your descriptions of both bush and president obama are often very laudatory but there is quite a bit of critical commentary in there as well and i think one portion of this book strikes me as very much in that vein. you take president obama to task are being what i would characterize as an uninspiring military leader. he didn't bring enthusiasm to his role as commander-in-chief, especially as regards the afghanistan war. and i think had a conversation with rahm emanuel where you make that point that the soldiers needed to hear, that the president was behind as you called it the nation. and you drew that conclusion from your interactions with them in these inner councils. >> yeah, in trying to weigh this and balance it, i supported every single one of president

obama's decisions on afghanistan, including up to the decision to seek the strategic agreement with the afghans that would keep a residual force there after the end of this year. but there were two aspects of the war in afghanistan that troubled me. one was the presidents suspicion of the motives of the senior military, particularly when it came to the recommendations on afghanistan. and the second was what you describe. as i told rahm when i met with him, i don't mind that the president speaks out on exit strategies and so on, but the troops need to hear from their commander, the person who is sending them in harm's way, that their cause is just and noble,

and the mission is important for the country and, therefore, their sacrifices worthwhile. and into two and half years i worked for president obama he only did that once or twice. and i think that's one of the responsibilities of the commander in chief when he deploys men and women in harm's way is that he would be willing to speak publicly to why that is important and why their potential sacrifices are worthwhile. >> did you ever try to broach this with the president himself? >> no. as you say i raised it directly with rahm and i said, you know, the president has to take ownership of this war. and i think i'm probably a few occasions i mentioned it to the president that he ought to go say more about why important to do this. but the interesting thing is, once he made this very difficult

decision in november 2009, where he overrode the political recommendations of his vice president and all of his political advisers to approve this surge, there never was, really other than the initial speech at west point on december 1, there was really not any kind of a white house effort over the ensuing months for there to be any kind of a campaign with the american public to tell them why those decisions were imported and why this cause was important. >> one last question. you mentioned in the book that you had urged the senior white house staff not to leak information about the raid to kill osama bin laden. and, of course, the information leaked out within five hours. who leaked that information? >> well, i like to tell people, first of all the department of

defense wrote the book on leaking. so am not trying to pretend that the defense department is innocent in this category. although the defense department is very good about holding secrets, military plans, and tactics and techniques that might put troops our lives at risk. so in this case my belief is that, well, i will describe this scene. we are at the very end of our time in the situation room. we know bin laden has been killed. is back in jalalabad. is on his way to a watery grave, and we're about to break up, the president is going upstairs to address the nation and tell them about this extraordinary success. and i said, no look, before everybody goes, we used these tactics and techniques every night in afghanistan in going after taliban and al-qaeda leaders. so it's important that everybody agreed that all we're going to

say is that we killed him and not get into any details about the operation and how we did it. and as you say, i write in the book, that lasted about five hours. and everybody agreed after i made this little, everybody agreed, sort of like little kids we did a blood oath kind of thing, we wouldn't do this, and it all lasted about five hours. i believe that the leaks primarily came from the white house and cia who just couldn't wait to brag about how good this had been. >> as you point out -- >> and then i think about two weeks later defense probably started to chime in. >> right, what you write there was a significant operational downside to doing that because the model for that raid was, the rates that were being done every night in afghanistan and iraq to

apprehend and remov removed frot you call the battle space these al-qaeda commanders and taliban people. there was a significant cost to that. >> yeah, i think so. >> we have some questions from the audience, and i would like to post them to you but before i do very quickly, is there anything tanything you did thath you could have done again? and before i say that you write very movingly about your difficulty in coping with the cash of these and joint responsibility for that. and i come and that part of the work is very well-written. i highly recommend people focus on that. >> well, i think i'm fairly, i think i am blunt and candid in describing mistakes that others made. i am equally blunt and candid in describing mistakes that i think i made. it just to answer your question, one for example, is that i

allowed a fairly dysfunctional chain of command problem in afghanistan to continue longer than i should have. with the u.s. commander in afghanistan actually didn't have command over all the american troops serving in afghanistan. and while i asked two successive chairman of the joint chiefs to try and fix it, it was ultimately my responsibility and i took too long. i finally fixed it, but i took too long to get there. that's just one example. >> just a follow-up very quickly, you write in the book that richard holbrooke, the special envoy, and to thank karl eikenberry, the ambassador were working against the reelection of our campaign of our ally they are, hamid karzai. and she didn't seem very happy about that.

how did that happen? >> well, first of all, karzai may have its shortcomings but he sure as heck knows what's going on its own capital. so the idea that we could do this and him not know we were trying to get rid of him was pretty naïve, in my view. and so when you see all these problems that karzai creates for us, is knowing that we for all practical purposes attempted a pooch against him in the summer of 2009 probably didn't help the relationship. >> and he is still there. with nursing some resembles archer. i have some questions from the audience. here's a statement from first of all, just a flat-out position paper. thank you for your longtime commitment to protecting my family and country. get well soon. godspeed, and go aggies.

[laughter] i'm going to have -- am reading this but it's my distinct the chairman of the joint chiefs is directly responsible to the president. what the valuable input the we lose when the chairman is obsequious to a domineering secretary of defense? >> well, i think the chain of command actually does not include the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. nor does it include the vice president. it goes from the president to the secretary of defense to a combatant commander. so under the national secured act of 1947, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is one of the statutory advisers to the

nsc, 1.2. the other is the head of intelligence. he is the president senior military adviser and he is the chairman of the joint chiefs. he has no direct command authority. and i will say both president bush and president obama gave the joint chiefs, including the chairman, all the time they wanted. and in my age there is, and i watched two different chairman under two different presidents, and i never saw either of them be obsequious or the president tried to intimidate them, or sort of damp and their views by being sarcastic or harsh or insulting or intimidating in any way. both of these presidents, despite the fact that they both agreed, disagreed with the chairman on a number of occasions, were very respectful

and give them all kinds of time. and i always made sure, first of all i considered it critical for me to get the most blunt possible advice from my senior military officials. and i'll give you an example. this will probably have to be believed, that when it came time for me to decide whether to extend military tours in iraq and afghanistan from 12 to 15 months, i was working with the military and trying to decide. this is a very difficult position. i knew it would have big consequences for military families. and my senior military adviser comes to me at one point and he says, the troops know you have to make this decision and they think you're a nasa for not

making it. that's the kind of candor that i tried to encourage among the senior military. and i believe that i had a very good relationship with them. and they would disagree with me on more than one location. the mrap was an example. medevac was another. the number of drones was another. so i tried to encourage and a violent when they would speak up and where they would be honest and candid. and i think any secretary of defense or president who does not want that kind of candor is making a terrible and, frankly, dangerous mistake. >> yet the cause to me for me judging from the book endless frustration from president bush and as obama that mike muller, on a number of occasions speak it wasn't just might. it was a number of other senior military. their frustration and impatience was not over what the senior

military would tell them in the situation room or in the oval office, or even in open testimony. it was what they would go out and say in public speeches or television interviews and things like that. that's what got under both of these presidents of skin. >> right, and i could see why it would. it seems to me there's a very difficult line to draw there. on the one hand you want to get good guys. this is a democracy. citizens in need and expect a certain level of transparency and information from their leaders, and yet if a military leader is off the reservation and pursuing or promoting a policy agenda that differs with the white house, it seems to me that could cause tremendous difficulties. >> and it's not on one that differs potentially, pursuing an agenda that differs from the white house, he is speaking out about things that in some way or another limit the president's options, or telegraph consequences that may be the

president would rather keep private during a period of deliberation. one of the things i write about in the and in terms of the civil-military relationship is the consequences of senior military speaking out too often and in areas that are not necessarily bear direct responsibility, or in terms of preempting the president. >> i have another question here. very simple, which added think the answer is simple, which book to her interview have you enjoyed the most? charlie rose or jon stewart? and i would have to add of course the answer now has to be this stop. >> let's just say that the interviews with jon stewart and charlie rose were somewhat different in nature. [laughter] but both were enjoyable. >> do you think the united states should adopt a policy of national service in place of a

draft? >> i believe, if i could wave a magic want, what i would favor is, is required national service that is not limited to the military. i believe that every young person in america between certain ages, 18-28 or 25 or whatever, off to spend a year or two or three if in the military providing national service, of giving back to the country something in exchange for what they have been given. we hear so much in this country about our rights as citizens, and we hear so little about our obligations as citizens.

