since this recession officially began, 7 million jobs have been lost. i honestly doubt jeff had a report showed 20,000 jobs created. i cannot imagine what the president would say. -- that the president say what i thought we did in december should be wiped away because of the jobs report. we have a long way to go. we talked about this last month. we knew this was going to be a long road. we knew along that road there would be ups and downs and bombs along the way. -- bumps along the way. there are some bright spots

which i think are at least encouraging, understanding that there are millions of people that have lost their jobs and are hurting. if you take the average of what we were losing in the first quarter of 2009, in january, february, march, we were losing our average -- six and 91,000 jobs a month. -- 691,000 jobs a month. if the take the last three months of the year, that number is 69,000, 1/10 of that job loss but it is moving in the right direction. if that was above the ledger on the positive side, i doubt you'd find anyone in this country that believes it is an advantage. >> is the president worried about gasoline getting close to

$3 a gallon? >> obviously, anything that is perceived or believed that will do damage to our economy or to the positive trends would be concerning to the president. >> they are worried it will contract in the second half. how worried is second -- is president obama? >> i would say the president is worried about today in the future. >> is a likely? >> i would say the president works akes up concern that mills are hurting, whether they are in last month's job losses are the job losses stretching past those two years since the recession

officially began. understand that people were hurting long before the board says there was recession in this country. >> what do you plan differently -- do you expect another contraction coming up? >> i refer you back to what the president talks about in december. he is not satisfied with where we were and wanting to change the direction of that line. >> he is preparing that there will be a contraction? >> he is not an economic prognosticator. he is concerned about the economy, concerned about the stories of people hurting that he has heard for many years and is working to do all that he can to create an environment for businesses to hire more people. >> the administration announced it will temporarily suspend the

transfer of detainees from guantanamo bay to it yemen. he did transfer six in december. do you know where those six are? >> i've not one to get into -- i think kristi asked these questions the other day. i will not get into discussing transfers. >> given the need to talk to congress and get them on board with the transfer of the prisoners, we need to convert that from a maximum prison to a super maximum. do you have any realistic timetable as to anything guantanamo can actually be closed? >> i think kristi also ask that question. we will work with congress in the upcoming sessions on many of the things that you talked about, not just retrofited, but purchasing. there are other issues relating to the movement of prisoners

>> one last question. in recent days, a member of the league of the righteous in iraq was arrested in two sessions -- was arrested in 2007. he was responsible for an attack in kabul that killed five u.s. soldiers. the u.s. military turn them over to the rockies. the rockies have read them. -- the i iraqis. again iraqis have released him. >> let me get some information on the case. >> is inappropriate for the u.s. military to turn -- >> other than what you told me, i'm not overly familiar with the details. >> it is a principle. >> i didn't want to generalize about something of which have just asked me with great specificity. >> i want to ask about timothy

geithner. republicans say there is evidence sang under his -- are saying that under his leadership is as to conceal millions of dollars of counterparty payments that were made with taxpayer money. they are suggesting that he was hiding information from regulators. does the white house believe the secretary geithner should testify or test -- or turn over any documents he has? >> i'm sure you are a talked to the treasury department. secretary timothy geithner was not involved with these e-mails. these decisions to not raise to his level at the fed. these are e-mails and decisions made by officials by independent regulatory agencies. >> he was the leader of the new york fed. >> right.

he was not on the evils of have been talked about. he was not part of the decision being made. >> there were doubts of more e- mails. in the interest of transparency, does the white house want more? >> i will point to the department of treasury. i just -- >> you gave me the treasury department. >> i do not know what the story is about the e-mails. i would tell you depth there -- tell you that there are not e- mails @ deval secretary geithner -- e-mails that involve secretary geithner. they did not rise to his level. >> various liberals have jumped on this. some say he is not fit to serve

as secretary-treasurer. do you still have full confidence? >> of course. i will hilly -- will will he be dealing only with the jobs issue? >> the last time i saw the remarks it was just on jobs and energy. >> do you think he might entertain some questions on the media? is it unusual that he would not open himself up to questions? >> and do not want to speculate. he is not taking questions today. >> he has not had a press conference since july. why cannot get him to answer the questions? >> we have done this before. the last time we did -- which cost of the media schedule, you reminded me of the dramatic

overexposure. >> that was then. >> i appreciate that we have acknowledged the flip-flop. >he added that he was not going to change. >> that was a procedural question which is also important bu. admiral mullin said we looked with regard to iraq. we have a to sing all we can do with -- we have looked to see all we can do with this. is this preparation of forces with regard to iran per presidential order or something the pentagon does? are there forces with regard to

yemen? >> i believe the pentagon plans for many different types of outcomes based on different scenarios. the tract that the president has aggressively pursued deals with engagement and hopes they will live up to the obligations international in -- internationally that that they have agreed to be responsible for. we are asking them about the research reactors to make a proposal. they have proved that their intentions are peaceful.

they declined that offer. we are working with our partners on the next steps and living up to the responsibility. >> [inaudible] >> elem not into discussing that. -- i will not give in to discuss in that. >> they expect positive net job growth in the first quarter of next year. does the white house still believe that? >> i believe if you look at numbers in terms of weekly unemployment claims, the project tree, you will -- deeper directory, you will see the economic job growth positive.

>> on senateunday, some [unintelligible] 6 are in the custody of the united system. they are in jail in yemen. one of the reasons that the president has stated he wants to close guantanamo is a non humane treatment that the initiation that take place. are there any reasons to believe the yemen prisons are treating them better? >> elem not fit into talks of transfers. >> what is being the point of transfer into yemen if we do not know how they will treat them? >> i am just not going to discuss this. >> you said there in the custody

of the yemen government. >> i'm just not going to get into that. >> the president and a lot of democrats are talking almost exclusively about jobs in the economy. do you believe that the focus on terrorism has somehow clouded or derail that effort? could you give us a little peek at what might be coming up next week for the next few weeks to try to focus washington's attention? >> i think washington's attention is focused on jobs. i think washington's attention is focused on our security situation. jonathan, each day, washington has to be focused on many different things. i think you for the president

say if there was just one problem to focus on maybe that would be nice, but that is not what he ever assumed would have been given the type of environment that we had coming into office. i doubt there will ever be a day we are only focusing on one issue. i think the president, each day that he is into this year, has worked on a multitude of issues ranging from getting our economy back in order, finishing of health care, working on the security situation and investigation that he spoke about yesterday's, afghanistan, i iriraq.

i think there is no end to the issues he has been working on. >> [inaudible] >> i walked out of it without having read that. we will get so animation -- get some information. >> the matter involving the advertising billboards that have been resolved? >> it is my understanding they spoke with the company and that the company is supposed to take that ad down. >> did any of you a billboard to endorse any product? >> uno. i better not make any jacket jokes. the boss might be watching. >> does the president feel he was let down? >> i think john was speaking not just for himself. i think he was speaking for all of those that have been represented in that situation.

the president heard from each of them. i think the president has talked about this. there iswas a systemic failure come a failure that went across agencies and departments that no one person or no one agency was totally to blame. i think the president is focused on identifying and what went wrong and how to fix it. that will certainly be his charge moving forward. we will hear back in 30 days about our progress on filling those gaps. >> the president said yesterday we are in a war with al qaeda.

does he regard the flight 253 be an act of war? >> i think the president and the white house said quickly after the incident that it was a terrorist incident. i would point back to what the president said in the fourth paragraph of his inaugural address. it was about our nation being at war with al qaeda. >> it raises the question of whether he is prosecuted as an enemy combatant or a criminal. >> he has been indicted in our criminal justice system after being interrogated in sensibly -- and extensively by the f five fbi. he gave the fbi useful information. >> one more on mr. geithner. barney frank says he thinks there should be something to

clear the air. would be useful for mr. geithner to tell what he knew? >> when the financial services committee generally has hearings with the treasury secretary, he goes to the hearings. >> the state of the union -- this month or next month? >> soon. >> one is still in the running. >> soon. >> is it the white house as hope to hold up the state to the union until there is a healthcare bill? >> not necessarily. >> [inaudible] >> are you a big fan?

we will announce something soon. >> the labor leaders are going to be to the president on monday to talk about healthcare. will he tried to make them understand that the taxing mechanism is a better idea than they think it is? >> i would be surprised if the topic did not come up. >> what is the purpose of the meeting? what does he hope to gain out of it? >> i think the president will take the opportunity to discuss that issue with them. i know that it is an issue that is a difference in the legislation that the house and the senate passed. i think the president will talk through it with them, what he believes can be gotten out of the provision. but did he ask the city not to advocate against it? some labor unions are actively

considering it. but i think the president looks forward to having a discussion with them on the merits of that proposal. >> on the yemen, what is the u.s. position on what role al- awlaki plays in the peninsula? is he someone want to arrest or capture or kill? >> i'm going to get some intelligence guidance. i have an answer and i do not know i can discuss it publicly i would be happy to discuss it afterward. the type of heate that you have seen, the motivation and perversion of al qaeda -- this

man is somebody who has sought on the internet to spread that provision and to do harm in spreading that hate. he is somebody of great concern. >> what degree is your evaluation of the pressure building of the fact that he is an american citizen? >> it is complicated by intelligence matters. >> given the disappointing jobs report, is the is ministration doing anything -- is the administration doing anything in terms of a public jobs program? >> i've not heard a discussion on that.

i think the president and the administration will tell you that what we believe we can do for both the recovery act and through additional targeted investments is to create an environment where the private sector is hiring again. i do not particularly believe there is a solution that only includes one sector. i do not think there is just one way or one positive that will solve the entire problem. over the course of the two years, 24 months, of jobs numbers that have been released since the official beginning of the recession, we are in the excess of 7 million jobs having been lost. we have got a long road to make up for that.

i will point you to not what the president doing but asking that it be expanded. there is a tremendous demand for these type of tax credits as we have seen in a program that is dramatically oversubscribed. they are seeking that assistance and help. we have got to lay a new foundation for creating jobs going forward. you are not going to be able to depend on -- simply on consumer spending or simply on the housing bubble to fuel economic growth going forward. you have got to find and invest in new ideas and new industries. i think it would be safe to say that for quite some time when it

came to building the solar panels and the wind turbines and a lot of the manufactured equipment for clean energy, we had a number of foreign countries that were doing much better in addressing that demand and we wear. as the president has often said, and the type of demand for these components and manufacturing is only going to increase as we seek solutions to our energy problems. we have to ask ourselves, are we going to create those jobs and create those components or are we going to import those components from overseas? the president believes that we have an opportunity to lead the world in this type of manufacturing. >> many say even if they are successful, it will not address the most distressed regions of

the country. does the president agree? >> he has been addressed this exact question. he gave the answer that i just gave. if we do not seek to fill these jobs and fill this demand, someone else will. it will be someone in another country. we have to make sure that this investment is a priority for us to agree to this job is now. >> we have heard people saying that they have let the president down. what has the president himself learned from this? how does he plan to operate differently given the newest threats? >> i think that first and foremost i will go back to john

and the intelligence community. i think the president wanted to ensure that first and foremost what we have identified through our review is addressed. the president is very serious about ensuring that it is addressed quickly and done fully and fairly. he did not want this review to be something that weighs around on someone's desk. i think you have heard him say that the level of our failure was unacceptable. where it not for -- were it not for braved citizens of the world on that plane it might have been

a catastrophic disaster. it was not the system the prevented that. it was the brave citizens. i think the president will ensure that john and others are the filling what interviews have shown are the gaps in our system that have to be fixed. >> and how will he do that? will he have more meetings with mr. brennan? will he change how he is briefed every day? >> i do not think there is any change in his briefing schedule. i think everybody else understands the tasks they have been undertaking for the last almost two weeks. the president is serious. >> following up on john saying he let the president down. did anyone offer to resign? >> not that i know of anywhere

else, certainly not in this situation. >> are there any legislative issue considerations on when he wanted to do it this year? is he aware of the ofstorhe intt storm of those who are begging him not to give the state of the union address on the three hour premiere of [inaudible] >> i do not foresee a scenario in which the millions of people who hope to finally get to the conclusion of "lost" are pre- empted by the president. you can quote us. >> is there going to be

economic events to communicate that concern? l>> i do not have it in front of me. over the course of the next several weeks, we have announced a visit to a high is this agreed to build of what he did in allentown in december that he will do again. there will be several events over the next few weeks on that topic. >> do all of the transfer ease -- >> i have now realized the code in color of your sweater are of some important significance. >> you brought it up. >> congratulations to your

crimson tide. i got e-mails from a friend wondering if i would mention my excitement. consider that having checked that the box. >> [inaudible] >> i think sometime before the end of our first term. >> we are talking alabama football. . .

he was in town for a funeral and had a chance to come by and see the president and the chief of staff. i do not have a readout on what they spoke about. >> adjusted two questions. -- just two questions. considering the continuing reports of a record worldwide cold as the president believes that there is a justification for the millions spent on the conference in trying to promote acceptance of global warming? >> i think one only has to step outside to understand climate change and the temperatures high

exchange are causing are with us. >> to the president's visit the hospital where he was reportedly born which is which one? >> i do not believe i saw you pull reports of hospital visits. i do not know what specific causes today's snowfall. i would say there are, even in places used to getting very cold weather, record cold. scientists will tell you whether it is in and around this country or throughout the world weather patterns have been affected by are changing climate. >> "the new york times" has

talked about you've gone a warning to execute for homosexuality. some other countries have already done this. if the walls -- if this passes in you gone up, will we continue to send aid to uganda? -- if this passes in uganda? >> in the event that someone like that passes, -- that something like that passes, that type of legislation would certainly not live up to any record of universal values that i think anyone would see in this country. >> first, the president spoke about yesterday the road to citizenship. this morning america guiliani -- mayor guiliani talked about

partisanship. >> if one looks at what mayor guiliani says after testifying in the u.s. criminal trial calling it, i forget the exact phrase, but holding up the stellar record and value system involved in our criminal justice system, i do not think mr. giuliani has the record straight in his comments. i think if you watch that interview there were a number of things that did not quite seem to drop to jog to the better part of reality.

he mentioned that there were not any domestic air attacks in the previous administration. that was interesting that the mayor of new york had forgotten that. >> you have now renominated johnson, not don johnson. >> u.s. that like we nominated crockett's partner. -- you asked that. i think i was pretty young. [laughter] >> sense in every nominated her, what are you going to do differently? -- since you have renominated her? >> as we talk about in here, one of the things the president would like to see is the change in the pacing of nominations in

general being addressed by the senate. we have seen over the course of many months, i think, a very intentional slowdown of work that the senate does which i do not think serves any one in any particular party well. obviously the president and his team will continue to work with the senate to get to the 60 votes needed for ms. johnson to pass the senate. not that i am aware of, no. >> the report says that incomplete and faulty data bases are part of the problem as well and international technology within the counterterrorism community causes this. why does not the intelligence community have a technology it needs? >> in some ways, there have been great technological advances, as

you heard john talk about. the difference between and the improvements that were added after 9/11 is that we knocked down walls between databases that were maintained in certain agencies. in fact, part of the -- part of what happened after 9/11 was that there was intentional redundancy added so that different places in the intelligence community could have access to information that is gathered by others. i think what john and others want to do is see that we insure those advances keep up with the best technology available as well as, as you heard john discussed, we now have the

benefit of a lot more information coming in. we have to ensure that there is the assignment of responsibility and the dissemination of responsibility done so in a way that allows us to keep up with the constant flow of important information. yes, sir? >> is he's going -- is he going to lobby the annual retreat for health care reform? >> i think we have -- and do not blame this on bill. i will look in there and see whether he is going to that and to other caucuses.

