great deal of attention. i was hoping you could discuss for the panel what's happening in the arena. >> this is a very real problem. and for the past several years, actually, there have been a group of countries, throughout the world, that have been pushing for international regulation to the internet. in years past they could use parliamentary maneuvers to table some of these actions. but this coming december in dubai that will be a reading negotiation. so back in 1988, most of the countries in the world got together and negotiated a treaty that set up a trend for the sbesht to be not regulated by governments. but to be regulated from the bottom up.

all sorts of folks could come and make the bottom up rules for how the internet works and how it will grow and thrive and eed. in the past couple years there's been a gathering storm of some countries led by rush and china. he said he wants international control of the internet through the international telecommunication union, the itu, which is the u.n. based in geneva. it does a lot of good things that helps negotiate and manage international telecom's traffic. so everything from cyber security and privacy to domain

name administration to engineering, administered by the task force. another nongovernmental group. as well as the arrangements of the long haul backbone where there are privately negotiated traffic swapping agreements between backbone providers and et cetera. all of that is consumed to give it jurisdictions over that. so it's a real concern. the obama administration and i and others are all in agreement with you. it's beening an issue between the developed world and the developing world. should they go the distance and become effective, i would would

undermine political progress in the developing world. but in the rest of the world, that might not be the case. they see the opportunity to charge them and have that flow to telephone companies. so there are a lot of issues there, but it's a very real concern, and we should all be working hard to make sure it doesn't happen. and it doesn't just take place in december, there are meetings throughout the globe between now and december where positions across the globe will start to harden. >> mr. chairman, i'll give you a second to comment. >> i think preserving internet freedom is of vital importance. it's important to the american

economy. it's important to the global economy of developing countries, and it's important to freedom everywhere. and it is important that we work together on captoring proposals that some countries have made. that would not be consistent with internet freedom, and that would have the opposite effect of that claim. so it's very important topic, and it's important that we all work together to preserve free flow of data. testifying before the sub committee on the fcc budget. when programming note, we focus on communications issues every week. tomorrow morning we'll continue the kofrgs on the washington jury snal.

the executive director of the women's forum. we talk about the gender issues and the hispanic vote. the perspective of vargas, the national association of latino elected and appointed officials and just how safe is the food we eat? the food safety for the center of science and the public interest will be joining us at 6:15en for those of you in the west coast. thanks for joining us on this monday. i hope you enjoyed the rest of your evening. in a few moments here on c-span three, general motors ceo dan akerson. and then three majors talk about education reform. this is c-span 3, with politics and public affairs programming

throughout the week, and every weekend, 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. join in the conversation on social media sites. >> tuesday morning on c-span-3. a hearing on u.s. military operations in afghanistan. top military commander in afghanistan will testify at 10:00 a.m. eastern. you can watch live here on c-spa c-spac c-span 3. last year general motors reported the largest profit ever. $17.6 billion. just three yeefs after receiving the financial rescue package from the government. dan akerson spoke about the the future of the auto industry in san francisco.

so no we'll get going. welcome to the conversation about the energy and environment. today we're talking about the chairman and ceo dan akerson. a leader, general motors, is firing on all sicylinders. the government's remaining 30% stake in the company could be seen as a financial and political liability. over the next hour as well as gas prices and the move to electric cars, such as the chevy volt. mr. akerson was head of global

buyout at the carlisle group, a private equity group in washington, d.c. he was ceo of general industry. please join me in welcoming dan akerson to climate one. [ applause ] dan, welcome. thank you for coming. >> thank you. >> gm has had a good year. where is it now and where are you taking the company in years ahead? >> we had the best year we ever had in the history. we posted record profits. i hope that is not the last applause i get. >> depends on profits next year. >> you are only as good as last quarter. where are we today? you know, i had been ceo of a couple of companies. being in private equity actually helped coming into this industry.

first i was criticized for not being a car guy. that's okay. there are three non-car guys in detroit today. i think it is the first time in 20 odd years since all three of the major american manufacturers are profitable. we had to go through some difficult times and there has been a lot of political dialogue on that to and fro. anti and pro. after a two-year hiatus, general motors is the largest manufacturer in the world. we had our most profitable year. between '10 and '11 alone, we grew $2 billion. our revenue today is about $150 billion, which would be larger than the gross national product of 100 countries in the world. it is a huge, i think, an american company.

it's a global company in the sense we compete in 117 odd countries. we export around the globe. we are very successful. most of the high growth markets. we have the highest market share of any automaker in the world. we cannot be as internally focused. we had internal metrics. are we better than the last model we made? are we looking at the competition and saying where will they be in three to five years? as wayne gretzky says, he doesn't skate to the puck, he skates to where it will be. we would often say we have a car and it's going to be x, y, z?

