i can get you the exact numbers but we have a lot of ph.d. economists. we have 16 offers outstanding to new ph.d. economists to join the s.e.c. when the school year is over. and we use them throughout the agency. >> how do you find these folks for example? are they all finishing up their ph.d.s. >> i think many federal agencies do it. there's a conference in january of every year where lots of ph.d. candidates come and we can interview many of them at once. the staff will have gone to that conference having read anything those people have written, learned as much about them as they can. select the ones they want to interview and make offers to them. >> interesting. >> we also bring in economists from the industry as well when we have the opportunity to do that. >> i would think the competition would be pretty fierce for them these days. >> you know, the competition is

fierce. the s.e.c., because of our market regulation function, is really very interesting place for economists. because it's not just -- it's not singular focus. you mean, you can be involved in money market funds and mutual fund regulation, but you can also be involved in market structure questions and what the impact of high frequency trading on our markets and be looking at issues around how broker dealers compete. there's so many different facets to s.e.c. regulation that make it interesting for economist. >> do they also get involved in review of what might be obsolete or outdated regulations for you? i know the administration is trying to push the agencies as well as the congress, i might add, toward trying to get rid of outmoded regulations that are on the books that actually cost the credit sector money, but yet,

don't do anything because markets have changed so much or other circumstances have changed. how do you do that review process or do you do you it? >> we do it now. but also -- already. but we also will be doing it pursuant to the executive order that was signed in july that does apply to the independent agencies asking them to develop a plan for a retrospective rule review. that plan is is currently with our commissioners awaiting their comment and their input to it. the economists are involved in that. as well as the fact that one reason for a big increase for our economics group in this 2013 proposed budget is that the ten-year review of the sarbanes-oxley rules will fall about that time. there will be an enormous amount of economic work that need to be done in connection with that. >> can you divvy up some of that rule-making or regulatory re view among the commissioners so

that each of you that you assign to each of the commissioners, the he -- not you. because you still have to run the place. but the other four different responsibilities. >> i haven't thought about it. it's an interesting idea to have the people take the lead on different parts of that. we'll certainly talk about that. >> just trying to figure out -- that way you have more hands in and trying to get it all done. on the regional office, i was pleased that you mentioned the review of the 11 regional offices. how do you suspect you'll go through the process of trying to figure out whether or not some of those could can be closed with -- but not lose the functionality of what those people do. >> one of the recommendations you know that comes out of the dodd/frank required study was that we look at our regional office strategy and you can imagine, regional offices grow

up over many, many years for all sort of different reasons. our regional offices do a tremendous amount of the agency's work. that's where most of our examiners and our enforcement staff are located. we want to go through it in a constructive and thoughtful way. we will analyze issues around productivity, around proximity to industry, proximity to investors, coverage for the country. because it's a big country and we're a pretty small agency. we're about the size of the d.c. police department but we have responsibility for policing markets across the country. we'll look at a whole range of different metrics. it's being led bitten forcement director and our head of examinations group. it is an area where we need support understood to do the

real kind of details and in-depth analysis that at the end of the day, they say we have it right. it may say we're not in all the right place. we just don't have any pre-conceived notion approximate that at all right now. we'll need contractor support. while i would like to focus on just three or four of the initiatives for the coming year, that's one that we will keep our eye on. >> just seems that -- i can understand why you would have to have the examiners in certain locations. although quite frankly with technology as it is and if in fact you're at least perhaps not in this immediate near term but certainly in the near future, if everything works on the i.t. front, i suspect that you can get an awful lot tended to in addition to having your folks just show up in a company. >> i went through this in the private sector. i can say that we ended up closing one office and actually opening a satellite office in

the new york area to get better coverage in new york where the industry was more heavily located. but there's also sometimes great stability and depth of knowledge and expertise in some regional offices that also has to be considered. we don't want to lose that. also, some offices are very expensive -- inexpensive parts of the country. from a cost benefit perspective, it might make sense to keep an office open and maybe sense to grow it, so long as airfares and other considerations to get them to other areas are not exorbitant. there are a lot of factors to look at. >> i appreciate that. joe? >> thank you so much. last year the s.e.c. faced some very serious problems in its leasing policies. leading to a violation of the anti-deficiency act. please describe what you have done to remedy this concern and to ensure that this problem never faces you again? >> thank you. i take responsibility for the

agency's missteps with respect to leasing a constitution center. the staff -- the inspector general report explains a number of flaws in the process. but the staff utilized in determining what our space needs would be. based on an expectation that the agency would be given the resources to dot new responsibilities under dodd/frank and a duj much our budget operation, which is not the same as an a proepg. appropriation. we did lease space. we moved very quickly to mitigate this situation. two-thirds of that state have been sublet or released now to other federal agencies that are nonappropriated agencies. the federal housing finance agency is one.