and so whether it's tutoring in inner city or rural schools are working in hospitals, teach for america, a new version of the civilian conservation corps, there's a host of different things young people could do for some period of time. for example, if you volunteered for the military you have to commit for three years, but maybe you get paid significant more than any other area, partly because of the risk and someone. and where i am torn is that there is, is whether such a service should be required, or whether it should be voluntary. but the voluntary piece of it would involve some measure of pressure in the sense that you would be, if you had not performed national service, you would be so difficult a disadvantaged in admissions for

universities, in the hiring process for jobs. that in other words, this would come to be seen as a moral and ethical obligation on the part of a young person, and if you chose not to serve, it would weigh against you in some of the choices in your life. i strongly believe that there ought to be some, that you would find that the military leadership is totally against the draft. and i think i share that, but i think it out to be broadened, service ought to be broadened for everybody. >> last question for you. as you look into the future, what do you see is the greatest threat to the security of the united states? >> well, in all honesty i think that the greatest immediate threat to the united states is, in fact, the paralysis that we

see in the two square miles that encompass capitol hill and the white house. if we can't begin seriously to address any, problems that we face, whether it's education or immigration or the deficit or the national debt, a host of other problems, none of those problems can be solved in the span of one presidency or one congress. so the only women actually can make headway against those problems is through bipartisan solutions that can be sustained through more than one presidency and congress. and if we can't begin to get past this paralysis in washington, then i think we are in serious trouble. if you want to talk about national security issues, i think we have to worry about cyber. we have to worry about a terrorist and discussion with a weapon of mass destruction.

we have to worry about iran. we have to worry about north korea, and we have to worry about something inadvertently creating a crisis in the south china sea. those are all kind of out there on the horizon as far as i'm concerned as significant problems, at the biggest challenge we face is getting our own house in order. >> secretary gates, thank you so much. very interesting. [applause] >> booktv and primetime continues tonight here on c-span2. starting at eight eastern.

>> c-span2 providing live coverage of this senate floor proceedings and key public policy events, and every weekend booktv. now for 15 years daily television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span2 created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> timothy geithner talks about dealing with a 2007-2000 financial crisis as president of the federal reserve bank of new

york. this is about one hour. >> i have a pretty simple question to start. why did you write your book? as much as you hat had to explao u very much want to bewhy did o understood. is that true? >> i agree talk to comply to write the book, good question. i never thought it would. because i have a hard time >> sitting still and it takes a fair amount of patience to do it. but i wanted to give people a sense of what it was like to have a chance to look at these choices we face through our g eyes. hav because they were pretty bad choices. i think it's still hard fork people to understand why this

was necessary, why it was sensible, why it was better than the alternative. i thought that was worth a shot. i wanted to give our successors, nativeand it w because you know, we're going to face financial crisis in the future and their devastating. i wanted to give our successors a better framework for making these choices, and a better understanding of the mix of things we did, what worked, what didn't work. understandin so tghat when they face this kid of mess in the future they can make better choices and do a better job. those were my motivations.etter >> your central argument that i. in the time of financial crisis, governments need to appear to reward the very institutions that are failing in order to save the rest of us from the effects of the crisis. you write in these three cases government needs to lean inre against the forces of gloom. borrowing more, spend more at exposing taxpayers to more short-term risk, even if it

looks to reward incompetence but even if it feels perception of an out of control money stephen bailout craze that government. d talk about that. >> those were well said, thank n you. >> i like to plagiarize. >> what i'm going to try to explain is financial panics the really severe type of panic, they happen very rarely come and to protect people from the consequences of the crash, the mass unemployment the false in the community do the easy counter to to think, the of what norman makes sense. so again in a typical recession or tabo in the case of a financl institution failing, you should basically let the fire burn, let the losses have been. you can do that with relative confidence that it's not going to spread to the responsible and to the strong. you can do it with less risk and

contagion. and the benefit of acting that way is that you hopefully get incentives better and maybe in the future at the margin you reduce the risk of that behavior that caused the failure is looked at as attractive to so it's a pretty good moral hazard argument at a typical, but in a panic after to the opposite.hazd if you let the fire burn too hot, you let the run gain ina momentum, then it will overwhelm your defenses but they will imperil the week.un the strong, not just the week. and you risk mass unemployment.k it's not hypothetical. if you look at the centuries of financial crises, look at the figures of crisis before the great depression, look at the great depression, or look at the last eight energy market financial crises of the '90sla and you can seest what happens c when governments stand back in the face of those panics and in hope they burn themselves out or

some version to political risk looking like a rewarding others and it's like devastating. it's not important that it's devastating to investors or shareholders of banks or managers the banks. isd what's important is it's devastating to the innocent victim. again, remember the great depression. of course, we have no memory of. that. but unemployment went to 25% and the economy fell by 25% and we had a decade of soup lines across the country, around the d world.ound the and in this crisis, in the fall of '08 the size of the financial shock at that stage in the crisis was five times greater than what happened at the, beginning of the great depression. ao the risks were grave and severe and potentiallybeginng catastrophic, and to protect people from the consequence orac to do as much as we could, weuld have used overwhelming force tod

keep the lights on in the financial system.d deey even though it looked deeply unfair, even though it seemed counterintuitive, even though it had more aggregates, even the a record taking on a financialtiva risk, but if we hadn't done that then we would face this uncertainty.y wor of dramatically worse economic outcomes even in the table as we experienced. so that's the basic thesis of of the boo the book. it's not an easy thing to make compelling to people i think,o except that if you remember back what it was like and i tober of '08 when a bunch of people fort the right reasons mostly had let the fire burn too hot, it waseoe devastating. it was just devastating.evastati and it was only because we were able, because we are the united states we were able to put all -- over one force behind the

system and it'd economy that we. contained the damage. th are still living with those. >> how do you find that line li between when you should let thee fire burn and when he did do the opposite and step in with overwhelming force? how do you expect to know a market where the line is?o >> excellent question.heest this terrible fog of diagnosis at the beginning. you can't be sure how long, hows vulnerable you are. you can't be y sure your in our crisis although it follows the long boom and read many the conditions were pretty severe crisis and they were observable vulnerabilities. this thing basically started in july o f '07, and it was sort ol a slow burn for a year mostly limited to the periphery of the financial system.itwa bear stearns investment world wasn't periphery but it wasn'ti really threatening the core of the financialw system.

vfx on the economy up to that point were pretty modest, so it was pretty hard to judge.e e in thef book i tried to explain how you make those choices. the right response initially ise to let the fire burn, and let it do what it has to do which is to consume the weakestonal institutions. that's the rational response, but you've got to be careful it doesn't get away from you. it doesn't get much momentum, that it becomes much more harde and that's a hard line. but if you don't, if you step i, to quickly protect everytution institution because you're too worried about the panic, you make a different kind of error. and air that might raise the risk of financial crisis, agobcu crisis in the future.d about so it's a hard balance.ifferent in the k united states because i didn't come into this crisisther with enough authority, we were late to escalate.in we had to let a tear shockoritye congress int o acting before we had a broader set of tools to do

enough to get our arms around. tools we were late to escalate because of the limitation of authority.i >> so a lot of people are mad, and they are probably still going to be mad after reading your book. i thought jon stewart put up remember what. he said this is like an optical ill illusion the one person looks ar it and you see a bpretty girl, you flip it and the other person looks at and -- i can't use jon stewart language. but do you think you can ever succeed in the racing the procession by a large chunk ofa] the population that this was all wrong and all unfair?this >> i don't come to me, it's completely understandable angera and rage becausenger the scars,t was so brutal and we're still living with the scars. unemployment is still alarmingly l high. we've had a catastrophic damage to people's savings and sense of security. we went into the crisis pretty

high rates of poverty, much worse today. people's perception of much w inequality, opportunity substantially worsened by the crisis. how could you expect people toad understand why it was necessary or just, to protect the institutions that were at the center of the crisis who then turned around and paidwho th themselves pretty generous bonuses for a long time? ..n you expect people to understand that? i don't think it is understandable. i can tell you with complete confidence -- and it is not a hypothetical, theoretical thing -- that of the alternative of letting the think lots and trying to protect people after would have been deeply

irresponsible and immoral because of the cost of damage. again, hard to make that compelling, too. this country had not experienced anything like this since the great depression. and really no memory of the series of great depression as we had following the panics of the previous 50 years. a hard thing to understand, and i do not think it is achievable. it is still important, not that people agree but for those of us who were their trying to sort through bad options to try to give you a better feel for why "we did. that is worth doing, even even if i think -- and i have low expectations for

whether you can make it seem acceptable. i don't think this was pretty. i don't think you can look at this and say, zero, it was this cool, elegant thing. it was messy and horrible. it just would have been dramatically worse if we had done what most people argued we should do. >> your first real public performance was early february 2009,, dark days. fair to say that the speech did not go well. i tried to sound forceful, but i just just sounded like someone trying to sound forceful.

