pushed by the owners at that point. the first time the owners seriously proposed random drug testing was in 2002, and the players agreed to it. so i'm the same place as don. in retrospect, i think everybody can take a hard look at what they did, but when you understand the history of bargaining in baseball, i don't know that we could have reached agreement much sooner. ..

>> with so many kids choosing soccer, what are you doing to encourage them to play baseball instead? [laughter] >> sitting over here i have the heads of the soccer player union general counsel. one of my dearest friends who would be very upset with me if he thought it was discouraging people from playing soccer. there are a lot of people in this country and in this world and a lot of great games. i don't think we need to discourage any young kids from playing any sports. we want kids to be active. there are plenty of kids playing

baseball, there's more girls playing softball than ever before. as long as everyone is active, there's plenty to go around. >> will be the impact of the tv deal for the orioles being negotiated now. [inaudible] [laughter] >> would you like to take this one? [laughter] >> the local tv revenue is a crucial part of our team and a crucial part of our industry. you have seen the local broadcasting rights which go through the roof team after team. that only makes sense. baseball is 162 new reality shows a year. tremendous content. baseball fits the new media very carefully or very closely. i'm not going to try to predict

how the negotiation involving the nationals and orioles will play out, it will be a very important negotiation for both franchises. >> players have benefited financially from the sports network. payments to the team as well. do you see a potential bubble bursting here as well? >> in the last question, i'm not a media consultant. i understand that all ratings for national events, not just athletics, are facing a challenge. when it comes to baseball locally, the power of baseball with programming in the local markets is high. it is a tremendous amount of content, whether that is for satellite radio or tv or internet or other ways that baseball is transmitted. i gave people a lot of credit for recognizing the change in

technology and seeing different ways to bring the game to people, not only in their local markets but people who want to follow the tigers or the red sox even though they may appear in washington. i don't think there's a bubble there. i think the value of the content is there. the value is there. >> could the new smartphone apps fully replace baseball cards? [laughter] >> that maybe the hardest question that i might be asked. it requires me to know a smart phone app is. i am not the most technologically savvy person. i think as a kid who grew up collecting baseball cards, and even swapping baseball cards in college, including what some people in this room, i think that you can marry the technology with the joy of card

collecting. i think that our licensees are joining licensees in this area in order to continue to figure out a way to use than -- that new technology. >> will mlbpa ever endorsed cards other than topps? >> the mlbpa and mlb have had an agreement with other card companies. export-import bank it has not been the exclusive baseball card licensee of the players association. while export-import bank's has historically been making parts for the longest period of time, we do work with others. >> what is the view on the hall of fame inductees using steroids when max. >> i can't speak for the union on that.

when you are asking the union's positions, i would have to talk with the current members. i can give you my position. i'm not afraid to do that. pete rose belongs in the hall of fame. he belongs in the hall of fame. the best baseball players should be in the hall of fame. it is a museum. if you want to have some notations on their plaque that indicates that they were either -- but a judge ruled they used substances or they were accused of using them -- so be it. there were people in the hall of fame who have been judged by several arbitrators to engage in a massive conspiracy call collusion to defraud the fans of free competition. those people belong in the hall of fame as where. from my perspective, the hall of fame is for baseball players and influential executives who have been involved.

they should all be in. >> do think that the drug scandal has jaded young fans and made them more suspicious of players achievements? >> maybe, but i think young fans and young people are more jaded than they used to be period. maybe that's a good thing. athletes and celebrities are covered in a way that they were covered before. certainly it when i was a kid, whoever your hero is, to see them as a larger-than-life figure that we might see when we were kids. i will tell you this. baseball is as popular as it has ever been. that is shown by attendance and ratings and people following the game. it is extremely popular among today's youth. even if they are jaded, i think they understand both the beauty and power of the game and the incredible talent of the players have. >> should the union have a role in collecting but see layers

successor? >> one of the things i have seen in baseball since 1988 is the recognition by everyone but the commissioner of baseball is the top representative of the owners. there was a time when the commissioner was eat viewed as the representative of the fans or the game of the institution, and i'm not saying that blood doesn't think about the game institution just like players do, but i stand by my main remarks. collective bargaining is an adversarial process. but is unabashedly the head of the owners when it comes time to bargain and when it comes time to represent, baseball against third parties, that is how it should be. we will honestly wait with interest when blood actually steps down, 20 or 30 years from now. [laughter] but we should have no role in collecting his success.

>> should financially strapped owners. [inaudible] >> i will answer as the head of the baseball players association. anybody in any industry wants to get as much support from the municipal authorities as they can. it can be the subject of economic debate, in particular cities, where the subsidizing of entertainment facilities is the best use of public funds. baltimore being one for sure, it was critically important to the city there. baseball is an important institution as you said. we welcome the assistance of any units of polity that is willing to provide it. >> what impact will the dodgers

and mets lawsuit have on baseball considering these are two of the largest markets? >> it will have a large impact. the dodgers and the mats are not only playing into it the largest markets, but they are flagship franchises for the sport. whether you are a mets fan or dodgers fan or not, you want to see those kinds of franchises derived. if the dodgers fail in having the group that is involved there, the group not only has a financial way, but an in excitement for the game and acceptance in our community -- it is great for dodger fans and everyone in baseball. i am not just saying this because my wife is a mets fan, but it is great for everybody in baseball that the mats can focus on putting the best team on the field. national baseball in new york is one of the treasures in the history of the game. it can only be getting better for the game if the mets have an opportunity to be as competitive

as possible. >> there has been a lot of talk about paying ncaa athletes. do you think they should be paid or unionized? >> that is a little bit different for baseball players than it is for -- those questions usually come up with respect respective football and basketball players. baseball players in college really are a little bit different. when a baseball player goes to college, he must remain -- he can't come out and pelley professionally for three years. baseball players are much closer toward the model scholar athlete that people would like to see. baseball players don't generate revenue that the ball and basque ballplayers do in college. there are reforms that could be made that could benefit the owners. one of the thing that was push for is giving more baseball players a chance to use their talent to get an education

before they try to play professionally. along with the commissioner's office, we are working to try to make that a reality. i don't think those concerns really apply to college is all players. >> what you advise players in terms of social media, such as twitter? >> i do know what there is. i do know what twitter is. levi's players -- on one hand, part of why baseball is as popular as it is, is that fans have a personal connection with baseball players that might be different than their connection with other athletes. they watch players on their favorite teams every day from spring training until the season is over. social media allows them to connect with the players. in a very intimate way. national fans think every single

guy is a celebrity. he doesn't have to be ryan timmerman or steve strasburg. if you're comfortable doing it, to establish that connection with fans -- on the other hand, you have to think before you do it. we have been fortunate. our players, i'm not saying that we haven't had difficulty, but compared to some athletes in other sports, our players have used that media responsibly. it is a great way to cement and further that connection between fans and players. >> what advice can you give young players who hope to become professional baseball players? >> learn to throw left-handed. [laughter] >> another possibility, and bj can help me out on this one, learn to catch and hit left-handed. those are two things that can keep you in the game for a long time. i think i go back to the day

when kids play sports because it was fun to play sports. you are not necessarily thinking at eight years old that you are going to get a college scholarship or get a chance to play pros. what i would invite any kids is to play sports, be active, play as many sports as you enjoy rather than just focusing on one particular game and playing that year-round. if you have the talent and the competitive drive to use your athletic skills to get an education, do that. if you happen to be one of the minute percentage that had the ability to make a living in the pros, you're lucky, but it can be guaranteed. >> when will baseball have the dental manager or umpire clinics to general manager could happen at any point in time. there are several baseball executives right now working for

clubs, working for the commissioner's office, who are qualified to be general manager. that is just a matter of time and opportunity. umpires i know less about. there is a possibility of becoming an umpire at the major-league level. i generally consider -- i don't want to stereotype, women generally are smarter -- so i don't know why they would want to be an umpire -- it is very difficult and thankless. but we are ready for a female general manager and there are a number of great candidates out there. >> will there ever be a true world series in which the top mlb teams play a top foreign teen? >> i am not sure that we will get to a stage where the world series champion in north america plays a team in japan. we have thought about that.

there are a lot of talent is there. at the world baseball classic, the termini described, really gets to that. the world baseball classic has the best players in the world. many of them playing in major league baseball, but the cuban national team, japanese, cuban players competing against one another in a very high-level competition. we really hope that -- the wbc is already a great tournament. this is the first time we will play it in 2012 to 2013. i think that the world baseball classic has within it the potential to be that kind of event. >> you said the emperor job is tough and thankless. will mlb ever utilized this to assist umpires? >> as many of you know, we already do. when you play to some extent on what we call boundary calls for home runs.

if the ball is over a fence or it has been in the sand or fair or foul in a home run, in our collective bargaining, we did reach an agreement to expand to other calls. what are called chat place, whether a player caught the ball or whether it hits the ground. that agreement was subject to further bargaining. it has not been concluded between the owners and the umpires union. owners have the obligation to bargain with the players and the umpires union. you very would well may be expanded plays in game. >> in your experience, to baseball players consider themselves part of the 1% or 99%? >> i think that if given a choice, most baseball players would consider 99%. the best part about this job, there a lot of challenges -- it's working for the players. reason is that the players

recognize how fortunate they are to get to make a living and to make unbelievable living playing the game of baseball. they are incredibly humble guys ,-com,-com ma they are regular guys, they don't take for granted at all what they have. they give back to the community. it is part of what makes them such great union members. the economics of many of them would place in the 1%, their outlook towards life is such -- these are regular guys. >> who do you think are the best baseball players of all-time and wide? [laughter] >> steve rogers, bobby bonaire, tony clark. [laughter] >> i am going to be a little bit political here and not name any names. i can say that everyone takes the best players are the ones

that were playing the game and they were seven or eight years old. i can say with confidence that the baseball players of all-time that are great are playing right now. the quality of their training, the skill of the competition has gotten to the point where the players -- and the fact that we are more inclusive than we have ever been if you go back to the history of the game before african-americans to play, before we had the best international players playing. i'm not going to name names, everyone has their own opinions. i can say with confidence that the quality of the game today is as high as it's ever been. >> if you were trapped on a desert island, which do mlb owners would you most prefer to be with? [laughter] >> let me think. the challenge here. [laughter] >> is does the owner want to be

on the list or not? that's what i have to figure out. maybe time warner would be a good choice because he is responsible for creating wonderful television shows and great entertainment. he would be an interesting guy to have as well. let's see, i guess magic johnson. who wouldn't want to be on a desert island with magic johnson? >> we are almost out of time, before the last question, we have a couple of housekeeping matters to take care. first of all, i would like to remind you about our luncheon speakers on monday april 16. we had alec baldwin, actor and spokesperson. tune into c-span or wanted streamlined. on may 4 we are going to continue with mike rizzo, general manager of the washington nationals. then we have a tennis legend.