we benchmark to the industry. we are producing great cars. i think about what are the things that keep me awake at night, first of all, we cannot rest on our laurels. it is a great year. the first thing is we need to attack our cost structure and producing cash and be competitive. our margins are not what our primary competition is. over time, you are still making a lot of money. the other guy is more efficient over a long time. companies don't fail in a year or two. it takes 20 or 30 years for the deterioration and the rot to really impact the viability of the company. so we can't be sitting here in 2030 or 2035 and say what

happened? the decisions were made in 2012. so we're in pretty good shape, but we have a lot of work to do. we still have many issues that need to be addressed and resolved. >> we'll get to fuel and economy and climate change and other things in a little bit. first, the bailout has become quite a national political issue in this election season. you came from a private equity firm. what do you think about -- was there private capital available to bailout instead of the taxpayers? did the deal give the uaw a deal over bond holders? do you have any critiques of the bailout package? >> i don't want to be critical. having come from private equity, we experienced and we are part of many restructuring. there are multiple options and avenues to a successful restructuring. and i know we have become somewhat of a punching bag in

this political season. i don't want to get into the political arena, but i'll say this much, if you were in private equity and we had $100 billion portfolio around the globe, front row seat, it was coming off the wheels. as americans, we have to be proud that our government stood up regardless of party affiliation. just like blood is critical to the body, liquidity is critical to the economy. and, yes, we liquidate. we provided liquidity into the markets. i'm also the senior director of american express which is one of the larger financial institutions. the question is were they going to be viable. it was a different set of circumstances in the financial

arena than the manufacturing in the automotive. at the end of the day, regardless -- i don't want to debate it. i wouldn't have joined the board if i did not agree with it. pragmatism has to enter into the economic dialogue. i went to the london school of economics. everybody knows that. but it is the london school of economics and political science. you can't separate politics and economics on a macro economic scale. did this company, in my opinion, george bush -- by the way, two presidents of different perspectives put money into this company. it wasn't just one president. and they weren't running for office at the time. they were in the arena. they had to face the hard facts and, in my opinion, they made the pragmatic decision to save this company because it has now been estimated 1 million jobs were at risk. that is 1 million households.

on a personal level, this is a wealthy state and wealthy community. you all look very prosperous and wealthy to me. when you do to detroit and you go to ohio and you go to pennsylvania and indiana and illinois, where a good share of the auto industry resides, whole communities have been negatively impacted just by the downturn. it would have been significantly worse. president bush said 1 million jobs and $150 billion in tax revenue would have been foregone by the state and federal governments had it been allowed to fail. there is the infrastructure. the industrial infrastructure of the nation would have been severely damaged. i don't care how we got there. the question is did it work? chrysler is alive. we're alive. we are not just alive. we are prospering.

around the globe and in this country. since the bankruptcy, we hired 1,700 employees in the united states alone. we invested $10 million. i know against a $1 trillion deficit sounds like peanuts. it's not. the ability to build new cars. we are focused on what is the evolution of the industry. we cannot afford to focus on the near term. what is it like in 2030? why are we spending money on the alternates? hybrids or hydrogen fuel cells. if i mentioned names of companies, you would all say wow? that german company is looking at your technology. it is this company which is a depository of property associated with alternative fuels as it evolves. this country now has an industry that has been totally revitalized that can make the necessary investments to

transition our economy to a higher tech and more efficient and cleaner industry. >> one way to separate politics from economics would be to pay back the remaining money that is lent by the u.s. treasury. do you have a time frame when the 30% stock is back? the stock is still below the 30% ipo price. >> you say lent. they lent us money. we paid all that back. they provided preferred interest with a preferred stock with a 9% coupon. we paid that back plus dividends and interest. we held the largest ipo in the history of the world. most of that went to the federal government. they own 27% on a fully diluted basis. they are just like every other

shareholder. they can sell when they want. it is perverse. i have some understanding of capital markets. we produce record profits, why isn't the stock at record levels? we have a big shareholder and we don't know when they will leave. as part of the bankruptcy, you heard the structure in the financial world. let's take the good assets of the bank and call it good bank and bad bank. we had liquidation motors. liquidation motors, we left the toxic assets behind, if you will. there were hundreds of millions of shares that went to -- there was a complicated -- i won't draw any conclusions or make judgments about who got a good deal or who didn't. it had to be done quickly. again, there are many paths to the solution. did it work? we had to give those several hundred millions of shares to the liquidation motor

shareholders. some of those were largely bond holders. when the stock swooned was because we dropped them and they flushes them to the market. so a lot at them look and say, when are they going to answer it. the answer is candidly, i don't know. >> you can understand the cry in congress if the u.s. government sold shares that were 30% below the ipo price. tax holders are getting fleeced. they sold at a loss. bad move. >> i won't tell you who i asked the question. is the federal government a private equity firm or acting on behalf of "we the people?" was our economy or citizenship properly served? what if we didn't collect that $150 billion in taxes? if we failed, we had a $24 billion pension shortfall which we now worked down to $13 billion. the government would have to

take up that $20 billion liability. it is more complicated than you get in a 20-second blurb on the evening news. or a quick thing in an article. >> sure. >> this is a complicated bankruptcy on a scale that i think the average citizen in this country doesn't have the interest, quite frankly. >> how would you like them to sell? >> how would i like them to sell? recognizing this may show up in washington, i think it ought to be a very controlled. a good way is come out and say we sell 5%. >> dollar-cost averaging? >> i would say they are not there to get the last dollar. by the way, there's -- when you say, owns. there is one company that owns the government any money. that's ford.

