, there's no paperwork. that has got to be worth something. teeple who are trying to evade a background check and go under the system, that is where the hell of a lot and that is something that they will pay for. i hear people say you know the gun i had with me, never want to have to use this gun. is the last thing i want to do. however, this is the first step you guys are discussing here. we need to be maxing out all

other avenues not only from mental health and akron check records but having a lock on the door, having to two doors in a classroom, having handled so they can't get chained shut to stop police from coming in. those things need to be looked at. that is what i'm trying to talk about. if we did all these things and we are still having problems, then we continue to look down the list, but don't go to the end of that list verse because -- is basically what i'm trying to say. there were noncontroversial commonsense things that not only will prevent violence on college campuses that help prevent violence just about anywhere. the one thing i have seen that as happened recently on the past year in state after state that makes your argument more difficult for me to understand is the fact in state after state it is becoming easier and easier to carry a concealed weapon, to get your permit. in virginia you can get your permit to carry a concealed weapon without ever shooting a

gun. how can you tell me that as someone that we should introduce with a gun into a college classroom? i fundamentally don't agree with that. during my rotc buddies, people i know in iraq who will come over and those are people i can understand at some point. but the other people that i know, my friend lilly who is a permit who is never shot a gun in her life, i would not comfortable with that person sitting next to me. i love that girl, but i'm sorry. when the states are moving easier and easier every year and you guys say nothing? i don't understand. we are talking about people carrying a loaded concealed weapon in public. this is not something that is in their home or their own personal property. this is out in public and this is a privilege to people that we grant to meet certain requirements and those requirements are dropping. they shouldn't be doing that. to should want the high standards among gun ownership. it should be one of the highest

standards of people you associate. let's have a that discussion. let's not have this one. i mean, you know, i know what i was coming into coming here today. this is not a group of my buddies so to speak, but you know, i understand that you guys are afraid. you guys are fearful when you go onto college campuses. i understand that. i was in a situation where i was almost killed on a college campus. people look very surprised that i'm not going to carry a gun with me everywhere i go now. i just don't want to live in a free country where my freedom depends on something on my side. i don't think that is working towards a free country. working towards a free country is to allow to live without having to worry about getting shot going down the street are going to the supermarket or your

college campus. that is what we should be working for, not the other way around in my opinion. but, you know, i am trying to deal with that here and like i said i'm dealing with that here by looking further upstream instead of at the last possible second. and i would encourage everyone here to redirect their efforts, to look upstream, to look before the situation that you never want to have happen, happens. and when we can do that we can make some positive progress. like i said it will not only reduce crime and violence on college campuses, but just about anywhere. it is the general idea that more guns in our country would make us safer was true, then the united states of america should already be one of the safest countries in the world. and we are not. so, that is all i really have to say. thank you very much.

[applause] >> thank you on. john we are going to follow up with four minutes rebuttal from each side. >> well, i want to thank colin for coming here. originally polled county who had been the president of the brady campaign had originally agreed to do it and i guess he has left and colin stepped in for him and i appreciate him doing that. because of my research i ended up talking to literally dozens of people who have been present in these types of events that colin has been at and i can always say my heart goes out to people. is hard to think of the more terrifying, more helpless situation when you are having to lie there and pretend to be dead usually and hoping that the person is not going to kill you. when there is very little else you are going to be able to do at that particular point in time. you know it is hard for me to think of a more terrifying situation. i want to address some of the

points that colin has brought up. one is just the experience. we have had a number of multiple victims and public shootings in schools. relatively few people know that over a quarter of the public school shootings in the united states have been stopped as citizens with guns before uniformed police have been able to arrive. when those events occur they get relatively little coverage about how they actually stopped where there multiple victim public shootings in churches and malls and other places around the country. even on city streets and the thing is that they are stop about people getting killed, then it gets almost no coverage and part of the incident only gets a percent or two of the news coverage even when it is stopped. promis is it b., pennsylvania among a couple of the k-12. you have appalacian law school in virginia, which was stopped by citizens with guns. and, you know, the question is,

he'll anderson, we looked at 13 different types of gun laws. background checks included that were there in the brady act and other state background checks that were there. i wish it was that easy. i wish it was easy that you could just pass a background check and keep bad people from doing things. the person who shot colin, you know, he did not fail a background check. we pass the background check there. he had been involuntarily committed at the time so hard you going to change it? are you going to make it so anybody who had any type of mental illness would lose their right to own a gun? you know, arrest versus conviction? the problem is even with the rules that we have come, somebody is planning ahead and these guys in the region killer was planning ahead for years. hari going to stop somebody like that? even though they have very strict handgun regulations in norway, didn't stop him from being able to go and get handguns that are used in the attack. their handgun regulations are stricter than what we have here