>> i wonder if you could address publicly their reaction that is going on on the internet. he signed an executive order granting interpol and certain rights and immunities here in the united states. some are wondering if that has caused an opening for interpol to have extraordinary police powers in the united states. a requested it? -- who requested it? >> the executive order updated interpol's status based on the fact that within the fast five years -- past five years they have opened an office to assist in the type of information sharing between governments that we all know that is so important. all that does is simply bring them and given the same

privileges and responsibilities that many other international organizations have in this country like the iea, imf, the red cross. >> it does not give them police powers? >> absolutely not. >> can you tell me whether any questions that took place here at the white house questions whether or not he would be tried as an enemy combatant? >> whether the conversations took place here at the white house? >> whether the 23-year-old should be tried as an enemy combatant. >> i would say a lot of subjects were covered in the situation room in terms of intelligence sharing and prosecution's going forward.

his status was discussed and it was in the situation room that the notion that the grand injury was likely to indict him, as they did the next day. >> in turkey, cairo, and other countries [unintelligible] >> yes. in fact in the near future i think the president will address some of the circumstances around recruitment in different regions of the world's.

i do not want to get into specifics right now. i think that will come quite soon. >> regarding to the comments of muslim and arab countries? >> i would say yes because i think if you look at the government of yemen and the activities going on now in pakistan and other places, these governments understand how qaeda and its allies -- al qaeda seeks to kill people within their own countries. spreading terror not just in the

hopes of spreading terror in our homeland but doing, obviously, violent and a terrific damage in those countries as well. -- violence and horrific. we have seen as a result of those activities by the viet minhi government and the pakistan needs to address -- the activities by the yemeni government. >> i love that the, all the sudden abc was asking on behalf of abc abc [laughter] i can -- i assume it is a big deal at abc.

that is a challenge i will leave exclusively to them. >> secretary of state hillary clinton and jedeh talked about relaunch in middle east peace talks between israelis and palestinians. they also commented on the flight 253 on the attacks. >> good morning everyone. it is a personal pleasure and, of course, an honor to welcome back the foreign minister to the state department representing a country that is such a valued ally and partner of the united states. over the past 10 years, his majesty has carried on division

-- has carried on division of his father. under his leadership, jordan has continued to be a key partner in the pursuit of peace and progress in the region and around the world. today, as we had in all of our previous meetings. we have discussed a wide range of issues. the wood to express our condolences for the loss of life that was unfortunately both american and jordanian and i express appreciation for jordan's commitment to violent -- committed to stopping violent extremism. this is a struggle that unites people of faith, people of peace, people of conscience ever were. terrorists have targeted our system -- our cities and

citizens and they must be met with unwavering resolved. i well remember visiting the hotel that had been bombed in 2005, walter wreckage, visiting the innocent children, men, and women that had been targeted -- walking through the wreckage. i have never forget what i have seen elsewhere. the united states, jordan, and our partners around the world stand shoulder to shoulder. we share a commitment to seeking a comprehensive peace in the middle east based on a two state solution. we are working with the israelis, palestinian authority, jordan, and the arab states to take the step needed to relaunch negotiations as soon as possible and without preconditions. this is in the interest of everyone in the region. at the united states believes

that through good faith negotiations that parties can mutually agree on an outcome which end the conflict and reconciles the palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines and the israeli goal of a jewish state with a secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet israeli security requirements. both are concerned about activities in jerusalem. the u.s. recognizes that jerusalem is a deeply important issue. for israelis, palestinians, jews, muslims, and christians around the world. we believe is possible to realize the aspirations that both israelis and palestinians for jerusalem and safeguard its status as a symbol of the three

great religions for all people. on this and other pressing challenges, this provides a solid foundation for the pursuit of peace and progress. i look forward to continuing to work closely with the foreign minister with jordan's new government and his majesty. as we brought in our partnership and our friendship. -- as we broaden our partnership and friendship. >> think you, madam secretary. it the pleasure is all mine. i am happy to be here at the state department again. back in august when i had the pleasure to be here, the relationship could be described as a partnership and not just a

friendship. this relationship has withstood the test of time and the challenges we have had in our part of the world and globally. our relationship is stronger by the day. we celebrated the 60th year of the relations between jordan and the united states. again, we let the solid relationship that both caught -- both countries enjoy is a solid one based on common values and shared vision of a comprehensive, lasting peace, coexistence, and prosperity. we have a firm belief in combat in the many challenges that we face around the world. i think you, madam secretary -- i think you to refer to the tragic loss of life that we sought in afghanistan and elsewhere as a result of our

ongoing and joints, global collective war on terrorism. thank you for referring to the 2005 hotel bombings in jordan. we must not forget that we, too, in jordan were a target and we will not waver or be deterred. we're determined to combat terror and terrorists no matter where they are. we will not wait for them to perpetrate their heinous crimes. we will try to approve them before they get to the implementation stage of their planning. our presence in afghanistan today is two fold. first, to combat terrorism and the root causes of terrorism but also to help out in a unilateral

effort. i would like to say that our presence in afghanistan will be enhanced and increased in the coming year. this is something that is ongoing. jordan was one of the first countries there. we're not on the part of a network of countries that are trying to assist afghanistan but also trying to combat terror and terrorism. we are also there to defend jordan's national interest and to defend jordanians and is a god and them against this threat. -- jordanians and save god and them. we look forward to working with you and other governments, matching terrorism. on the peace process in the middle east, i had good conversations with the secretary and their respective teams. we agreed on the need to

relaunch serious negotiations that are bound by i 10 line -- by a timeline to end this lingering conflict to establish an independent, sovereign palestinian state along the lines in the west bank living side-by-side with a safe and secure state of israel. it is vital to achieve a comprehensive peace on the basis of internationally agreed upon efforts that would secure a clever to region -- a clever to regional border. we will continue the much-needed leadership role with the united -- leadership role that the united states can play. once again, i would like to remind you of the important

issues and then include refugees and jerusalem. everything should be subject to negotiation. but it comes to jerusalem, it is potentially a/point. -- a slash point. actions on the ground in jerusalem can turn into a provocative and antagonizing actions to the followers of the three great religions. it is very important to try and board -- try and avoid action in jerusalem. everyone is in agreement that jerusalem is to be discussed in the final stages of negotiation. that is a growing cent -- there is a growing sense of urgency to

move forward to achieve tangible process therefore creating a more stable environment that allows us to address more accurately other challenges before us today. after the successful resolution of the contract, we will look at further instability worldwide. are you referring to the global war on terror. -- i am referring. jordan is fully committed to working hand in hand with our partners in the region and ready to assist united states to achieve its peace. this is not only in the national interest of the palestinians, israelis, and arabs but also of the united states of america. we will spare no effort to secure this endeavor and fully support the u.s. leadership in ensuring negotiations work fast towards the two state solution.

>> affected question on the terror reports the president got yesterday the point at the visa issue. this was not related to the information that his father gave concerning his son. also there was the issue of the misspelling of his name. how serious are these issues and what you plan to do about them? a quick question on the middle east, if i could. have you or are you willing to give guarantees to the arab countries and palestinians about the obama administration's use on negotiations and also the settlement issue?

by setting the president made it very clear in his remarks that we are looking hard at what did happen in order to improve our procedures to avoid human errors, mistakes, oversights of any kind. in the state department, we are fully committed to accepting our responsibility for the mistakes that were made. we are going to be working hard with the rest of the administration to improve every aspect of our efforts. i think it is very clear from the president's resolved that this is the highest priority not only for him but for all of us. the safety and security of the american people come airline travel will remain at the very

top of our minds and efforts. we will be working with all of our other partners inside the government to do all that we humanly can to make sure that we prevent incidents like this and protect people. with respect to the middle east, we are absolutely committed and has been since the very first day of the obama administration to working with all of our partners. it is a great matter, not just for the people of the region, not just to the arab nation, but to the entire world. there is a hunger for a resolution of this matter, a two state solution, that would review the terrorists and the naysayers that would give the

palestinians -- that was rebuke the terrorists. to give the israelis the security they deserve to have. george mitchell will be consulting as he has been a very broadly not only in the region that in europe and elsewhere. we are in constant consultation with our friends and partners in jordan. this is a year of renewed commitment and increased efforts to what we see as an imperative goal in that region of the world. >> good morning both of you. madam secretary, senator mitchell said a two year timeframe and the first nine months concentrating on borders.

can you confirm this is the thinking of the administration backs secondary, the palestinians is saying they will not come to the conversations. the israeli ambassador is saying it is about the time frame. how will you approach this? >> what senator mitchell said is he wants to move as quickly as possible. there has to be negotiation on all of the final status issues. as we discussed earlier, resulting borders resolve's step -- settlements. resolving jerusalem resolve's sediments. i think we need to list our sights and said being looking down at the trees will need to look at the forest. where are we headed together?

we know what a final resolution will have to include. borders, security, jerusalem, refugees, water. we know by the elements of the two state solution must include -- we know what the elements must include. he is being prudent in saying these are hard issues that require a lot of back and forth between parties, guarantees, and assistance from the rest of us who are trying to move this forward. it might take as much as the time he mentioned, but obviously we hope to be moving much more expeditiously. first, we have to get negotiations relaunched. we could stand here and talk about what we would like to see happen, but at the end of the day there are two parties that have to make it happen. our goal is to persuade the two parties to get into this in that

negotiation as soon as possible. >> can you shed some light whether he was a double agent or not? or if he was sharing intelligence between the united states and jerusalem? >> let me pick up on the positive statement that the secretary of state has made. the pursuit of peace in the middle east, let me just say in the final analysis time is of the essence. the president of the united states and the secretary of state from the beginning of 2009 expressed a sense of urgency and said peace in the middle east is a priority. time is not on our side. yes about time frames and setting deadlines -- you asked about time frames treated the

secretary of state has said it before and senator mitchell has said it before. some deadlines have to be put on the table. these deadlines have to serve the parties rather than present obstacles. the zero parties put things in the right time frame and perspective. we have said this in the pots -- in the past we have had to which process and not enough peace. we do not need another open- ended process to leave loose ends. it is important. the issues are known to everyone. if you soak the borders -- sew up borders, you identifying the nature -- you identify the nature of the two state solution. i hope with the many difficulties we saw in 2009, and

this is not the first year we have seen them but the sixth year of the conflict, our results should not be effected. let 2010 hopefully be the year of negotiations and peace for the entire region. on afghanistan, neither the secretary nor i are intelligence officers. ha i am not at liberty to discuss intelligence operations or ongoing shared intelligence between like-minded countries. however, i have said very clearly that in the global war on terror and terrorism, jordan is at the forefront and we are there as part of = work. we are also there to protect our

national interests. of terror and terrorism many decades ago. this is not just reason. we have had to be creative and effective in our pursuit of those who want to do harm to our country and citizens. most recently in 2005 we had the hotel bombings. there were tens of attempts that were foiled. this is the result of our commitments and ongoing operations whether it is military personnel, intelligence work, humanitarian work, or whatever. in our pursuit of terrorism we are saving humanity. we're not just talking about counter-terrorism. we're not waiting for terrorists to carry out their plans. we're talking about prevention,

finding the root causes, and finding where they plan and plot and stamp -- and stop them before they get to us. there is a jordanian presence in afghanistan that has been there for many years. humanitarian presence, logistical, and intelligence operations to protect our own citizens and prevent terrorists from carrying out their heinous crimes. information is power, they used to say, but sharing information is also power. sharing information between like-minded countries is just as effective in combating terror directly. i have the was not too long an answer. -- i hope that was not too long of an answer.

>> we have more now from secretary of state clinton. to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the conference on women's health issues. to talk about poverty in and maternal mortality prevention. this is about 25 minutes. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. my goodness, thank you.

this is a wonderful location. charlot's for quite nervous when mashal this note last night. i'm delighted the sun is out and shining on all of you here. we gather for this commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the groundbreaking in cairo. i think about that and the thousands of people who are part of lipper, who came together to declare with one voice that reproductive health care is critical to the health of women and women's health is a central to the prosperity and opportunity of all, the stability of families, communities, the sustainability and development of nations and it makes me nostalgic for conferences that are held that actually produce results. [laughter] think of as a framework for moving forward. there is no doubt in my mind

that the work that was done and the commitments made in cairo are still the ball work -- the bulwark of what we are expected to do on behalf of women and girls. the year 2015 is the target year. part of the reason we wanted to have this commemoration is not only to look backwards but to look for words. what is and we will do between now and 2015? all governments will make access to reproductive health care and family planning services a basic right. we will dramatically reduce infant, a child, and maternal mortality. we will open the doors of education to all citizens but especially to girls and women. it is somewhat hard to believe,

in retrospect, that cairo was the first ever global forum that recognize the connection between a women's health, the quality of women's lives, and human progress on a broader scale. i am delighted to join you in marking this landmark event, but more importantly asking you to join with us in rededicating ourselves to the goals that we embraced 15 years ago. they remain critical and unfulfilled. i have the honor and privilege as a look around the audience of knowing many of you, some of you for a very long time. i know how committed many of you have been and continue to be. we have made measurable progress since 1994 in improving the health and lives of women and

children, especially girls. for example, the use of modern contraceptives worldwide has increased from under 10% in the 1960's to 43% in 2008. we have greater access to neonatal care including medicines that prevents the spread of hiv from mother to child. we have significantly increased child survival rates. the number of girls enrolled in schools around the world has gone up. we have come closer to a less measurable, but still critical goal, the integration of gender into a range of global programs including our efforts through the united nations to bring an end to sexual and gender based violence in places of conflict. however, past inequities remain. too often, still today, in 2010

women and girls bear the burden of regional and global crises whether it is an economic downturn, climate change, or political instability. they still are the majority of the world's poor, and schools, and healthy, and underfed. they are rarely the cause of violent consequences but increasingly they bear the consequences of such conflicts. -- they're the majority of the world's poor, unschooled, unhealthy, and underfed. 15 years later, far too many women still have little to no access to health reproductive services including family planning and maternal health care. when we look at this that the set in health care for women, we

can see what it means in terms of lost productivity, lost resources, and lost lives. nearly half the women in the developing world's deliver their babies without a nurse, a midwife, a doctor, or access to crucial medical care. global rates of maternal mortality remain perilously high. one woman dies every minute of every day in pregnancy or childbirth. for every woman who dies, another 20 suffer from injuries, infection, or disease every minute. more than 215 million women worldwide lacks access to modern forms of contraception which contributes to the nearly 20

million unsafe abortions that take place every year. sexually transmitted diseases, of course including but not limited to hiv and aids, claims millions of lives annually amongst women. since july -- it is often the result of pregnancies that occur when a girl is too young. an estimated 70 million, that is 70 million women and girls, worldwide have been subjected to female genital cutting. a procedure that is not only painful and traumatic but is also the source of infection and increased risk of injury during childbirth. as those of us gathered in the ben franklin room of the eighth floor of the state department know very well, the topic of

reproductive health is subject to a great deal of debate. i think we should all agree that these numbers are not only gramm, but after 15 years of they are intolerable. if we believe that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, then we cannot accept the ongoing marginal as asian of half of the world's population. we cannot accept it morally, politically, socially, or economically. [applause] we are here today to travel the distance. this is a journey that the obama administration and the united states government will travel with you. we need to travel quickly

because we only have five years. for the health statistics that i just mentioned point to a broader impact. there is a direct connection between a women's ability to plan her family, face pregnancy, and her ability to get an education, work outside of the home, support her family, and participate fully in the life of her community. when a girl becomes a mother before she becomes literate, the woman gives birth alone and is left with a permanent disability. when a woman twills daily to see her large family but cannot to mr. hazmat to agree to contraception, the struggle for present suffering that can and should be avoided. there were presents potential that goes unfulfilled. they also represent an opportunity to extend critical help to women worldwide and the children who depend on them.