we were offered $12 billion. michigan delegation was working on our behalf. we could apply and i'm sure we would grant low-interest department of energy loans for clean and high tech. i said we're done with that. we nixed it. so did chrysler. i say the perverseness of it all. governments help their companies to kind of shape and mold without too much of a heavy hand. shape and mold the direction and technology and how the economy evolves. i don't see anything -- it is not a religious issue. it is something that is pragmatic and it's done for companies around the world all the time. >> another pragmatic issue for americans is high gasoline

prices. you told cnn last year that gas sold at $4.50 would affect people going into the showrooms. how is that impacting car buying? >> well, just in my tenure, we shifted -- if you look at the types of trucks, crossovers, suvs, sedans, we have shifted a huge amount of production from small to medium sized sedans. away from large trucks. that is a factor of energy costs and producing smaller cars and more fuel efficient cars. i remember president obama when i was in private equity and i think in an unguarded statement of exasperation with the industry and at the depths of recession say why can't they build a car like the corolla. we did.

the best selling compact car in america today is the chevy cruze. it is not just the corolla. all of them. it makes about 40 miles per gallon. >> do you make money on the cruze? >> yes, we do. >> the general prevailing wisdom is bigger cars, bigger margin. you can make money on the medium-sized cars? >> you make a lot more cruzes than others. we don't make money on the volt on an incremental. the volt, we sold as many volts in the first year as toyota sold prius in their first year. sometimes you have so shape and mold our own future. we will make investments where we think the long-term future is in our interest. >> last year you said $1 a gallon gasoline tax would be

preferable to the standards talked about at that time. it essentially became law in california. do you think the increasing the 18-cent a gallon gasoline tax is a good idea? >> i think there are a number of approaches to how you want to impact consumption. there are economic laws just like there are physical laws. one is you don't tax production. you tax consumption if you want to change behavior. there are a number of ways to get to that. that was an example. one of several. but i do think you can affect consumer behavior by a number of different ways. >> so maybe a gasoline tax increase? >> i think it ought to be on a list of potential alternatives, yes.

>> we put this program on facebook and immediately got a bunch of questions about an issue. i would like to read a question. please ask mr. akerson why gm funds the heartland institute. a group that tries to push climate change into our public schools. is this funding consistent with the company's message and marketing of the chevy volt? >> i am glad you asked me that. i wasn't aware of this until the last day or so. a couple of things in terms of good governance. i cannot sit on the foundation's board or steer anything. >> you are saying it was the foundation that gave the money to the institute? >> yes, not the company. let me say another fact. the first time i was interviewed by the press. the guy said do you believe in global warming. i said i do.

executives said you don't say that in public. this may surprise you, my underwear doesn't have gm stamped on it. i am an individual. i have my own convictions. sometimes they agree and sometimes they don't. i think it's actually healthy to have different perspectives around the table. let's talk about -- i always say actions matter more than words. just last week, the apa named us the star energy provider because of the mission controls. we are 60% more efficient in the use of fuel than we were just five years ago. landfill usage coming off our plants is essentially zero. you can pull it in a coffee can. [ applause ] >> most of our plants are

completely run off of landfall methane. they are zero emissions. we have plants that are the size of small farms. 200 or 300 acres under one roof. we put $40 million behind the chevy program with the cruze and said we would reduce 8 million metric tons of co 2 in this country in one year. we bought and paid for a forest the size of the state of connecticut. this is $15,000 that was committed to before i came in. i also think the heartland institute, i'm told, does other things. i find this interesting. i won't go any further. i'll take another look at it when i get back to detroit. i'll leave it at that. >> we had a lot of conversations here. will there be a price on carbon? a lot of prices around the country and the globe, europe has a price that is low.

australia put in a carbon tax. when do you think there will be a price on carbon and how will that affect your planning for selling gm cars around the world? >> when i was a midshipman at the naval academy, we were told, yes, sir, no, sir, i don't know. >> lots of people have metrics and scenarios. >> all i have to say is i try to be very pragmatic. we have to allow for all possibilities. we were an active participant in cafe standards this year. we will do our level best to be a responsible corporate citizen and if the wisdom of our political leadership is to put

in a carbon tax, we will react to it and react to it as best we can in the interest of our shareholders. >> in the past, california put through carbon emissions that governor schwarzenegger passed and signed and other members wrote. in the past, there was a lot of time spent against this sort of thing to meet these goals. so, the auto industry signed up for the current to increase mileage to 55 miles per gallon. >> we were parties to it. we could have. there were factions in the company that i -- this -- >> the lawyers wanted to go at it? >> this is the new gm. rather than sit in the corner and be extrapolate, we want to be part of the solution. we do not want to be part of the problem. we live in this country. i have grandchildren and