next up, i would like to present our traditional. [inaudible] it will be handy for drinking coffee on the desert island. i have one last question. would you think will win the world series this year? >> someone predicted that i was going to get this question. the answer that i gave was that every player pays the same amount of dues. that is what pays the salaries here. in seriousness, i think even the most ardent baseball writer would say this is impossible to pick out. you have six or seven teams in the american league that are just as good as any other. to make it to the world series. the national league appears to be wide open. this is one question i'm going to duck. >> how about a round of applause for our speaker today? [laughter]

i want to thank all of you for coming today, and i would also like to thank our press club staff, including journalism institute and broadcast center for organizing the event. you can find more information about the national press club on her website, and if you would like to get a copy of today's program, please check out her website at www.press.org. they keep coming. we are interned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> more from our "q&a" program. today we will hear from the folks behind the film american casino. it gets underway at 7:00 p.m. on c-span two. also, they look at bernie sanders on the book the last great senate. after that, the head of amnesty international talks to the author on universal rights. later, a discussion on independent voters. it starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. >> this year's studentcam competition asked students to create a video telling us what part of the constitution was most important to them and why. today we go to madison, connecticut to talk to third prize winner josh stokes who is

a junior in high school. >> why did you choose the first amendment as your topic? >> i chose it because it basically outlines what america is, and it has all of our basic freedoms in at. >> what are those five rights associated with the first amendment? >> by rights are the freedom to petition, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of religion, the freedom of the press, and freedom of speech at. >> you interviewed a group of protesters were you documentary. how does the first amendment apply to their movement? >> the group occupy wall street wouldn't be around if it wasn't for the first amendment. they are using public property, and they wouldn't be allowed to be there if it wasn't for that freedom, and they wouldn't be allowed to be speaking out it wasn't for it the freedom of speech. >> you interviewed a state senator who compared both the tea party movement and the occupy wall street movement. what similarities did he find 20

to? >> i don't think it is so much the similarities between abuse, but the way that they express them. they both expressed their views through freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. >> why do you think freedom of religion was included in the first amendment? >> i think that the founding fathers included it is because when the pilgrims came to america, they were being oppressed religiously and they were hoping that america would one day be the free country than it is today. everybody would be allowed to practice whatever religion they would like without oppression from the government or other religions at. >> you talked about the freedom of the past. what does that mean to you? >> the freedom of the press is the right that all americans have two print whatever they want, whether it be newspapers or magazines, and that can be against the government. that is great, because here in america we can do that. it is 100% legal, which is different from other countries, which maybe would be bad for

having something like that. >> as part of the portion about freedom of the press, you also mentioned the internet's role. how has that changed people's access to information? >> you can go on google, facebook, twitter -- and you can find anything about anybody. i think what it does is it keeps the government officials more reliable. today more than ever we can read anything about them. they wouldn't want to do something that would put their career at risk. i think it keeps the more honest and reliable because they can be found out the. >> which of those five rights associated with the first amendment do you think is most important? >> i think that freedom of speech is most important. not everyone has a certain religion that they want to follow or are interested in assembling peacefully, but with freedom of speech, i think every american really wants that freedom.

they can speak their words and say whatever they are thinking without fear of government interference or without fear of anyone saying anything at. >> thank u. so much for joining us today, josh. thank you and congratulations on your win. >> here is a brief portion from josh's documentary called first amendment. at. [inaudible] >> information is power. it is a powerful weapon in the hands of the free people.

it masks the lies and rips off the bandages of deceit. twitter, facebook, cell phones, any of it. they're unmasking the lives of tyrants. >> the freedom of information act cannot be uploaded on the internet so that's available not just to the person who made the request, but to the whole world. >> you can watch the entire documentary as well as all of the winning documentaries at studentcam.org. continue the conversation on c-span's bespoke and twitter pages. >> former president bill clinton is calling on congress to extend the export-import bank charted through 2013. and to increase its spending limits. it puts at risk taxpayer money to support big companies. mr. clinton gave his remarks at a conference today hosted by the

export-import bank here in washington. he is introduced by the ceo of honeywell. this is about 45 minutes. >> president william jefferson clinton doesn't need an introduction. but i will give him one anyway. i am very pleased to do so, because the president has always been a steadfast supporter of business and the bank. he recognizes that american business and trade is the source of our nation's productivity and the source of our standard of living. while it is important for government to be a regulator of business, it is just as important for government to be an enabler of business. one of the best ways those peaceful and prosperous relationships of the nation exist is through commercial ties. we live in a global economy. our nation's ability to do good things domestically and

internationally is derived from the strength of our economy. as president, this wasn't just an intellectual exercise, but rather an understanding that manifested itself. the 1993 economic package that brought us from deficit to surplus and economic expansion. providing financial loans to mexico during their 1994 crisis helped that the american public do not support by a five to one margin and put the president at significant political risk. especially if it didn't work. mexico and the loans were paid ahead of time. completing nearly 300 trade agreements, including nasa, gas, and securing public trade relationships with china. passage of the jobs through trade expansion act of 1994 that supported the overseas private investment corporation and strengthened protection of property. it supported small business

through the job protection act. small businesses guaranteed credit act, and the small businesses lending enforcement act. a great significant to the audience, support of numerous bills supporting the bank, most notably the export-import bank authorization act. not a bad run their mr. president. president clinton's impact hasn't stopped with the conclusion of his presidency. as example, the establishment of the william j. clinton foundation with the intentions being converted to good results by partnerships between government, businesses, ngos, and private citizens. the clinton global initiative, convincing global leaders to address the world's issues. the clinton climate initiative's, working with 40 of the world's largest cities to reduce greenhouse gas. in raising money for disaster relief efforts around the world partnering with george h. w.

bush and president george w. bush on several. we have been able to support president clinton in these efforts by having teachers in mexico through the global initiative and distributing the schools there. strongly supporting the clinton climate initiative with our focus on energy efficiency, and rebuilding a 40,000 square foot school in haiti. we are very proud of our association with you mr. president. when you have a president who demonstrated support for american business throughout his presidency, who has been hugely impactful after his presidency, and he wants to continue helping american business and the american economy, that is a good way to make that happen. the answer, of course, is to give the keynote speech at the

conference. please join me in welcoming our president william j. clinton. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> first i want to thank u. for the introduction. we have become an unlikely group of friends, he and i am a small group, big guys. he has been a trusted partner with the clinton climate initiative on our global initiative excess of what they have done on technology training in mexico and china. i really appreciate his services

in the bipartisan budget committee. it has been known as a bold commission. i hope after the election it will be dusted off. it has the best framework for the beginning of our efforts with our long-term debt problem. the best that i've seen. i want to thank the members of the diplomatic force and business people who are here. i understand vice president of nigeria is here. i love the country, and i've done a lot of work there. [applause] i want to thank the president of the ex-im bank.

board members. [inaudible] , thank you very much. this audience is full of people who work for me, and i hate to start mentioning them, but i can't not. i want to thank kevin barney who is in the back. he will always have a special place in my heart. he and his sister were both in my administration because he was so kind to my late stepfather who passed away a couple of years ago at 92 years old. they keep tom mcdonald, jim mcdonald, carol keating, thank you very much. everything you did. all the others who are here who worked in the white house administration the ex-im bank is

to be a bipartisan deal. i hope it will be again. i would like to talk a little bit about this in the context of where the american economy is, not just where the reauthorization bill is. the president set a goal of doubling u.s. exports in five years. that can clearly be done. in the eight years i was president, we more than doubled exports, a 158% increase. this can be done. but it has to be done with a strategy that includes a lot of things. i want to kind of set this in context. first of all, ever since the landmark study by the two economists a couple of years

ago, more and more people have noted that america's income stagnation problem may have him multiplicity of tears. one of them is to have a high percentage of our employment in the tradable sector of the economy. i remember when i was pushing all those trade agreements and the creation of the world trade organization when i was president. it was obvious to me that we had to do that because export related jobs than -- i'm sorry i don't have the current figures, on average they 35% more than non-export related jobs in the united states. i'm sure the numbers are more or less still the same. since president obama took office, there was an nyu study and a lot of other studies that show that the tradable sector of

the economy not only get jobs with starting pay that pay increases with the growth of the company, people who have worked in the non-tradable sector are much more likely to get jobs with not only lower starting pay, but without pay raises that keep up with inflation and economic growth. i say that because most of the discussion here in washington, and i have participated in it, and i'm a democrat so you know which side i'm on, a lot of this has been about tax experiments and income inequality and extraordinary gains of the last decade. in fact, the last 40 years accruing to those of us who are in the top 1% of earners. i think that is an important debate. where ever you come down on that, the most important thing

is to keep growing the economy. if you don't grow the economy, it doesn't matter how you divide the shooting time. in the end, our hopes are to build a country and a world with shared prosperity -- it will fail. we should begin with our premise. if america once again wants to lead the world, towards shared prosperity, we have to be able to change the internal dynamics of growth in this country. one key component of that must be to increase employment in the tradable sector, which means increase exports. in more common language, that would be well appreciated in my native state of arkansas if you want 20% of the world's income,

you you'd better sell something to somebody else. [laughter] >> i think this -- let me put the issue at hand with the ex-im bank. with the bank wants to be doing in some sort of larger context. we want to double exports in five years and keep growing as a trading country, and do it anyway in a way that is fair to her trading partners and helps to build their employment of their people. if you really look all over the world, the things that people are trying for in the world is a decent job with a reliable income that allows people to support their families. we have to start with an economic policy that deals with our long-term fiscal challenges and still makes the necessary

investment to our productive future. we have to produce competitive interest rates, they might be zero now, but when economic growth resumes vigorously -- not just in america, but everywhere -- interest rates will not stay as low as they are and will not remain competitive if we don't have a long-term plan to reduce more debt. we need enough regulations to avoid future financial crises, which includes adequate capitalization requirements, without choking people taking risks. what happened in the last decades, and one of the reasons we have less job growth and stagnant incomes, we had way too much debt in relation and too little investment in the areas where the jobs will grow.

