discussion on the i.m.f. enrolled bank spring meetings to raise more funds. douglas rediker explains the current eurozone situation. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--] host: good morning and welcome to "washington journal" on this saturday, april 21. here are your headlines. the international monetary funds holds its spring meeting and the big topic of conversation is new funding for emergency loans. more fallout on the prostitution scandal as three more agent are forced out. and new reports on the fundraising battle are in. we'll be covering all those topics on the "washington journal." but first, went to hear from you on the subject of the housing market. in recent weeks, there's been an increasing number of optimistic reports on bankers and economies

that the -- economist that the housing market are on the rebound. you're a homeowner with thought tons the surges give us a thought. also you can post your comments and send your questions via e-mail, twitter, and facebook. and a very good morning to you. want to start with a headline from "the washington post" yesterday on the subject of the housing market. the headline here from the "post" -- homegrown long and foster finding success in rebounding houseing market. tells a story of a real estate agent and webber says in the article inventory is tight in northern virginia and buyers are eager to take advantage of low

interest rates before they go away. the market away caused bidding wars and a healthy clip of business. as a result, he has logged two close a month in twemblings double what he recorded a year earlier. and he's not alone. agents at longing and foster enjoying a resurgence in business boosting the bottom line. sales topped $6 billion through march, up 14% from the same period a year ago. that figure represents 18,000 homes sold from pennsylvania to north carolina. scommnls aren't just there from "the washington post." this yesterday from the florida realtors. a release from the florida realtors states florida's housing market shows positive trends in 2012. the comment --

host: so good news in several different areas on the housing front but we want to know what's happening in your neighborhood? are you seeing this? before we take some of your calls and whale you're dialing in, want to read an article from the huffington post that also talks about this matter. questions whether this recovery is actually being seen on main street. the headline from yesterday in huffington post -- if the u.s. housing market is experiencing a recovery, it hasn't reached

gwinnett county outside of atlanta. statistically, not much as changed, said bill king, the director of the county program. the county is on pace to reach about 20,000 for the year. not much different from years, king said. 90 building permits were reached down to about 9,000 per month at the peak of the housing bubble in 2006. the housing market is improving. many argue that it may already be helping the broader economic recovery and say that it is on the verge of our has possibly even passed what jpmorgan chase c.e.o. recently called an inflection point. yet while the bidding wars for manhattan real estate may have started up again, the article states in gwinnett county and

many other communities around the country, the off heralded but seldom seen housing recovery is far from reality. the national association of realtors on thursday reported preowned home sells fell to 4.48 -- 4.48 million unit annual pace in march. economists expect sales to rise according to a bloomberg survey. march's pace is far below the area peak of more than seven million units per year and it is below the pace of 5.5 million seen during a housing unit in 2009. the story goes on to note in reporting the decline, the nation's realtors were as always, optimistic that the housing rebound was just around the corner. a pent-up demand can burst forth from him proving economy.

economists point out all the conditions would seem to be right for a housing recovery. if you've got spotless credit, you can get a 30-year credit for 3.9%. home price levels are not seen in nearly a decade. the troibles those prices keep falling. potential new homeowners are having a difficult time of taking advantage of low mortgage rate because banks are holding tight to the mortgage credit. we want to know what's going on in your neighborhood. are you seeing a recovery if are you seeing a false recovery? we'll start in columbus, ohio, with dee. dierks are you a homeowner? caller: good morning, america. host: good morning. caller: no, i'm not a homeowner but i will not like a lot of

black people live around here yesterday and it's so many boarded up homes. they're not all boarded up but there is a lot. it's like over 5,000 in the city. but some of them are nice homes and brick homes and they're boarded up. storefront's boarded up. and and america's not going to recover unless you get people in these homes paying taxes on these homes. i mean, we spend all this money in afghanistan, all the wasted money in afghanistan, iraq. i mean, and you know, president obama, he's all talking about the buffett rule and he's -- host: dierks are you optimistic about a recovery happening? are there any signs of life in some of those boarded up areas? caller: there's no one -- there's no one -- not -- i mean, i'm from like -- there was like

funeral who got shot or whatever and it was just -- when you look around where the funeral home was, the storefronts are boarded up. there's homes boarded it and it doesn't have to be like that. and that's where all the violence is taking base plays in these neighborhoods where nobody's living. host: i want to show you a clip yesterday from at the national community reinvestment coalition reference on strengthening the housing market. former fannie mae chairman talked about the housing policies that led to the mortgage collapse. >> we never have a policy in this country that everybody was going to own their own home. we thought it would be a thrill if 707% did. that would have been something that we would have said that's such a achievement but the