investing in the health of women, adolescence, and girls is not only the right thing to do but it is also the smart thing to do. that is why we are integrating women's issues as key elements of our foreign policy agenda and italy especially our global health initiative and global food security initiative. that is why we saw the first appointment of an ambassador to global women's issues and it did not take me long to decide who should fill that position. it is why we are launching a women's entrepreneurial efforts in latin america to ensure that prosperity is spread more broadly including two women. it is why we are working with religious leaders in afghanistan and pakistan to increase access to information about family planning and preventative health care. we are doing all of these things because we have seen that when

women and girls have the tools to stay healthy and the opportunity to contribute to their families will being that they flourish and so did the people around them. consider this one story oneusaid works with international planned parenthood federation to provide reproductive health services, education, and training to low- income women. among their clients is a group of teenage girls who call themselves the moonlight stars. their parents are dead meeting them the sole providers for their younger brothers and sisters. without any other options they were working as prostitutes. through this usaid program they gained access to condoms and education to protect themselves from disease or pregnancy. they also began taking class's in sewing, knitting, and other kinds of skills that could be used to help support their siblings without endangering their physical or emotional

well-being. thanks to the job training and the support that a company gives, many of these girls have left prostitution behind and have embarked on a new path of opportunity for themselves and their family. while investing in women lifts lives, the inverse is also true. in societies where women's rights and roles are denied, girls are forbidden from attending school or pay a very heavy price to try to do so. few have the right to decide whether or when to get married or become mothers. poverty, political oppression, and even violent extremism often follow. maternal and child health our particularly poor and indications of a broader progress. in recent years, we have learned more about the conditions that a company political unrest. one of the most constant

predictors for political upheaval is the rate of infant mortality. in places where the in -- where the rate of infant mortality is high, the quality of life is a low because investment in and access to health care are often out of reach. that breeds the kind of frustration, hopelessness, and anger that we see. we know that child mortality is closely connected to maternal mortality. when a mother dies, her children are at a much greater risk of dying as well. these struggles cannot be separated. in the obama administration, we are convinced of the value of investing in women and girls. we understand that there is a direct line between a woman's reproductive health and her ability to lead a productive, fulfilling life. therefore, we believe investing in the potential of women and girls is the smartest investment

we can make. it is connected to every problem on anyone's mind around the world today. [applause] we are rededicating ourselves to the global efforts to improve reproductive health for women and girls under the leadership of this administration. we are committed to meeting the goals and working in partnership with all of you. one of president obama's first jobs in the office was to overturn the mexico city policy. [applause] we have pledged move -- new funding and a renewed commitment to achieve millennium achievement goals 5 which is a two-thirds reduction in

mortality and universal access to health care. this goal is, again, critical to and interconnected with every other millennium bowl. the world has made less progress towards fulfilling that goal than any other. this year, the united states renewed funding of reproductive health care through the united nations population fund and more funding is on the way. [applause] the congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. that is the largest allocation in more than a decade since we last had a democratic president, i might add. [applause] in addition to new funding, we have launched a new program that will be the centerpiece of our foreign policy, the global health initiative, which commits

us to spending $63 billion over six years to improve global health by investing in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, prevents millions of unintended heard it sees, and cover millions of new hiv infections among other goals. this initiative will employ in approach to fighting disease and promoting health. it will address into related health challenges together. for example, by integrating family planning, maternal health services, and h.i.v.-aids screening and treatment so that women receiving reproductive care will also receive hiv counseling and will be referred to a clinic if they need one. we are not seeing -- we are now seeing the rise of the largest youth generation in the world that needs and deserves to know how to stay healthy. we will be providing critical information to them. the global health initiative

will also focus on helping countries strengthen their own health. we went to build sustainable health systems in countries to ensure all of our global health programs including nutrition, malaria, tb, hiv aids, are designed to meet the needs of women and girls including by taking into account the many social and economic factors that have an impact on their health from sexual coercion, domestic violence, too pervasive gender inequities. you know that hiv aids is now morphing into a woman's disease. increasingly younger and younger women in many, many poor countries are infected. we know that expanding access to contraception helps only if women are empowered enough to use it. protecting myself from a charity is harder when one's life depends on staying in a man's a good favre, reaching favor, and

all the prenatal care in the world will not save them from a violent home. this means improving the quality of their lives on many levels and reaching out to men and boys to encourage them to become advocates and allies. we have our work cut out for us, but we had an excellent road map from the cairo program of action and they were the target from the millennium development goals no. 5. we are going to need your help. in everything we are doing in the department and at usaid, we are injecting the needs and rolls of women and girls. we are asking how they can play more and a role in their societies, be involved in peacemaking, assist in mitigating against and preventing climate change, it is

across the board. we are making it clear that there has to be special attention paid to the needs of women and girls. it is in america's national security interests to do so. i want to close with a story of one woman whose life was transformed by the work that the people in this room do every day. carolyn is a young woman from the democratic republic of congo. for years she endured the shame and ostracism caused by system lead. eventually she found her way to a clinic supported by the u.n. population fund and finally received the surgery, care, and emotional support she needed to heal. she then started speaking out about her experience to fight the stigma to let other people

know that even in isolated places that treatment is possible. her message has traveled the world. two years ago, she came to washington and urged members of congress to support maternal health programs worldwide treated today, the united states is proud, once again, to support the work of the u.n. population fund. one advocate, even one with such passion and commitment, can only do so much. everyone, everywhere deserves high quality care not only at her most vulnerable our but at every single stage of life. that is our goal and our responsibility. it is also a matter of simple equity and fairness. i has been in many places in many parts of the world where the rich, the educated, the well off, the connected, the powerful, the elites had access to every single form of health

care. yet, it was denied by law, by culture, by taboo, by regulation, by resources to the vast majority of women in the same societies. that is unacceptable. part of what we need to do is not only to provide services to those who need them but to change the mind and attitudes of those who can be responsible for delivering those services in countries around the world. i have said in many different settings on, i guess every continent except antarctica, that the rights that women who have a position in society are able to command cannot, therefore, be denied to the

women who lived down the street or care for their children, or clean their homes, or plant their crops and we have to do a better job of making the equity argument on behalf of girls and women and in particular leave of the cairo agenda. i am very optimistic. i am very committed that we can do this together. i am very grateful for what so many of you have done for so many years. you have it within the -- writ in the ups and survived the downs -- ridden the ups. you have worked in favorable political environments and unfavorable ones. you have stayed true. he stayed true to your commitment, your passion, your belief that every single child in this country, boy or girl,

deserves a chance to live up to his or her god-given potential. i just want to urge that we do not grow weary. and not know about you, but sometimes it can seem a little bit hard to take. it is also self evident. it seems so obvious to the rest of us that this needs to be done and we keep encountering obstacles of every shape and size. these stay with us. let's try to create institutional and structural change that does not get wiped away when the political winds blow. let's try to create markets for these goods and ways of finding them, educational, instructional programs, along with our commitment to serve that will

give women everywhere a chance to take their own lives and futures into their own hands. . . >> now president obama talks about energy jobs. this comes along the announcement that the economy

lost more jobs in december and the unemployment rate was unchanged. >> it means whether we are putting people back to where. job losses for to thousand 9 or 1/10 of what we were experiencing in the first quarter. in november, we saw the first gain in jobs in nearly two years. last month, we slipped back, losing more jobs than we gained. it is still pointing in the right direction. what this underscores is that we have to continue to explore every avenue to accelerate the return to hiring. that brings me to my announcement today. the recovery act has been a major force in breaking the

trajectory of this recession and stimulating growth and hiring. with the most popular element has been a clean energy manufacturing initiative that will put americans to work well helping america gave the lead when it comes to clean energy. building a robust sector is how we will create the jobs of the future, and jobs that pay well and cannot be out source. it is also how we will produce our dependent -- reduce our dependence on foreign oil. it is how we will combat the threat of climate change and leave our children a planet that is safer than the one we inherited. it will be one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. the united states, the nation that pioneered clean energy, is being outpaced by nations around the world. it is china that has lost

[unintelligible] we spearheaded the development of solar technology. we have fallen behind countries like germany and japan and producing it. almost all the batteries that we used to power our hybrid vehicles are manufactured by japanese countries japanese -- japanese manufacturers or asia. i welcome and am pleased to see a real competition emerging around the world to develop these kinds of clean energy technologies. competition is what feels innovation. i do not want america to lose the competition. i do not want the industries that yield the jobs of tomorrow to be dealt overseas. i do not want the technologies that will transform energy to be abroad. i want the usa to be what it has always been, at the leader when it comes to a clean energy future.

that is exactly what is clean energy manufacturing initiative will do. it will help clean the energy gap that is between america and other nations. through this initiative, we are awarding $2.3 billion in tax credits for american manufacturers of clean energy technology but a they are companies that produce solar panels and assemble cutting edge factories. the initiative will likely generate 17,000 jobs and roughly $5 billion more that will leverage under investments that could help treat 10,000 additional jobs. it will give a much-needed boost to our manufacturing sector. it will double the amount of renewable power with equipment built here in the u.s. a. this initiative is good for middle-class families. it is good for our security. it is good for our planet. over 185 companies will receive

these tax credit. one of them is tpi inc that is based in newton, iowa. because of these tax credits, they will not only be able to expand an existing facility in newton, they are not only be able to build a new facility in nebraska, i do also be able to hire over 200 new workers. it is my hope that similar stories will be told across america because of this initiative. this initiative has been so popular that we have a far more qualified applicants than we have been able to fund. we received requests from roughly three times as much in funding, some of 1 $6 billion, as we could provide.

-- $7.6 billion, as we could provide. i have called for investing another $5 billion in this program, which will put even more americans to work right away building and equipping clean energy manufacturing here in the united states. in the letters that i receive that night -- as many of you know, i get about 10 letters a night that it again but at -- i also hear from americans are facing hard times. they lost their jobs and cannot afford to pay their bills. i am confident that we can have the talents of our entrepreneurs and workers, we can gain the clean energy worldwide, and forge a future where a better life as possible in our country over the long term. that is a future where now closer to building because of the steps that we are taking today. thank you very much, everybody.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> we will analyze those unemployment figures. it is about 25 minutes. : 85,000 jobs lost in december. guest: oh, boy, 85,000 jobs lost, gosh, that's a terrible number. wow. 85,000 lost is a surprise. i think that takes everybody by surprise. gosh, that's a lousy number because we had 11,000 lost in november. there was real hope there the economy was gaining momentum. and really in recent days there's been a changing in attitude of a few days ago people would have said, well, maybe we lost 30,000 jobs in december. and in recent days optimism has risen so much that people thought it was up to zero or maybe even a gain. if we lost 85,000 jobs in december that's not encouraging

at paul. host: what effect will that have? what will we see happen? guest: it's important that these things bounce around a little bit. maybe you just had a little bit -- we got a little alead of ourselves in november. maybe there was too much hiring done in november and people decided to lay off again in december and wait and see how the economy was shaping up. so maybe this is -- the trend is good but this is a one-minute blip. still if we go to the capital right now and we went to some democrats' office there are hairs being yanked buss this is not a number you want to come into the state of the union address with. it's definitely -- i think will be seen politically setback. besides politics but people's lives. 85,000 jobs were lost.

host: and isn't holiday hiring makes it high? guest: the labor department tries to take that thing -- that noise into account. you know, what you really were hoping for there is we would get some momentum, a springboard into the new year where if we had -- if you had come out and said, you know, we picked up 10,000 jobs, that would have i think caused a little bit of euphoria on wall street. and this is just going to be a bit of a downer. host: ok. as the report comes out from the labor department, we're getting the associated reports in real time. a sharp drop in the labor force, a sign more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work. kept the unemployment rate at 10%, the same as in november. analyze that for us. guest: again, when people start feeling more optimistic they actually come into the labor market. so if they're not hearing that their friends are getting jobs,

if they don't see any help wanted signs, then maybe you say, maybe i'll stay home. even though we lost 85,000 jobs we didn't get a higher unemployment rate because the job pool -- the labor pool didn't grow because people are still that discouraged. and, you know, sometimes people just think, you know what, i am going to shovel drives for the winter. i don't feel like leaving the house. gas is so expensive. i am not going to drive around looking for work. host: it actually effects the national economy? guest: it helps hold down the unemployment rate. but -- so we have a better looking number. when you talk about how many millions of people are sitting at home underemployed, unemployed, working short hours, not getting raises, not getting bonuses, you put it all together, it's a grim picture for workers. it's a real -- you know, ongoing problem that the administration has to address. host: revisions to the previous

two months' data showed the economy actually generated 4,000 jobs in november, the first gain in nearly two years while it lost 16,000 more than the previously estimated in october. guest: in is back to what i said. these things can bounce around. so we thought that in november, if i'm hearing you right, we thought in november we were still losing jobs and in fact we had perked up a little bit in november but, see, that could contribute why december was not a good month for job creation because to the degree that anybody was going to do any hiring maybe they did it in november and now they're just taking a wait and see attitude so they're not really adding jobs. and then you get to the end of the year and maybe some businesses just decided, small retailers might think, this turned out to be a not great christmas season and we will give it up. people may start close down some businesses and that's why you're seeing some job losses.

host: bob, independent line, franklin, indiana. you are on with marilyn geewax of n.p.r. caller: thank you for c-span. this is a government of the corporate, by the corporate and for the corporate. and also our national news media is owned by corporate. and that's why -- the real problem is nafta, unfair trade practices. we shipped out all our manufacturing jobs and government jobs create debt, manufacturing jobs create wealth. guest: you know what, one of the things about nafta, though, is that initially a lot of manufacturing did go to mexico. that's the north american free trade agreement that joined together canada, the united states and mexico into a trade zone. initially it did seem that some manufacturing was going to mexico, but a lot of those jobs in mexico actually ended up going to china and other parts of asia. i don't know. i guess it's argue ble -- argue

-- arguable, those would have an impact on manufacturing in any case. and certainly technological change as factories become more automated they just use less workers. there are all sorts of arguments in that. host: minnesota, lynne, democrat. caller: my name is duane. host: are you from minnesota? caller: yes. how comes the government don't want people in poverty to get out of poverty? host: what does that mean, dwayne? caller: i'm a disabled veteran and live with my mother or my mother lives with me. if i make any money over -- basically if i make any money, they're going to cut my veteran

pension completely. ok. i'm also on social security. ok. if i make over $800 a month they're going to cut my social security. so you can't make any money at all if you're sitting in a place like i am and me and my mother can't make it right now the way it is. guest: well, first of all, i want to thank you for your service if you're a vish. we appreciate what you did for the country. on the issue of government on the issue of government benefits, i think that's what there are big decisions to be made about deficit spending. on the one hand government does not want to spend too much. on the other hand, we are trying to do things like the fear of veterans and people who are disabled. there are some tough decisions safe about how much government

funding the can afford for for social places like that. when do we focus on debt reduction? host: independent line. we are talking about the economy. caller: can hear me all right? host: ahead caller: no one seems to bring up the fact that 50 million jobs have been lost through communist countries. they are basically doing all the work now that we did here. secondly, all of the judge said we had on this green, and they will all be made in china. there are no jobs coming back to this country. they are gone. i have been watching them go since 1977 and earlier than that we have been setting these things up. our country has been taken over by the stock market. they dissuade their hand. it is an economic devastation. everything is being wiped out.

we have watched it being torn down and ripped apart so the more they devastate come in the bigger b. murray they drive. that again congress and the white house will be dealing with is anger about the bonuses we're starting to see for bankers again are coming back. wall street's been making money and yet we're seeing these very dismal jobs numbers. so there is -- the economic argument is that if wall street makes money and companies are expanding then we can -- there's more money for companies to invest and expand plans, invest in workers. so a good stock market is good for the country. but there is this gap, a real lag between employment and profits on wall street. jobs are always a lagging indicator. i looked what happened back in the early 1980's when we lost jobs, especially manufacturing in the 1981-1982 recession. it took four years to get back

to a fairly decent plabe market. once the stock market started perking up by late 1982 but it really wasn't the job market that perked up until maybe 1986. so you always have this real plag of good times on wall street and hard times for workers until the jobs market catches up. again, that's another political problem. do you pass legislation that cracks down more on bonuses on wall street or for bankers or that sort of thing or do you get out of the way, try to hope that the market works quickly and that the successes on wall street fairly quickly translate into jobs for average people? host: what congressional action -- you talked about limiting bonuses. what effect would that have on job creation? what else can congress do to further job creation? can they do anything? guest: there are political arguments that are sort of --

you can make complick arguments in different direction -- economic arguments in different directions. if you say to bank of america you need to stop these bonuses. i met a lot of americans working in shanghai who were basically investment bankers, venture capitalists. they feel mobile. they can pick up and leave new york and move to shanghai and have a very good life and maybe they do their work over there. there's some fear if you crack too much down on bonuses and wall street that people will pick up and move to elsewhere and we will lose even that. so that's one argument. but other people are making a strong argument that really the problem in this country is the unfair distribution of wealth. that there's so much wealth concentrated in the stock market, in these bonuses, and the highest paid executives have done quite well and you

look at the average wage and it's weak. the average person has not gained a whole lot in the last decade or so. what we're seeing on n.p.r. and our facebook page, people are writing in, there's a sense of -- we've had more than 3500 people gone to the facebook page talk about their experiences. as i've read through these things i see people saying, we just downscaled. we just adjusted. we're living in a smaller house. we have less stuff. we have one car now. whatever. they are just adjusting their expectations to lower. and meanwhile on wall street they're not particularly adjusting their expectations. they want those big bonuses. so i don't know. you are at an interesting point in the economy where there's this big gap in the for funs where a lot of people on -- fortunes where a lot of people on wall street are making money. politically how do you respond to that, hew will people feel

about it? these are tough questions coming up in the 2010 elections. host: where there surprises on where the new jobs are? fwoip i think if there's -- guest: i think if there's a surprise in there it's maybe -- i guess -- how can i put this? one of the things we're concerned about is the jobs are growing in places that you would think. health care, education. you know, a lot of those sort of service sector jobs that will start to come back. i guess the thing -- i looked at it, hmm, i hope there's stiffle a lot of innovation out -- still a lot of innovation out there because we can't all be nurses and teachers and go for the safe jobs. we really need people to be the next microsoft. we need somebody to creates a new google that ends up hiring 10's of thousands of people. we need more innovation. one of the sections was the

tech sector. will we have new ideas coming out of that sector? i think the thing to worry about is, are we going to -- so many people have been so harmed in this recession in terms of their jobs that we hunker down and say go for the safe jobs, i will do what i know will lead to a job. instead of saying i want to be an entrepreneur to go out and start a new business that someday will hire fens or hundreds of people. -- tens or hundreds of people. when we keep going, hunker down and take the safe jobs, and i certainly understand that, but we need to spur that entrepreneurial spirit to create the microsofts of the future that will hire tens of thousands of people. host: do you foresee given that the report, the labor department's reported 80,000 jobs lost in the month of december, 2009, do you foresee federal reserve doing anything? do you foresee a statement by

the president? do you foresee the stock market dropping today? guest: likely things to happen. maybe if you were someone who was wanting to get a loan, it's hard on the people that aren't getting jobs. for you, maybe this is good news because it probably makes it less likely that the federal reserve will raise interest rates. the fed has been sort of hanging back, keeping interest rates very, very low. and waiting to see what happens with the economy. if we had had, say, 85,000 jobs added, the fed might say, time to start to inch up interest rates a little bit. so this news tamps down the desire to raise interest rates. and so if you are somebody, a small business, someone who wants to, you know, borrow money for whatever reason, lower interest rates are in your best interest. so that's good. i think probably plit -- politically, yes, the white house will respond to this news. and for the stock market, you know they're crazy.