and we had institution oversight, which had so much uncertainty in the economy that it collapsed on us. we need some balance there. the second thing we have to do is to have -- as i said, adequate investment, including from the public sector in the things that are important to her competitiveness. development, education, and training. we have to have investment in the modern infrastructure. not only in our ports and airports and roads and water systems, but the infrastructure of the 21st century, in a modern sustainable energy infrastructure and information technology. these things are critical to our future. we also have to be prepared to reform our systems. let me back up and say if you believe as i do that the major

challenges of the world are basically subject to three categories -- too much inequality and income and access to employment, and capital to start businesses and health care and education, all over the world between rich and poor countries, there is too much instability for people to take risks, whether reasonably predictable with results. the way we produce and consume energy and other resources locally has made our growth system unsustainable in the 21st century. we have to change that. the challenges of doing that are very different in rich and poor countries. i spend most of my time in places with very low incomes. we have operations where we sell aids medicines or malaria medicines or tuberculosis medicine for people who have

aids. where we work on waterborne diseases, cholera and dysentery. we are training people to do it in 70 countries. i do a lot of work in haiti, has several of you have helped me. you have helped the haitians, for which i'm grateful. and the poor countries, they don't have the systems that we take for granted in richer countries. let's think of all the things we take for granted. you would be shocked if the microphone failed, at the lights went out, if the screens went dark for those of you like me who don't have 20-20 vision anymore. you know you can drink the water, if you get bored with my speech, you can get up and go to the restroom. i have been in a lot of places where people take that for granted. we were looking at our resource

station in agricultural development a couple of years ago, it took us an hour and a half to go 18 kilometers. on the road. now, it takes you an hour and a half to go 18 kilometers in washington dc today, but for very different reasons. [laughter] >> the point is, those places you have to build systems. systems get predictable positive consequences to good behavior. in all of the old rich countries, which is basically the u.s., europe, and japan, we have systems that have risks, and we have to reform them. if you go back to the sumerian civilization, all societies and people running all great organizations, public and private, they hope on present

gains and create future opportunities. more interested in maintaining present conditions of power than advancing purposes in which the institutions were established. we in america are trying to figure out how to reform our health care system, k-12 education system, our system of financing in accessing higher education for people, and our energy systems. we need to be financing a government budgeting systems. we need to perform our immunization system, and i will say more about that in the future. the point is, when you are a wealthy country that runs up against limitations of the way you are doing business, you need to reform and get back into future business. if you don't, you get penalized. that brings me to the export issue. one of the reasons that we need to do a better job of training

programs is so we can get more workers into the tradable sector of the economy. at one of the reasons we need more trade agreements is, you know, we take forever and a day to decide to do these trade agreements, meanwhile, the people we are trying to make a deal with have made five other deals. there is only so slow you can go until you make the perfect enemy of the good. that bothers me. look what happened with this korea deal? i applaud the approval, but it took us five years to get this free trade agreement passed with korea, during which the time this country entered into agreements with the eu, latin america, and others, with a whole network of trade agreements that we have been

entered into. we were falling into leaving. i think that we have to see this ex-im bank issue in the context. if we want to be competitive, you have to be. it is just as simple as that you have to do what it takes to make sure that americans who are able to sell different services around the world, have the chance to do so. i do not agree with those who say that our country is in permanent decline. it is still a highly entrepreneurial place where people start small business. we still have hot beds of innovation. silicon valley is booming again, high-tech in massachusetts is moving again, san diego has the largest number of nobel prize-winning scientists in

america, orlando, thanks to disney world, universal theme park, global entertainment, the pentagon and nasa has 100 computer simulation companies. the cleveland clinic and the cuyahoga community college are helping to train the compass of our middle-aged, non-college educated people to work in emerging health care jobs that they never would've even entertained a few years ago. we have these innovations that are very important. not only that, present company excluded, we are young compared to our long-established competitors. it is younger than europe's, it is younger than japan's. unless they change their immigration policy, we will be a younger workforce than china. we can accelerated if we would stop some of our nutty

immigration practices. let people who can create jobs for others come into this country. that is worth something. for those of us who no longer have it, we know it is worth something. [laughter] >> the average age of the workforce being young, if you're educated and prepared and organized and supported in a business government environment, it works to be a very good deal. we are still the largest exporter for goods and services and capital, but jenna and germany do it with more merchandise than we do. germany went has a much higher percentage of gdp in exports, partly because it is probably the most successful country in the world in involving small and medium-sized businesses in exporting. which is another reason we

should support the ex-im bank because of what they do there. there are places where we have fallen behind. the quality of our infrastructure is no longer competitive. we ranked 24th in the world in the computer download ratings of the internet. south korea rates first, their download speeds are four times of america's. we ranked 15th or 16th in the percentage of young adults getting university degrees. partly because of the way it has been price tag in the market. i do believe that student loan reform, when fully implemented, will remedy part of that, because it will allow all graduates to pay their loans back as a percentage of their income for up to 20 years. so that people can stop dropping

out of college because their budget can't pay the loans, and then they can take jobs based on what they want to do and need to do, not based on the salary they have to have to pay their loans back. we have challenges, but we have advantages. meanwhile, we have all these companies from big to small in america who are doing great things and have become far more productive as a result of the agonizing years we have all just been through. there was never a more important time for us to be competitive in the export market. you can say all you want about subsidizing the finance of export, as a practical matter, when you get on a field in a competition, and you either need

the competition or you get beat. i love mutual agreement. i would love it if we would all get grid of our nuclear weapons. i love it if a lot of good things could happen by mutual agreement, but unilateral improvement is not a very good recipe for success in athletic or economic competition. i hope that in the end this question of the xm banks -- ex-im tanks will not be like football. it was one of the harshest of times a partisan disagreement when i was president, i don't believe we ever had a fight over -- no matter what else we were fighting about, i don't think that there was ever any disagreement about it.

i think it is important, and i also remember that we made an extraordinary effort, partly due to fred's leadership at the fpa program, so we could get more small-business people in it. when we reauthorize, we said the export loan program would work like that at the ex-im bank. in effect, we made the ex-im bank financing bigger. by mid- 1997, we had a national export strategy that was focused on medium-sized and smaller companies. we eased lending for them -- the working capital guarantee program through the ex-im bank. we created an export assistance system that was nationwide. in between 1993 and 1997, the

export sale but we facilitated. we had an exporter database direct marketing, by 2000, we had 127,000 companies, which were used to sign of almost 30,000 new customers. we did a lot of this kind of work, and i was thrilled when president obama nominated thread that he had been at the fda. i knew that we would try to help the big companies, but they would come to us with what the deal was and be straightforward. we didn't do it or not what we had to do is to make sure that the medium and smaller companies would be involved in that. yes, 80% of the ex-im banks financing by dollar volume, goes to larger enterprises like boeing or caterpillar or ge, but

the finances for smaller companies have doubled over the last three years. more than 85% of the transactions are done by ex-im bank. that is very important. one of the reasons that this kind of work is not by private banks, it has to do the transaction costs. involved in the smaller operations. this can make a huge difference. we had a 300% increase in the value of exports of smaller business in the 1990s. we can do that again on a bigger base. if we reauthorize the ex-im bank. i just want to emphasize that this is not just about big companies with well-known addresses. wichita and toledo have more

than 50% of their annual gdp tied to exports. there are a lot of other towns doing so as well. increasingly, state economic development programs are trying to get into this. north carolina has a particularly aggressive effort to this department of commerce to organize and involve their small businesses in exporting. but there is no mechanism through which what they do can be readily spread to other states, and last you have the infrastructure of the ex-im bank out there working state after state, trying to make sure that everybody knows how to do this and what the consequences are. again, i would say that we live in a world where everyone is looking for an advantage, and yet everybody knows that we need rules to keep the bandages from running into excess.

we had the world trade organization, we had a heck of a lot of fights about the rules. and this is the world we live in. a dynamic, vibrant world. all i know is this. although successful countries around the world are defined by growing economy, creating jobs, and rising incomes -- rising incomes have different political systems in a variety of different social systems. every successful country, every single one, has economy in an effective government. they worked out some being appropriate to what exists. to make themselves as competitive as they can possibly be. you cannot cite a single country on the plan. growing economy, rising income,

and a robust institution. it does not have both the private sector's end private government. they have radically different tax structures, and radically different social programs, but they don't say the government is evil and weak as possible, let's just get out of here. >> there is not a single example . the president says we're going to double exports. i think that collectively as a people we can help meet that goal and do better. it is hard for me to see how it will be done without the ex-im bank. ..