notion that's out there now that somehow people thought 100% of people are going to own their own homes, that african-american loans have gone up to some incredible number was crazy. it was absolutely craziness. we made some progression. but -- progress. but where we didn't make progress was not loans that were aimed at folks who didn't have a chance, if you look at the areas in the country that are most devastated by the housing collapse, there are areas in which you had the highest percentage of loans to investors. some of you might call them speculators but the official name is investors. in las vegas, 30% of all the loans made were made to people who were investors. and that's assuming you believed they're on their form when they said we're going to live in the house. i really believe it was more like 50%. host: and we'll go right back to the phones on this issue of the housing market in your yay area

to ray from lafayette, louisiana. caller: good morning. i own a few properties. well, first of all, i had some complexities with trying to pay off one mortgage about six months ago. but i got that resolved. i have property in tennessee. and in that county, the unemployment rate -- there hasn't been any kind of property sales. i tried to sell property there in november of 2007, just right before the decline and of course it's still been hanging. there's been just a couple of nibbles but nobody's qualified. and so -- you know, and i see they've just started a construction of a new subdivision in the back. i'm curious as to the

participants and i see that a few of the new homes priced maybe $200,000 to $250,000, you know, with courthouse, and a see a lot of fannie mae type of backings. host: so ray, do you think it's the banks and the mortgage companies not willing to ep up to some of these folks that are willing to buy? is there interest there? >> well, there seems to be construction but i looked at the new subdivision like 50 lots just maybe 15 of them presently constructed in past couple of years, and of the 15, there's like four of them that are government backed with fannie mae or freddie mac. host: ray from lafayette, louisiana. i appreciate it. want to take you to a cbs news

story from yesterday. also on this same subject. but the headline here is "why the housing recovery remains a long way off." home prices remain affordable and mortgage rates low but the labor market and ongoing wave of foreclosure continue to dampen the housing sector. so-called short sales of home where properties are sold less than what is owed for mortgage has yet to surpass the sales of fore closed houses nationwide. that has many analysts skeptical. distressed homes are preventing a more substantial recovery is the point of the article from cbs news yesterday. i want to take you next to peter from st. peterburg, florida to talk about the housing market in your area.

let's go to maryland. carol is a homeowner to talk about home market prices in her area. caller: oh, no, it's a guy. my name is carol boyd. the houses dish bought a house in 2007 for $199,000 and when i went just recently to look at how much it is worth now, i lost almost $50,000 because of so many distressed homes around it and made the prices go down. host: and are you optimistic of things moving in the right direction? i mean, you're down right now, but are you optimistic we're headed in the right direction? caller: well, they're getting

ready to build -- they call it like a light rail or red line from canton in baltimore city out to security boulevard and they said it's like a billion dollar project and they are building new homes right up in the area right along where this track's supposed to go through. so i only live like a mile or two away from it. so i'm hoping that will help, you know, bring up the property. bring up the value of the property. but i'm being hopeful. host: some information about carol's state in maryland. this from reality track.com on foreclosures in maryland. this is a list you can find on march 2012 foreclosure rate heat map in maryland, there were 1,546 fore closed properties that amounts to one in every 1,539 housing units. again, that's realitytrack.com

you can go to to look up your state. let's go back to the phones. andrea is a homeowner waiting to talk about her area in north carolina. go ahead, andrea. andrea, are you there? caller: i am here. host: go ahead. caller: good morning. my situation is similar to that of maryland. there's been a lot of new construction in the area that has caused older homes prices to drop, probably about 5% in the last two or three years. so we're in a situation where we wanted to sell but i think we're going to go with renting to put a little more equity in the home over time and i'm really curious as to other areas that might have a lot of new construction. because we're in a military town and a lot of soldiers are supposed to come in this area but not as many soldiers are coming as they anticipated. so we have empty homes. current homes are not getting sold. and home ownership has been in a

crunch. host: what's the thing point going to be for you vs. selling and renting? caller: i had meant with two realtors and what it cost to get out of the house was not an option. so i'm going to meet with a property manager and look at putting the house up for rent and hang on to it for a couple of years and then we'll see. host: andrea, what part of north carolina are you from? caller: in new fort bragg. the reality track has north carolina 3,698 fore closed properties from the march foreclosure heat map report. that amounts to one to every 1,170 housing units. want to go right to john who is a homeowner from massachusetts. good morning, john. caller: hi. basically, the system's rigged. what you guys are doing are just and wall street and the