who knows. the likely thing is they anticipate so much. it's always hard to make predictions before the markets open. the futures was waiting. everybody was waiting to see what this report would say. and my sense is i think this is going to be disappointing and that it could harm the stock market. however, having said that, if you talk to economists long enough you know there are two hands. on the other hand, some people might interpret this as good news because there is a little bit of a growing fear about inflation coming back. as i was talking about gasoline prices. if the jobs market takes off too quickly then maybe we drive up inflation. the demand for energy increases. the demand for, you know, gasoline to drive to work starts to increase. so some people who are worried about flaring up inflation and rising interest rates, we had already seen some interest rate

hikes in china, maybe the market will interpret this as good. we can have lower interest rates and less inflation for a longer time while the economy more slowly builds towards a turning point. host: portland, oregon, gene, republican. you've been very patient. you are on with marilyn geewax of n.p.r. caller: yeah. i just feel like the media, there's such a divide in the way that people believe now. you have the democratic belief system, you know, as i can see it is that government is the answer. and then you have the republican belief system that the private sector is the answer. or the entrepreneur spirit is the answer. what i -- i've been in business for 30 years. and what i see happening now -- i have friends across the u.s. there are so many businesses that are on the verge of closing even just from the fear

of new taxes like here in oregon we are going to have a new tax that's going to be what they call like a gross income tax or something that because all the corporations aren't paying. and so the thing is when you have that kind of media that's promoting a certain belief system on most of the networks and then you have the other side which maybe is the glenn beck side which is giving numbers that are saying these things and then these people are saying these things, isn't there a fact that in the government today that there's a socialistic view which means the government is better to run things, and there's a capitalistic view -- guest: on this controversial about taxes -- on this controversy about taxes, i hear from both sides there are some people that are very concerned about rising taxes and that could discourage business. that could prevent people from wanting to earn more because they don't want to hire marginal -- higher marginal fax

rate or higher property taxes. taxes are obviously a burden on individuals and businesses. but i also hear from businesses who are worried about things like infrastructure. they also want government to keep spending because the roads are too crowded and the bridges are falling down. so some businesses and some people say, no, we really do need to keep up those -- increase our tax revenues because otherwise we have this terrible crumbling infrastructure problem. and ultimately a failed transportation infrastructure system is going to hurt the economy more than higher taxes right now. so again that's something that politically people have to work out. right now, what do we need more? spending for infrastructure, to improve our roads and to create jobs, or do we need lower taxes? key debate. host: associated press story, stock index futures tumbling after the government reported they cut more jobs than expected. the labor department said the

unemployment rate stayed at 10%. 85,000 jobs lost last month. more than the 8,000 expected that you talked about. the report signals that many jobless people are giving up on their search for work. dow futures are down 34 or .3% at 10,511. what does that mean? guest: well, the psychology matters. back to what i was saying. even though this number is -- when you look at a job market of 131 million jobs, 85,000, you know, sometimes they revise these numbers, they're not -- host: as we saw earlier. guest: statistically, if you're one of the sfistics, if you are one of the people that lost your job, it feels pretty painful. if you stand back and look at the big picture the economy, maybe they'll revise it next month and it wonet quite as bad as we thought or whatever, but psychology -- won't be quite as

bad as we thought or whatever. do they want to buy appliances this year? time to buy a new washer or drier. people are so discouraged they are not looking for work, if employers are still laying off people, that's bad psychology to start the year off with. so i think that's what the stock market is going to respond to, is that there's this real concern that, oh, man, we are not out of this yet psychology and that's not good for investors. host: what other numbers besides the jobs lost or gain, what figures do investors and economists look at? guest: now the big attention will turn to the corporate earnings season. the year ended december 31 for most companies. not everybody is on that fiscal year. but most corporations will start reporting what happened in the fourth quarter. and again this is that kind of

complicated scenario where it may be that all those job layoffs will boost profits. maybe companies made money in the fourth quarter because they're squeezing so hard. we've seen tremendous increases in productivity. corporations are just literally telling people, work harder, work faster. and because of the fear of losing your job people do work harder and work faster. also, there's new technologies to help you become more productive. so we may be seeing that even though they're laying off employees they aren't necessarily having less output. so if we continue to if we can seem to have these productivity gains, that maybe to profits for corporations. that would spur wall street. they would be happy. that would -- eventually trickle down. you need to look at when the corporate earnings start to

come out, we will have a better sense of the overall attraction of the economy. >> just a few more minutes left of our guests. she grew up in youngstown, ohio. go ahead. caller: good morning. it seems as if the republicans that are calling in, and they want to blame obama and the administration for the problems that we are currently going through, but these problems were based on the eight years of fiscal non oversight, the wall street golden parachute a scam where the executives scared of. we give away all this tarp money that was supposed to save the little people. guest: these are political

argument as to what started the scrutiny. the trouble began a long time ago. i grew up not far from cleveland. the steel mill started closing in 1977. going down in the 1970's. and it was hit by that recession in 1981, 1982. things got better for the region in the 1990's. in the recent years, you know, it's political arguments as to who was at fault. the thing was the midwest, the area around cleveland, detroit, those areas have really taken a lot of manufacturing hits with job losses. and probably still more to come. so there's a lot of good reason for people to be angry in those areas about, and whoever you want to blame, well, that's a political argument. it's certainly true that there are just real problems with employment in the industrial midwest.

host: missouri, carl, independent line, you are last for marilyn geewax. caller: i am last. and i'm going to -- you there? host: we're listening. caller: be short on time. first, let me say this. i'm 75 years old. i have masters in three business disciplines. my i.q. is at genius level. i built businesses, sold businesses, worked for multinational corporations. . we are like we were in the 30's.

if anyone wants to do see what direction the united states is heading, all they need to do is look at mexico. in 2008, the united states became the numbers 1 country in the world in income and equality. inequality. when that happens, the masses of people do not have enough money to buy the products that they make or the services. guest: again, this inability to purchase things, the lack of demand we're talking about, it is one of the key factors to watch here is going to be the gasoline prices. every time the price of gasoline goes up 10 cents, $14 billion comes out of consumers' pockets. that is money you could have spent at a rest on -- at a restaurant.

instead you're putting it into your gas tank. if we want to boost demand, that is the work -- the worst thing we cannot is rising gas prices, and yet that is what we're seeing. it may be the same scenario as the w, that the economy took a fall, it will bounce up, then go back down again. if we have a lousy job market and rising fuel prices, that could increase the likelihood of a w recession, a double dip. into the new year, the estimates are that it is a 10% chance of a double-dip. maybe the chances have risen. host: if people want to see your work on line -- guest: we would love people to go to npr.org and get comments.

and also at npr's facebook page, you have an opportunity to tell us about what happened. there are great stories out there. host: to use them on the air as well? guest: we also follow up on the stories and just listen to the conversation. i've done a great deal of reading those comments. it gives you a great chance to look what happens around the country when you hear what people are saying about the job service. host: is your website easy to navigate? guest: npr.org -- just look at the jobs think it is right there on the front, i hope. kr#4a&1@)d >> tomorrow, the council on

islamic relations it discusses issues surrounding the muslim community and the attempting bombing of northwest flight 253. janet adamy of days the word to merge the house and senate health care bills. "washington journal" is lies 7:00 a.m. on easter. >> remarks on current state of the economy by the president of the federal reserve bank of richmond. he spoke to a gathering of the maryland bankers association in baltimore. this is about 45 minutes. >> our final speaker today to of office on august 1, 2004 as the seventh chief executive of the federal reserve bank of richmond. in 2009, he served as the voting

member of the federal open market committee. as a member of this committee, he was involved in decision making processes that determined not only the fed fund rate but the decisions that affected interest-rate in general, foreign exchange rates, employment, and the general level of crisis of goods and services. many of you at this event last year and heard him as he started in this role. we are certainly looking forward to hearing what he has to say about 2010. he has agreed to take questions. if questions come to mind, write them down and he will try to enter them for you. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction. it is a great pleasure to be with you here today.

i want to thank rick and kathleen murphy to do a great job. it is also a pleasure to share the stage again with the irrepressible honey bun bassu. [inaudible] i did not get to see his presentation. i did get his assertion that he nailed it. [laughter] i fear my presentation might not live up to his. i'll try to make up for it in modesty. [laughter] i thought it was a reasonable

expectation to see growth in the second half of last year. despite that, there was substantial uncertainty about how the thing will play out. there is the possibility of a deeper contraction that i thought i could not dismiss. we did see positive momentum the second half of last year. third quarter growth was real gdp and exceeded 2%. most economists expected to see a determination made that the recession officially ended above the middle of last year. that is and out of a good news. the level of economic activity is still far below where it was a couple of years ago unemployment is quite high. many households are making do with far less than they once did.

moreover, there are substantial economic challenges to the u.s. economy looking ahead having said that, i do believe that growth will continue this year and that incomes will generally improved. i'm glad to focus on the national economy and the outlook for growth and inflation in the year ahead. i will touch on some important economic challenges. i have to do the usual thing of noting for you that i speak only for myself and not necessarily for my colleagues and the federal market committee. when i spoke last year, i went out back and read my remarks. i spent a fair amount of time on a list of factors that appear to have contributed to the decade- long boom in housing and housing finance that preceded and appeared to have precipitated the recession that we saw in the associated financial market turmoil. it included his circus strong growth in productivity to growth

in real income in the demand for housing, low term long term interest rates, technology driven credit delivery, and expanded access to credit for many americans but of and a regulatory regime. it may not have adequately contain the much more -- the moral hazard associated with the perception in the marketplace that many large financial institutions, including the government sponsored housing finance and into midi's -- intermediaries were too big to fail. i do not intend to discuss these at length. i have done a lot of that year. i mention that as a warning against mono causal explanation for what we have just been through. the recession that just ended ranks as one of the deepest on record. it was led as a suggested by the plunge in housing construction that solve the boom.

housing prices almost tripled. by 20005, evidence was emerging that the run-up had gone too far. rates began to rise in vacancy in 2005. measures of home construction and sales activity began to fall precipitously. home prices began to decline. it reduced equity values and household wealth. if lead to rising fall in foreclosures. the layoffs in residential construction and dampened growth in overall household income. that cost the rest of the economy to flow. iwe turned into contraction mode. the recession that followed was a head of longer and deeper than we have experience in the 1930's. i can cite a silicon statistics. out of time is up to one.

and number of people employed has fallen by 7.2 million through november. that is a tremendous number. the contractions in overall economic activity appears to live in the customer. the data we have received since then indicate activity has generally improved. i will discuss the sectors to improvement is most evident. i will start with housing. construction activity hit a low point last year and have risen modestly since then. single-family housing starts have increased 35% and new-home sales have increased by 8%. there are signs that home prices have bottomed out as well. one widely followed index of existing home prices nationwide rose a seasonally adjusted 3.9% from may through october of last year. even with these welcome gains,

new housing construction remains well below the pace required to accommodate population and income growth on a sustained basis. that is to be expected given what appears to have been substantial over investment in housing during the boom. as a result, while i expect residential investment and many others as well do, will no longer be a drag on gdp growth going forward. a lengthy period of adjustment may be necessary before any growth is warranted for our economy. consumer purchases of cars and trucks also began to fall off in 2007 and fell sharply in 2008. it is a look when last february. brunn it decreased gradually before the "cash for clunkers" program boosted last summer. the payback was smaller many

analysts had forecast a. sales have improved steadily in the last four months. that is an incredible sign. just as with housing, it looks like automobiles longer vote they drag on gdp growth for an forward and to make positive contributions as well. it is a welcome contrast to the last two years. apart from that, consumer spending which fell slightly during the recession also reasons and of a pact last year. in the third quarter, consumer spending increased at a 1.6% annual rate. many economists are expecting a somewhat larger advance to be reported in the fourth quarter. let me be clear here. consumers are by no means an exuberant mood. the rise in savings to over 4% from 2% last august likely

reflects a combination of apprehension about future income prospects and a desire to rebuild while that was depleted by the broad erosion in financial asset prices. the recovery in equity prices in the home values we have seen no doubt contributed to the modern upturn in consumer spending. the ongoing civilization in labor market conditions also appears to have played a role by giving consumers a bit more confident in their prospects going forward. business spending on new equipment and software, which fell a sharp 21% during this recession has also reversed course and register positive gains. in business spending and capital goods, macy's and congress [inaudible] excess capacity in some sectors

to stop preclude the emergence of profitable opportunities to deploy new equipment and software effort, to reduce costs and drive increases in productivity in goods and services. i expect business investment spending to continue on a gradual upward trend. in addition to these domestic developments, there has been a worldwide rebound in economic activity which is boosting demand in our export industry. a year ago, there were falling at a 30% annual rate. totaling of all these terrible demands, recent estimates suggest that real gdp grew at 3.5% annual rate in the second half of last year the most rapid growth in several years. part of that growth reflected an inventory stream from earlier in the year. inventory liquidation kept

production, gdp, the low final sale. the shift toward inventory accumulation provided temporary boost to gdp growth. it will help in the fourth quarter and first quarter as well. that will necessitate the hiring of new workers which will not have -- which will add to household income. many consumers will respond to higher spending. this is the typical pattern in the period of the following a recession. we do not see any reason for this to be different for th. the industrial production increases to give me since the low points and june of 2009. the midsummer rebound in auto production was significant for . the survey based indexes that we have come and the ones published

by the institute for supply management, have risen substantially last year. it indicates the growth in manufacturing activity has spread broadly across different industries. the new orders component of those indexes have registered even more impressive growth over that time and is not the highest level since december 2004. these particular indexes have a 60 year track record of giving highly reliable signals on recession recovery. we have no reason to suspect a break from form here. one key element supporting the recovery is a significant improvement in financial conditions that has occurred this past year. corporate borrowing costs have declined significantly as commercial paper and bonds are much lower than they were less sure. many major banks have successfully sold stocks and have the capital to support new lending, even if conditions turn out worse than expected. we do here antidote's frequently

about businesses being turned down for credit. it is important to recognize that many borrowers will naturally face tougher credit turns in a soft economy, because of their revenue prospects are likely to be more uncertain than they otherwise would be. the proper bins are is the stability of the banking system as a whole to supply an appropriate quantity of credit, not any given individual bank. any one individual bank could be shrinking their balance sheet while others are expanding. i am not aware myself of any serious evidence that the banking industry is inappropriately constraining the availability of credit. i have been focusing so far on the areas of the economy where improvement is evident. there are other areas where we face major economic challenges,

however. commercial real-estate -- big and raids our rising, a mars -- and 20 positions -- commercial back securities have taken more losses with more on the horizon. numerous projects are scheduled for refinancing and months ahead. some community banks have lent heavily to commercial developers and are now facing rising delinquencies in losses. no one expects a quick reversal of these negative trends. business investment in nonresidential structures is likely to be a sizable drag on u.s. growth in the near term. more worrisome is the labor market. we just received the december employment report this morning. the number of people employed has fallen in 23 of the last 24

months but of the unemployment rate has more than doubled to eight him 0.0 rate in december. -- to an 10.0 rate in december. going forward, employment will return to an upward trajectory. we have seen a few initial signs of improving labor demand such as an increase in the average work week since october and the rate at which employment has fallen has decline significantly since early last year. even the most optimistic forecasters do not expect a rapid improvement in the national labor market conditions. we will need to carefully monitor employment earnings through an extended period of time. let me put the whole picture together for you. i think the most likely outcome is that the economy will grow at a reasonable pace next year.