>> is coordinated competition. because we live in an interdependent world. we can't escape each other. i would not like it, for example, if water problems now being experience inside china -- experienced in china which are quite severe in a way, part of the yellow river is dry during part of the year, and they've built these two great canals that run from the minneapolis si to the yellow, and some chinese engineers -- not greenpeace, some chinese engineers fear that

the solution to the the problem will actually, ultimately, cause both rivers to be dry parts of the year with calamitous consequences to china and perhaps to its neighbors in southeast asia because it will press the chinese to consider takingous more of the m -- taking out more of the macon than it should given the needs of vietnam and loose -- laos and others in the mekong river system. you shouldn't want that to happen. we need to live in a world where every year step by step there is more shared prosperity. and more shared responsibility for our common problems. but we cannot help to create that world if we continue to allow too much of america's human capital to stagnate because we don't have enough people in the tradeable sector, we don't have enough growth, it's not broadly enough shared

because they're not working in areas with good wages and growing income. this is a huge issue. so, to me, reauthorizing the xm bank will not only create a stronger american economy and help to send a clear signal that we are back in the future business, will help us to do things that will help our neighbors. i'll just give you one example of that. our neighbors in the caribbean have the highest electric rates in the world. in the world. haiti, where i spend a lot of my life and the dominican republic where i've done a lot of work for more than a decade, have probably the highest rates. haiti has the highest electric rates in the caribbean, the poorest country. virtually every caribbean

country could be completely energy dependent with solar, wind, geothermal and waste-to-energy facilities. they could run all their cars on biofuels made in the brazilian system where you get with sugarcane 9.3 gallons of fuel for every gallon of oil required to produce it. it would change the future of the caribbean, our neighbors, our friends, our partners, and it could be led by american technology and american companies if we could work the financing out. it's one of the things i plan to spend a lot of time on in the next ten years. but it's just one example. if we want to do this given their economic circumstances, even the american jurisdictions in if puerto rico and the virgin islands, if we're going to do this, we've got to work the

financing. and i could give you 50 other examples. so for those of you who are here from america whether you're republicans, democrats or independents, i urge you to ask the congress to reauthorize this. at the higher level. for those of you from other countries, i urge you to continue to work to build the kind of trading and investing relationships with us that will give us a chance to do things that every good market does, that benefit our people but also benefit yours. and help you to build modern, diverse economies. where we share the prosperity and the responsibility of a 21st century world so full of opportunities and challenges. i do not think you should be pessimistic, but i do think we should say let's just get off the dime. let's quit majoring in the

minors. let's get fighting about things that are self-evident, and let's decide that our goal is to create opportunity societies for people and to take those steps which will do it and do it most quickly, most effectively and most broadly. there'll still be plenty of room for honest argument about how to do that. but a lot of very simple decisions will be resolved in a rapid way beginning with reauthorizing the exim bank. thank you very much. [applause]

>> we'll be back from 12:30 at lunch. see you then. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] >> we've got more from our "q&a" program coming up later today. we've been focusing on documentaries this week, and today we'll hear from the folks behind the film, "american casino." that gets under way here on c-span2 at 7:30 eastern. tonight a look at our "after words" program. we'll start at 8 eastern with a discussion with vermont senator bernie sanders. and after that the head of amnesty international usa talks to the author of "universal rights." and later a discussion on

independent voters. that all starts at 8 eastern here on c-span2. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and mix affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> a discussion, now, on social media and the 2012 election campaigns. from today's "washington journal," this is about 45 minutes. >> host: we want to introduce you to lauren ashburn who is the editor-in-chief of the daily download. ms. ashburn, what is the daily download? >> guest: hi, peter, nice to be here.rn, the daily download is a new webw site that we have created that, basically, cure rates the

smartest content on the web. and we give you smartest posts of the day, smartest videos, things that are really -- that t really time-strapped personhe w would need in order to get the full picture of what's happening. strapped person needs. host: who defines smartest? guest: i do, of course. host: how would that be different from a "drug to udge report?" guest: these are things people would not see. we are assuming a level of understanding and education, and this is something you might not see from a site called mindfloss, or something like

that. these are unique stories. plus, original post from howard kurtz, other contributors, myself. host: we want to introduce howard kurtz, who hosts cnn pulled all "reliable sources." what is your role? guest: i am a contributor and an adviser. it has been fun to watch this built up. there are the smartest post, and there are the dumbest post. my favorite feature is the guilty pleasure. the other thing about the daily download, when you ask about " the huffington post," or some of these other sites, it does not try to do everything.

we do a lot of original video. sometimes we have skype conversations. we interview people. we think video is moving of mine. i love television. i love being on cnn, but this is a new frontier. host: how has your life changed since you left writing for "the washington post." guest: it has changed tremendously. i have the metabolism for an online guide. the great thing about writing for "newsweek" or "daily beast" is you can get something ought quickly, but the downside is you're always on deadline.

host: lauren ashburn, are there different points of view? guest: one of the things we agree on is that the increasing polarization of media is not good for america. you have one station where al sharpton is basically covering himself and then you have fox, which is admittedly conservative. we have an independent look at the news. host: we want to ask you about something in the news. hillary talks the ann romani

tweet. this is in response to it being said that she never worked a day in her life. now, david axelrod tweets, supporting ann romney. how will this play out? guest: on the policy side it will raise sympathy. raising five boys can not be easy. she has played an interesting role in trying to play oddball the family -- in trying to play up the family side of mitt romney. what is interesting as a lot of warfare is conducted on twitter.

it really has an impact. it has a ripple effect. most journalists are on twitter. they will pick up on it. it will be talked about on c- span or cable television. guest: about one year ago i wrote an article when we were considering two females for the supreme court justice, elena kagan and sonia sotomayor. host: you wrote it for? guest: "the huffington post," candid talk about how -- and it talked about childless women have it easier than those that do not have children. i was saying you women without children, it is easier to be successful. i have three children.

i do believe it is easier. you take one piece out of your life. you can then focus clearly on your career, but i agree with a lot of people are saying in that it does not mean that just because she decided to focus on her family that is not a career. even in this age right now, that is a hot-button issue, and it is exploding and twitter. it is exploding on facebook. people are taking sides. host: we want to show you hilary rosen's most recent tweet in response. here: what is going i'm

is hilary rosen is a democratic operative, and i'm not saying she is trying to do this on behalf of anyone, but is trying to paint the picture that mitt romney and his wife are all the touched. that is the subtext. guest: what drives me crazy is i respect them for their views, but what drives me crazy is this is women against women. this is female against female combat when we have such a hard time with women in politics anyway. we could not elect a female president. we had a difficult time even with a vice-presidential candidate. guest: was there not a lot of women that it's at sarah palin. -- that attacked sarah palin. guest: right. let's bring it together, girls. host: when you decide to take

part in this conversation, how will you do it? how will it be different? guest: we are analysts, essentially. on something like this, we will carry the video. we will put it right there, analyze it together, and ask for participation. host: from anybody? guest: absolutely anyone. guest: we like to engage everyone. we have done this story about pintrest, an interesting story. 90% of the users are women. it is a follow-sharing site. guest: you do not know anything about the site. guest: ann romney is very

active on it. it is a way of going around the mainstream media, interacting directly with women voters, which is what mitt romney needs. host: who founded pintrest. -- pintrest? guest: three guys. it is a photo service where you can create your own virtual board, and then pin things you like. one of the things she created was her mitt-loaf, where you could put up videos. she did this love letter,

essentially. was a happy anniversary video. no one would run that. host: how is it different than facebook? why not just put it on your facebook page? guest: first of all, it is hot, new, and shiny. traffic went up 52% in february. guest: it is more visual. it is not about having an exclusive set of friends. guest: anyone can look. the idea for the campaign is to have somebody say that is really cool. it is not so much words. it is just pictures, video. guest: the obama campaign is also on pintrest, but it seems to be in a more official way.

guest: it looks like a team of kids is running the obama site. it is not very personal. host: will you be editorialize index guest: we analyze. guest: the site ranges widely. it is not like a newspaper that has an editorial page with a position. it is a collection of voices, hours, and the voices of our editors find. host: howard kurtz is a familiar face to cable news watchers, now is washington bureau chief with "daily beast" and "newsweek, but a little bit about lauren ashburn, she went to albright

college, has a master's from columbia. i apologize for taking so long talking to our guest. pennsylvania. firing. democrat. go ahead. -- irene. democrat. go ahead. caller: i wanted to mention romney withr annn the five children. i will be 65. i had seven children. five living. you know what, i'm still raising children. i'm still washing my grandchildren's close this is my responsibility maybe my --

responsibility because many my daughter-in-law is too busy. one of my sons is working all the time. i am doing all the things that a mother would do. and, the great grandparent. financially, these things need to be done. host:, quickly, your point? caller: my point is i want the truth to be put out for middle- class people. you cannot put her with the average woman whose husband is a billionaire. host: lauren ashburn? guest: that is an interesting point. it is true for working women, they have to work. that is the point that hilary rosen is making. but also, ann romney could choose to work if she wanted to come and she made a decision not to do that. was it out of choice, yes.

does it make it less valuable? now. -- no. guest: she did serve as first lady of massachusetts, and she is effected with multiple sclerosis, and does volunteer work. they are a wealthy family. there is no way around that. in a campaign year, that will become fodder. host: we want to show you hilary rosen's most recent tweet . it is not up there right now. we will show it to you in just two seconds and we will take this call from indiana. bob, republican line. caller: good morning, c-span. i am 70 years old, and it saddens me about the envy this

president has created. he is a community educator. -- educator. howard kurtz made the statement that "morning show" was right- leaning. joe is a phony. host: a response for that caller? guest: i am not the one who made that saying, a guest of mine said "morning joe" was a right- leaning show. i guess joe would agree that more of the guests lean left, and he is the only right-leaning house that i could see. host: i wanted to get your

analysis of hillary rosen's mos. guest: i would analyze that as a slight walked back. hilary rosen says this might be getting personal, and i just want to make a point about your very wealthy husband. mitt romney is fair game, and his wife is fair game, but to start picking on her because she chose to raise five sons, i think that is a losing argument. host: lauren ashburn? guest: i agree. the best thing the democratic side could do right now is keep quiet. the right is doing what it is doing to attract women or not attract women. guest: you do not think the obama campaign should talk about

women's issues in general? i'm just -- guest: i'm just saying do not make it personal. the obama campaign has women on their side. it is theirs to lose at this point. i think that attacking ann romney at this moment, when the polls show that when in favor president obama and his policies is a mistake. host: is, will -- is tumbler an active site you follow? guest: it is. have you read the most recent hillary posts? if you go on tumbler, there is a group of pictures that two young kids put together.

hillary clinton is wearing these black sunglasses and she is texting and the kids have decided to put a picture of ryan guy swing above its -- gosling about it. they do a parody. guest: it is kind of a mashup site, where people are getting news, information, and laughter, sometimes. guest: even though it is not as prevalent as twitter and facebook and lease in the campaign world, but this most recent use is elevating its status in the political realm. host: is tumbler ispintrest

making money? guest: facebook bought instagram. guest: that was a lot of money for a site that has not made a dime. guest: it is. as far as buying other sites, we just saw aol and the sale of all of its patents. i think there is right now -- maybe it is a bubble, but i think a lot of people are trying to find the next big platform, and if you have the platform where you are getting information from people that could be sold, and you have a different way to communicate with people, then, you know, you have a good chance of being bought. host: california, david. thank you for holding. you are on with howard kurtz and

lauren ashburn. caller: great to see that there are some alternatives to the right and left. i would like you guys to check out some different videos at theirisamagicbullet.com. host: emanuel. you are on. caller: when it comes to the news, when will we get back to interpreting the news -- to reporting the news instead of just interpreting the news. second, when people can go out on blogs on false names, make disparaging remarks, and then list information as facts that have no basis in fact.