government, they're just when nicing the system. -- whenizing the system. -- weaponizing the system. they basically attacked poor middle class people with products that were faulty. that they can gain the system and basically this is what keeps happening every year. we have people coming in leaving government like a revolving door, coming back, finding ways of scamming the system and it's always targeted to the poor. same thing with the oil companies. they have not done anything, anything, to improve, clean cup or anything like that. women are going swimming in the coast of mexico, having, you know, problems with their health and everything else.

what we're doing is fulfill the riches dreams and there's two different lazarus. one for the poor, one for the rich. host: john from massachusetts talking about the dreams at yesterday's national community reinvestment coalition conference on strengthening the housing market which we also already showed you a clip of this morning, a former new orleans mayor and urban league president spoke about housing and the middle class american dream. listen in. >> it strikes me as just absolutely wrong to suggest that home ownership is not essential to the future of the american dream. and it strikes me as an important and using change in the narrative for which there was a consensus for decades and decades. and when that consensus emerged

in the post world war ii period, we grew a middle class. we built strong neighbors and communities. it was not absolutely perfect and there were many mistakes made. i challenge those who suggests that home ownership should not be a central part of the american dream for their policy to house the nation. for some to go do old style eastern european apartment flat? host: we're talking about the house, market in your area. i want to talk about an article from "financial times." the property predicament. the idea that home prices are positive is based on unrealistic expectations. robert schiller traces the crisis of the 2000s and looks at prospects for growth. don't have time to read that whole article for you but wanted

to point it on the house and home section of the "financial times." take a few more calls and go to other headlines. let's go to temple highlights, maryland. richard is a home owner. thank you. caller: good morning. people got to realize that the housing market has been seriously inflated. they're trying to hold on to the value of their homes or trying to sell homes at the current value. the housing market is 40% inflated. when you hold on to the homes, you're going to drown in the foreclosure. i haven't heard nobody saying the foreclosure is stopping any time soon. so if you're trying to hold on to the asset of your house, you're going to drown in foreclosure. you can't hold on to the increased value because it was artificially inflated so people get over that. they're going to keep holding on to it. host: what are you seeing in temple highlights? caller: there is no need for a

person to buy a new home at the current value period. why buy home when you can get a fore closed home for way cheaper? it doesn't make any sense. everybody buys new homes. there's no logic in it. none. thanks. host: thanks, richard, from temple highlights, maryland. a few stats on foreclosures. we've had them up for you. 100,000 plus properties nationwide started the foreclosure process in march, according to reality storm track. and -- reality track. that's up seven percent percent. let's go to jim from highland, new york. good morning, jim. jim, are you there? caller: yes. thank you for c-span. host: go ahead. caller: i felt strongly a couple of years ago when the mess hit the fan about the banks, you

know, in deep trouble and relate and it being related to a mortgage crisis that before we the taxpayer forked over all these billons of dollars to bail out these banks, i felt strongly that there should have been a stipulation on the table at that point that all of these loans be reset at 4%. in fact, some in congress were calling for it. and the fact that they got these banks got over on us. they got the money, and yet, people still have these balloon loans that were just the interest rates alone were forcing them out of the houses. so the fact that we didn't put forth a 4% ceiling on these loans as a stipulation for lending money tuille of these large u.s. banks was outrageous that this kind of deal was not

met. but that said, and probably we should still be pushing for such legislation. host: jim, tell me about the housing market in highland, new york. caller: i think the housing market is very good from the point of view that someone going -- if i was a handyman, i would be buying houses now. if i could handle, i would buy five houses. i would represent them out. the rent in my area and i'm familiar with a large portion of the tri-state area are enormous. you can own a home for less than renting a similar sized apartment and or house. host: had a couple of comments on twitter. this from big guns on twitter.