anyplace in the united states. and get it didn't stop him from being able to do that. now, you know, the background checks, i don't know of any research by a criminologist that is found background checks generally you know, national studies like the brady act have found drops in violent crimes nationally. now, i just want to mention one thing with regard to israel. israel has learned a lot from these types of attacks, and one of the things is that terrace have a huge should teach it bandage. you can try to put more police there. you can fix doors board or the things that the problem is, terrorists can either wait until the uniformed police and military leave the scene and then attack or they are the first people you go when you take out. in israel for years kept on

trying to put more police and more military out on on the street and ordered to stop them and finally they gave up because they realize they didn't have enough money to go and protect every possible vulnerable target that was there. so what they did was in the early 70s, they started letting adult jewish citizens carry around concealed handguns at the time. about 15% of the adult population is able to go and carry handguns. but you will see at that very same time a huge change in the types of terrorist attacks that occur. i don't have time to go into it now. you want and more regulations? you have to realize there are trade-offs. yuma get more costly and more difficult for people to go and get guns he will have fewer people who are going to be able to have guns to protect themselves and you will have less deterrence in terms of these attacks occurring. i do greatly appreciate colin taking the time to come here and the reason why we wanted somebody from the brady campaign was precisely to go and give an alternative viewpoints and we could have a discussion and dialogue.

i know the last time i debated paul helmke we talked for half hour afterwards and i enjoyed it but i appreciate colin coming. thank you very much. [applause] >> thanks john. you know i heard you say something that i've heard quite often in debating this argument in general, that people -- criminals don't follow the rules. you pass laws that only affect law-abiding people. i understand that people will always run red lights. people will always drive recklessly and some people will always speed so is there an idea that we should not have traffic lights or stop signs or speed limits because people will break the rules? the only people that will burden will be the law-abiding people. that fundamental argument is a -- call for anarchy if you

take it to be an. we need laws in place to make it difficult for dangerous people to easily obtain dangerous weapons. it is simple. is a fundamental fact. last weekend, there were seven people killed in akron, ohio in their homes in their own neighborhoods, not a gun-free zone. is a multiple victim shooting and i'm glad to mention the appalacian law school shooting. this is something that has been restated over and over again in public domain and there is something fundamentally wrong with your understanding of it. the appalacian law school shooter finished shooting and disarm himself, put his gun down and was tackled by another unarmed student while he was being subdued by the student. to law enforcement officers were taking classes there, went to their truck, got their guns and held them at gunpoint while the rest of the police actually arrived. he was stopped by an unarmed person after he had already disarmed himself. this is not someone stopping a

shooting because they were concealed carry license he. the same thing in tucson arizona. this is a shooting the shooting stopped by a 65-year-old woman, not someone from -- with the concealed carry license. you know, like i said, generally, i understand how people feel uneasy but we need to look at the bigger picture. we need to look, step back and have open eyes as opposed to looking at something very narrowly. this is something that is bigger than just a problem on college campuses. we have a problem of violence everywhere in our country. we need to address all of that, not just part of it. and i something as simple as requiring background checks on every single seller, fewer decent american should want to know that the gun you are about to sell is going to somebody who can legally own it. who does not agree with that? and what we are trying to do here is pass simple commonsense things that make it more

difficult for people to obtain weapons. that is all i am going to say, so thanks. [applause] >> thank you. dr. lott and mr. carter thank you for being here. i do have to mention at this point that this is something that we pride ourselves very much for concealed carry, that we welcome the opposing view. if you disagree with us, and if you think their viewpoint is wrong, or you think that we are misguided, we are always willing to hear it. however we have been pushing this agenda for a long time. >> more now from this conference. up next law professors and academics discuss their research on allowing concealed handguns on college campuses. this is 45 minutes.

[inaudible conversations] >> he assert is vice dean and coeditor of the economic review. graduate of st. johns college in annapolis maryland he held advanced degrees from the cabot university of america, 1978 and a political science from harvard university 1979 and it each day in 1981. he received his law degree in 1985 from the university of chicago where he was executive editor at the university of chicago law review and chapter president of the federal society for law and public policy. professor lund served as a law clerk for patrick higginbotham of the united states court of appeals said that the circuit from 1985 to 1986 and the honorable's sandra day o'connor of the united states supreme court in 1987.

in addition to experiencing the united states apartment justice as officer of solicitor general and the office of legal counsel he served in the white house as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1982. he has written more than two dozen articles about the second amendment and firearms. is written widely on a variety of subjects including competition in her petition federalism separation of power speech and debate clause and civil rights. he is also written extensively on the legal regulation of medical ethics and the application of economic analysis and legal institution and to legal ethics. professor lund. >> thank you very much. i am a lawyer and i'm going to talk a little bit about the law but i'm going to do my best to speak mack english so i hope you'll bear with me. after the heller decision of 2008 there was a lot of celebrating by gun rights advocates and rightly so. this was the first major