housing should recover from a depressed state. if it should be stable through next year. consumers should gradually expand spending. investment should make something of a comeback. these components should overcome a continuing drag from commercial construction. i am often asked how economists can be so of beat in the light of the obvious economic challenges such as the week is in the jobs market and the declining level of commercial construction. my answer begins with the observation that there are obvious, as serious problems coming out of every recession. we have a historical 31 recessions to prove it. despite the obvious to problems, we always recover. often more rapidly than anyone expects. if you drill down the details of the 31 recoveries, some common elements are evident.

party touched on the boosted production. more important is the behavior of individual consumers. while many workers lose their jobs during a downturn and suffer greatly because of it, a much greater number remain employed. many of them will take the precaution of cutting back on spending in deferring major purchases, particularly automobiles and electronics in case something happens to their own job. at the recovery begins to take all, the workers gradually become more confident about their future job and income prospects. they began to spend a larger fraction of their incomes. many firms will find it prudent to reduce capital spending during the recession. as demand revives, the firms will see an increasingly number of viable investment opportunities for themselves. in short, deferred spending during recessions creates pent

up demand by consumers and businesses that will bolster spending once the recession ends. i see no reason for this cycle to be different. there are always risks to an outlook. the future is always uncertain. the bigger market could recover more slowly than many expected. that would restrain consumer spending and dampen growth. household incomes and tousle confidence could presumably rebound more vigorously. consumer spending could expand more briskly. these are standard risks on either side of the album coming out of a recession. it is worth mentioning me a prominent risk. firms and individuals are facing major uncertainty surrounding federal policies on trade, and the environment, health care, financial services, taxes.

for a business, considering a commitment to a new capital spending project our new hiring can be difficult to estimate after-tax yields for some new endeavors with an environment that is so rich would deregulations. this uncertainty could well by us firms toward us deferring new investments. it could lead to lower productivity. turning knelt to the -- many economists expected the exceptional level of economic activity to depress inflation, pushing a below zero. projections have remained fairly stable according to the best

available measures. this has an anchoring effect on inflation, which average 1.1% -- 1.5% last year. the risk of a pronounced reduction in inflation seems to have diminished substantially. during the recovery ahead, we may face an increase in risk of inflation drifting upward. that occurs in during past recoveries. while the risk appears to be minimal at this time, we will have to be careful as the writ uncover rate -- as the recovery unfolds to keep expectations from drifting around what we will need to be careful about is when and how to withdraw the considerable monetary policy of stimulus now in place. it requires -- this time the fed will have to monitor policy instruments to grapple with not just one but of the fed traditionally targets the overnight federal funds rate which required appropriately

adjusting the supply of our monetary liability in order to intersected demand at the federal funds target rate. by targeting the federal fund rate we gave up control of monetary liability. it affects a broad range of other market interest rates in influences' growth and inflation. that is how we implement economic outcome. since october 2008, we have had the authority to reserve banks to pay explicit interest on reserves balances to make cold. this is as the ability to change the amount of our liability. we have so much reserves in the system that interest-rate are driven down.

when it comes time to draw down monterey stimulus, the fed will be able to raise interest rates on research and influence the consolation of interest-rate in the economy or to drain reserves which will have its own effects on the constellation of interest-rate in the economy. or we could do both. despite these added challenges, the core objective of monetary policy remains the same. that is price stability. as always, it will require keeping inflation expectations anchorage. it reflects the views about the future conduct of monetary policy. we will need to carefully choose when and how rapidly to remove monetary policy stimulus bi. this is the same difficult task we face in every recession. i will be looking at the time at

which economic growth is strong enough and well enough to be established. when the economic outlook for the coming year appears to be brighter than the year just ended, our economy does face several significant challenges over the longer term. i will conclude by mentioning two of them. the first challenge that we face over the long run that i want to highlight is the path of a future federal budget deficits that are implied by current and planned fiscal policies. it should be self evident that any government that cannot grow indefinitely at a rate much faster than the economy itself grows. . .

another challenge that i'm particularly aware of is in the area of financial regulatory reform. in the wake of the crisis we

have just been through, it makes sense to re-examine our approach to financial regulation. i have argued that the most important step to ensuring long-run financial stability is to have elements to the financial safety net, which has grown considerbly in response to this crisis. i believe that the crisis itself was in no small measure the result of us not having clear limits on the extent of government support. leverage and excessive risk taking were encouraged by the belief that large parts of the financial system were protected and those beliefs have been ratified in the event. if we retain a stance of official a.m. bigity as to when such protection will or will not be forth coming, which institutions will benefit from support and which of their licts will benefit from such support, if we do that, i suspect to

disrupt will continue to grow and the safety knit will become ever more expansive. a more expansive safety net will require more stringent regulation but regulatory systems are necessarily limited in their capacity to offset the effects of the safety net. just like a.m. bigity about the path of future fiscal policies, continue the ambiguity could limit our long run. it is a great pleasure to speak with you. thank you very much. and i'll be happy to take your questions. [applause]

[inaudible question] >> housing activity was extremely strong by historical standards, especially in the decade from 1995 to 2005, but especially in the several years preceding 2005. housing activity as i noted declined to a level that is far below what we need to replace the housing stock and keep up with the growing demand. having said that, though, the way you should think about it is we've built two expansions worth of housing in one expansion. we have gotten ahead of ourselves in investing in housing and it's going to take years that it rises to the level where we need to expand construction very much. that's why i said you know, i

think what we should expect and hope for is a level of new home construction that's flat going forward. the level of existing home sales seems to have risen. there are a lot of foreclosure sales but there are a lot of non-foreclosure sales so markets seem to be liquid. that liquidity was awaiting a bottom in the housing prices. so housing prices appear to have bottomed out nationwide. i think it has lent some people confidence that they have a sense of what the market is telling them about their house, finding it easier to price houses. so we've got a housing market that's functioning and not in freefall where people are holding off the market. liquidity has come back, people buying and selling existing houses, but i don't think we

should hope for an expansion in residential construction to play a major role in this expansion. in fact, if we do, i think it will come back to bite us. [inaudible question] >> so the question is what role do i expect the federal role to play in federal policy issues ahead. there's a simple answer and delicate answer. there is a simple version to your question and delicate version. the simple version is with regard to congress's decisions about tax and spending, the federal reserve has typically acted as an institution ready and willing to offer its good counsel to congress, but it's ultimately up to congress to decide on matters of the

public's purse string. within the federal reserve system, we are acutely aware, because we're in the business of intermediate and longer run situations but interplay between the budget deficit and other ways which sustained deficits can be dell tar yuss in the long run. where it's a good idea to close the gap in a sensible way. the delicate version of your question has to deal with the fact that the federal reserve has engaged in activities and done some lending that from at least an arguable point of view constitutes fiscal policy in their own right. when we lend to a private institution, if we don't expand the money supply when we do it, we have to sell u.s. government

securities. so essentially we are borrowing and issuing t-bills and lend money to a.i.g. and congress has a right to view that as fiscal policy and we are very aware that it is. and so we take that responsibility very seriously. i think that coming out of this crisis, you know, this lingering question about the federal reserve's balance sheet and its implications for fiscal policy and politics of sent trang bank. and for now, leave it at that. >> you spoke about the ressdengal market stabilizing -- residential market stabilizing

and can you explain what your outlook is in the commercial real estate. what do you see the fed doing to prop up commercial bank securities? >> that's a good question. so let me first observe that a full and commercial construction activity and problems in commercial mortgage-backed securities markets are typical coming out of the recession and typically a late-developing part of the cycle. it declines later, recovers much later. i think that has to do with the language longer for a commercialable project than a residential project. commercial mortgage-backed securities are a more prominent part of the financing of commercial real estate endeavors now than they were 10, 20, 30

ears ago. having said that, they're not the only game in town and not the only source of financing. so the fed has one program -- well, first let me say before this, i think the commercial real estate problems at community banks and regional banks is a manageable one. there are some banks that were heavily concentrated, chose some strategies in terms of execution and region that turned out poorly for them so we are seeing bank failures around the country particularly in markets that are particularly troubled, georgia, california, florida and the like. but as a banking system it's going to cost the taxpayer bunch but it is manageable. the commercial-backed securities mortgage, it is manageable. the federal securities has a program called talf.

so it's some big acronym. [laughter] >> and it's like providing a little bit of lending and leverage to private entities that want to raise their own capital to invest in commercial-backed securities but focused on new issues and not so much on seasoned issues. so it's not going to help with sort of the rollover and finance challenges ahead. my overall take is that, knock on wood, it's a manageable problem. let me go over to this side of the room. let's go with the young lady who stood up. >> your projections for the recovery seem to be based largely on prior recoverries. this recession was -- the current recovery is based a lot on fiscal stimulus coming from

the government. how have you factored that into your current projections? >> the question is how have we factored in fiscal stimulus, which appears to be unique in magnitude and structure in this recovery to our forecast, our sense of how the economy is going to recover. well, it does seem as if that stimulus is adding to growth, did add to growth in the second half and will add to growth some in the first half of this year. the amount it demands will be diminishing over the course of the year. i think the economics of the relationships i described, the way consumers gradually recover confidence, at least broad measure of them, the way firms gradually recover confidence, that dynamic is the same quantitatively either way with or without the stimulus.

the location of the recovery groths may be different. but i think overall, the broad contour, maybe the numbers will be different, but the broad contour would look roughly similar. and there are a lot of analysis in the profession and federal system of that thought experiment, what would the recovery look like it with or without and that comparison and it's clear we would still get a recovery. >> the guy who didn't stand up. [laughter] >> we hear from bloomberg, 10% are 60 days or more behind and when you get 60 days behind, a very large percentage of those go into foreclosure. is that something we should be concerned about? >> well, it depends on whether you are one of those borrowers.

there is a huge adjustment process under way in the housing market, people who have mortgages that they can't afford or have mortgages that are greater than the value of their house. it's going to take a long time for the system to digest those problems. servicers are working overtime. we helped sponsor these events where a bunch of servicers come in a room and invite a bunch of mortgage borrowers that are seemingly in trouble or risk of default and try to work something out, try to get them something that they can afford, but that is a labor-insensitive process because it involves collecting new data. you have to gauge the borrower's current income so you know what they can afford, you don't want to modify a loan and have it blow up again in a few months and sort through what's best for

everyone combined. should they stay in the house or not. and that's a data intensive process and it's tough for the borrowers to pull together the right paperwork. it's tough for the services to get through this mountain of paperwork that's flowing through. some servicers are doing a better job than others. the treasury has helped with the modification programs out there. but it's going to be months and months before we're over the hump. now what that means for growth, it's not necessarily a disaster. if you have this process that works out where you're taking people in houses and re-arranging who is in what house and their mortgages, that doesn't have to have a large impact on spending. these are people who have cut back already because they are under water in their mortgage or

incomes have gone down. and as disruptive and costly and as terrible an eviction is, by itself, that's not going to put the economy in the tank. one more from over here. >> since you are looking at timing issues when the fed would divest itself of longer securities, what about -- in audible] >> he's asking -- you are wondering about whether the timing -- we have all these  assets, large-scale asset purchase program that we are about to complete and which we bought or planning to buy $1.25 trillion and bought $300 billion of treasury securities as well

and some more agency data, $175 billion. so the mortgage-backed securities and the treasury as well are going to mature and roll off but one of the options that we have for draining bank reserves is to sell some of the securities. so that's an interesting question. in the mortgage-backed space, we have announced this purchase program and you'd expect market interest rates to take into account that we're going to be buying for a while and after that, we're not going to be buying. so myself, i'm not expecting a huge increase in mortgage rates on the date that our m.b.s. purchase program ends. if there's a little blip, maybe that would happen, but i think expectations about our purchase program is -- has largely been built into market rates. out beyond that, i think markets are going to react to decisions

we make and announcements of plans we have. and i think the experience we have had in the last year and a half suggest those announcements pretty well with what happens and rates get built in pretty rapidly when we announce our intentions. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, dr. lacker. as always, very informtive. we appreciate you taking time to come and speak to this group and especially to answer some questions. this concludes our program for the year. the first friday economic outlook forum is an annual event, one we hope we will expand every year as it becomes bigger and better. mark your calendars now for first friday, 2011, january 7

right here. i would like to speak our speakers, maryland association of c.p.a.'s, maryland chamber of commerce, maryland and all of our guests making the first annual friday economic outlook. bundle up and drive carefully. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> the latest on the economic

stimulus, over $311 billion has committed to states by the federal government to spend on stimulus projects, that's up $4 billion from last week. over $160 billion has been paid out for those projects. at c-span.org/stimulus, you'll find news conferences, hearings and congressional debate on the economic stimulus as well as links to government and watchdog groups tracking its spending, c-span.org/stimulus. >> next, remarks by secretary of state clinton and the foreign minimums at the ter of jordan. then a discussion on u.s. counterterrorism efforts. then after that, a forum on the most recent afghan election.

>> it offered an explanation for something that had been baffling westerners in particular for many years and that was starting to show trials and success that he seemed to have. >> sunday michael scammell and "darkness at noon", on koestler. >> now secretary of state hillary clinton and foreign minister of jordan call for a resumption of middle east peace talks and express concerns over recent events in jerusalem. secretary clinton also comments on the flight 253 bombing attempt report. this is just over 20 minutes.

>> it is a pleasure and honor to welcome back the foreign minister to the state department representing a country that is such a valued ally and partner of the united states. over the past 10 years, king abdullah has carried on the vision and spirit not only of his late father, but of the jordanian people and under king abdullah's leadership, jordan has continued to be a key partner in the pursuit of peace in the region and around the world. as we have in all of our previous meetings, the minister and i discussed a wide range of issues. i want to begin by stating publicly what i had told the minister. i expressed both our condolence

for the loss of life that was unfortunately both american and jordanian. and i expressed appreciation for jordan's commitment to combating violent extremism at home and abroad. this is a struggle that units people of faith, people of peace, people of conscience everywhere. terrorists have targeted our cities and our citizens and they must be met with unwaivering resolve. i well remember visiting the hotels in in 2005, walking through the wreckage, visiting the innocent children, men and women who had been targeted at weddings. i will never forget what i saw there. i will never forget what i have seen elsewhere.

and the united states, jordan and our partners around the world stand shoulder to shoulder in this fight. we also share a commitment to seeking a comprehensive peace in the middle east based on a two-state solution. we are working with the israelis, the palestinian authority, jordan and the arab states to take the steps needed to launch negotiations as soon as possible and without pre-conditions. the united states believes through good faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome, which ends a conflict and reconciles the palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps and the israeli goal of a jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet israeli security requirements.

both the united states and jordan are concerned about recent activities in jerusalem. the united states recognizes that jerusalem is a deeply important issue for israelis, palestinians, jews, muslims and christians around the world and we believe it is possible to realize the aspirations of both israelis and palestinians for jerusalem and safeguard its status as a symbol of the three great religions for all people. on this and other pressing challenges, the partnership between our countries provides a solid foundation for the pursuit of peace and progress. i look forward to continuing to work closely with the foreign minister, jordan's new government and with his majesty as we broaden our partnership and our friendship. >> thank you very much, madam

secretary. the pleasure and honor are all mine. i'm extremely happy to be here at the state department again and to have this opportunity to have this overreaching exchange of views with secretary clinton and i said back in august when i had the pleasure of seeing secretary clinton here that the relationship between jordan and the united states can best be described as a true partnership, not just a friendship. and this relationship has withstood the test of time and numerous challenges that we have had in our part of the world and i think the relationship gets stronger by the day. thr last year, madam secretary, we celebrated the 60th year of the exchange of diplomatic relations between jordan and the united states. and again, this reflects the solid relationship that both

countries enjoy. our partnership is a streagteekic and solid one based on common values and shared vision of the comprehensive lasting peace, co--existence and prosperity in the middle east and our firm belief in combating the many challenges that we face around the world. i thank you, madam secretary, for referring to the tragic loss of life that we saw in afghanistan and of course, elsewhere argues as a result of our ongoing and joint, collective war on terrorism. thank you for referring to the 2005 hotel bombings in jordan. we must not forget that we, too, in jordan were also a target and we will not waver or be deterred in our determination to combat terrorism and terrorists and wherever they are.