guest: there are people that will stir things up. pretty quickly, you are found out. guest: this is a minority view, but i do not understand why they allow people to post not using their own names. i think it would elevate the tone of the discourse. because it is an exploding world, one thing we are doing at daily download is looking at new forms of journalism and digital tools that people can use at home. this is one of our specialties. we talk about a site called raw porter, where people can send information that might be used. it also shows that people can be their own journalist. they can use these digital tools

to gather information about their community, political contributions, their schools. i think that is a good thing. i would not want to go back to just three networks, a couple of national magazines. host: howard kurtz, do have a problem with people posting comments? guest: i love comments. i think they are great, but a lot of times they get out of hand with personal attacks, libel assertions, and so forth. how do you invite all of these people in without letting them hijacked the process? my own feeling, and some sites have move to this, but is if people had to use their real man, it would add accountability. -- real name, it would add accountability. host: is daily download doing that? guest: we are not, but maybe we

need to have a meeting. we are inviting people to comment via facebook. it is better than just creating a name. our comments link back to a facebook profile. guest: there is some element of accountability. guest: right, you can[applause] -- [laughter] host: what is the lead story right now on a daily downloads? guest: trayvon martin. i put together a peace after looking at twitter and facebook and the things that were said zimmerman was facing second-degree murder

charges. on twitter, it exploded with support of trayvon martin and really negative comments about george zimmerman. it was very one-sided. i think people who had the most emotion about the case came down to, but they also started attacking the media. i wrote a piece about how a 140 foracter ran t need to wait the reels of justice to grind slowly. guest: the headline on these pieces are presumed guilty. i am not taking issue with the special prosecutor's decision after weighing the evidence. it did seem weird than an armed kid got shot. but, he is entitled to our system. host: next call from arizona.

jan of our republican line. caller: i am really excited to see mr. kurt. he is one of the best sunday morning shows he has. i am not a relative. [laughter] guest: i told him not to call now. caller: you are a true journalist. i do not know if you are republican or democrat, but you never take sides on one or the other. you are amazing. i do not know why your show is that at the top of the heap on sunday. host: you ever read his daily beat? caller: i do not do social media. i was watching you talk about the president's war on women. unlike mitt romney's wife, i chose to stay at home. i am an interior decorator.

it is hard to be a mother. you are in so many social things. there is one thing i want to say. you were great. nobody talks about the president paying his women 18% less than men make. i do not know who did the book that came in and they let him do the article. they call it the man's club. the president has the boys' club. there are different things. the president is not this special on women. we do not need to bring of working women against stay at home women. this was back in the 1960's. host: we got the point. thank you. guest: i am an independent but i appreciate the fact that she watches my program. obviously, the democrats have tried to stamp republican

policies as being a war on women. that is a nice campaign slogan the republican -- the republican primary process focused on contraception. rick santorum just dropped out of the week. he talked about -- romney says there should be no federal funding of planned parenthood. in order to compete for the conservative base, republicans are focusing on issues like that and that has given political fire to the democratic party. just yesterday, romney tried to fight back by talking about how the president's economic policy is hurting women and female business women in entrepreneurs. host: lauren ashburn, anything to add? guest: agree with you when it

comes to talking about putting women against women. pitting working women is women who are working at home is a big mistake. it is not fair. because, everybody in their own family has their own way of making things work. maybe for a while the wife stays home and maybe the husband stays home. you know, it is all about personal choice as it comes to whether or not to stay home or not. i guess it comes to personal choice on a lot of women's issues. i commend you for making that decision to stay home. every woman has a story. i made a decision to leave a big corporate job to work out of my home office and start my own company so i could be there when my kids came home from school. and i could pick up my kids when i needed to and take them to the doctor. everyone makes a different choice for different reasons. are you offended by either side? the and romney or the comments?

guest: i am not a finighan here is why -- is a very personal and difficult issue -- i am not offended and here is why. it is a very personal and difficult issue for women. you could write a book today about the guilt that women feel and the anst that women feel -- angst that women feel. we are not a point where we can feel like this is the right answer. there are some articles written about how to have a balanced life. well, there is no balance. the only balance is that there will never be balanced. host: to you agree with this tweet? -- do you agree with this tweet? guest: i think that rosen took this in a personal direction. her saying it was not about

policy -- we are following have a lot of tweets. it is an issue because of the battle latino voters. that is crucial in this fall election. the larger issue is going to consume enormous amount of our attention. guest: i want to say that we all do television late at night. we all know that sometimes, you say something that might not be exactly what you want to say. guest: you hit the send button and you can only get so many words until those tweets. guest: if you want to take it back, it is hard because the fire storm has already blown up the building. host: david axelrod of the obama campaign tweeted last night -- guest: that is a technical term.

[laughter] he is not wanting to be saddled with beating up on a ann romney. host: independent line. howard kurtz and lauren ashburn are our guests. online politics and social media is what we are talking about. caller: i would like to weigh in on what hillary rosen said. she did not say anything wrong. what she was trying to say was that mitt romney's wife was never in the work force. he can only talk about a woman that works. if the wife was talking about her kids at home, that is different. i do not think there is need for apology. that is my opinion. i would like a lady to weigh in on it because i think she is saying something -- saying

-- guest: i am not quite sure you are saying that i am saying. i will tell you what i mean by all of this. i think hillary rosen made a value judgment. that is the problem here. she made a value judgment that stayed home is not as good as going to work. and therefore, a, you can say that you are not as smart and b, they like to take it easy because having kids is an easy job. you know, they're all of these kinds of things. these things can be placed on those few words. guest: this is not really about ann romney. it is a way to get at mitt romney. he is dragging ann romney into it and it is personal.

host: howard kurtz, dan quayle, murphy brown, any relationship? everybody knows what we are talking about. will we know in five years what we are talking about when we say hillary rosen and ann romney? guest: it does not involve a famous fictional newscaster but it does remind me that the culture wars that are going on for a long time -- here we are in 2012 and we are having this discussion. guest: because corporations in america have not yet caught up to having female workers and female employees who can integrate their home life in their work life. i think you would feel -- guest: do all of them understand this? maybe they did not have patience

for female employees left to leave early? guest: someone who is at the very top of a corporation just to have kids and was never home. therefore, ok, you just have kids, you are not going to be home. i did not get a chance to be home. there are some like that. there are some who say, i want you to have that choice but in the backs of their mind, they are thinking, i did not have a chance to do that with my kids. employees, i think, need to rise up and say look, as women, we can be equally as effective working at home part-time, full- time, have time as we can sitting in an office from 9 to 5 in the afternoon. host: lauren ashburn at dailydashdownload.com. how will this hillary rosen/ann romney play out? guest: we will debate this

issue. we will analyze this. just as we are doing here. i think that gives a real value add to the internet world because we are able to react in real time to an issue that is exploding on the net and add voices of reason. we hope. better not inflammatory. we will get a chance to look at it in a different way. guest: and encourage people to comment. host: this week has come in. -- tweet has come in. guest: that debate has gone on for some time. the definition of -- we in the news business, those of us to work for organizations, no longer have a monopoly on the term journalist. there are very good loggers out there who report and worry about getting their facts straight. or are very opinionated and to

edit lot of value. i read a lot of blotters every day. -- bloggers every day. i tweet and facebook./ 5 ellicott at -- guest: 5:00 and you can go home. guest: smart consumers out there have to make their own judgment about who is credible and who is worth following and who is worse their time. host: a tweet -- guest: true. i think she is right. there were a lot of tweets last night on twitter that said, the big lesson from all of this is open your mouth. do not keep quiet if you are upset about the way something is being handled. guest: the trayvon martin case

was a tremendous failure on the mainstream media. it did not become a national story for two weeks. guest: one of the reasons is that there was not a lot of money in journalism anymore. they close the bureau in sanford, florida. guest: it goes beyond economics. it was a systems failure on the part of national zoo's -- on the part of a national news organization who finally thought this was an important story. host: kentucky. a democrat. you have been on hold. thank you. go ahead. caller: yes, i was back in the early 1970's and i always remember one of my professors at western, a copyrighter, who taught ethics. he said the day that the

journalist start doing commercials for their own stuff, turn the tv off. and, i kind of got passed by but journalism, to me, -- i am a retired social worker working for the homeless. it is a cycle of trust. ally know what to say except this is towards my roots. i know things are different. how do you integrate the ethics that the older guys like us were taught? host: we got the point. let us get an answer. howard kurtz? guest: mike wallace passed away few days ago. did cigarette commercials.

that something we would not do today. i do not believe that journalism is a less ethical thing than it was now in the era that -- then it was in the era of caught walter cronkite. it might come out more now because all of these bloggers and folks are to -- are blowing the whistle on things. by definition, we have become more transparent. this was -- host: we of time from one more call. republican. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i wanted to ask mr. kurtz and miss ashburn if they could talk about miss rosen's recording stance over eminem.

she works for the recording industry and now she is the alta meant self-promoter, doing what she is doing to create another controversy. host: any comments? guest: i do not remember much about that. i do not think she is not entitled to have her opinions and tweet. guest: she is a contributor now to cnn's she is paid to give revise. i cannot remember about eminem. did she want to allow him to support? i am not clear. host: lauren ashburn, do think that hillary rosen knew what impact for tweeted wout would h? host: gguest: i know her and i o not think of her as someone who wants to stir things up. she is very opinionated and has

very thoughtful things to say. guest: you are saying she miscalculated. guest: i am saying maybe she underestimated. she spends a lot of time on tv saying a lot of things. guest: if you spend enough time on tv -- guest: sometimes it will come out a little bit differently than you anticipated. host: you can hear an example of how a topic can hijack the show, as we spend a lot of time talking about this issue. very quickly, when it comes to politics and online media, are we going to be seeing more and more press releases done by twitter, facebook and less use of the editorial pages or the front pages of newspapers. guest: yes, and it is a good thing because it opens up the debates to more voices.

ordinary people have something to say or they are with you or something like that. i like newspapers and i have worked for one for 30 years, but they should not have a monopoly on the public. guest: there so last century. there were the days of the fax machine and the papers would be falling on the floor and it was a miss. [laughter] host: dailydashdownlaod.coad.co. why did you pick that design? guest: we wanted to be clear. we are very video heavy. a lot of original video. guest: -- guest:

when we are evaluating our foreign policy globally, human rights can never be the only consideration but it has to be part of the dialogue.

