i was talking to one of the municipal officials and i said, well, what kind of tourist season are you expecting? he said, we think we're going to have a huge tourist influx. who are most of your tourists? where do they come from? he said, well, we have a lot of turks, a lot of russians, we have a lot of iranians and a lot of israelis. i said, how does that all work? he said, i tell you, if you go to the discos late at night, the two kinds of people that are left are the iranians and the israelis. oh, and shortly after hearing that story, i walked into a public building in batumey, one of president shakashvili's advancements, it's one-stop shopping. go in a building, get a marriage license, a work license, a passport. it's quite remarkable. so i was wandering around being

shown this modern technological wonder. i walked into the visa section. these three men came running up to me. they said, we love you, we love you, we're from iran. i said, we're trying to get along with you. they said, we like you, the people like you. now, who knows, but i think that -- i think that the larger point in shimon's very eloquent and, as usual, compelling description is that there continues to be this disconnect between the people of iran, which is a much more diverse society than most of us understand or know how to deal with, and this leadership which is becoming more and more rigid. more of a military dictatorship,

if you will. and so there's a lot happening inside iran. and keeping this pressure on, keeping the sanctions on, keeping the world united against this nuclear threat and what it represents to this regime remains our highest priority. so, you know, we're pushing forward on it and we'll see what comes out of moscow. >> unfortunately, the time has come when we have to conclude. and you've been both very generous with your ideas and analysis and time. before we do the concluding ceremony, shimon asked me if he could say a few words. >> i had the unbelievable privilege to be among the openers of the center. i think the two of us, the late

king, profoundly. and missing him. i think that was an unusual idea. to bring the two impossible people at that time to speak together and maybe it was the opening of the peace process. now, i'll tell you why, it confuses me to define what is wealth and what is poverty. for example, i'm suspicious that there's not a poor person. for breakfast and for lunch and for dinner. but he didn't become poor in his

feeling. i believe that the person who is rich with feelings and concern is a real rich person. he made his wealth with his own imagination, with his own charm. and he can charm everybody all over the world. be careful. and he has not only charm. he is wise. really caring. they're caring for the united states. they're caring for peace. they're caring for peace between us and the palestinians. they're caring for friendship between america and israel. and in israel, hospitals,

people. you can publicize. when it comes to charity and to giving, very modest and very restrained and that's what makes him a real person and me a confused one. because i think, my god, a person remains poor in his feeling because he got money. who needs him? if he has money and he's rich in his feeling, good that he has money so he can be of help. and for ten years i think this institute collected not only you, but with your outstanding people. already live the stories. and they really are thinking,

the thinkable. you're afre freufraid to think unthinkable as well. we're listening very carefully. i really want to thank the wonderful couple. my weakness is greater for shell. i really thank him. thank the two of you. job in trying to bring peace and in trying to help those that needed the help. thank you very much. >> shimon peres is taking part in a bilateral meeting with

president obama and vice president biden over at the white house this afternoon. later this evening he'll attend a dinner in the east room where president obama will award him with the presidential medal of freedom. former president bill clinton and secretary of state hillary clinton will also attend. c-span will have coverage of the event. you can also see it at c-span.org. going on right now over on c-span, live coverage from the u.s. chamber of commerce. they're holding their 2012 jobs summit and releasing their third annual enterprising state study looking at how specific states are doing in today's economy. a number of governors are on hand to discuss the findings. this afternoon here on c-span3 we'll have live coverage of remarks from treasury secretary tim geithner. he's the featured speaker at a council on foreign relations event. the secretary is expected to talk about u.s. economic recovery efforts and preview next week's g-20 summit in

mexico where world leaders are gathering to discuss issues surrounding europe's debt crisis. again, that's live here on c-span3 at 4:30 eastern. jp morgan ceo jamie dimon testified before the senate banking committee earlier today about his bank's multibillion dollar trading loss. we're going to show you that hearing coming up in just over 40 minutes. but until then, here's a discussion on jp morgan's recent losses as well as the current state of wall street and the lessons learned and what needs to be done. >> dennis keller is president and ceo of better markets. >> good morning. >> thank you for being here. good morning. here's how "the new york times" described you in a story. think of better markets as occupy wall street to cousins. what is better markets? what do you do? >> better markets is a non-profit organization based in washington, d.c., that promotes the public interest in the financial markets.