two-third of the space is gone. one-third of the space is left. we're accessing that to the gsa. they have informed us that they have tenants for that space and they are working through that process. we expect to access it in the next 30 days or so. i revoked all delegations to staff to sign real property leases. and on august 1st of this past year, i signed an mou to turn over all of our leasing responsibilities to the general services administration which has deep and long experience and weep will leverage them and they will enter all real property leases on behalf of the s.e.c. on a going-forward basis. >> i'm tempted to say that should make the chairwoman very happy. but i'm being sarcastic. >> i'm sure i understand. i actually am prees pleased that you all are giving that responsibility over to the gsa.

we'll deal with them on another day. but they are more suited to do it than y'all and we know that. >> we're little and it's the same motivation behind transferring our financial management systems to federal shared service provider at d.o.t. we can use our resources much more critically for our mission, protecting investors, ensuring the markets operate with sbig rit. to build up infrastructure where they can do it better than we do is the appropriate thing for us to do. >> for anybody scratching their head, it's very clear and good that the chairwoman is good on the oversight of general services. >> thank you. >> i know that this -- but she's right. how is that? [ inaudible ] but profoundly sarcastic. a whole different thing. but i do agree with ms. emerson

that this is probably where it best belongs. hopefully this will never happen again. let me ask a question. i think the s.e.c. has been more vigorous than ever in pursuing wrongdoing, oufr however, i am concerned about the various reports regarding the s.e.c.'s settlement policies with those accused of unlawful activity. in some cases the s.e.c. obtained settlements with individual in which they never had to admit or deny guilt. the same individuals have pled guilty to criminal charges elsewhere. do you think the s.e.c. is doing enough to obtain admissions. do you think the s.e.c. can obtain enough value from a verdict when which an entity doesn't admit any wrongdoing. now, we've also seen fresh reports that say if they had to admit guilt and you could get into some legal proceedings that would eat up resources, but it

just on the face of it seems strange to many of us that somebody would do something wrong and would simply go, oops. and that's the end of it. i'd like you to tell us why you think that's a good policy. >> sure. our policy with respect to cases where there's been a parallel criminal proceeding and there's been a finding of -- a plea or a guilty verdict, we do not allow people to neither admit nor deny in a parallel civil proceeding. that policy changed a number of months ago. i will say with respect to just our purely civil proceedings, this is how we approach the issue of allowing people to neither admit nor deny. if we can get in a settlement back to investors about the same amount of money and penalty that we would get if we litigated the case, without the uncertainty of

litigation, the possibility of losing or the tremendous dee laf litigation, we think that's a good deal for investors, to get that money back to them more quickly. the -- i realize at least people feeling unsatisfied. they would like an admission of guilt. if they have to admit guilt, they might as well litigate and delay this as long as they can. >>cases. where we can get in settlement after years of a trial if we were to win the trial, we think it's a good deal for -- >> right. but if part of your mission is to try to make sure that what happened that put us into this hole we're in right now doesn't happen again and there is people tepd to have short memoritend t memori memories. we're claiming certain -- having cost it all.

i remember, unless i'm totally incorrect, that we got into this mess when a lot of things happened in the financial industry that had ramifications and domino effects throughout the economy. now, if no one is going to be found guilty of anything, then what's to stop people from doing it again and again and again knowing that all that's going to happen is they have to repay what they took, if you will. there's something missing there, that doesn't happen to a person down the street from me in the bronx. they usually have to pay more than that for stealing a car. i don't know if there are any lawyers on the panel. i'm not a lawyer. but is it a common practice throughout society? >> i will tell you that every other -- virtually every other federal agency and regulatory agency allows the settlement of cases on a neither admit nor

deny basis. in fact, doj, federal trade commissi commission, allow the person who has been sued to deny all of the allegations ebbs except for the jurisdiction. we don't require them to admit them. we need a strong settlement posture than most other agencies. the other thing we do, if you look at a complaint that we file in a case, we lay out the fact pretty clearly. we quote the e-mails and talk about the conduct. it shouldn't leave anybody to doubt what it is we believe the wrongdoing was and gives a pretty full picture and description of what went wrong. and, again, we do litigate a lot of cases. we name a lot of individuals in the cases we bring. >> well, let me just close with this. there were some folks in the past, including folks in your agency, that didn't want any oversight to take place.