in 2005, we said we will not wait for the terrorists to perpetrate the heinous crimes but try to uproot them before they get to the implementation stage of their planning. and our presence in afghanistan today is two-fold. number one, to combat terrorism and the root causes of terrorism, but also to help out in the humanitarian effort that is needed there. and i would like to say that our presence in afghanistan will be enhanced and increased in the coming phase. this is something that is ongoing. jordan was one of the first countries there. we are not only part of a network of countries that are trying to assist afghanistan and the people of afghanistan but also try to combat terror and terrorism but we're also there to defend jordan's national

interests and to defend jordanians and safeguard them against this growing threat. so, madam secretary, we look forward to working with you and with other governments in combating terror and terrorism. on the peace process in the middle east, evidence very good discussions with the secretary and good discussions with senator mitchell as well and their respective teams and we agreed on the need to relaunch serious negotiations between the palestinians and israelis, negotiations that are bound by a time line and benchmarks to end this lingering conflict to establish a palestinian state along the june, 1967 lines, in the west bank, including east jerusalem and gaza living side by said with a safe and secure state of israel. it is vital to achieve peace on

the basis of international agreed terms of remps and will ensure a collaborative region. we are in agreement that there are serious difficulties, but we hope that 2010 will see the continued and much needed leadership role that the united states can play in this regard and once again, i would like to remind of the important issues that need to be tackled that includes refugees in jerusalem. everything should be subject to negotiations. and when it comes to jerusalem as the secretary very correctly pointed out, jerusalem is potentially a flash point. it is so sensitive to all the followers of the three religions, but most importantly, actions on the ground in jerusalem can turn into

antagonizing issues to the three religions. it is important to try and avoid unilateral action in jerusalem. everybody is in agreement that jerusalem is to be discussed in the final stages of negotiations . there is a growing sense of surg against si to move forward -- urgency to move forward in the talks that will correct an enabling environment that will allow us to address other regional and global challenges before us today. absent a successful resolution of the conflict, they will splote in the middle east and worldwide. and i refer to the global war on terror. as i told madam secretary, under

king abdullah ii, jordan is committed to working hand in hand and ready to assist the united states in its efforts to achieve peace, which is not only in the national interests of the palestinians but also of the united states of america. we will spare no effort in doing all we can to ensure the success this endeavor and make sure negotiations move fast towards reconciliation on the basis of the two-state solution. thank you so much. i look forward to continuing our hard work in the future. >> if i could, a question on the terror report that the president got yesterday, in that report, it singles out what is called a visa issue and points out the fact that this suspect did not have a visa was not correlated to the fact that the concerns of

his father and the misspelling of the name. how serious are these issues and what do you plan to do about them? and one quick one on the middle east. have you or are you willing to to give guarantees to the arab countries and palestinians about the obama administration's negotiations and also the settlement issues. >> first, jill, as to the report, i think that the president made it very clear in his remarks both before and again yesterday that we all are looking hard at what did happen in order to improve our procedures to avoid human errors, mistakes, oversights of any kind. we are in the state department, fully committed to accepting our

responsibility for the mistakes that were made and we're going to be working hard with the rest of the administration to improve every aspect of our efforts. i think it is very clear from the president's stated resolve that this is the highest priority not only for him, but for all of us, the safety and security of the american people, of airline travel will remain at the very stop of our minds and our efforts. and we will be working with all of our other partners inside the government to do all that we humanly can to make sure that we prevent incidents like this and protect people. with respect to the middle east, we are absolutely committed and have been from the very first day of the obama administration to working with all of our

partners. this negotiation is clearly about issues that most directly affect the israelis and the palestinians, but it is of great matter, not just to the people of the iege region, not just to the arab nations, but really to the entire world. there is a hunger for a resolution of this matter. a two-state solution that would rebuke the terrorists and the naysayers that would give the palestinians a legitimate state for their own aspirations and would give the israelis the security they deserve to have. george mitchell will be consulting as he has been very bodly not only in the region, but in europe and elsewhere. we are in constant consultation with our partners in jordan.

but this is a year of renewed commitment and increased effort toward what we see as an imperative goal for the region and the world. [inaudible question] >> good morning to you. senator mitchell said he talked about a two-year time frame. some news reports talks about the first nine months concentrate on borders and refugees and borders will be discussed later. is this the current thinking of the administration? and the palestinians are saying they aren't going to come to the negotiations. israeli ambassador is saying they don't believe in time frame. how are you going to bridge the gap? >> what senator mitchell said is he wants to move as quickly as possible that there's an urgency

that we certainly feel, but there has to be a negotiation on all of the final status issues. and as minister judeh and i discussed earlier, resolving borders resolves settlements. resolving jerusalem resolves settlements. we need to lift our sights and instead of looking down at the trees, we need to look at the forest, where are we headed together. we know what a final resolution will have to include, borders, security, jerusalem, refugees, water. we know what the elements of this two-state solution must include. so i think senator mitchell was being very prudent in saying these are hard issues. they require a lot of back and forth between the parties, guarantees and assistance from

the rest of us who are -- try to move this forward. so it might take as much as the time he mentioned, but obviously, we hope to be moving much more expeditiously. but first we have to get negotiations relaunched. i can stand here and talk about what we would like to see happen, but at the end of the day there are two parties who have to make it happen. our goal is to persuade the two parties to get into this very in-depth negotiations as soon as possible. >> on afghanistan, -- [inaudible question] >> may i pick up on the very positive statement that the secretary of state made on peace

in the middle east. and just say that in the final analysis, final analysis, time is of the essence. the time of the united states and the secretary of state from the beginning of 2009 expressed a sense of urgency and said that peace in the middle east is our interest. time is not on our side. you asked about setting deadlines. king abdullah and secretary of state clinton and senator mitchell, you can't have an open-ended process, some deadlines need to be put on the table and they help the parties. they help the parties put things in right time frame and right perspective. we have said it in the past. we had too much process and not enough peace. what we don't need in the region is another open-ended process

that leaves issues unresolved. so it's important and yes, final decision as the secretary listed them are known to everybody. if you sought out borders, then you automatically resolve settlements in jerusalem but identify the nature on the ground of the two-state solution and what it looks like and all other things go into place. that's on the peace process. with the many difficulties we saw in 2009 and this is not the first year we see difficulties, this is a 60-year-old conflict, but our resolve should not be affect d. hopefully 2010 will be the year of negotiations that lead to the establishment of palestinian state and peace and security in the region. on afghanistan, neither the secretary nor i are intelligence officers. we are intelligent officers, but

we aren't intelligence officers. and i can't presume to speak on behalf of the secretary, but i'll speak for myself and say i'm not at liberty to discuss intelligence operations or ongoing shared intelligence between like-minded countries. however, i have said very clearly that in the global war on terror and terrorism, jordan is at the forefront and we're there as part of that global network and also there to protect our national interests. we were a target of terror and terrorism many decades ago, not just recently. and we have had to be not only creative but had to be extremely effective in our pursuit of those who want to do harm to our country and our citizens. most recently in 2005, we had the hotel bombings, but let me not count the tens of attempts

that were foiled or thwarted. and this isal result of our commitment and our ongoing operations, whether it is military personnel or intelligence work or humanitarian work because in pursuit of terrorists we are saving humanity and the united states and jordan and other countries are on board together. we're not just talking about counterterrorism and waiting for terrorists to carry out their plans but talking about terrorism prevention and finding the root causes and finding the root of where terrorists plan and plot and try to stop them right there before they get to us and attack our citizens and interests and kill innocent civilians. there is a jordanian presence in afghanistan and been there for many years. again, humanitarian presence, although gist particular presence and intelligence operations to protect our own citizens and prevent terrorists

from carrying out heinous crimes. information is power but sharing information is also power. and sharing information is just as effective in combating terror as combating terrorism directly. >> thank you all very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> now a discussion on u.s. counterterrorism efforts and homeland security from "washington journal," this is just over 40 minutes. former deputy national security adviser for counter-terrorism during the bush administration. mr. zarate, could you give your

analysis of the president's speech yesterday on the flight bombing? guest: peter, first of all, good morning, thank you for having me. i think the president's speech was an important speech, and the report that came out with it, laid out quite clearly what the u.s. government knew it before december 25, what we have learned since about the potential attack, laid out very clearly and honestly, i think, the failures that occurred. i think the president did a good job, actually, of laying out the facts, and also taking responsibility. you have to give him credit, john brennan, his assistant for homeland security and counter- terrorism, credit, and there seems to be no shirking of responsibility here. but what struck me was that this was more of a failure of the lack of -- of the strategic problem of attacking al qaeda on

the homeland with the tactical information was available to the best government. that struck me yesterday, because that was not apparent in the information before but much of the information was more akin to we did not find the small pieces in the vast volumes of n that. that struck me yesterday, as a former counterterrorism official, but also as a citizen. host: what about the fact that for the last 10 years, almost, since 9/11, we have a new intelligence apparatus in place. is information shared differently? are we succeeding in making sure that people are targeted? guest: i think absolutely. one of the things we need to be careful of is sloppy analogies between what happened here and what happened before 9/11. but the president, as well as

john brennan, did a very good job of explaining that yesterday. this was not a 9/11-type failure, where you had intelligence that was stovepiped, capped by different agencies, not allowed to be shared by law, as well as by culture. we actually do have a very good system, given all the reforms of the past eight years, that actually not only collects vast amounts of information globally, but has it available and is sharing. the problem here is that there was not a prioritization of the nature of these threats, and it was not a connecting of the data that was available. that is what the analysts are supposed to do, frankly, and that is where the failure lies. host: it was in one of the editorials this morning, it could be "the new york times," but in "the new york times" lead editorial, it says, "80 years after 9/11, the government still does not and -- eight years

after 9/11, the government still does not have a single terrorism data base." guest: i think there is a reason you did not have the database. there is information about foreign citizens, communications, that cannot be blended with information about suspected american citizens. host: why not? guest: there are civil rights, civil liberties, constitutional issues, with non-u.s. citizens of versus u.s. citizens. that was not the issue in this particular case, but to suggest one huge database with all the information about potential terrorism suspects -- we have got to be careful, because when you are looking at investigations, you may be looking it innocent individuals, and to put them aside as potential suspects. the other thing i need to mention -- we need to remember that we have short memories and

get our country and that there have been incredible successes -- we need to remember -- we have short memories in our country -- that there have been incredible successes. remember the december 2006 plot where al qaeda was planning out of pakistan through london to bring down 10 airliners over the atlantic. that was a very serious threat, perhaps the biggest threat since 9/11. the intelligence system we put in place, the sharing we had with the brits and the pakistanis, actually support to that well in advance. we tend to forget those in -- that actually thwarted that well in advance. we tend to forget those instances. host: "the washington post" this morning has a large chart that outlines the different lists and

all the different communications that are supposed to happen, and it begins with this tide list. could you describe to us what the tide list is? guest: there are gradations of the databases and lists. the tide list -- i would just call it the tide list -- is the master list of all potential suspect individuals. that number is over 550,000 individuals of potential suspects. host: that is the master list. guest: that is the master general list. but you have to be careful, because not every name in that list means that the individual is a terrorist threat. from there, you have additional screening of those individuals, with information available, where they are able to identify people who prevsent more of a

direct threat. that goes to a more refined listed from that, there are lists created for those who pose more of a danger to aviation. the no-fly list, which means you don't let somebody on the plane, because you think they might blow it up or taken hostage or do something nefarious with it, and the other list is a selectee list, where you take a person inside and you give them extra scrutiny. the problem here was that the suspect in the case, abdulmutallab, was on the big list, and it was not the information to put him on the more refined list that would give him extra scrutiny. that was part of the problem. host: when you come to the no- fly this, there is only about 4000 names there. is that comprehensive? guest: no list is comprehensive or perfect. host: but that is the official no-fly list for the united states. guest: that is.

people need to recall that the u.s. government has tried to be strenuous about who goes on that list. those are individuals who are reasonably known to be threats to aviation, who may be operatives, who may decide to use the plane as a weapon. these are not just people who are potentially suspects who had an extremist conversation monday somewhere around the world. these are actors who are known to us or suspected to us to be very dangerous folks. a real good question here is sure that this be brought in? i would remind people, again, since our memories are short, that when i was in the white house, there was a great deal of pressure from congress and advocacy groups to which will downed the list -- to whittle down the list. there were susan cries about the number of names of the list, mistaken identity -- were cries

about the number of names on the list, mistaken identities. host: is the list smaller today than it was when you are in the white house? guest: the master tide this is bigger now. when i left, we were closer to 500. that is now higher. there was always an attempt to refine the list and make sure you did not have wrong names on there, bad names. part of it is the commercial interests. part of it is you do not want to unnecessarily burdened travel for the american public. it is important for u.s. commerce. host: how often did you look at that list? when you are in the white house, your position was similar to john brennan's, except to get the position. guest: he took the position i had, but he is also the homeland security adviser.

in theory, somewhat similar. host: would you look at the daily, because supposedly gets fed into a computer every night. guest: i would start and end every day reviewing the threats that had emerged either over night or during the day. i thought my responsibility was to make sure that we were giving you attention to those threats that appeared based on the information available, information coming through the system. again, i was at a fairly high level. it works slightly differently than somebody on the line. i saw my responsibility as to make sure that we were looking at the priority threats and doing everything to ask the hard questions, not only of our intelligence community and law enforcement community, but our partners abroad. that is how we started and ended every day, and we have instituted this as part of the reforms in 9/11 and accretion

of the counter-terrorism center. three times a day, the community, the counter terrorism threat community, did get together, continues to get together, to review literally a matrix of threats that are being laid out against the united states. sometimes those numbers come in terms of seriousness, in the dozens, sometimes they are a few, but the lists are in the hundreds of threats that are posted to the united states, literally every day. host: does the dni system work, in your viewpoint? guest: one of the things that people need to recall was that the system was built to deal with the failures in the iraq experience. dien n -- dni was not necessarily an expert or model to fix the 9/11 problem. -- experiment or model to fix the 9/11 problem.

it is not just counter- terrorism, but it is things related to north korea, iran, the big ticket items that the intelligence community has to be focused on. i think dni is still a work in progress. there had been hiccups' over the last year, some conflicts with the cia as to who is to represent the u.s. and the intelligence community abroad. but i think in general, the process in place for the counterterrorism community has actually worked quite well. i think folks need to just recall the successes that we had in light of, unfortunately, this failure. host: our guest is juan zarate, former deputy national security adviser in counter-terrorism for the bush administration. cspanwj is our twitter address.

margaret, a democrat, you are first up. caller: good morning. i hope you can clarify a couple of questions that this lonely layperson has regarding the computer system, and the right people get notified. am i to assume -- i have had these questions since the christmas bomb incident -- and i to assume that the computer systems that we have in place, and all the intelligence agencies, don't take the information as it is gathered, pertaining to one person, and sort of cholesterol -- sort of coalesce it all and some kind of alarm goes off when it hits a certain level of danger? guest: that is a very good question, a good question not only for the layperson but for

the expert. there are multiple databases that has that information about suspect individuals. what you have are systems that actually tried to track and manage information and to tie information with the various databases. but the important thing is that there is a human factor that requires analysts to actually do the prioritizing, and in some cases, pulling from various databases to actually look at potential threats. there would not be eight matching database or process by which anything related to some guy named abdulmutallab would get compiled automatically. he would have to have analysts, -- you would have to have analysts, as we found out yesterday, looking at threats from al qaeda in yemen, saying that al qaeda in yemen is trying to find operatives that can get past the u.s. homeland, and then look for individuals or pipelines of individuals who may fit that category.