we do a whole variety of things. we work with the regulators to get the rules right. we promote transparency, accountability and oversight. basically our mission is to prevent wall street from engaging in reckless conduct that would cause more bailouts and risk not just the financial system but our economy as we saw in 2008. >> so you're here in washington, d.c. you work out of the k street offices known for housing a lot of lobbyists. you have a very different mission. how did you get started in this? >> i worked in the senate as a senior staffer for a number of years. prior to that, i'd been at a big law firm where i specialized in securities and financial markets or corporate conduct, or put differently, maybe corporate misconduct. when i was leaving the senate i looked at a variety of things, there were two big consequential issues i thought really merited a lot more work. one was financial reform. and given my background, i thought somebody needed to be out there fighting for basically the public interest which is not

represented very well in opposition to what is the richest industry in the history of the world which is wall street. and they are, as everybody in washington knows, because the army of lobbyists can run you over at any intersection in this town. the public interest isn't very well represented. >> here's that "new york times" story i memgsntioned, talking at lobbying on the volcker rule, of the dodd/frank law. would prevent from making speculative bets. financial institutions met with federal ayhen yegencies to talkr 351 times whereas public interest groups including yours held just 19 meetings. that's according to an analysis done by duke. byron dorgan, your former boss, said it's david versus goliath. how do you get your perspective heard? >> well, the good news is it's fairly open reception for the other side of the story. i mean, the drum baeat on the other side is a self-interested

drum beat. given what happened in the financial crisis, let's not forget, began on wall street, and was essentially created by wall street's reckless gambling in investments and trading. and resulted from the deregulation over the prior couple of decades. so i think that the financial crisis and the economic damage it's done to this country and still continues to do to this country has made people much more receptive to listening to those who are bringing an informed perspective, public interest, in the other side of story. >> we're going to see jamie dimon, head of jpmorgan chase, testify before congress today. what impact does the loss that the company had, because of risky trades, have on the american public, or the system? jamie dimon and others have said, look, it's internal housekeeping, we dealt with it, it's not like, you know, the average person, the average american necessarily took a hit from what happened. >> i have to laugh, i keep hearing people say, look, it's only $2 billion, only $5

billion. what's that? the truth is not necessarily the exact amount. the real issue is that this bank less than four years after the biggest financial crisis since the great depression, which has devastated this country and american families from coast to coast, and has stuck the next generation with a multitrillion dollar bill to clean up the last crisis and not four years later the so-called best bank and best ceo in america has no idea what's going on in his own bank. and that's a nice illustration of the problem with too big to fail banks. you can't possibly know what's going on in those banks. and you can't manage them. you can't imagine the risk. and that's why these things surprise everybody including the ceo. >> dennis kelleher, president and ceo of better markets. it's a non-profit organization based here in -- promoting public interest in the u.s. and

global financial markets. if you'd like to join the conversation, hooere's how to ge us a call. 202-737-002, republicans. and independent callers, 202-628-0205. if you had an ideal world, what would you do? talking about banks that are too big to fail and inherent teenagteenage dangers and how they're set up. how would you recreate the system? >> reintroduce capitalism to wall street. wall street is the only place in the united states where if you fail you completely mess up your business. you do things stupid wrong. or you have bad luck. you actually don't fail. what happens is you fall into the comforting arms of the u.s. taxpayer. in addition to that the too big to fail banks on wall street also get all sorts of subsidies from government. that allows them to compete unfairly against the rest of the banks in this country. and the capital, that violates all the basic rules of

capitalism. everywhere else in the united states except for wall street, if you're a business and you fail, you fail. you lose your job. you lose your money. you lose your title. you lose everything. you go into bankruptcy. and you don't get any subsidies anywhere else in the united states anywhere near what they get on wall street. and you don't get to create an unlevel playing field that gives you an unfair advantage. the first and most important thing is to take away the subsidy, put regulations around the too big to fail banks so when they fail they can fail and go into bankruptcy or liquidated in a way that doesn't threaten the economy. then the second thing i would do is limit their influence in this town. one of the biggest problems we have is that wall street is the most powerful economic industry in the history of the world and they have used that economic power to buy political power. and that's what protects the privilege status of wall street and that's why wall street's interests are able to be put over the interests of the rest of america, our economy, our