there are some people in government and there are people in this society who may not in our country, who may not want you to be vigorous in your oversight. so please make sure in doing what you feel is right that you're not opening the door for people to think that they can get away with things. because there are plenty of folks out there who would want it that way, under the heading of we shouldn't have too many regulations. they don't seem to understand that some regulations are in place to stop bad things from happening. >> i understand. i just want to reassure you. we are a law enforcement agency. we're many things. we're a regulator, but we are a law enforcement agency. we take it very seriously. we've brought on board a lot of top notch prosecutors into the s.e.c.'s enforcement program so that we can go up against the biggest and strongest and best-funded -- that exist. we'll continue to do that.

>> thank you. >> i'm glad you brought this issue up. because it's really important. you did say earlier in a question that wasn't specific to that -- this exact issue warded the big banks settlements for example. that you wanted more lit gators. i shouldn't assume anything. let me ask. if this is so possibly you can have more opportunities to pursue cases and not have to settle with no consequences. >> now, we won't settle a case if we don't believe we're getting the appropriate remedies and we won't bring a case we wouldn't win because i think that would be irresponsible. as we bring more and more cases, we will have to litigate them. we'll need experienced counsel and paralegals and investigators to support them.

>> do you have a contract out for the services? some agencies actually do. >> i believe we have a paralegal contract. i don't think we -- we obviously, have expert witnesses from time to time under contract. that's another expense of going to trial. in fact, it's needing expert witnesses. >> indeed. >> i don't believe we contract out our core -- >> for a certain specific trial that doj needs some extra help with, for example. i was just curious. myself with remarks by the ranking member onso on settlement. we need to strike a very careful balance between settlement and litigation because of the impact it has on what i term some

measure of risk. we have to be careful as they do in criminal proceedings, that if you don't do something from time to time that elevates that risk by prospective perpetrators, then if you're just settling for what you would normally get, to me it doesn't do anything about the risk factor. i just make that kind of as an observation. you said in passing a minute ago when you were talking about capital formation that caught my attention, because last year i worked with jim hines on a bill that, as you know, madam chairman, chairwoman, elevates the fresh hold of registration number for community banks from $500 to $2,000. that same language is coming back in a bill this week as you know. the s.e.c. has the -- i guess authority, it's within his

purview to do that on its own. we had 420 votes on that. >> yes. it was overwhelming. yes. >> it was pretty decisive. help me with that. why -- >> let me add to it that we have a new advisory committee at the s.e.c. on a small and emerging businesses which has been a tremendous resource to us over the last six or eight months. in looking at a lot of these issues. they recently recommended to us that we raise that 500 shareholder trigger to 2,000 for community banks and 1,000 for other public companies. they just transmitted that recommendation to us recently. this is something we're looking at very carefully and we would have to engage in rule-making, which may take longer than actually passing legislation would take. but the staff is working very hard on this. there's a lot of interest in moving forward. >> my experience in a short period of time of being a member

of congress, i'm not so sure that legislative activity is any fast error slower than rule-making. i just -- i haven't been convinced yet. but we'll see going forward. i was also pleased that you mentioned in your -- in discussing cost benefit analysis, there was a mention in passing of high cost/low cost areas. when you add 670-some people in a given year, if all of those personnel additions and i know you've indicated they're going to be spread out around a lot of offices. but if they were all located in, say, the district of columbia or in my friend mr. serrano's beloved bronx, we're talking about a sizable amount of cost associated with people living in some of those locations. whereas, if they were in a cape jury ard owe, missouri or a -- >> northwest arkansas. >> fort smith, arkansas.