that was the failure here. analysts were not taking that strategic problem and then pulling from the data that was available. it was available, and was noble. that is the -- and it was knowable. that is the unfortunate thing about this case. host: what is it your viewpoint on abdulmutallab's father going to the embassy, a well-known figure, worldwide in many circles, and reporting on his son, and that information not going further? guest: that information provided to our embassy in nigeria in november it was a critical event. the analysts, the people at the embassy and the state department, did not describe enough importance to it, frankly. i think it was his judgment, in essence, as to the importance of it. -- i think there was a misjudgment, in a sense, as to the importance of it. we get hundreds of thousands of

locked-in threa -- walk-in threat information all the time did most the time, -- all the time. most the time, it is not any good. that said, this was a little bit different. this was a prominent individual in nigerian society, not going to his own government officials, but coming to the u.s. embassy, telling officials that his son had gone to yemen. that should have triggered some -- the whole context of that should have triggered more concerned, especially as we learned yesterday, given that we were learning the past few months that al qaeda in and was trying to find out if to send to the u.s. -- find operatives to send to the u.s. host host host you are on with juan. caller: this is an interesting conversation and there were two

points that i wanted to make regarding this. there were two things in the news that were quite chilling recently. first was a interview with osama bin laden several years thrg -- ago that he was interest nd and we have been concentrating on large wars rather than wise intelligence gathering. i am of the opinion that the entire invasion of iraq was costly in american lives, treasure and basically misguided . we should have been hunting down bin laden. . down bin laden, that has not stopped. that is something that is of great importance the prior administration and this administration, is important in

terms of the ultimate dismantling of al qaeda. but you're broader point is a good one, that he has talked about his ultimate goal of bleeding america of blood and treasure. he equates the current battle with the united states to the battle against the soviets in the 1980's in afghanistan, he ascribes to the mujahedin in his efforts the collapse of the soviet empire, and they want to see the collapse of the u.s. we need to be cognizant of that, in terms of how we react, ensuring that we do not overreact. that is one of the challenges for this administration, not giving the terrorists to much of voice in this particular incident. host: when the president spoke yesterday, he talked about reforms for the intelligence community. i want to get your reaction to this. >> these reforms will improve the intelligence community's ability to share, analyze, and act on intelligence swiftly and

effectively. in short, they will help our intelligence community to get its job better and protect american lives. but even the best intelligence cannot identify in advance of every individual who would do us harm. we need the security at our airports, ports, and borders, and with our partnerships with other nations, to protect terror from entering america. guest: i think the president has it right. we have to have a dual system that builds the intelligence picture to identify people who are a threat to us, but he will not be able to identify everybody. you have to have security particles in place that can identify random individuals that have explosives on them. the one thing that is a bit confusing to me about all this is that i think one of the things we have done relatively well over the past eight years is prioritize the threat. you necessarily have to -- the volume of threats is so great that we get, and that the

intelligence community, counterterrorism community, deals with. that is precisely what we have tried to do, and i think have been doing over time. for there to be a conclusion that we were not prioritizing properly, not giving enough resources to this problem, really, i think, struck me as a major default and a major problem, and certainly the president is right to focus on that. but it is odd that we were not focusing more clearly on the threat coming out of yemen. host: next phone call for juan zarate, jackson, new jersey. caller: good morning, mr. zarate. this is a wonderful conversation. guest: good morning. caller: i have a concern about our own connect the dots, and national security. we have a mindset in this current administration that seems more intent on attacking the cia, our navy seals, the fbi, so on and so forth. it seems to me that it is very

difficult for these people to do their jobs without being concerned about watching their own back. i think this whole eric holder thing with wanting to try these guys in the united states and bring the cia out to the floor to lash them a few times, or whatever they are going to do -- they want heads to roll -- i think these people live in a bubble and they want the wrong heads to roll. that is my concern. guest: the caller raises a very good and important point, something i've been concerned about the past few weeks, and that is what all of these actions by the administration are doing to the moral of the intelligence community. i think one of the challenges that president obama has here is that he must demand accountability, he must demand that we do a better job, and given the information that we have, but was revealed yesterday, there were failures

year. people need to be called to account and they need to improve. that said, the intelligence community, the cia in particular, feels a bit under siege. we had the incident in afghanistan where seven cia officers were killed literally on the front lines, and apparently, according to reports, trying to capture ayman al-zawahiri, al qaeda's number 2. these are men and women and institutions that are built to take risks for us, and if the ghost wrote -- if they grow so wary of taking risks, we get out a bunker mentality that could make us less safe. the other thing to mention is that the debate about afghanistan has been incredibly important inappropriate, but one of the negative externalities' of the intense focus on afghanistan, and to a certain extent, the drawdown in iraq, is to not have a global picture of

what really is the current threat. we had a margin information about this more direct threat from yemen -- we had emerging information about this more direct threat from yemen. the debate about afghanistan, the intense debate about afghanistan, the centrality of that, which is not in doubt, but that somehow attracted from, at least the political bird's-eye -- that somehow detracted from at least the political bird's eye view. i think to a certain extent it is a wake-up call for the political establishment and perhaps all of us that we need to be watching the adaptations, we have to watch what is happening in yemen, what is happening in somalia, north africa. these are real problems. it is not just afghanistan. it is sobering, it is unfortunate, but it is the reality we live in. host: next juan call next zarate, -- next call for juan zarate, jacksonville, florida, a democrat. caller: i have a question

concerning the way we are put under scrutiny, for lack of a better word, when we go to board our flights here in america. now, so much time is spent on, it seems, getting a group of names on a list who cannot fly. why isn't there a list done for people who can fly? with our database at today's technology, it takes no time to compile a list of people who are citizens, who are legitimate americans, who have reason to be flying, instead of this list so that it makes it easier -- host: sorry about that. guest: you raised some very good points, actually. this is something that the department of homeland security has been looking at for the past few years. they had a pilot project to make

it easier for business travelers to get through security, and that is a preferred travelers program, if you will. i think you are absolutely right. there needs to be a way of making it more convenient. but at the end of today, the list are not going to do it. i name based system is not ultimately secured. you are not going to be able to put all the good citizens on a list, either. this also points to the fact that the administration has to be careful here. we have to be targeted in a way that we enhance our scrutiny and security, because simply blanketing additional security requirements on airports and american business and folks abroad may not make us that much safer, and actually may have a backlash effect, things that the bush administration had to deal with after 9/11 from friends and allies in pakistan, saudi arabia, algeria. we did not like all the scrutiny, the extra attention that they got as they were traveling into the united states. the administration is going to

have to calibrate this well, or else we are going to see some of the very same backlash. host: well, there is a lot of noise in the media whenever something like this happens that we are fighting the last war, the last incident. are we doing that again with these restrictions, watching a satellite maps on airplanes, pilots putting out landmarks? i mean, really? guest: and the removal of the los -- host: shoes in the bush administration -- guest: that is right. particularly in aviation you have seen this. the hole advent of magnetometers and aviation security started in the 1970's, when terrorists started taking planes over and taking folks hostage, etc. at each interval of innovation by the terrorists, we have had to adapt and put in place new security procedures. richard reid with the two bombings, we take our shoes --

with the shoe bombings, we take our shoes off. now you may be body scan, pat downs, different restrictions on the plane. in terms of that type of preventive security, it tends to be reactive. one of the challenges is can you get in front of innovation? interestingly, we knew that this particular type of explosive was not only developed and used by this group in al qaeda in yemen but used for an attempted assassination of a counter- terrorism chief in saudi arabia. we actually knew that this type of device was being developed and was being hidden by this group. i think one of the failures was not to actually take that into account as we were thinking

about security with respect to the airports. the other thing is that at some point, you cannot be so restrictive in terms of security, that you are going to choke commercial traffic that is so important to our economy and freedom. at some point, you cannot let the terrorists to dictate how we live. it is a victory for them. so it is a balance. host: next call is from baltimore, independent line. caller: mr. zarate, i caught a speech yesterday at american university on c-span. i went to school for international relations years ago, and it seems like the elephant in the room has always been to me, and if you ask anybody who comes from the regions that are troubled these days, is the unemployment. you go into a taxicab and you

asked the man the unemployment rate in eritrea oh, my god, it is a multigenerational unemployment issue. if people don't have opportunities, is this snake oil that we are trying to apply to a wound? you cannot stop terrorism if you have an endless supply of people who are willing to give whatever modicum -- host: appoint, thank you -- got the point, thank you. guest: absolutely right. you cannot kill or screen your way out of the problem. there is much disenchantment. you look at yemen, for example. not an economy of any real sordid the demographic bulge of young -- not an economy of any real sort. the demographic bulge of young males. a very bleak picture in terms of

what young males in a place like yemen can do and aspire to. that said, i think we need to be careful here. at the origins of al qaeda, including the elements here the continue to threaten us, don't necessarily come from the po or streets of cairo or other parts of the arab muslim world. these are individuals who are largely well educated, privileged in some cases, and we see with abdulmutallab, he came from a privileged family in nigeria, studied engineering in london. we have got to be careful about too many generalizations about poverty or unemployment causing terrorism. i think the dynamic is different. there is an ideology and play here that is a living too much of the world, and that is that the muslim world is under siege,

the west is at war with islam, that by the united states, and that there is an obligation, but religiously and politically, to oppose the united states had to fight it with, as they call it, legitimate jihad. we have to realize that there is an ideology at play that we have to undercut, and much of that, i think, will have to come from the muslim communities themselves. host: as abdulmutallab goes to court today, do you have an opinion on whether national security is threatened by his being in a civil court rather than a military tribunal? guest: i don't think there is an inherent danger with having terrorists tried in criminal court. we have done it before and we can do it again the real question is the initial paradigm in which she is handled. are we trying to -- in which he is handled. are we try to gather intelligence and prevent further attacks, or are we trying to

gather information as a side benefit of actually holding him accountable in the criminal, legal context? you can ultimately to book, but you have to do what first -- you can ultimately do both, but you have to do one first. putting him in the criminal system for for us the opportunity to get as much as possible -- forfeits the opportunity to get as much as possible. he was in london and was obviously recruited in some way. we are at a moment where, as the administration admitted yesterday, there are additional threats coming from yemen and from this group. we need to know what that looks like. what is the pipeline? who is setting these individuals? how are they were quitting? how many others were there? -- how were they or recruiting? how many others were there? putting them in the criminal system does not give you that flexibility.

i don't argue that you do not ultimately try him at some point, either in the military context or the criminal context, but you have to be clear what you are trying to do in the context of the threat. host: west virginia, republican. caller: good morning, gentlemen. i have a question, sir. with all the technology that this country has, why is it so hard to track down bin laden? i mean, you have a drones, all the intelligence. guest: well, technology is important and critical, but it is not everything. we i dealing, especially when we're talking about the dark corners of the world were al qaeda has found safe havens, whether it is before 9/11 and afghanistan, over the last few years in western pakistan, or more recently in the hinterlands of yemen, we are talking about parts of the world where we don't have much access, where,

in many cases, al qaeda has friendly environments, tribal elements, families they have married into that actually i did these individuals -- actually hide these individuals. and so is more than just being able to put eigha drone in the ear or a listening device somewhere. you have to get intelligence on the ground on where these individuals are t. with some of these parts and the world, we just don't have -- for example, western pakistan -- we just don't have boots on the ground and it is hard to look in every case and every corner. host: your job in the bush administration, deputy national security adviser on counter- terrorism -- how much time was

spent on that question? guest: we were focused heavily on that. as i told my wife when i was thinking about what i was doing with the rest of my life as the administration was coming to a close, i said that the two things i want to do -- i wanted to get the three americans held hostage in colombia out, which we did, thanks to their military, and i also wanted to find a way of getting bin laden, because it would be so important not just symbolically, but because he continues to play the role of galvanizer, organizer of the movement. we have worked around the world to get information about him and try to find him, and not only him, but ayman al-zawahiri. this post with the seven cia officers were killed -- that appears to be what they were

trying to do, trying to get closer to ayman al-zawahiri. i think we have got efforts under way. host: do you think bin laden is our ralive, from what you know? guest: i don't think there is any reason to believe he is dead. there are recent audio tapes that have been authenticated, and we think they are current. i don't think we have had eyes on knowing exactly where he is since tora bora. there was a senate report out in a very good article in "the new republic" about the incident. but no, we think he is alive and there is an active effort to finding him and capturing him. no doubt it will be an important close to a chapter in the war on terror once he is either killed or captured. host: mike in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, a democrat.

caller: listen, can you hear me? host: we are listening. caller: he hit the nail right on the head when he said screening people. what is wrong with -- if the airports will cooperate, what is wrong with having -- lines and lines of people born in this country, showing american citizenship, and another line of people coming in with the visas, and another line of people coming in from another country? host: okay, just add to that, someone you might know at the heritage institute, writes about national security issues, talks about in "the washington times" this morning that the department of homeland security is not necessarily responsible for all aspects of homeland security. if he walks through, in this

editorial, the different departments and agencies that are responsible for different parts of the layers of protection that are built to our borders. i just want to add that to the tenement said. -- what the gentleman said. guest: i think that is fine, although d -- that is right, although the authority has been consolidated and they have that ability. but dhs does not have the to possibilit -- have the capacity to deal with all the counter- terrorism issues and the country. to the caller's point, part of this is being able to use intelligence wisely to figure out who may be suspect and who may not be. i think we need to be careful

with profiling and making distinctions, because we certainly have cases where u.s. citizens, of both past and present, not only have been radicalized, but have joined forces with al qaeda. the headley case out of chicago, where a citizen was helping last party toward the -- helping lashkar-e-taiba. zazi, an afghan-american citizen, apparently trained by al qaeda and sent back to commit some sort of attack in denver, on his way to new york. we need to be careful, because there is a home run problem that we have to contend with that is not necessarily feed into -- homegrown problem we have to contend with that does not necessarily fit into a clear dividing line. host: last call is from maryland. caller: well, good morning.

thank you for taking my call. this is my first time calling, so i hope you will be patient with me. i am a sociologist, and i think the american people should notice that we are acting like a nation divided against itself, with particularly republicans attacking a sitting president who admits -- the republicans are admitting that we are at war -- shouldn't this be considered treasonous? it of violence -- it violates the constitution for a former vice president to say things about a sitting president that gives fodder to our enemies. host: you have been invited to give political comment. guest: i am not a politician by turning, but i will take a crack at this.

when we were in the bush administration, there was plenty of debate, and there should have been. an important element of public debate and scrutiny over what we are doing. i don't think all the criticism is a problem. it should be part of our national culture. that said, i agree with the caller that we should remember who the enemy is. we have a transnational movement that is trying to motivate people around the world, including american citizens, and they continue to attack us, in big ways and small ways. we have to keep our eye on the ball, and that is something that president obama reasserted yesterday. we have to work together to figure out what that means in terms of the long-term interests and how we deal with problems like yemen, not just because of al qaeda, but because of potential instability there. host: how did you get interested in this work? guest: i have been very

fortunate and blessed over my career. i was a lawyer by training, got into harvard law, work for the clintons administration for janet reno, i was in the terrorism and violent crime section. i was given an opportunity to work with some degree prosecutors of our time, pat fitzgerald, folks in new york working on the embassy bombings case. i was put on the uss cole case, working with great prosecutors here. i was a young prosecutor learning at the feet of some great prosecutors who were looking at the problem of al qaeda before 9/11 and trying to address it. the frustration, by the way, in that period -- i was a junior guy, but i was witnessing this firsthand -- was that we knew that al qaeda was at war. they not only declared this and in 1996, but they were taking a progressively greater and greater steps to attack us.

the bush administration came in power and i was asked to move over to the treasury department three weeks before 9/1131 9/11 happened, i was part of a leadership team that was going after a terrorist financing. i did that for four years, and then was asked to go to the national security council. host: juan >> tomorrow on "washington journal," niha awad discusses the attempted bombing of flight 253. "wall street journal" health policy reporters janet adammy updates on the work on the house and senate health care bills and

joan goldwasser talks about new credit card rules that go into effect in january. that's live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> next a forum on the reasons after -- on the recent afghanistan elections. then, journalist david ax with u.s. troops in afghanistan. after that, president obama on today's unemployment figures. >> i'm always concerned about the potential unforeseen consequence, unintended consequences of new regulations. new regulations, regulations of any kind, act as a tax. when you tax or regulate something you tend to get less of it, you tend to diminish it. >> this weekend, republican f.c.c. commissioner robert mcdowell on the effort to create a national broad band plan, net

neutrality and other issues. saturday, president obama's ambassador at large for women's issue talks about supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg and the role of women and the law on "america and the courts." >> next, a discussion on last year's afghanistan's elections. they talk about their fraud investigation and eventual victory by hamid karzai. they discuss the presidential elections for this may. it was held at the u.s. institute of peace in washington, d.c. >> good morning, everyone. we can proceed. thank everyone for coming. my name is john dempsey with the u.s. institute of peace, based in afghanistan. i have the privilege of actually

being here in washington this week for this, our first public event on afghanistan of 2010. i'm so happy we have such a good turnout, i recognize some faces here, see a lot of people i haven't seen around before and i look forward to a frank discussion with our distinguished panelist today on a subject that clearly has been getting a lot of attention over the last year, given what we saw in the difficult election season in afghanistan last year but that also has not yet gone away. i think once we got through the difficult process of the elections last year, people were breathing a collective sigh of relief that we moved on and could actually get on with governance and moving toward with strategic objectives in the country, but yet, we have another election seemingly just around the corner, so we have to ask the question, what does that mean for afghanistan's political development? what does it mean for international programs in the country?