larry summers came to your office and said, i can tow you what to do but i would not give a speech like this. how do you hang in they're like that? >> barney frank said it was like my bar mitzvah. [laughter] you know, i made this decision, which i think was the right decision, even in retrospect, to go out and lay out this framework for the next stage of our strategy at a pretty early time when we did not have all of the details. people were filling the vacuum with ideas and expectations for what we should do which we were not going to do, and i needed to

suck the hope out of the air about some of the stuff they wanted us to do and have a device to try to force an end to the debate internally. you can debate things forever because it all sucks if you let people argue forever you will never decide. i made a choice to go early with the general framework, not enough details. a lot of things were scary. this dress test, the device we used was something people never heard of before. it was alarming because most people living with the hope that the government would come in and go buy from these banks a bunch of these bad assets as a way to keep them alive. i know it sounds inexplicable was to do something much more generous to the bank shareholders and banks than we

did. i needed to suck the hope out of the air for that. yeah, it i said i was a terrible speech and i wasn't great at doing that but we had a bigger problem too, which is that i made this choice to go early pretty general with a framework that a lot of uncertainty in it. that was very, it made the everything a little more scary even than it was then. but, we did what i said we would do. everything i said we would do we did. not all of it had as much traction or power as we hoped but overall effect of that strategy was much more effective than even we thought at the time because the economy, when we started was shrinking at annual rate of about%. we were losing 3/4 of a million jobs a month and within the sixi months the economy was growing at 3%. incredibly rapid turn around for a world economy at edge of

collapse. that was because ofd the force and strength of what fiscal stimulus delivered. and what the fed policy delivered and scale of that strategy, that sort of content of the strategy that first laid out in that not well-received c speech. >> let's retrace some of the steps that led to that moment. you were a career public servant but somewhat accidentally develop ad specialty in financial crises from mexico to asia. love this line, king the former governor of the bank of england, whenever there was crisis tim was there. you didn't cause the crisis, the crisis caused you. >> i think he probably thought i caused some of them but he was being gracious. i grew up overseas mostly. and i decided, having had that experience living in india andin thailand and, studying in china i wanted to, you get to watch

your country from a different vantage point and iaea norm us effect in the world, mostly for good, but not always for good. i wanted to spend part of my life to effect those decisions. i went to treasury early in my life still a servant. 1988 i was 27, 28 and i never thought i would do it for long but i had this really rewarding experience working with people that were really excellent. completely ethical. there was no, had this naive existence where politics rarely got in the way or negative way interfered with the choices about policy and as you said, i had this experience of watching and being there, being part of or helping or observing a bun of countries deal with pretty devastating financial crises.

pretty valuable experience, i had no idea how valuable but pretty valuable experience. i lived in japan, worked in japan just as their economy waso collapsing. watched how they embraced aey strategy of kind of mostly drift, sideways drift for a long time. didn't do much to clean up the financial system. looked at cost of that and watched emerging economies blow themselves up in rapid expression. that was a good experience to go through. taught me a lot about how fragile these systems are. how damaging they can be when they fall apart. give me a good lesson the mistakes government make over and over again. importance of overwhelming force, it was we fought and debated each time all the classic moral hazard debates. it was a good, it was a good education if you know the

crises. >> so you're, the night before your first day of work as president of the new york federal reserve what happened? >> well, i was, they asked me to come run the new york fed in the fall of 2003 and my kid were in school in washington then and i wasn't going to move them in the school year. i went to rent an apartment in new york, my first night in new york i went to buy some stuff for breakfast and i bought a six-pack of beer and i was carded.o [laughter]. that was a, that was a somewhat awkward beginning. yeah. >> so let's talk a little pit about your time as president of the new york fed. your chapter in your book is called leaning against the winde and you talk about growing fears about some things but what came to be known as shadow banking system, all stuff going on outside the regulated banking

system and your work to fix you up of derivative market. your critic are not having it. after "wall street journal" branded it as one of its losers in part because you said in early 2008 in the financial markets i think there is true some sign of process of repairs is starting and bear stearns collapsed just a few weeksth later. so talk about this.c were you really leaning against the wind. >> i try to talk about honestly, openly about the stuff we missed. the stuff we tried, why it failed, why it was so inadequate. i tried to do a fair job going through this of laying out the things that described that i thought were reassuring about our system, even going through the crisis and things that were troubling.ug but let's do basic, basic contours of our system at that point to give you feel for what it was like to see it then. what happened in our system is over the decade that followed the great depression as memory of panic faded our financial,

completely outgrew thet safeguards we put in place around banks after the great depression. so in that case we had major financial panic.io we put in place constraints on banks, deposit insurance and the fed, the fed had sort of protection, safety net provided for that function. over time we evolved in the united states and that long boom, they call it the, call it the quiet period of decade, this set of institutions that were no constrained in terms of capital or leverage. had no access to deposit insurance or safety net for the system and we evolved over time in fannie and freddie as you written about eloquently, investment banks and big s insurance companies, whole universe of nonbank financial institutions this complicated world of essentially banks. more risky than banks because they were not constrained in terms of leverage and more risky

than banks because they had no access to deposit insurance protection against runs and the, in our system, the fed's reach was limited to a part of the banking system but the banking system was only about 40% of the financial system in credit. and that other 60% was much more risky, very vulnerable to runs. and when i got to the new york fed in that fall of '03 i think what worried me most was that big mismatch where there was risk, where there were constraints, where there was somebody not only in charge and the scope of the firefighting authority that even we hadge because i knew that when things fell apart which they might do,e you know, people generally say, where'sed fed? what are you going to do about it? theyp come ask us for money.

we had pretty limited tools at that point. so that troubled me a lot. i wrote a fair amount about what in the face of that i tried to do, we tried to do to lean against the forces of optimism that were causing this big boom in leverage and risk. but as i write those efforts were of course very weak against the force of the boom. ina adequate, late, insufficient. not because there wasn't a lot to worry about but because we had no direct authority over, where most of the risk was. evenus where we had authority,rr like over banks, you know, wei didn't, we didn't think about forcing them to hold capital against the risk of a great depression. people thought great depressions can't happen in the united states people thought great depression's can't happen in the united states. it seemed inconceivable.

we took those lessons we took the lessons to try to reshape the rules of the financial game in the united states. those lessons interpled what are very powerful, promising designer reforms that we're now putting into place but we missed a lot and didn't do enough in advance. >> so bring us back to the fall of 2008 and try to explain the sheer amount of fear there was. there is a great story in the book about a conversation you had with lloyd blankfein around then. >> burning storm or gathering fire is getting a lot of momentum in fall of 2008. the system was on the edge of collapse and it was happening around the world and, whatou

people call lehman weekend, that weekend we brought major institutions together at the new york fed to try to figure out a way to contain the damage and avert default by the biggest institutions. at t that weekend lehman and d merrill lynch and aig were all basically at collapse. if they collapsed the system was going to fail and although we were able to find a solution to merrill lynch and aig we, without a willing buyer for lehman we had no good options. i write in the weeks after that when the system was basically breaking down there was a classic run across the system.in i got a phone call one morning from, from this very prominent banker at maybe 6:30 at my desk, i called him right back, you have to get that fear out of your voice. don't talk to anybody else in

your firm or outside because if they hear you, it will be, it will be terrible and i say you can replace it with anger whatever you want but you can'te let people hear youpl that way. but as i explain in my book if you were, if you were aware then you were scared to death and it was the people who weren't scared that you had to worry about the most. the people who were scared were the more smart in the competent. >> wasy there anybody who actually wasn't scared? >> yeah. i mean, after lehman, thate morning after lehman "the wall street journal" editorial page and "new york times" editorial page thought it was terrific. they said, thank goodness they didn't step in to find solution to prevent default. they thought it would be a just, virtuous, excellent imposition of pain against the, on the deserving but would have no effect on rest of us. that was the dominant view ofon the time. so, yeah, there were a lot of