>> when we abandon our deepest values whether we are talking about torture as it relates to the war on terror or the policy with russia and the upcoming issue of whether or not the u.s. congress should pass the accountability act which we don't know the details but whether or not we are going to stay on record as a human rights matter and russia and china this week on q&a, a look at a documentary on subprime mortgages and their impact on minorities in baltimore "american casino" is co-produced by husband and wife team andrew

and leslie cockburn. c-span: leslie cockburn, when did you first think about doing the "american casino" documentary? >> guest: welcome to january of 2008 andrew and i decided to do the film. we wanted to do something together come a future documentary project, and we were watching the market very closely after what happened in 2007. we had a crash in august and then a couple of bear stearns hedge funds just disappear. also, by that time we had on the courthouse steps in any city are not sure the of shinnecock in three minutes to basically, so we could see at that point the one important could be as

important as 1929. i'd just been reading john kenneth galbraith book on 29, and andrew's father covered the crash of 1929, so we could see but rumbling and we felt we'd better jump on this now and with a documentary like this we could actually tied together what was happening in a place like baltimore with wall street. c-span: after you got the idea what did you do next? >> guest: well, we started talking to people. we started -- what we do as a journalist is we are trained to get in touch with the subject very quickly to look around to see who was doing interesting reporting about this and we can across mark of bloomberg who'd been writing about this before anyone else with what was happening and he came to baltimore to see what was

happening on the ground and serendipitously started to meet people on our film faugh and we started to meet people who were the not borrowers of "the wall street journal" editorial page like to describe them, you know, the subject prime dictums, but to meet the ordinary mainstream are aware that was getting into trouble, so we went to things like the foreclosure workshops in baltimore, people bristling with how do you get out of the situation, and we met patricia positions hopkins therapist that's in the film. so we started to sort of drift ourselves in the subject both animal street and baltimore and even at that stage, which is january of 08, but -- the memory

i have of that period is how terrified people were on wall street, people were talking apocalyptic terms about the bank, some of the trip on derivatives, one of the big banks told me i'm sitting here looking at my screen and it feels like armageddon this hadn't yet got on the front pages of the paper that we were going over a cliff. >> where do you find money for something like this? >> document trees like this aren't that expensive to make. i've been making documentary films for 30 years now so i know how to mix something without spending too much money. it's really about editing as much as possible in the camera really. and people that we had worked with for many years. the editor was someone we were

with for many years. we edited one of the great old production houses of new york and so there are ways to do things without spending huge amounts of money and we go to private investors there's a number of areas and places to go to find people who will put in relatively small amounts of money but we are not talking about a multimillion-dollar project here this is less than a million dollars. c-span: who did you want to see it? >> we wanted people to see it that were experiencing the nightmare for closure and it wasn't people that have gotten themselves into debt because there's a strain of faults in the country and in the crisis that somehow it's the victim's

fault if so they've got this coming to them. we wanted to show people in this situation that there were lots of people like them and maybe they had been unwise but they hadn't been sort of wicked in getting into this kind of travel and it's something affected by a lot of people that are not always completely irresponsible, and i guess beyond that we wanted everyone to see because this is a huge event. in the film he called it a 100 year storm so everyone wants to know what happened. how come suddenly there we were rolling along unemployment under 5% and then boom we are under the cliff and unemployment is 10% and we want to show people that. estimate there's a lot of shots in the opening of the boards of

new york. i'm going to go where i suspected of the political point for you both and the combined two things. let's watch that and then we can come back and you can explain why you chose this. >> in the middle of a recession -- to understand why this is like a gambling casino u.s. to understand what is at stake. on a december evening, december 15 to around 7:00, phil gramm, republican senator texas and chair of the senate finance committee walked to the floor of the senate and introduce a 262

page bill as a writer to the 11,000 page appropriations bill which excluded from regulation the financial instruments that are probably most at the heart of the present meltdown. >> can only excluded them from all federal regulation from state regulation as well which is important because these instruments could be viewed to be gambling instruments where you are betting on people will or will not pay off their loans and he announced that time that this measure this would be a boon to the american economy and to wall street because they would be free of any supervision in this regard.

to many american families, too many minorities you don't run homer there's a homeownership debt and america. the difference between anglo america and african-american hispanic home ownership is too big and starts with setting a goal by the year 2010 we must increase minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million. c-span: is that right? is this where the politics of all of this started? phil gramm, george bush? >> guest: well, we chose phil gramm -- there's a lot of things that happened. you can choose a lot of dates that the legislation in december of 2000 was the really big one because it set basically you

couldn't of alternatives. you couldn't -- it made it if you read it it's very clear that it protects the start of this, credit defaults copps etc and it allowed them to just below and beyond control and a grin was instrumental in that. remember michael greene murder talking about that, he's a lawyer and protector of the university of maryland law school, he was a regulator, so he was on the commodity futures trading commission, said he would have liked to outlaw these kind of derivatives that have gotten us into so much trouble, but he himself said that point in december of 2000 was the absolute critical moment and phil gramm is the person who pushed that through. c-span: where did you happen to get this video?

>> guest: of phil gramm? c-span: yes, what is he doing now? >> guest: he is vice chairman, he's enjoying his reward as the vice chair of the union bank of switzerland, still very powerful in texas politics i believe, and -- c-span: if you go back to that time period in december, he didn't do this in a vacuum that was attached to an appropriations bill, did that go through at conference, had it ever been discussed in the house of representatives do you know? >> guest: it had been discussed and they try to introduce the modernization act as a separate bill and it hasn't gone through, what they then did, what gramm did with willing assistance is to attack it on to an appropriations bill and this is december 15th, 2000 everyone is wanting to go home for christmas, bill clinton is about

to leave office, so clinton signed it and there were the to under 62 pages to check on to an 11,000 page bill so how many people do you think actually read it? graham if you look at the congressional record, there's a speech introducing the bill and i went to the excellent organization to c-span2 get to tape and your research to try to find a the studentcam backend said there is no tape because he didn't actually give that speech. it was inserted into the record afterwards, so this momentous piece of what the solution wasn't even spoken in the senate alone -- c-span: for the record this is the first and you can to the organization so i had no idea, people do it all the time but i let everybody know that's not why you're here. go back to the george bush clip. the george washington university?

>> guest: weld too jul come he may have got the same speech again and again and again in 2002 which was very interesting because he was -- you could look at it one way saying he's very anxious for the minorities to have decent housing or you could say i wonder what forces were at play in 2002 to encourage him to do this. i think was coming from a lot of directions. if you look at it from wall street. in 2002 there was a critical time in the life of cbo, is collateralized debt obligations, because i was just about that time that this are people on wall street decided that instead of being so diversified in the securities, why not just load them up with some problems? said it was a very dangerous moment. they started pouring subprimal loans into these products and at

such large numbers that it made them much more vulnerable to exploding. c-span: what were the democrats doing along this way of the idea of the subprime mortgages? >> guest: not enough. i mean it's fair to say that no one really at that time was raising alarms. i mean, they were -- i think sheila bair, now coming to know, the chairman of the fdic, running the fdic, she was one of the early people to go to -- in sight to go to greenspan that the fed and say look, this is looking rather dangerous. there is another now that mr. mr. gramlich, who was governor of the fed, he was raising concerns by 2004. but people from wall street who started to bet against subprimal loans in 2005, but you could say unfortunately no one really raised the alarm when i might have made a difference. c-span: in this next clip mark pittman, and i know that he's

died since then and i will ask you about that in a moment, and also david is it attasani, a mortgage broker. but before we show this, where did you find a mortgage broker? >> guest: david attasani was not a mortgage broker to be he worked on wall street for a number of firms and he asked us in fact not to mention the various firms where he worked, but they all would be extremely familiar to you come and, you know, as he describes in the film, some of them no longer existed by the time we went to see him. >> guest: he was marketing, selling these mortgage -- mortgages bundled into bonds. he was selling these securities to other banks around wall street. c-span: sure is this clip. >> i worked for four companies on wall street. three of them don't exist anymore.

my grandfather worked for the same company for 40 some odd years in pittsburgh may be more, i don't know but he worked for the same company his whole life. but things permanent anymore. the stock market goes south, banks going out of business. it's just the way american people live. i don't think anything - propelled or inhibited it, i don't think now. i don't feel any responsibility for this mess at all. >> it really started getting he did in 2004, 2005. the mortgage rates kept dropping, you know, the once people get, and that made the others much more valuable because they offered much more yield and that much extra you can cite an awful lot more, and it's all about money. >> why did you go to mark

dittman? >> guest: when you're trying to explain this stuff in the film you want to take it slowly, and mark is very good at explaining how these things worked, and therefore want to start with him because he talks about when the whole sub premarket start healing up, and he makes this very important point. there are a lot of people who don't even know what sep prime means. you have to explain that you get more yield, more money all of the guys on wall street make more money out of the subprimal loans and there was a key thing and also he introduced the idea is which indeed were extremely important as everything on wall street is speed based certainly with this whole crisis, the things people were packaging. they wanted to do more and more and more because the yields were so good and fees were so good.

so, mark is one of the best and at the age of 52 he had the heart attack recently, but mark was one of the great financial reporters of our time as economists joe stieglitz said recently. and i also felt -- and andrew dessel -- that mark, was from kansas city, has a real presence. he's a real all-american guy come and he really is a populist and that he, you know, she loves ball straight, he left covering wall street, but he really wanted the rules to be fair. c-span: what is this it is a prize he died of a heart attack or did you know he wasn't all? >> guest: well know, maybe his family knew there was a terrible shock that he, you know, when we suddenly heard that he had gone to the opinion, she had been -- she's been so much part of our lives. we got to know him so much during the making the film and even after the film appeared.