taxpayers and our financial system and that's just wrong. >> let's get to the phones and hear from george who joins us from brooklyn on the democrats' line. hi, george. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: good morning, c-span. thanks for taking my call. i've been listening -- i am trying to figure out how i'm 81 years of age, i worked all of my life and paid taxes and did everything necessary i thought to keep us going. i found out one thing. that republicans don't want the democrats to succeed. senator jacob javers was the only republican i can go back to in years who was dynamite man. he didn't care. out of line, you were out of line. it's time we stop the republicans from going up, trying to bring back the days of the '40s and the '50s. it's a shame in this world that they could go so far with money.

they robbed us blind with social security from the bush administration. they took more money out of social security and it was taken out of there from 1968 to 2000. now what are we doing? nobody mentions that. all of them have fat cats. they want to one thing, make sure there's no blacks left to have a word in nothing. i want you to have a lovely day. c-span, it's time to wake up the world, and that's what's going to happen in 2013. have a nice day and thanks for my call. >> not sure what george is referring to is going to happen in 2013. he was taking republicans to task. >> i think george is really referring to 2012 which is the election coming up. i want to say, george, at 81 years old if we had, you know, people half your age, half informed and half as involved as you are, we'd all be better off. you mentioned something interesting. you said, what's been going on since the '40s and '50s. you know, wall street created the stock market crash of 1929

and the great depression that followed it. and over the years that followed it, we put in place a whole variety of laws and regulations that basically heavily regulated the financial industry so they could not create another great depression and another great crash. those rules were in place for seven decades and they worked very well because during that seven decades, not only didn't we have a great depression or another major stock market crash, we also had broad based prosperity in this country. not only did the country prosper, but frankly the financial services industry and wall street prospered along with it. that happened until into the 1990s when wall street and its lawyers and lobbyists and mouthpieces and front groups basically took down the regulations that protected the american people from wall street. and that, all those regulations basically were down in about the year 2000. and i will say they were taken down on a bipartisan basis, george. it's not a one-party problem that we have here.

it's a two-party problem. you're right, it's primarily, if you going to weigh it, one party more than the other. it's a bipartisan activity. the laws and rules protected the country for seven decades until 2000 approximately. seven years after being deregulated, wall street crashed. the world's financial system and our economy. and we became very, very close to a second great depression. and that's what's at stake in financial reform. if we don't get financial reform right, then the country's still going to be at risk of wall street and these too big to fail banks and we will have a second great depression after the next crash if they're not regulated and if the american people are not protected. >> let's hear from tom in roger city, michigan. independent caller. go ahead. >> caller: yes. this is tom green. thank you, c-span, for taking my call. you have a nice day. but i'm 68 years old and i've been through all the

administrations, living-wise, all the way back to eisenhower. and i look at this upcoming election as to the point where romney, he might be smart with his financial dealings, but i don't think anyone can handle $13 trillion or $15 trillion debt. i don't care, you know, he doesn't really seem to have any contact or anything with the lower class people, which i don't consider myself lower class, but i am native american. i can just see all the overseas involvement, he's not going to be able to handle any of that. none of it. because he doesn't have the experience in it. i just hope the republicans get together with somebody and resolve these issues that we

have today. but i don't think romney is going to do it. i don't care how much financial experience that he has. because he's never really worked a day in his life. >> let's ask dennis in his lif. >> tom, let's ask if you've weighed into the political fight. >> the good news is that it's nonpartisan. we do not weigh in in the political fight. we also don't take positions on legislation and don't lobby as defined in the law, which is take positions on legislation. a the lo of people think advocating for the public is lobbying and it's actually not. but tom mentioned an interesting point. he mentioned the $13 trillion debt. and one of the reasons that they need to be regulated and nicely illustrated by jpmorgan chase. it's the largest bank in the united states. it has $2.4 trillion in assets.