people, a lot of people who thought going into the weekend, all of washington was caught in this fever of saying, had been too much rescuing going on, no more rescues. now, then they got scared to death and they, you know, gave president bush and hank paulson the authority we needed in the end to put out the fire but, yeah there were a huge number o. people who had no sense howwh perillous it was. >> but you argue there was no desire to enforce moral hazard at work and the decision not to save lehman. it was what you could do. >> it is an important thing i know seems inexplicable, in finance it is not like national security. we don't give the president of the united states this standing authority to put out financial fires. we don't do it because of moral hazard concerns. we think if you do that, investors will take too much risk they will live with the expectation that the government will come in and protect them. ourto president, even the united

states, came into this crisisprt with no authority except toith declare bank holiday or close equity markets, not things. helpful in a panic. and so the tragic failure in some sense of the country going into this, among many failures was, we didn't have the tools to contain the damage early enough. ultimately we were able to do it but not until a lot of damage was baked into the outcomes. so, the fed, also by design, very limited tools. i write in my book how i went to the new york fed initially in 2003 they showed me this book called the doomsday book. i thought, this would be cool. it was terrifying because it was three inches thick but when you looked at it, which i did, carefully, it was a pretty limp, weak set of things because again by design people who created the

authority for the fed didn't want the fed to have the ability to step in and preemptively bail out a rescue, a nonbank financial institution. even when they gave us that authority, it was very limited and we weren't allowed to take that much risk. the statute says that even thos emergency powers you can only lend if the president of the new york fed could be secured to his or her satisfaction. what does that mean? that means you have to be able to say we're lending not against air but we're lending against something that we might have the capacity of using, deploying to cover our losses. very limited on the risk. no guaranty, no be able to put capital into institutions. for that reason, without a willing buyer in the lehman case, had no good options. and i also write in the book how i was very confident if we hada willing buyer but we needed to do what we did in bear stearns, we had the fed take some of the risk for that to happen i'm confident we would have done

that and hank andi ben would hao supported that. people would have been unhappy with us for doing it because, again, just to go back to the beginning, it seems counterintuitive and paradoxica that would be appropriate and necessary but again look at the damage that happened in the wake of that default. >> i think it is david axelrod who called your relationship with president obama a bromance. you did -- [laughter] you did try to talk him out of choosing you as treasury secretary but you ended up being the longest serving member of his economic team. talk a little bit about that relationship. >> i didn't know him and we met in, i got this call asking me to come see him in new york in october before the election. we talked and, we had a littlefo bit of common background in the sense we both lived in southeast asia when we were kid and younger and our parents were

in the same profession, his mother, my father. i didn't know him. he said after we talked i might have to come to washington. i said you shouldn't do. that i had a bunch of good reasons for that. i think that helped a little bit because he knew i wasn't eager to come do this and try to take him out of it. we to spend a lot of time together. we went through a lot of ugly, messy, horrible decisions together. i just had thes most, amazing admiration for him because he is, i think for me at least, all thatng you wanted, much more thn you could have hoped for in a president because he, all he cared about was trying to figure out what was the right thing to do, what was going to be the most effective thing in avoiding the most damage, getting the economy growing quickly asn possible. he wasn't going to let the

short-term political costs interfere what was right. he was both very sporty of the path we agreed on, stuck with it. but he also was very hard on us, very hard on me, in the sense of subjecting my recommendations to pretty tough internal debate, deliberation. he was never paralyzed by that. did the right thing to make sure he wasn't, he wasn't, he was going to look at all options before he embraced what i laid out. i thought he was just a great decision-maker. very brave, very smart, very creative. att that moment where it matterd so much. i'll tell you one small story. we, the first phone call we had in the transition with the vice president-elect and chief of staff and maybe a couple other people, it was a call to

talk about his economic agenda in the first term and i began and said, well,. mr. president-elect you will prevent a second great depression. that is what your economic will be. hen. snapped at me on the phone. and he said, well, i just want you to know that is not enough for me. i will not be defined what i prevented. i admire the fact he was willing to understand this economic affair was central. nothing was possible without averting the worst crisis but he was focused ons how he would figure out a way to create a governing coalition to make some progress against all the challenges we faced in the country and i admired that ambition and his capacity to look through the immediatedi imperative devote capital he

needed to that imperative and look beyond it to other challenges we faced with the country. >> you have great mottoes that seem to be more broadly applicable then in a financial crisis but mottoes for life. plan before stuff, not just against stuff and talk a little bit about how these affected you during the debate inside the administration in early 2009 when a number of people were arguing for nationalizing the banks and you stood pretty muchd alone for that. >> it wasn't a debate whether we should nationalize or not nationalize because it was possible if banks were unable to raise enough capital and survive a great great depression and that might have been avoidable and desirable in that context.

i think what i learned early in life about how you make decisions in these contexts is that you have to surround yourself with people who are, who are, not just reasonably smart and ethical and people you can trust with a diversity of background, experience, but who have enough, who have capacity for conviction. are willing to say what they're for. willing to take the risk in saying, well, how about this? because mostly what you find in these cases if people want to debate the problem, say it is not a problem, hope it will go away, or just describe the challenges and you can't have any effect on the choices you have to make if all you can do is screen your concern. the concern is important, it's very valuable but it doesn't gen you to a choice.do so, what i tried to do always just was just to, to, you know,

have the table, around the table, a group of people who were prepared to go relentlessly through all the available choices and sort through the best of the bad ones and try to figure out which risks were the better ricks to take. what the costs of the mistakes would be. could you correct the mistakes because you will make mistakesa and help people get through the choices that is the choices iff bring to people in the crisis. i would, plan is no plan just a good, short version of trying to convince people that you know, they had to decide what they were for, not just what they were against. what the president did which was very good, try to let there be enough competition for diagnosis and ideas that he could get a feel what was the best among the bad choices. i write in the book what happened over time as we worked through those choices is that

the alternatives, most of them couldn't survive 30 minutes of debate because they were, well-intentioned but they had, you know, just bad risk/reward. much too risky relative to return. we had no authority to do them. they assumed unicorns would exist and you have to work through those things and suck the hope out of them where there is no hope and expose people to their infirmities. >> so talk a little bit about the toll this took on your life and on your family. what was it like to have the daily show visit your house? >> "the daily show," they had a lot of fun with me. [laughing] i think the president said in the off val office and said in morning meetings on the economy, really terrible and i remember him coming to the oval office one morning, saying seriously, like the second time you're on

"saturday night live." it was knot very good.ple i had great people around me and very supportive president. it was not so fun for me sometimes but very hard on your families. liked not families of people tt served in the military or in the fire department orir first-responders but it is still hard because they have no privacy and they never see you.e when you're around you're not there. when you're present you're not really present so it was notr really fun for them.nt >> there were repeated misperceptions of you both before you became treasury secretary and during the time you served. rahm emanuel's wife told you must look forward to your nice career at goldman sachs. there was a great interview, a great anecdote in the book about your meeting with barbra streisand and tell us

about that, tell us why you think it is people really never got to know you, why that is. >> i mean we were doing stuff that deeply unpopular, by on its face look it was designed to reward the arsonists. people wrote about me early on and this perception, just, became conventional wisdom, its hardened very quickly that spent my life at goldman sachs. i remember this hearing on hill, member of the congressional oversight panel, began a question to me, well, mr. geithner, of course you're a banker. >> i said no, i'm actually not a banker. >> well, you were in banking. >> i said no. i'm not in banking. >> so you're investment banking. >> i said no, never in investment banking. i but that perception, probably

because that initial description of my past and probably because of the what we were doing just hardened. it b became overwhelmingly, accepted wisdom. the way the world works, perceptions matter a lot. when the perceptions harden, they're very hard, very hard to break. >> so another policy yes, some of the fiercest criticism of yom during your tenure and of your book has come about, the help that was offered for homeowners. and one critic wrote, in every turn on housing the evidence points to tim geithner preferring whatever option put the least pressure on banks rather than actually helping ordinary people. >> i know that is a common perception but just deeply confused perception and it rests on a just a deeply unrealistic sense of, of what, what our choices were, what our options were. i mean, we had a democratic

president. really at the peak of his political power with democratic majorities in both houses. i think some of the best housing talent in the country working for him. a lot of progress sieve economists. all the right incentives. understanding everything was terrible and it was getting worse still and he put enormous pressure on all of us to try to figure out how we could do more to make it more likely people wouldn't lose their homes. 11 million people lot of their jobs. americans underwater. scale of those challenges werea just vast relative to the resources authority we had and we were unable to relax those constraints in our authority, unable to get more authority from congress. unable to get more resources on

a material scale and, and we were definitely slower and less creative than i think we, i would have liked and i think we ultimately were in using authority we had. but we did ultimately help millions of people stay in their homes and refinance and we put a floor under house prices and lay conditions for recovery but ultimately, ultimately what it took was, when people started to get jobs again. that was when you started to see the pain start to ebb a little bit. things starting to get better. once you had income again you would more likely to stay, current on your mortgage. and the scale of that stuff just wasn't large enough. but again it wasn't because we didn't know it was terrible. it had nothing to do with, nothing to do with helping the banks. people, it is just upside down. if we had been able to get