>> no, no. stop it. >> the cost associated with people located in those areas that have nice qualities of life, cities, communities run by some of america's best mayors, having been one of those, there's some merit to having people in these areas and help reduce that cost. i know it's not a lot in the overall scheme of things but every little bit helps >> i agree with you completely. the largest number of slots in this budget proposal would go for examiners who are not in washington, d.c. because there's very little security in washington, d.c. to be regulating. they would be spread around the country. places from salt lake to fort worth to boston, philadelphia, we have 11 regional offices. so part of this regional office strategy that the chairwoman and i were discussing really needs

to look at where we can most affordably house and hire people and give them a quality of life as youefly have them stay with the agency for a long time. >> thank you. >> thanks. mr. yoder? >>. >> wow. everybody seems to be good. we'll let you off the hook early today. anybody -- do you all have questions you want to submit for the record? if it's so, we'll submit them to you. if we could possibly request a response within 30 days. >> very quickly. >> that would be terrific. you don't have to do it by tomorrow. you do have a tough job ms. schapiro. it's a responsibility that few others in this government have. it can't be easy to sleep at night. thanks for the good job you do. our job is to make it easier for

you to do your job. but please understand that we also want to be as efficient as we possibly can. >> we understand. we want to be as efficient as we can too. then we can spend the money on things that really matter. but i appreciate -- >> thank you so much. >> thank you. on washington journal tomorrow morning we'll be joined

by representative paul brown, a republican from georgia to discuss the super tuesday primary result. his bill to repeal the president's healthcare plan and gas prices. and you can call in with your questions about foreign pol stoi democratic senator ben cardin of maryland. washington journal is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. coming up, a senate armed services committee hearing on the situation in syria. defense secretary leon panetta and joint chiefs chairman general martin dempsey testify. see it live starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span 3. this weekend there are two ways to watch the tucson festival of books. live on c-span 2 and live online at book tv.org. on saturday, jeffrey rosen on the history of the supreme court and at 3:00, panels of forensic science, politic at 4:30 and

mexico's drug wars at 6:00. sunday, panels continue at 1 eastern with the environment and the great depression at 2:30. the american west at 4:00 and at 5:30 studying the brain and diana en rec ez on bernie madoff at 7:00. look for coverage streaming live on book tv.org saturday beginning at noon eastern and sunday starting at 2:30 exclusively online. the tucson festival of books, live this weekend on c-span 2 and book tv.org. there is a real anxiety within a substantial part of black america when confronting black americans who are successful in the wider society because there's this anxiety that to be successful, especially if you're in a predominantly white setting to get the backing of white people, the trust of white people what did you have to do to get that

backing? what did you have to do to get that trust? what did you have to do to get that recognition? there's this fear that one of the things that you had to do was to betray in some form your community. >> the first sunday of every month, book tv's in-depth focuses on the book of one author. he spoke about race, politics and the obama administration. watch it online at the c-span video library with over a quarter century of politic and public affairs on your computer. last month 100 germans gathered for a town hall meeting with angela merkel. she answered questions on germany's economy, national security and concerns over extremist groups. this is an hour and 45 minutes.

>> translator: ladies and gentlemen, warm welcome to this first meeting with the chancellor and others. i'm glad that you came. and the chancellor, dr. angela merkel is going to be our host tonight. [ applause ] >> translator: mrs. chancellor, we want to talk today with the people, our guests and how we're going to live together in the future. it's a citizens dialog. i know that you always talk to the citizens. but the format is different. >> translator: first i'd like to thank you for coming and also for the ones who couldn't make

it. we're going to change our roles today. here i came to listen to you. to hear your ideas. of course, it doesn't exclude that if you ask me questions, i might answer. i came here for information and advice. how do you want to live together? maybe not the way we live together today but what's going to happen to us in five years' time, in ten years' time. i think it is probably good to see what doesn't work today and how we can change it for the future. so the question today is how do we want to live together in future? >> translator: so this is important, you say, that on a daily basis the chancellor has to deal with policy. but it's good to think about the future, what am i going to o do with my children, with my grandchildren. so we were the first stop.

we thought where to go, what cities. should we go in a small village or in a big city. we decided for a mid-size town and we thought that this city should be either new states and air fort is a nice city. but also it was with a lot of diversity and we thought that this area could be a good start. and the kaiser's shall the emperor's, probably a good place. the media was enthusiastic. so it was a good choice. then we're going to two others. all three being mid-sized cities. >> translator: you all look good, ladies and gentlemen, really good. the room is empty, nobody can hide. we have the three big themes and it's written on