and how do we ensure that the difficult problems that we faced last year in the presidential council elections aren't repeated as the dwrict council and parliamentary elections go forward. before i introduce our speakers, let me just give you a little perspective, having lived in afghanistan for the last seven years, working on the rule of law and governance issues. in 2004, i observed the country's first presidential election and then in 2005, i observed the provincial council and parliamentary elections and did the same last august for the presidential and provincial council elections and i cannot overstate the difference in the mood in afghanistan between 2004 and last year. back in 2004, there was a sense of optimism, there was a sense -- there was some energy that you could really feel in the air, that afghanistan was going in the right direction and people were expecting that the

promises made after the agreement were going to be met and that the institutions of governance and democracy were being built, that reconstruction efforts would lead to tangible improvements in people's lives and the 2004 elections were widely deemed to be an overwhelming success with high turnout, over 70%, with violence kept at a very -- kept at very low level, with voting irregularities, while they existed, kept at relatively low levels as well. with the large number of women turning out to vote and people i think thought that afghanistan's democratic development was going in the right direction. if you contrast that with the high levels of fraud, the low voter turnout that had as much to do with voter apathy as it did with fear of coming out on voting day or reprisals thereafter, i think is a reflection of the fact that people are frustrated in

afghanistan with the way their democratic development has gone and with the elections coming up this year, we want to try to ensure that the mistakes of 2009 are not repeated. that said, there were some bright spots last year. one in particular, the electoral complaints commission, two of whose members are here today on the panel, was able to maintain its independence from political interference to such a degree that they were able to pinpoint with some degree of accuracy the amount of fraud, discount the number of ballots and require there be a second-round runoff, thereby taking the initial i.e.c. count to 54.-- 54 point something percent and having president karzai accept that, which i think was a good step for afghanistan. of course the runoff never happened but at least the e.c.c. was able to maintain its independence and show that the rule of law does matter to some

degree in afghanistan. so with that, let me briefly introduce our three distinguished speakers and turn it over to them to speak just for a few minutes, probably no more than 10 minutes each if you can keep it to that, so we can have a frank and vibrant discussion and q&a session after that. to my far left, scott warden who just returned to the institute here. he's a senior rule advisor with usit, who was on a leave of absence to work as one of the three international members of the electoral complaints commission. he was also involved in the elections in 2005 for parliament when he was with the jdmb. you have their buy yows in front of you, i won't go into too much detail on that. isabel root is desk officer for the e.a.d. at the department of political affairs at the united nations and worked in

afghanistan back in 2005 as a political advisor and there's quite a lot of afghanistan's elections and has been following the processes very closely. to my left, grant kipen, was champlee of the e.c.c. both in 2005 for the parliamentary and provincial council elections that year and also for last year. i think both scott and grant were at the center of the maelstrom last year. be pointed with your questions and try to get information on what was happening behind the scenes. these guys were at the center of what was going on at an extremely difficult period in afghanistan. with that, why don't we start at the far left with scott and move in this direction and go from there. scott, if you want to start? >> we had a meeting and ruled that -- >> you had a jurga. >> we're going to switch the

order. >> ok, take it away. >> thanks very much, john. thank you to usip for hosting this event here this morning. scott and i had a discussion last night about how we would sort of go forward with this discussion this morning and i think what i would like to do is lead off with a bit of the introduction to the ecc. as many of you know, it's temporary -- of the two electoral bodies in afghanistan, the independent election commission and the electoral complaints commission, the e.c.c. is a temporary body. it's only in existence for the period of the election campaign. it will cease to exist, its mandate ceases to exist up to 30 days after certification of final results. our understanding from a few days ago is that the final certified results for released

in sort of late third week of december, our mandate officially ends about the 25th of january. our mandate as described under law, the e.c.c.'s mandate, is to investigate and adjudicate all challenges and complaints with respect to the electoral process. we have a role both within the nomination period, when candidates come forward with their nomination papers, as well as during the campaign period and after the campaign period. the e.c.c. in 2009 constituted some, i guess, 250 or 260 people. we had headquarters at kabul and offices in all 34 provinces around the country. i'd like to say that one of the things i was enormously proud of and i think the commission as a whole is enormously proud of were the efforts of our staff around the country. of that number, only about 18 or

so were internationals. the rest were afghan nationals who, and i don't think there was one individual on staff that had been with the e.c.c. prior in 2005. so we're working with a totally new group of people. in addition to our official role, which everyone looked on with great interest, one of the other major roles that we had was a professional development one. to bring a group of people that had never been involved in an electoral complaint capacity prior and to get them to understand what the rules and responsibilities were and to have them actually undertake those responsibilities and functions was an enormous undertaking if for these elections. one of the challenges that we had in 2009 was that we were established quite late in the process. our first meeting as a commission, formal meeting as a commission, took place on april

26. we were quickly into the candidate nomination period. at that point in time we did not have a headquarters in place. we did not have any staff identified iaside from a couple of people that had been sent to us in support of -- in the early going. so we had an enormous task ahead of us, not just in discharging our responsibility, in terms of investigating and adjudicating complaints and challenges but also getting the organization up an functioning. and one of the, i guess, the other major challenge as we saw it was the -- and i don't want to be too difficult on this, but it was -- we had -- we took on a lot of responsibilities that did not really rest with us and the

i.c.c. in particular was willing to put the decision on us in one instance on the challenge period in terms of candidates meeting particular criteria set out in the law and the constitution. these were activities that could very easily have been done by the i.e.c. but for which they felt that we should be the ones that the make those decisions. that kind of relationship continued on through the entire process, which, given the points i made earlier about how late we were established, the fact that we had a new crew learning as we went, placed enormous burden on the organization as we went through. in terms of lessons learned, i know scott will get into this in more detail, i can add as we go along. to me, one of the major lessons learned is, and looking forward is how much we in the international community didn't use the time between the 2005 elections and the 2009 elections

to do the kind of groundwork that really needed to take place. if you look at the observer reports from 2005, you'll see a lot of recommendations in those, some of which, one in particular, voter an civic education that needed to take place, which really didn't occur in the interim period. it was very late, that sort of process was late getting going in 2009. the other thing that struck me was the lack of understanding about the processes as -- as a whole. by many of the take holders. candidates in particular. i remember in some amusement, going to a meeting at the intercon hotel for -- this was a meeting hosted by the election commission, the minister of interior was there, minister of defense, head of m.d.s. and it

was about providing security and transportation to presidential candidates during the campaign. and some of you may know about this, there's an assassination clause within the law if there's a death of one of the candidates for the president rble election, they have to start the process all over again, so there was some interest in making sure all candidates remained alive throughout electoral period. but my point is, aside from the transportation and security issues, during the q&a period, a number of candidates got up and said, well, we think this is very nice that these are being offered, but what we're really interested in knowing is where can we get the money to campaign? as if they thought there was going to be some magic pot of gold once they joined this club of presidential candidates that they could access. that, unfortunately, was not the case and so many of the candidates, i think, really

didn't understand what they -- what the process entailed. you know. this is indeed unfortunate. i think added to the burden of the e.c.c. and types of complaints and volume of complains we received, not so much during the campaign period but certainly after the -- after election day forward. i'm just going to stop there and let scott carry on and then look forward to your questions later on. >> ok. >> picking up from that, one of the benchmarks i think the e.c.c. set for ourselves when we started this was to make progress over the performance of the complaints commission in 2005. and i think we did that in several ways. i think john already mentioned that overall, obviously, e.c.c. decisions were the focus of the election and the public and hopefully we discharged our duty well in terms of upholding the

rule of law. i think that through the course of the process we found that there was still great interest in the elections and in complaining about the elections by the voters. we had about 3,000 complaints overall throughout the various phases of the campaign. with this new and overwhelmingly afghan staff, e.c.c. was able to, i think, thoroughly investigate all of them. and hopefully our decisions represented a model of transparency that can be built on in future elections. another focus of our work was a vetting process. in 2005, there were clauses that prevent members of illegal armed groups from standing for elections. it had mixed success, i think we can say this process was undertaken again in the recent election and we wound up ex-compluding 55 candidates, mostly from the provincial council race, one for vice

president and one for president on the basis of their links with armed groups. this was an accepted result and represented a will the of progress in a field where we had hundreds of complaints about people's bad acts in the past, mostly criminal activity, which was not part of our jurisdiction. still, quite a significant achievement. i think good for the process in after began sta -- afghanistan that we were able to exclude a number of candidates that had not given in their records and not committed to rule of law this went on without much objection. another big success, i think, grant already mentioned is the capacity building element of that, of our 250 staff. this election, despite the focus on the fact that there were international commissioners on the complaint commission, was an a process.

to do this on a provincial basis, we had officers in all 34 provinces, they were entirely afghan staffed. i think that represents a good accomplishment to build capacity at the local level for running elections independly from international assistance. the negative aspect of the elections, of course, was that there was a significant amount of fraud. the presidential election, i think, was pretty well documented in the press. our investigations yielded quite a bit of fraud in all parts of the country in -- on behalf of all candidates, especially for karzai in terms of volume. we had about 1.2 million ballots based on our investigation that led to a second round. let's focus on international -- less focused on internationally buzz the provincial council

election but we found across the board there was more passion on the part of complainants and candidates themselves at that level. these are local race, it matters greatly for a candidate's prestige. there's not so big of a goth mandate the council has. but looking at that race, you see a bit of a preview of what can happen in the parliamentary race. which is lots of candidates, intense contacts a lot of scrutiny in the process. our investigations went on in all the provinces, we investigated hundreds of ballot boxes and wound up invalidating thousands of ballots in that case and we're still waiting, i guess the announcement has come from the i.e.c. as ho to the who won and who lost but their website is down. we're still waiting to see, the public is still waiting to see the outcome. we found significant fraud and i think it revealed that with the

presidential race, reveal maryland flaws in the system that need to be taken care of. there's a lot of opportunity for progress. i just want to focus on three areas that i think were fundamental to the fraud, irregularities that curred in 2009. they need to be focused in the short and long-term of afghan elections. particularly with parliament, some of them can't be resolved if they're going to have the elections in may as the i.e.c. announced. but certainly needs to be addressed if we're going to have progress on the operation of democracy in afghanistan. the first and longest term issue is voter registration and the creation of a voter list. for each of the elections, there's been a registration process, people get a voter card that makes them eligible to vote. a new exercise is conducted in advance of the 2009 election

they registered 4.5 million new voters. a lot of those we saw pretty convincing evidence were fraud len. there were a lot of fake cards out there, identities couldn't be verified and when it came down to it in terms of investigating fraud in the 2009 election we really couldn't rely on the voter list at all to verify if there are 600 votes from a station, were there 6 hurricanes people who showed up and were they all eligible? this is something that doesn't create fraud on its own, but it's a significant tool used in all of our countries and all around the world in developing situations as a gate keeper to the electoral process to keep bad elements out that needs to be fundamentally restructured, i think, if you're going to have reliable elections into the future. but that's a longer-term fix. in the medium-term, you can't deny that one of the biggest reasons for problems in this

election was security. it has two aspects. one, keeping people away from the polls to an extent, but also it prevented observers from monitoring the election and making sure that whatever regularities were undertaken were actually reported. and further more, you had polling stations in places that were insecure with lots of ballots but very few voters. that's something that needs to be addressed in the 2010 elections, which is, are the polling stations in places that can be secure, can be observed and if it's in an area that's dangerous, we want voters to have access to the process but you don't niecely -- necessarily need as many ballots as they provided because of realistic expectations of turnout. the third area i think was a fundamental problem had to do

with i.e.c. personnel. you know, it is -- it is candidates, their agents, voters who commit the frauds but the inch e.c. has significant responsibility to the public to try to take proactive measures, try to mitigate the risk of fraud and when fraud does occur, to take corrective measures. it's really a dualing role between the e.c.c. and i.e.c. to address fraud and the e.c.c. is a reactive component. we an connell -- we can only investigate after the fact. the i.e.c. has broad powers to recount, investigate on their own and to take remedial measures and they failed to do that. that was all put to the e.c.c. and you know, hopefully, we performed our job adequately but certainly it's an overwhelming task and there needs to be a partnership between the two institutions if it's going to

work. in terms of leadership at the headquarters level, i think what you need to look to is has learning occurred? and so far we haven't seen any statements from the i.e.c. that say, we recognize there are fundamental flaws and this is what we're going oto do to direct it. false -- unless that happens you have to look at changes in the management level if you're going to have a significant improvement for next year. but more broadly at the provincial level, fraud occurred in individual polling stations, often in quite remote locations. as a basis -- as a result of our investigation, just into the presidential race we found that i think it was 1,400 polling stations had 100% fraud. our methodology was if we found significant evidence of corruption of the voting process, we would invalidate the station. 1,400 station, individual locations, where you can say there were serious problems.

we also did an analysis and found that if you look at polling centers, a high school might be a polling center, with multiple polling stations. 450 polling centers had at least half of their polling stations with fraud. then we did analysis and found that 23 districts had at least half of their polling stations found fraudulent for the presidential race. this amounts to hundreds if not thousands of individuals who were responsible for the conduct of the elections in. maybe they were intimidated, maybe they were corrupt, but either way, we need to address the large staff issue at the provincial level to see what happened and you have the right people in place. if not, you know, the prospect for a better election in 2010, i think, are dim. so, let me leave it on that note, i think there's a lot of issues that could be addressed

in the q&a, but that's an example of the short and long-term approach that needs to be taken in conjunction with what grant said in terms of voter education, candidate education so you can see that this is not an internationally driven process or an exercise you have to check the box on but rather, this is an organic afghan process to choose leadership. i don't think people are seeing that yet and hopefully they can start to see that in the election -- in the next election to come. >> i will not take too much time, either. i want to leave more time for questions. just as an introduction, i work for the electoral assistance division a small office in new york, which is principally charged with assessing the situation ahead of elections in countries where either the security council or countries have requested we get involved. in the -- at the end of 2007 --

can you hear me? at the end of 2007, i participated in what we call a needs assessment mission to afghanistan to assess the situation ahead of the presidential and provincial elections. i would have to concur with participants here that we were disappointed to see that very little had been done since the 2005 elections in terms of improving the capacity of the electoral institution, improving infrastructure for the preparation of the elections, nevertheless we made a number of recommendations at the end of our visit that we thought could lead to some improvements in the electoral process. i won't go through all of them, but i think some are still valid for the upcoming elections.

i think one lesson that we learned from a number of elections in difficult areas or in countries recovering from conflict or who do not have large experience with electoral processes is that rather than trying to implement a number of technical fixes which might be difficult to either comprehend or put in place in countries, again that have not had a long electoral experience, what's essential is that the people have the trust of the electoral authorities. trust whichever institution of the government which is involved in electoral process. ideally, you -- it's much ease wrer to organize proper elections in an area where institutions are strong, where you know that the institutions, the e.c.c.'s role is, where the

institutions are solid and can bring redress when problems occur. i think one thing that has been a recurring problem with elections in afghanistan is the timelyness of -- timeliness of decision, timeliness in setting a date and in deciding how processes are going to develop. it's very -- not only are these positions taken too late, often they're taken too late to inform the public properly or the candidate about what they're facing. one of the other recommendations we made was to try as much as possible to focus on transparency, accountability, and that can take many ways, obviously, as scott mentioned, it's very important that the

civil society, that all the electoral stake holders are full participants in the electoral process and are given access to the information they need to make their own opinion about the process. i was indeed in afghanistan for the elections in 2005. i worked on out of country voting for refugees in 2004 for the presidential elections and there was this sense of uplifting that i would agree was not there, regrettably, in the last election. this last process was very difficult. i think everybody recognizes that. it created a number of crises that certainly were not needed at this point in the -- for the country. it swallowed a lot of the energy and it did not allow the country to focus on many other things for almost a year.

i'm saying that because i think that there's a lot of questions now about timing, but i think you have to balance how much energy elections, and the electoral process swallows and you know, what other priorities afghanistan should be looking at at this point. just maybe a word to say that working as an electoral expert, i would say that in many cases, people put too much expectations and weight on elections. elections are not a panacea. thees were the first afghan organized elections. it's difficult -- it's a difficult, technical process but the afghans this time were the ones making the decisions. they weren't in 2004, 2005, some of the members of the independent election commissions were foreign advisors, this was the first time that the i.e.c.

was fully afghan. i think they've done, you know, a lot of -- they've learned a lot, i would say, from this process. i think that one sign i would say that was positive from these elections was the level of political debate, let's say, and in a way, the criticism that accompanied these elections shows that people are interested in learning better and in learning how to improve the process. so let's just hope that, you know, within afghanistan there's sufficient debate now to push forward the reforms that can actually make these elections a prose process that's more accessible to everybody. in terms of the reforms, maybe we can -- i'll see if there's some interesting questions on that later on. i would