$700 billion from the congress, and use it to help people stayng current in their mortgages, or reduce the mortgage balance, that would have been terrific for the banks. banks would have loved that. it would have taken a whole bunch of losses off their table. in some sense what the stress test was designed to do, the stress test, the core of it was to say, we're going to say, these are the losses you banks would face, foreclosures, defaults by businesses, if it was a great depression. so the purpose of the stress test was to point out and make it possible for banks tout withstand those losses. to illustrate to force we have enough capital to withstand those losses. so their, their criticism of the program is correct in the sense that they were inadequate, butt deeply confused in terms of what the options were and what our motivations were. >> it is one then that confusedw

me a little bit because you do write at the end of the book, i wish we had expanded our housing programs earlier to relief more pain for homeowners but i think your book is quite compelling defense what you did do and why. is it really true that you would do things differently? that would you do more? >> let's separate these go things. i try to be very open with this in the book. within the scope of the authority we had, we did pretty persistent innovation, evolution, expansion, of our programs, to try to get more traction because they were disappointing in their reach but, we didn't do that, you know, we wer e learning as we were doingre it. if we had full knowledge, at year one of what we had year four and could have done it all earlier that would have been great but is that possible?o it is possible i guess. but we had some prell excellent housing people, a lot of knowledge, right incentives,

president of the united states putting enormous pressure on them, on us. that is one thing i say.th if we hadat expanded those thins more quickly, more traction earlier within the authority that would have been great but the big constraint was on, give you an example. pretty ironic example. when paulson got authority to put fannie and freddie into conservatorship. put capital into them to prevent their collapse, congress did not give the secretary of treasury any power over what they did. just power to give them money. not power to influence what they did. so i will give you an example what that meant. so we, we, you guys understand there is a good economic case for principle reduction in financial crises, particularly for people at risk of losingp their homes. so we spent ais lot of time looking at the case for principle reduction. we came to the judgment, not as early as i think i should have there was a pretty good case for

doing it, letting fannie and freddie do it. we went into the big effort with fannie and freddie to convince them to do targeted program of principle reduction that would have benefited hundreds of thousands of people. we had no authority to force them to do it. we laid out numbers for them. tried to make the economic case for doing it. they didn't want to do it.ic so even though they existed because of the money we were giving them in capital, that came with no authority. why was that? because democratic congress did not give a republican president authority over controlling the thing. so that constraint on authorityc was very consequential. unable to relax it. so you could say it's a failure too of ours, that we were unable to relax the constraints. very different criticism from saying we left unexploited, unused authority which would have been hugely powerful in that context. >> so there are tons of good questions from the audience and, some fall into categories.

so i will start with this one. what have you learned about navigating the u.s. political system during a crisis? before immediate and decisive action and the international political system. >> i don't think i learned very much about politics. i don't understand, i don't really understand that place and it is a kind of a, it is kind after soul-crushing experience to go through. there is so much hypocrisy and adolescent posturing and it's not very fun. learned not very much about that. on, in politics, internationally or, here in washington, you know the most important thing you can do is to try to figure out what are the interests and incentives and beliefs and constraints of the people you're negotiating with. that's important because unless you have a feel for those things

there is no way you can have any chance of moving them or finding where your interests might overlap, might be coincident and complimentary. so, you need to come to these discussions with at least a willingness to try to understand what your opponents or your critics or your counterparts think about the world, even very different world. if you don't agree with that view you have to understand it. you still have a figure out a way to find the capacity for compromise. yoigu know, this country has ovr time demonstrated pretty remarkable, pragmatic capacity for compromise on reform. we just seem to have lost our way for the moment.lost we'll rediscurve it at -- rediscover it at some point and take as bit of effort and appreciation for where you can find some complimentary interest. >> so please compare the european to the u.s. response to the financial crisis.

>> ours was better. [laughter] i mine they had a harder problea in many ways. i think federation of 17 countries, no institutions for common strategies. like many americans in fall of 08, and first three years of the crisis, i think it would be better for us, for the first three years of the crisis, this is pretty helpful illustration of a consequence of different strategy, they decided they would, i think put some fuel on fire. not just let the fire burn. but they thought the fire was going to be just, you know, put a much of deserving brutal pain on the more profligate, investors banks, governments and then they induced a bunch of additional austerity, even by countries that had plenty of resources, very strong fiscal

positions.a those two things caused, yout know, almost great depression-like outcomes in large parts of europe and they,m and they flirted over and over again with the risk of complete collapse of the euro area. in august of 2012, they decided that strategy wasn't very good strategy, so they reversed course, laxed the austerity, basically rhetorically, in reality, stack ad bunch of money in the window, the ecb did, to calm fires of panic and they bought themselves much more room to begin to reform but they're h good, they're a good, natural experiment in the cost of alternative strategy. it is very painful. it is not, austerity they induced was not just a fiscal avoidable austerity they induced, but if you let financial markets live withca panic-like conditions for a long period of time which they did

for three years it is devastating on capacity of businesses to expand, to borrow. to hire people, retain people. just devastating. good national experiment. so if people like thatti alternative, you should go liven in spain. >> the question here, do you think fannie and freddie will be reconstructed and if so, how and when? i have to add on to that a little note, do you think it is ironic that some of the institutions that you are accused of treating so favorably now suing you for their favorable treatment and i don't mean you personally obviously but included in that fannie, freddie, aig? >> i do think it is ironic, just so you know, the context of thiu stuff. there is -- this is a rescue most people viewed way to generous to the arsonists and unjust and unfair and yet the government is being sued fort making too much money for the

taxpayer on the largest, most riskiest things we did in the case of those three institution do i think fannie and freddie be reformed is where you started in? >> yeah. >> at some point i do. it will take a while because this political system can't really do anything now. and this is a complicated thing. it is very risky reform process, as you have written about eloquently, what produced the mess with fannie and freddie was the coalition of real estate interests, well-intentioned housing advocates and, and banks. pretty powerful coalition. a little bit of left progressive, a little bit of market in that coalition. we call it the housing industrial complex and they have a pretty strong grip on the political system. so i always felt, at least when i was there that not good to

russia because if you tried to rush the reform process, i knowf it doesn't look like we're rushing it, if you try to rush the reform process the risk you strengthen hand of coalition and they try to recreate a set of conditions that were probably not sensible. you know, a badly-designed, excessively-generous subsidy to housing with bunch of bad institutions at the core of that. i think it is okay if it takes some time. i know it's knots ideal. it is okay to take some time. housing markets have a long way to heal. private capital not coming back with alacrity in that market. economy is not still that stron, still. you want to run a legislative process that maximizes the chance that what the reforms,

the regime is dramatically better than the one you had before and that might take some time. >> this can be a short answer or a long answer and i'm going to ask the question on the chance that the answer is ain long way. what are your thoughts about the current controversy around high frequency trading? >> oh, i think it's, it's necessary, just, desirable level of attention to a problem that has no, you know, no obvious, easy solution yet it will take a long time to figure out a better framework but it is worth the attention. so i'm for the controversy ande the attention and hopefully it produces some changes that make those markets, you know, have a bit more integrity. and a little less risk of catastrophic damage.a >> so in the book you are quite

pleased with dodd-frank. you think it really did make a difference and go a long way toward making the financial system safer but you also write about the very thing in this person's question. somebody would like you to comment on why the revised rules for the fdic guaranty authority and limitations on fed authority are problematic. so talk about that in the context of some of the things that aren't so great about dodd-frank? >> well, leto me just describet two of the most important things dodd-frank did. we did put in place a lot of credit to elizabeth warren, a new framework for consumer pro, much better designed, more accountability, will be better, not perfect, level of predation and predatory stuff that happened. against the risk of future financial crises we have much better authority to imposed much more conservative constraints on risk-taking much more broadly. before the crisis in '07, the ones that exists applied to

about 40% the financial system. they were too thin too. they're much more conservativeey and applied much more broadly.bl banks, can't through acquisitions own 10% of the banking system. much more restrictive limit on consolidation that exists anywhere in the planet. force big banks to hold much more capital for same amount of risk. anyo relative to a small bank, systemic surcharge. and there is betteran bankruptcy-like authority to dismember large institutions liketo lehman, bear stearns, aig we didn't have the in panic. those are all good things. but in the sort of deeply populist moment in washington they took away some of the firefighting authority that was so important to protect people from the, from a much worse recession. they took away the fdic condition, fdic's guaranty authority and i think lesss consequentially, little tightening stuff i recommended actually on the fed.