in fact, its assets are larger than the economies of brazil and the united kingdom. that's just one of the too big to fail banks. it has 270,000 blows around the globe. these montrocities cannot be managed and this is a nice ill gra illustration. we're going to hear about it at the hearing. including the best banker in the world, which, by the way, there's strong contrary evidence to that reputation. but he has that reputation. so when you think about the size of these banks, you can understand, a, why they threaten the entire financial system because if a bank that big were to fail, could you see why it would take down the system. but you can also see why a bank that big can't be managed, including its risks that have actually been born by the citizens of the united states. >> and you can watch that

committee meeting starting at 10:00 this morning. let's hear from elizabeth from long island on our republicans line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> morning. >> i have two short questions. could you tell us why timothy geithner never reveals the actual amount that all of these companies really owed here and over in europe? >> you want -- that's an excellent question, elizabeth, actually. and i wouldn't personalize it to the secretary of the treasury, timothy geithner. there actually has never been a full accounting of all of the programs and all of the money spent, used, and deployed to save wall street from itself and to save our economy and financial system from wall street. there's no question that it's way, way, way into the trillions

of dollars. the alphabet soup is mind boggling. never mind the additional programs done by the fdic and all of the regulatory agencies. so on the one hand you're right, which is we still don't know the exact amount. we do, however, know it was trillions and trillions of dollars and it's never been detailed one of the things that better markets does is keep track of the crisis. we actually have a section called cost of the crisis. we try and catalog not only the things that were spent, lent, and guaranteed, but another thing nobody ever talks about is the social costs. we have over 10% unploim. we have about 15 million americans underemployed, three million disclosures. we have the highest free stamp use in the history of this country and if you look at where

that increase has come from by zip code, it's in the middle class of the united states which is being devastated paying the bill for the large financial crisis. and just yesterday the federal reserve board came out with a study of what happened to the american families and workers since 2007. the net worth has gone down 40%. this financial crisis has devastated this country and one of the things that we fight for at better markets is to try to prevent that from happening again and one of the things we all better hope happens today is that these questions are put to the ceo, including how after just three years, since you did this, wall street and you did this to this country, how can it be that you're still making hundreds and billions of dollar bets and high risk derivative

securities that risk your bank and don't say 5 billion isn't much to us because 5 billion here and 5 billion there and a couple more billion there, what you have is a financial crisis and that's what this country can't afford because it's still going to be paying for the last financial crisis. >> dennis kelleher, we've been hearing from today. we will hear from jamie dimon engaging in a conversation there in advance of the g-20 summit next week. he'll be talking about the global economy this afternoon. find out more about that on our website. roy tweets in and asks, was there criminal activity on wall street that led to the meltdown? if so, why has it not been prosecuted? >> roy asked a very good question. it's mind boggling that not really a single prosecution of anybody in a serious position on wall street or in the financial

industry has come out of this crisis. you have about $11 trillion in stock prices gone, the activities here and the losses that were caused clearly suggest broadbase criminal activity and yet time and time again this administration and others say we're going to investigate it but they can't find it. well, first of all, all they have to do is is turn on the tv and watch "60 minutes" which has done two or three terrific stories of whistle blowers.

so they get the upside, they get the bill, and no one is prosecuted. it's not american and again you take 100 bucks and you rob the american trillions of dollars and stopped. >> here's the story from the washington post. speaking of whistle blowers and a champion of consumers, for nearly a decade, the sworn court testimony combing through heavily african-american areas in the washington, d.c. area,

such as baltimore, prince georges county county in maryland and community groups and shoddy mortgages. higher interest rates and they needed to pay and wells fargo. >> the most powerful agency in the world. they put out a laundry list of names but they are not the whales, they are not the wall street titans, they are not even to mid-level people on wall street. you don't have to look far and almost certainly criminal conduct. you can just read "the washington post" and i understand it's distributed here in the nation's capital.

maybe the department of justice can look at this and jamie dimon, and why that will tell you what he really believes. what he says is spend. the same thing goes for the politicians in this town, the department of justice saying that they are tough on wall street and how many top prosecutors and fbi agents have they assigned and until they assign a couple of real serious prosecutors and because it's not true. >> caller: i pulled myself up by my bootstraps and i bought buildings in broo