he was very supportive and, you know, was always ready to explain, you know, to come and do q&a and explain to people because of the he really wanted ordinary people, not necessarily wall street professionals to understand this, you know, this huge event, which are superficially very complicated that he wanted to be able to understand them so people would know what had happened. c-span: by the become i saw in the theater in washington. can you see it around the country now or can you buy a dvd? >> guest: right now it's been in a theatrical run for two and a half months and so it is over now. it's just opened in europe at the film festival in amsterdam. secure you can buy it on dvd and on our web site which is americancasinothemovie.com. c-span: what is determined for either one of you what makes this a success? >> guest: the various ways,

the one we like best is when people see the film and come out and say now winder standard. now i get. i didn't understand why the economy suddenly spun out of control and what happened on wall street. it seemed so complicated and now i have seen the film and i understand to be at. >> guest: when the film opened the festival in the spring wheat at three screenings and that they were packed with wall street people. the wall street people -- was very interesting because after -- of the end of the screenings it turned into a real time meeting. these guys stood up and they started talking to each other and they gave the first opportunity to really, i mean, they were yelling at each other. the ratings guys were yelling at the brokers. and it was quite lively and it was exciting to see wall street

react to this and it was the first time a lot of those people understood what affect it have on people's lives. c-span: i want to come back to that. but here's another clip because when you talk about ratings people, this will help fill in the blanks. >> you almost have to follow the money come right? because they are taking their feet from the investment banks. in fact, that rating agencies wouldn't even run their own models. meaning that when they raided a deal, they would take their rating agency model, give it to the investment bank, investment bank would run the entire model for them, and then give them the results. and then the results would go to rating agency analysts. and that analyst would take it through committee in devotee essentially agree on the reading. but they didn't run their own models. >> how do you know this? stomach because i worked in an

investment bank and was running for a model for them. >> i was requested by the head of the cbo group to put some ratings on some bonds that had come in as a particular part of the cbo but we didn't have that information to really had never seen the tape, we haven't read the legal, as we went back and set over criteria require years we have to take and that we have the legal to make sure that it meets our criteria, and they went back and said we can't get any of that. you just a guess and put a rating on it. and that was clearly a violation of our efiks, so i just told them i wouldn't do it. c-span: what's the importance of this?

>> guest: the rating agencies -- frank who was a senior executive at standard and poor's, he was in charge of residential mortgage based securities. there were absolutely crucial to the whole system and to the disaster because they were the ones who said, you know, this investment was coming you know, that could be rated aaa minutes superstate. it's never going to go broke, or aa or vv. and what they did was as it emerges, from what frank is saying enough, the banker, the anonymous banker said, but there is essential function and lescol -- what's been going on was to take things that were actually, you know, what subprimal mortgages -- which are inherently not so creditworthy. and basically through the magic of the securitization and everything to say that they were in just -- you know, aaa which is something we used to only apply to things like a general

electric and the exxon corporation. so they took garbage and a spray painted it with gold paint and said this is gold and trillions of dollars were invested on that basis the was garbage to make it look like it was presented as a goal. and because of that, that is why we've had such a huge disaster. because, you know, things were basically assigned false readings because -- according to this anonymous banker at least -- i think we know who he is but he didn't want his name used -- they were basically in bed -- the lobbying paid by the investment banks to give these ratings. and in fact, the investment banks were doing the reading, and you know, were running the models come as he said. and then basically these are rubber stamped by the rating agencies and passed on to the public. c-span: moody's and fitch, i believe. is that the name of it? >> guest: that's the big three. moody's, standard and poor, those are the biggest to come and then fenech.

c-span: the that the investment banker rissole and silhouette. can you tell us what the scene was behind him? without giving away he is? >> guest: i will say what is behind him c-span: it's not a real picture behind him? >> guest: no, no, it's real. he's sitting in a real place. there's nothing distorted. he simply his voice is distorted and he is dark. it's his silhouette. we spent months and months and months talking to more and more people on wall street. and you know how you do it, you meet one person, and finally they say i want to introduce you to somebody. we -- is very important for us to meet the guy is that for absolutely at the heart of the business of making these collateralized debt obligations that blew up in everybody's face. it takes time and we had many meetings with groups of these

people from different banks. this person happened to be at bear stearns. he was very brilliant out what he did. i don't want to say too much more about him except that he represents a group, and it's not a big group of people who understood these securitized vehicles. the problem for the wall street people was coming on camera and showing their face. the reason you don't see them all the time is they have deferred compensation rules so that if you went on camera coming you could lose literally millions of dollars on compensation, and also, you know, you to sell your life when you take these jobs and you agree to a lot of things that make it very difficult for you to go public. so that's why you hear some of the experts but frear degette to hear the bankers like him talk the way bankers talk to each other and that was -- we

couldn't have made the film without -- he's the heart of the matter really. and, you know, there's a moment i don't know whether you have it in the clip that there's a moment later on he actually takes you through how you make a cdo and from cdo how you may get squared. and at that moment, the audience understands the incredible scam of making these things that were packed with in some cases a million .5 subprimal loans, rated aaa and sold off to -- as he describes as korean bankers. but the ratings agency -- there is this inherent conflict of interest here. the rating agency, the big three, you have the government saying a devotee has to. you know, they have this kind of cause i government. it's the stamp of approval. so they are acting as our regulators come in and did they are paid by the investment banks. and coming you know, the guy is

in korea or germany, they are not going to buy anything, nor is the california pension fund going to buy anything that doesn't have a triple a rating when you think that would be the first thing that would have been changed since this whole thing. you know, frank, ratings executive said if only what he had been doing, if it had been tightened up this whole thing wouldn't have happened. but right now they are not being regulated. the relationship with the bank is still the same. the only thing you really see is the suits around the country and the rating agencies, and ohio has taken the lead in that, so we will see what happens. c-span: go back to that film festival in new york city where you showed this three times, and there was a discussion that broke out afterwards. were you there in the audience? >> guest: yet, they started

with people of asking us questions, but someone, like i said, the house is basically full of wall street people coming and pretty soon as the, you know, us having to answer the question someone else would jump up from another part of the theater and say played a minute, you know, you were at the ratings agency. you did that. welcome it was your fault, not ours. it turned into this extraordinary debate, this town meeting. c-span: did anybody in the session get mad at you for how you portrayed them in the film? >> guest: no camano camano. every once the six people didn't get mad at us to the they were pleased you know, that we had played the whole thing out to be the was almost a cathartic for them that he was a forum the way the we were providing a backdrop of a forum so they could really have their say and talk about what had happened. c-span: how did you divide up the responsibilities? >> guest: liz leigh is the filmmaker. she directed the film and i did

journalism. c-span: wrote the script? >> guest: leslie. >> guest: there isn't much of a script in this film. this is -- it's just people talking. we have no narration, so it's just -- and when you see the writing on the cards come it's deliberately and very dry. it's very straightforward. so it isn't a script that's pulling you through the film. it's the people who were pulling you through. so although we both share a writing credit, i would say there isn't really a script at all. it's simply -- its layout so that one person follows on the from the last person and to explain it. c-span: how much of the music is original? >> guest: welcome andrew found the original music. >> guest: its -- we would -- because we were spending time in baltimore, and i knew about baltimore, you know, it is a very musical city. suddenly i thought well, maybe, you know, people were doing music about this. maybe it's some kind of --

because we had a dirt tracks and are using bruce springsteen singing woody guthrie and so forth and it's in the film. we went to baltimore and oscar around and found there is a very sort of local music studio there and said well, is anyone, you know, what is the chance of getting any sort of current or street music about for pleasure and mortgages and this nightmare that's happening. and at jolie 66 lagat 60 tracks presented to us, which we used three, which are just these kids. i mean, the most -- the one that we play is used twice over the end credits in the film and then the end credits is a group of three young people, ages 11 to 14 who were recruited, got together as an after-school program and recorded history sort of hard drinking song called losing my home. ..

but it was their idea and they

composed it and it is based on personal experience. c-span: those numbers we saw on the screen were what? >> guest: they were the numbers from this last summer of the total bail out that has been given to the financial site dirt bypass -- both by the treasury and by the federal reserve. as you can see, the numbers are kind of enormous. we've heard a lot about the $700 billion pop program that has been off and spoken of the sum total by stan kenton and helped wall street. but as you can see from here, it's a lot more than that. the total commitment was $12 trillion were for trillion has been spent so far. so most people don't quite realize how much of our money and credit has been invested in

shoring up wall street. c-span: how hard was it to get figures? >> we got these from the bloomberg team. we decided early on he wanted to do its own figures. he wanted to check it out himself. and the two of them did it twice. they did it in -- they did it in january 1st 28 trillion. the government had committed by that time 8 trillion. by march it was 12 trillion. now it is obviously higher. c-span: make little bit of a transition here. we see one fellow we saw earlier, but then we moved to the baltimore team and you'll see the teacher got involved with. >> some people ask, you know, i always say it comes down to create. -- greed.

these black -- ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i just think it is immoral to be such a huge boom around the housing industry. a lot of people made a lot of money. but now all of these people who buy during that period are losing their homes.

they teach about social justice issues, human rights issues. i ask that the class issues of social justice and human rights. and i have been considering talking with my students about the mortgage crisis and what that does. there's a lot of security, the huge stress. it's terrible. >> at 37,000, draeger 40,000. ninety-nine cents. 37,000, $889.99. once, twice, third and final call. c-span: let's walk back from a foreclosure auction on the steps of what? castro courthouse steps, baltimore. any day of the week at that time and early 2008 come you can see these guys on the steps selling this house it.