we said, for example, i thoughtt the fed shouldn't be able to do firm-specific interventions in the future like aig or bear stearns. only generally available stuff. if you want to do firm-specific things, that should be left to the government. that was my view. the guaranty authority i think is very consequential because it was one of the most effective things that was done to limit the force of the panic in fall of 08. it is only way you break panics. one of the only ways you break panics. what happened was, congress, although it wasn't very controversial at the time, congress got caught up in a belief, the financial stations is what caused fires. it is not true. it doesn't happen that way. they got caught up in this belief, somehow if you limit the tools available to the fire station, you make fires less likely. that is also not true. but still they got caught up in that basic belief. so they limited condition that

authority and what that means is that, because politicians are not going to rush to do the right thing in a panic because it is so deeply unpopular. what it means is that congress will be late like it was this time. they will be late in ther, futue when it is severe. that will be very costly thing. i still think on balance, if you look at reforms, although they're messy and complicated and imperfect, these core reforms around limiting risk are very powerful. and they're very well-designed. they will buy us, they have a chance of buying as you long period of relative stability. not permanent. there is nothing permanent in this because as people become more confident, eventually risk will migrate around thosen constraints you face the risk again of something more severe. but on balance, even with those limitations, restraint on fire station and reforms i think are, are, really pretty good. >> so i think we have time for

one last question. and, this one is, are you still doing your taxes with turbotax. >> excellent question. [laughter]. no, i got a good education in the complexity of the tax system and, generally believe in paying for advice. [laughing] >> well, thank you all very much. [applause] >> booktv in prime time continues tonight here on c-span2. starting at 8:00 eastern, the author of factory man, how one furniture-maker battled offshoring. ed an american to in. steve forbes and elizabeth ames on money. how the destruction of the

dollar threatens the global economy and what we can do about it. michael lewis, on his book on high frequency trading, when computers, rather than humans buy and sell stocks based on complex algorithms. c-span2's booktv in prime time all week on c-span2. >> here's look at some of the programs you will find christmas day on the c-span networks. holiday festivities start at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span with the lighting of the national christmas tree. followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady, michelle obama. and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. and just after 12:30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about their causes. at 8:00, supreme court justice, samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights and founding fathers. at 10:00 a.m. eastern the art of good writing with steve pinker. at 12:30 see feminist side of

superhero as jill lapore searches secret history of wonder woman. pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits. american history tv on c-span3 the fall of the berlin wall with footage of president george bush and bob dole and speeches from president john kennedy and ronald reagan. fashion experts on first lady fashion choices and how they represented the style of the times in which they lived. at 10:00 former nbc news anchor, tom brokaw on his more than 50 years on reporting on world events. that is this christmas day on the c-span networks. for our complete schedule, go to c-span.org. >> white house hosted its annual tribal nations conference early this month with leaders from federally recognized native-american tribes. up next, on c-span2, a conversation from the conference focused on climate change. we'll learn from the head of the

environmental protection agency, fema and the energy and interi don't remember departments. then education secretary arne duncan, other administration officials on education programs for native americans. >> native-american documentaries which premiered last month. >> 2014 is the first year the annual tribal nations conference has called been native youth to contribute. 40 young adults from indian country were selected to join president obama in washington, d.c. to talk about the issues that matter most to them. these are a few of our stories. ♪ >> my name is jump eagle and i start ad campaign for hope to

try to prevent suicide from happening on our reservation and by doing that, i was selected to represent my tribe at the white house tribal nations conference for youth ambassadors. on the reservation the suicide rate is high. last december we had two suicide and i how me and my family felt when we lost my fourth cousin to suicide. sometimes you need people to step up and make a change. and i said i wish all of the sad kids could feel what i feel when i pick this up. i wanted to make one sad kid have a smile on their face. everybody was talking about it. she was kind of like a celebrity almost in my little school in our little community. ♪ she didn't stop there, she wanted to keep doing more. >> she dedicated her basketball season to the kids. >> she used it as another reason

to go out there and play hard. >> i do believe she changed a lot of lives. >> hello. mymy name is dakota brown. i'm a junior at argonaut high school. i come a rural community in jackson california. there are changes that i would like to see. native americans have the least numbers represented in college. a lot of my cousins and friend who are native maybe weren't doing best in school. i wanted to do something to help change. that i thus became the start of nerds. native education raising dedicated students. who would be able to help out with the primary fund-raiser? nerds is a fire to peer mentoring is tutoring program. lowest besides in pe, drama were kind of fs. we focus on improving grades of native-american students.

through nerds i was able to go to summer school and catch up on classes that i failed. >> i got in trouble. nerds got me back on the right track. >> pretty much got accepted into the college. >> someone needed this group to get themselves up on their feet. >> it is fun to be in a group with other natives and have new friend. >> recently i lost, lost my best friend to suicide. i called janay, i said i don't think i can handle it. you can't give up on me. we have basketball. i think that really helped me. so there will be more people out there like her. >> my brother. >> see the young natives today in this area get excited about the nerd program and all other things that you're doing. you're taking a lot of these young kid that were not doing so well, given them something to be positive about.

>> the grade are good. i see it in the paper. i get so proud of that. >> once these children get a little bit of help, who knows what they can do. makes me want to work harder. thank you for all you've done, little brother. so proud of you. >> love you. >> tomorrow i will be traveling to washington, d.c. i'm very excited about meeting the other kid from the program. it just gives me a really good feeling to know i'm not only one trying to mca change. >> i want to tell you how much you mean to us. the hope you brought to us. even your little cousins and little brothers and sisters, they see you now and they believe that they can do anything. the kids want to sing a song to you. basically said, grand father, grandfather, hear me, the children are lost and they ban to be found. ♪ >> give her a big ol' hug.

>> we're all packed up, ready to leave for d.c. we have really early flight. i have been to washington, d.c. before but this time it is different because i get to work with the white house and all the tribal leaders. are we ready? >> yes. >> okay. >> don't forget homework. don't forget homework. ♪ >> we're the first generation that is kind of a big deal. >> people want to hear from young leaders. >> we all have stories. >> their competition, i was chosen to be native-american princess at my high school and i used my voice to encourage neighboring communities to be proud of who they are. >> we go over to the senior center home every friday for an hour and play games and actives with the residents. helping them with their dementia and alzheimer's. >> every year we help with

admission. today we've done it with nearly 18,000 books at those schools. >> there are other youth like us that want to make a difference. >> i made a lot of friend. >> getting together, talking a lot about things. having like teammates. ♪ >> i think it will make a big impact because i could take all of this i'm taking in here back to my community. >> generation i is trying to go against the grain and promote the well-being of native children. ♪ [applause] >> lining, please welcome the

climate change plenary panel with interior secretary, sally jewel, epa administrator gina mccarthy. fema administrate craig fugate and cheryl diver of the fondue lack tribe of lake chippawa. and interior secretary -- [applause] >> thank you all for being here of. climate change is one of the major initiatives of the administration. he has appointed of course his native-american cabinet as we're calling it but there is also a committee of that group that is

focused exactly on climate change. we have tribal representatives on the president's climate resilience and adaptation task force. myself and mayor reggie joule from alaska. wonderful relationship and participation by tribes in those efforts. we would like to share some of that work from the departments from each of you. if i could ask the panelists to speak briefly about one minute, what you do in your role with climate change. acting director boots. >> thank you, karen. i'm mike boots. acting chair of white house environmental council on quality. energy and climate issues, the piece i want to briefly talk about is the task force that carry karen just highlighted in her quick remarks. earlier this year after late

last year, the president name ad set of governors, mayors, county officials and -- reggie jewel from alaska to give him -- about the best ways that the federal government could be a better partner. . . >> these folks, karen included, spa lot of time with all of you

getting input to give back to us. and i just want to take a minute to thank you all for your participation. karen and reggie put together a full series of phone calls, webinars and other outreach mechanisms that got more than a thousand folks from indian country participating in that effort, which was huge. and your input was incorporated into the report that these guys just delivered to the president a few weeks ago. and today karen and reggie are also releasing a supplementary set of recommendations which give a little more voice to tribes on specific recommendations that should be implemented across the federal government. and there's a whole number of measures on that front. i want to just quickly say the two things that karen brought to that cometally was -- continually was the sense that there needed to be inclusion of tribes that are made in the

decisions and to be thinking about tribal governments the way we are as state and local governments. and at the same time, karen and reggie did a great job of reminding us there are unique impacts, circumstances and experiences that occur in tribal lands on this front and that we need to be mindful of the federal government about how we tackle that. so i encourage you all if you haven't yet to take a look at the recommendations that karen and reggie put forward today, but also take a look at the broader set of recommendations submitted to the president. there's a lot of work for us to do now on our end to go tackle that and make sure we're implementing it across the agencies. >> thank you. epa administrator gina mccarthy, thank you for being here. >> thank you, karen. thanks for moderating the session, and for all of your great remarks and your partnership. i just wanted to highlight a couple of things while i'm here. first of all, i've been to two

incredibly robust listening sessions, and what i have learned in those sessions is how great it is to have this opportunity to be together and how unique the time is that we're living in and our opportunities, and we cannot squander them. the second issue is i've learned to bring more lined paper with me -- [laughter] because i leave with very long things to do list, and then we get them done. so that is a good thing. but the first i wanted to thank sally jewell for all of her tremendous leadership on the council and for her willingness to co-chair a subcommittee with us that is looking at these climate change issues. i think you probably all know that president obama sees climate as part of the legacy issues that he wants to move forward to address, and he very clearly recognizes that tribal issues are very much now driven

in so many ways by the changing climate that we see and the tremendous impacts that that can have on both the ability of tribes to survive, but also to maintain their culture. and we have to recognize that and work together which is why bringing this issue to you today so important and how much we want to listen to what you have to say about the work of that counsel and how it can best fit your needs. it's dealing with everything from the tremendous droughts to the fires to the changing seasons that we're seeing to the ability to have wildlife interactions the way that we've had before and our fisheries, and they're challenges that we need to face together. and really the last issue i want to mention is that the president, you know, one of the reasons why it's so exciting not just to be here, but the times we're in is the leadership of this president on these issues is something i feel every day like i died and went to heaven,

to be very honest with you. it is something that is a tremendous energy boost for all of us who want to get good things done, and he is very cognizant of the fact that we have two years left, and we need to take action. not just on climate, but on tribal issues. and we have heard that directly from him, and we are responding to his charge. and so i know that many of you are concerned that there may be no ability to get new laws done, but the president is not relying on new laws, is relying on creativity and applying the ones that we have. because we can do things that we've never done before. and so as part of that initiative at epa this week i put out a memo to all of the staff, i reminded them of our unique government-to-government relations with the tribes, i reminded them that we have a right as well as an authority to remind ourselves in every work that we do that tribal rights

and their resources are protected by treaties in treaties of the supreme law of the land. [cheers and applause] so i reminded them that we already have existing laws. our challenge is to look at how we're implementing though and how we're applying those and when and where we have discretions, we need to use our laws and our rules and our regulations and our implementation to actually enhance the work that we're doing with tribes so that we deliver their treaty rights every chance we get. and so you have my commitment that we are going to work strong and hard and take as many notes as we can, and you will see us doing what the president says which is to build him the strongest legacy he can both on issues of climate and on meeting our tribal responsibilities. thank you. [applause] >> thank you.

>> welcome, secretary of energy ernest moniz. >> well, thank you, karen, and also let me thank all of my administration colleagues here who are, indeed, great colleagues to work with on this and many other issues. first, let me just say that the department of energy really interacts with our tribal communities in two different ways. one is historically at our far-flung department of energy sites across the country, many of those sites are nearby, contiguous with tribal lands, and so we have those partnerships that we continue to develop. second hi, in 2011 -- secondly, in 2011 the department established the office of indian energy to provide a focal point for focusing on clean energy and its deployment on tribal lands. more recently i would say that we, just last year, we

consolidated our tribal programs to have more streamlined management and perhaps more importantly in our request for fiscal year 2015 funding to congress, we increased our request by just about 50%. i might say that request was well received in both chambers. now we need to have them come together and actually pass a budge so that we can -- a budget so that we can are those funds to deploy. and i can assure you, we remain interested in continuing our growth in these programs. i'm not going to go into the issues of climate change. we've just heard some of those. just to say that the d. of energy -- the department of energy, one of our very special roles, clearly, is to work on developing, demonstrating and deploying the energy technologies that we will need to address climate change but also to address the economic needs in tribal lands and, frankly, across the country and

across the world. we know that often we see in our tribal lands and certainly in our alaskan native communities tremendously high prices or energy. so there's also -- for energy. so there's also an important economic advantage here in addressing these technologies. let me just very briefly mention four, four things, four announcements if you like. today the administration has been announcing the first round of climate action champions, 16 communities recognized for their ambition and first steps in addressing climate change. i'm pleased to say that two of those are the tribe of chippewa indians in michigan -- [cheers and applause] and the blue lake rancheria in

california. [applause] so in these months, these tribes and the other champions of climate change -- and there'll be more rounds, so hang in there -- so they will be receiving technical assistance around pollution mitigation, climate resilience, and each will be assigned a federal coordinator to help leverage resources to support the implementation of their climate strategies. that's good news. secondly, our alaska start program which is strategic technical assistant response team program. so today, again, we are announcing a new round. since its start in december 2011, the program has helped 11 alaska native communities advancing clean energy, technology and infrastructure projects. so this third round of assistance, again, will add to

that increasing resiliency, local generation capacity and energy efficiency and the like. also creating local job opportunities. i might say -- [applause] thank you. in addition, i might say something which was another important program is as the united states heads into the chairmanship of the arctic council, that we are developing a ten-year plan to support and accelerate deployment of renewables throughout the arctic region, and our indian energy program, for example, just did seven consultations with alaska native tribal leaders, tribal governments and villages and regional corporations. and this is the kind of outreach and consultation that we need more of not only in this program, but across the board. >> only one more. >> and third -- [laughter]

third is that today the indian energy office has launched a new web site providing a one-stop shop for federal funding and technical assistance programs to support development for tribes, alaska native villages and corporations. and fourth -- i'll skip the rest of that third one. [laughter] well, these are announcements, you know? and fourth, next spring the department will host a tribal nations summit, and in preparation for that, actually next week, we'll be in indian country in arizona to have a two-day working group to help plan out that summit for next year. the exact mace and date we -- place and date we will be letting you know of wherever it is and whenever it is. we hope to see some of you there. so thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] [laughter] [inaudible conversations] >> fema administrator craig

fugate, thank you. >> well, good afternoon, everyone. finish when this first started, i've been here, i guess, since about 2009, the stafford act basically said this: the entities that are allowed to ask the president for a disaster declaration were states and territories. and federally-recognized tribes were a paragraph later where it said local governments and tribes. after hurricane sandy, congress went back, they listened to you, and they changed the law. so you went from being after local governments to being at the same level of a state, a territory or a centrally-recognized tribe. meaning that tribal governments now through self-determination can make decisions about requesting assistance from the president for a disaster and not go through a state.

[applause] that's about self-determination. [applause] so i want to give credit to the president and to the administration. we did get a law changed that for too long people told me would never change. you can change the law when you're in the right. but the second thing that came out of sandy was the president's observation there are still many people debating climate change. his fear is it's too late. we have to start talking about adaptation. and this really comes into fema's role. we're not going to be there, and we don't really have strong programs before or during. but after an event occurs, the question we are asking ourselves, are we building to the future? too oftentimes our data and information has always been based upon past events. but you're out there, you're seeing it. things are happening faster and at greater events than we've ever seen before.