a very long list every morning. so what we did was we went to the auctions and simply drove from baltimore with our cameras, going to these different addresses. and in the first day we did it, one of the first houses we went to was passed that along to the high school teacher, the house that has just been auctioned with the caveat that could be affected by a bankruptcy filing and we had just come back from filing for bankruptcy that morning. so he was at his house. he was loading up all the boxes. the house had been completely dismantled. so we went around the house and he was in complete shock. but it turns out of coursey was incredibly articulate and very, very interesting case because we were able eventually to drive his marked as all the into a securitized project at goldman

sachs. >> the al mullane wade, she's a referendum? how did you find her? >> guest: we found her through word-of-mouth and baltimore, minister at the church who is living in our car. we were interested particularly because people say these people got into trouble because they took out loans. they wanted to buy a bigger and better house. they were getting houses they didn't deserve. al mullane was one of the many people who lost their homes, out of their house free and clear. she inherited the house from her parents. and then took out a loan on the house because she wanted to make improvements and have an operation in the house of people in her church. in about $20,000 as she says in

the film, she's lost her house, she is living in her car. it's hard to believe all this happen because because of $20,000. c-span: here's a little from reverend wade. >> some days i'm depressed because i miss my home. i am homeless and it's hard. it's a struggle. it's devastating. it's upsetting and unbelievable, but it's real. i don't have a home anymore and i'll never forget this as long as i live. this is a house i grew up in most of my life. i came here in 1861 with my mother and my father. i have been here a lifetime and i went to school here. i went to junior high school, which high school, went to college and we used to have a church next door in the neighborhood was just home. this was just home. i wanted to do assisted living

here. i wanted to help people in the property wasn't in the proper condition that it needed to be, so i was advised to the equity, some of the equity and to do alone and start my project that way. the loan was for $20,000. it's really sad all this was lost over $20,000. the payment was closer like $300 a month, but i was on a fixed income and it just got to be too much. wells fargo is the mortgage service or an dicey serviced and i got the loan through. i had that particular time didn't know of the anson mount of the mortgage loan. i just took it by faith that i was going to be okay. settlement was really bad. you just don't know. you're trusting your mortgage broker, trusting the settlement people, trusting the bank and what else can you do? you really don't have a clue. you're just happy to have someone say yes we will finance

you. yes, you are proved and you could go to settlement. c-span: what would happen today if she went in for islamic she got before? >> guest: if she was looking for a loan? >> guest: if anything changed. she trusted all these people. >> guest: she would not get a loan. it's much, much tougher to get around these days. so no, she should not been given a loan at that point. and she knows that now. c-span: what happened to her church? >> guest: she is not functioning as a minister now. she's basically surviving. that limits to 7.5%. it was actually a possibility of rising to just almost 13%. >> with the possible bias every six months. >> a much responsibility do they

have? annotators our responsibility. >> guest: reexport that at some length in the film and we have -- you know, in a film being a rubber strap for example who is community lawyer and an art and it was another community lawyer and baltimore and both of them are very smart lawyers say believe me, smart lawyers to understand all the jargon and these funds. in the loans were tied to all kinds of fancy numbers and rates and stuff that was very individually tailored, none of these loans were like pearson even if you read one of them all way through, you wouldn't necessarily know what the next one was going to be like. no one likes a loan documents. i haven't run into a human being who has read every document before they sign and rappers start points out that in the film he points out that it got

so lost that people -- people were being signed up for mortgages on the hood of their car. it would be late in the afternoon when people had to pick up their kids from daycare, but they'd be penalized monetarily if they didn't get enough fun time. so you have to pay feed. you have an hour and and what is happen often in baltimore and elsewhere, which we found out from the community groups at saint ambrose that helps people who were in terrible trouble because of foreclosure, that they would get the signing and members are different. this happened to denzel mitchell. they be told one thing so they really believe they could afford the payments. and they get to the signing and it wouldn't be the same number

because various applications have been left out. so there is the real sleight-of-hand going on. c-span: it's interesting that we will see the mayor of boston ruf since been convicted of one count. she was charged with a lot of counts that were dropped when she was acquitted here that she was found guilty since then any mistakes then is senn, sheila dixon. let's watch this and i will ask you about that and the other people we've seen. >> you have people who are homeless, looking for a place to live. an unoccupied house becomes a place that gets broken into. they know other homeless people that need a place to say and they take over the house and start renting rooms. so they start their own business on a house that somebody has left. >> want to check the rate of property? >> baltimore is a real pain for investors. investors see an opportunity and grab a property and start suing three have been so too somebody as a first-time home buyer they

can take it damage the programs out there for first-time homebuyers here but let's be clear. investors and businesses make money. they want a return on investment. do they care whether or not the person can hold onto their home for the long-haul? probably not. once the property is sold they are gone. the record reflects is a part of a foreclosure as well. part of the pain. >> when you have to put additional revenue and supported the neighborhood by boarding up homes, by other people's properties depreciating, it takes away revenue that you can use should be stabilized areas. so it's causing us additional police, fire, resources coming out of community development. all the other support services that help to keep a community thriving and growing.

c-span: had she been indicted when you interviewed her? no, no. do you know exactly what happened to her when she was convicted of one count? >> guest: she is not the incentives. she'll have to step down. it isn't clear. baltimore is a very political city. but i've got to say, whether or not she was convict did, any mayor in america that is fact and what is bad bushey said. this crisis has this incredible municipal effect in cities because you have the tax base shanks, on the houses are empty, his problem with abandoned property like in baltimore and other cities are to force the banks and the people would foreclose taken the property

back to at least maintain them and cut the grass and stop them from turning into ruins. and you know, to cost them huge amounts, costing the city huge amount to look after these houses. he saw the crew earlier coiner on porting them up, trying to do with squatters who moves and can do irresponsible things like leaving the other nine. the danger of shutting down the block. so what we are trying to do -- what we explain in that segment is the just things that happen to an individual. but it stand as the impact whole cities. i mean, among something else when the house goes into foreclosure, when the house is boarded up, when i went into foreclosure the bank takes it back and then take me later option about that 50 cents on the dollar or whatever just to get rid of it. that crashes the price of every other house in the neighborhood.

so you get everyone else's house values going down to more and more people are fine in that they are paying their mortgages down much greater than the value of their house, so they need to fall. so it's an escalating thing that has been a huge impact on american cities. >> i want to remind anyone watching. it is "american casino" the movie.com and you can buy for 2495. it has been in theaters for the past couple weeks. does that bother you at ecs chop up your documentary because you are setting a mood as you watch it? by the way, how long is it? >> guest: it's 89 minutes so as to make a feature length. i don't mind it. it's fascinating to see what he chose them. different things from other people. c-span: there's a lot of things chose been on a lot of things missing. >> guest: you are building in the throughout rat under certain rhythm, but there's also

sections of it that are often changed. c-span: can you give us a range of what things cost to do. >> guest: i'm not sure what other people would spend on something like this. i suspect that we spend less simply because when you've been making films for a long time, which you do is waste less material. there's something called a ratio which you might be 50 to one in terms of the hour that she should address is quite low. does that cost somewhere between a million half-million? >> it can go from less than half a million. it could go from a quarter of a million to 2.5 for 3 million. some people can spend quite a lot. if you have a big staff, a lot

of people are pirating around the world, shooting the plot, you can relate -- c-span: hominy shooting days as you have? >> guest: i can't remember exactly how many days. let's see, probably maybe 30 shooting. >> guest: of all the days we shot, one day we didn't do something. practically everything got used. we got something from every day. people can spend months, if not years in the edit room on documentaries are regular features and we're moving along at this sort of pace that we have to do if we are working with frontliners 60 minutes are any of these places where you really have a deadline. >> guest:

c-span: when was the last day you finish your work? >> guest: we added a couple things. we finished in february and nine in march 1 people refocused on a baltimore who is in the process lost their homes. so we added it to the film did last home. for and of july we added some figures that at the end >> before it closed down, couple minutes to go. elizondo canosa in september of 1991. let's watch the story a little bit of worry to matt. >> we met in london years ago. we're not at a club called zanzibar actually.

i also just started working at nbc news. c-span: what is your relationship? just go well, we are married and we were together. we make films together for a pbs frontline and we read books together, so it's a very close relationship. reiko whatever books have you written? >> guest: this is her first book, but i would book called out of control, which is about the reagan administration activities in central america, no covert operations down there and i read a book about the threat which is about the soviet military. c-span: were you from originally? >> guest: i'm from ireland. c-span: what was life like growing up. when did you leave? >> guest: life is interesting. it was like actually we didn't

have a car or a telephone or a phrase, so i grew up by lawyers. i grew up in the 19th century way. there is no different the way we were living for a hundred years before. communicated by telegram. especially people under the age of 110 but it's a perfectly viable way to live. i left derek has when i was 17 and went to work in london. c-span: hominy books and documentaries and frontlines have you done since 1991? >> guest: it's been let's see, one, two, three books. many many 60 minutes.

c-span: your daughters for like 10 have been when you're here before. >> guest: yes, one of them is an actress. people would've seen her own house. her name is olivia wilde. she plays on house. our other daughter is a lawyer and an artist, cory coburn and is now doing racial justice issues, litigation at the aclu in new york. c-span: and patrick is where now? >> guest: patrick is at home and am glad he's deciding whether he's been deciding whether to return to kabul or baghdad, where he's been. c-span: and alexander? >> guest: alexander's delivered under the california race that is counterpunch.org.

skype projects on his house. c-span: your secretary hank paulson, former treasury secretary. this is only a minute or so. let's run this and we'll wrap it up. ♪ >> this morning we made come a hearing on the turmoil of recent reactions regarding government-sponsored entities, investment banks and other financial institutions. ♪ >> this is not just a cosmetic issue in a feel-good issue. ♪ >> the taxpayer already is going to suffer the consequences if things don't work the way they

showed work. ♪ c-span: the video you must have gone in there with an idea. you weren't a minimum of vision when he shot a look at. >> actually, no. it didn't work that way. it was shot before the idea happening. that means that he might want to say how we ended up at them is that. cast doubt that senator be hancock contract. written in 1982 when there was actually a bad recession. family heard about it from a former turnout for bear stearns in their planned attack in the bear stearns trading room as

things are going so. everybody's broke is like a modern song. so it's a very eloquent actually if you listen to the words. it's a really good sign about financial recession. c-span: in 60 seconds, what is the most important thing you learned from this experience? >> guest: you better go first. >> guest: that's so unfair. well, the most important in two learned or what i thought his imitators are too complicated for you to understand, it's not true. they're just trying to blind you. it's very simple. this is loansharking. they gilt-edged, lousy products. it is not our fault. >> guest: having much of my life overseas, worse can this sort of post apart elliptic scenes in afghanistan that would amaze me with how much damage could be done right here at

home. through this terrible collapse. it was really an eye-opener for me to see all the destruction and whole neighborhoods and just how bad it can get. c-span: leslie cockburn is "american casino".com. thank you for joining us. we were in the credits again so we can see some of those numbers. thank you cell match. -- thank you cell match. ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ >> be sure to join a sony wrap up our long look at documentaries from our "q&a" program. ..