the weather service uses this term 100-year event. have you heard that in the news like every week? [laughter] and so it's really challenging us to work with noaa and other partners that when we come back and we look, and you particularly look at how do you build resiliency. this is a term we throw around in government, but it's really about how do we adapt to protect our way of life, our heritage, our culture? faster than the environment around us is changing. and for the federal government, we're challenged because we often time have based all of our decisions upon past history. we don't look to the future. and that's where we really need your input in the tribal council, in the tribal representation on climate change is you know your history, you know your heritage, you know your past. help us find the future. because if we don't make the investments for the future, we may lose that. so we're past the point of

talking about and, you know, the changes that are occurring. we're not debating climate change, we're talking about are we able to adapt and build for the future. and that's our commitment at fema, is not to miss the opportunities, unfortunately after disaster, just to build it back the way it was. we've got to build to the future, but we need your input. because all the smart folks up here, we're still struggling with what does that look like? what's enough? are we making the right decisions? but it was the president's observation that, you know, we cannot continue to debate climate change, we've got to start talking about what we're going to do to build to the future. and that's our commitment and our promise that we will not do it without you, because we are one nation with multiple nations working together to solve this problem. thank you. [applause] >> and last, last but not least, secretary of interior, sally

jewell. thank you so much for all of your leadership for indian country. >> thank you, karen. and thank you, karen, for your leadership on the task force. and i have to say that up here with us we do have leaders in many different ways, many that you don't know. craig doesn't know that in addition to hud, fema is a major provider of housing on indian reservations. show of hands, how many of you have a fema trailer on your reservation? okay. so that's where they went. not ideal housing, but thank you for that, craig. [laughter] i want to talk just for a second to our native youth ambassadors who are here. there's a saying that is we don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. so that's what climate change is all about. we have an earth that is in trouble. we've got in trouble a lot of times through our ignorance, through our greed, through our practices, and they're coming, they're catching up with us as administrator fugate said,

catching up with us with weather, with impacts on our fisheries and on our subsistence, on our cultural sites within the this country -- within this country, on the things that you do hold dear from your ancestors ask you'd like to have -- and you'd like to have for your descendants as well. and that's why our work up here so important. gina mccarthy -- [applause] thank you. gina has stepped up as co-chair, as she referenced, on climate change as part of the white house council on native american affairs. ernie moniz has stepped up as co-chair on energy on the white house council of native american affairs. ernie and i had an opportunity to do a hike together, and we went by the dam outside the pueblo, and he said that'd be a good place for lowhead hydro. he's thinking all the time about what can we do to bring renewables to indian country.

his lab, the national renewable energy lab, where i was just a week ago is doing great work on the potential of a hybrid, a distributed energy that could drop into a remote place. could be the bottom of the grand canyon, could be a remote village in alaska, could be a remote island in the pacific to make sure that we're bringing energy that is clean, that doesn't continue the sins of the past and gives us a brighter future but also gives you a brighter future to participate in a full way in the economy without having to do it on the backs of the way that we've got here that has been so damaging. so there's much going on. regulations can be frustrating, you all deal with those, we do too. regulations can be thoughtful and really important like regulating methane which is something that the three of us actually are working on. like regulating carbon that gina mccarthy has been a true champion out front on with her power plant rules from the epa.

these are painful, they're difficult. nano-generating station, i know, is a tricky one, and it's one that i think epa's been really thoughtful in recognizing the impact on tribes in that area and the importance of working alongside them. so we're up here to talk about climate change and to talk about energy and to listen to your thoughts and comments, so it has been a privilege to be with you today, and it's a privilege to represent the department of interior and our work on climate change and energy. thank you, karen. >> thank you. [applause] >> we will take questions from tribal leaders. just a reminder they are to be questions, not statement, and we're hoping you'll keep them to about four minutes so that you can get answers and have as many people participate as possible. so thank you for your cooperation. state your name and where you're, you're

from, please. >> i'm mark -- [inaudible] i'm with the band of -- [inaudible] indians an hour north of san diego. climate change in the west has exacerbated everything, but in particular the drought and wildfire cycle. and in so doing, it's had severe impacts already in indian country and damaging tribal homelands and cultural and sacred sites. it's also put extraordinary pressure on available water supplies. these acute pressures focus the need for you urgent action when local and regional water agencies continue using more and more tribal water, water they shouldn't be using and wouldn't be using if our settlements were in place. so in the gap here between all this acute pressure brought on by climate change-driven drought and the fact that our water settlement has not been agreed upon, negotiated, put in place,

that's where this taking so occurring. and it's water we will never get back. so there's a pace that is not, it's lack of a seasons of urgency. of a sense of urgency. and that's my fundamental question. what will you do to utilize the resources available to you, secretary jewell, to accelerate is pace of indian water rights agreement and to create an institutional framework for these things into future administrations? and let me just point out that out of the 12 federal regions,11 of these regions have identified, the tribes in those regions have identified indian water rights as one of their top four issues, 11 of the 12 regions, so appreciate the consideration. thank you. >> thank you very much for the question, and you're absolutely right. we're in real trouble in california. we are in regular contact with the state ask the governor's

office -- and the governor's office. the bureau of reclamation is very much involved, and my colleague, mike connor, deputy secretary of the d. of interior is an indian water rights lawyer. he is working very closely not just with capitol hill and the states and the bureau of reclamation, but also with tribal leadership on doing as much as we can to accelerate indian water right settlements, but they take a very long time. we did, signed the third and final agreement with the -- [inaudible] tribe recently, and that was decades in the making. and so these are difficult, and you've got issues in the short term that need to be addressed, and i think we can help advocate on a local basis with you. the bottom line though is in california we're running out of water. and you know that. and we know that. and the governor knows that. so we will continue to advocate,

but water rights claims take a very long time. we're working with congress to say we need a source of funding for those settlements when we do them because they're subject to appropriations. so there's no easy answer, but i want you to know that we're on it. we're on it on wildfire as well because we need a fix so that we can provide a willing schedule of dealing with hazardous fuel removal and postfire remediation that reduces the risk to sacred sites and damage to the landscape. if you've got specifics, i'd invite you to contact my department, and we'll make sure that you're meeting with the right folks, but it's very difficult, and i appreciate you bringing that up. thank you. >> my question is for dr. moniz, but before i ask it, i'd like to thank president obama, his administration and the department of energy for naming,

for naming the blue lake rancheria a climate action champion. the folks back home, they just got the message here today, and they're very honored, and they wanted me to make sure that i told you that. >> we want to thank you for being the climate champion. [laughter] >> as you might know, mr. secretary, the blue lake rancheria underwent an ambitious project to take fuel lake residues and turn them into hydrogen and pump it through a fuel cell to be able to power part of our casino and also many of the homes there. and in the course of doing that project, we had a lot of technical assistance from pilar thomas in the office of indian energy. and as we commissioned that project and we move on, we are looking at doing some microgrid technology and other photovoltaics. my question to you, sir, is can

we count on the same level of technical help and assistance as we move forward and develop these other projects? >> well, thank you. and first of all, i think those projects of producing, if you like, renewable hydrogen and microgrids are why you are a champion of climate change, so we encourage of that. i might also say that the imperative to develop economical renewable sources of hydrogen is only increasing as fuel cell costs are going down rapidly. and, for example, just two weeks ago i guess it was toyota announced the first mass market, if you like, hydrogen fuel cell car. so this is coming. so the answer to your question fundamentally is, yes. as i mentioned, we are hoping to get a substantial increase in our budget in this fiscal year, and that will continue and lift up our abilities to do the kinds

of technical assistance that you address. in fact, the last thing i'll just say we still have more r&d to do in terms of the waste-to-hydrogen approach because there are still things like cleaning up the hydrogen stream, etc., where we can drive more costs down. thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm chairman of the tribe near seattle, and we have a strong history, and i'm also a presidential appointee to the advisory council on historic preservation. as you know, you've heard all week in a lot of the sessions, the strong spiritual connection that our respective tribes have for our landscapes and our homelands. and those are interconnected with natural resources and, of course, climate change is a threat to not only our natural

resources, but our spiritual connection and our ancestral ways. and as you've also herald, there's been a lot -- heard, there's been a lot of different testimony from a lot of states, a lot of indian leaders here in this room. we've heard from alaska how seasonal changes are affecting moose and fish and berries and their whole ecosystem, and it's happening also in florida, arizona, california and other states. too many to mention. i'm from puget sound, and ocean acidification is how it's expressing itself in our part of the world, and we're very concerned about not only salmon, but shelf fish because we rely heavily on clams, crab and other shellfish for our sustenance. we've heard about -- [inaudible] rights at risk, and because our treaty rights have been adjudicated in courts, those treaty resources are under threat because of these changes in the environment.

and my question for our trustee which would be administrator mccarthy, is what is epa doing to insure that tribes have a meaningful role in development of climate change regulations and policy actions, and can you affirm incorporation of traditional knowledge this your actions and you institute the tribes' plan for adapting the change that's underway in our environment? thank you. >> well, first of all, mr. chairman, thank you for being with me at the last listening session. the it was a pleasure to be with -- it was a pleasure to be at the table with you and many of the colleagues that represent a variety of agencies talking about these very issues. i'm glad you mentioned ocean acidification, frankly, because it's one of the issues that most concerns me because we know so little. there are many things we know about climate change scientifically. i