we have no recovery. we have massive debt with no solutions. the same corrupt are running this economy. obama says why change. one of the comments on twitter this morning. and want to take you to one other comment on twitter. gary wrote in housing is local. when hundreds of homes in your area are vacant for one reason or another, there's a long way to go for to recovery. so we're talking about the housing market in your area. let's go to dean, a homeowner from naples, florida, this morning. good morning, dean. caller: good morning. first, i want to say i'm a republican. i'm 92 years old. and the housing market in naples is not too good. i own a condo, not a house. just a few years ago it was worth $400,000. and now it's only worth about $200,000. so it makes it hard to -- host: dean, are there signs

things are getting better? caller: i don't think so. host: so these reports that we're hearing that things are improving, you're not seeing it in naples? caller: not at all. and you pay the same taxes and the same maintenance fee. and after you get to my age, that's hard. host: dean, thanks for the call from naples, florida. want to stay on this subject on housing market in your area. keep calling in. but want to show you a few of the other headlines that are in today's paper. one of the big stories is the new fundraising reports that are out -- came out yesterday with the federal election commission and how it's affecting the presidential campaign. the front page of the "new york times" today, big donations drop sharply better the -- for the president. president obama's re-election campaign is straining to raise the huge sums it counted on to run against mitt romney with

sharp drop-offs and donations from every major industry forcing it to rely more than ever on small contributions and relative handful of major donors. from "wall street" to hollywood, from doctors to lawyers, campaign cashes are not delivering for president obama. the zpwraufl has left his fundraising totals behind where they were at the same point in 2008. the "new york times" story goes on to total up the fundraising numbers that were reported yesterday. this on the jump page from the story. all told, mr. obama and the democratic national committee ended march with about $130 million in cash on hand. a sizable war chest.

the republican national committee ended march with 23.4 million in cash on hand. the story also has a pretty handy chart that compares president obama's fundraising numbers from his 2008 campaign to 2012. one of the big notes here is cumulative fundraising at this point for the obama campaign in 2012 is at 196 million. in the 2007-2008 campaign, the obama campaign was at $235 million. the democratic national committee in 2008, $69 million. today, they're up to $150 million. and the article also takes you through some of the biggest sectors where obama has seen big drops in big campaign donors. notably lawyers and law firms,

down 47%. securities and investment industry down 68%. and so on from there. that's again, in today's "new york times." but we want to continue with this conversation about the housing market in your area. we'll go back to florida to selena. is buying or selling a home, selena? caller: i am purchasing a home. host: and how do you feel about the housing market? are you ready to jump in now? caller: yes, i am. the interest rates are very low. i just want to talk about some of the changes i've seen over the last few years. i did purchase a home in 2009. and i noticed the difference at that time. it was a good time to buy these foreclosures and short sales, but since then, i'm now purchasing a home again and i find that these short sales and

foreclosures are not the good purchases. the reason being is because in florida, because of our weather, there's a lot of homes that has been contaminated with mold. and the foreclosures and short sales, many of them have this problem. and i also find that the banks are trying to sell these homes at a higher price. than they did in 2009. so i just would like for people to be warey of this issue. and it's actually a better deal to buy a house that's an active purchase where the previous homeowners has been there for a while and has been taking care of the house properly. host: selena from carl springs, florida, thanks for the call. another comment on twitter. here in pennsylvania, we're doing ok. house i bought in 2002 is worth more now than what i paid for.

again, that's comment on twitter. back to the campaign trail come and of the fundraising reports. want to point out an article from the "financial times" about one of those conservative super packs that reported its numbers yesterday along with everybody else in the presidential campaign. this is american crossroads and its affiliate group of crossroads g.p.s. you may know it because it was co-rounded -- co-founded by karl rove. and that's in comparison to the democratic super pack that has been -- super p.a.c. that has been formed from yesterday. this article from the "wall street journal" notes that democrats are seeking help from bill clinton to help their super packs -- super p.a.c.'s.

asked bill clinton to step into court donors. mr. clinton is likely to assist the super p.a.c. called priorities u.s.a. action whose anemic fundraising total has unnerved the obama campaign and senior democrats. on friday, it raised $4.6 million in the first three months of the year -- host: so more on fundraising reports in a bit but back to the phones. jim is from bakersfield, california. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you so much for the opportunity. you work for one of the greatest people on the planet, brian. he is one of -- i respect the

most in washington. i am a homeowner here in bakersfield, but i'm also just completed the paperwork to buy another home. and i must tell you it started in -- at thanksgiving and it has been probably one of the most stressful experiences i have gone through on my 53 years on this planet. and i bought houses before, ok? i mean, if you -- if you have the money outright to buy a house, you're in good shape. if you have to get a home loan, i mean, forget it. and the reason why is there are so many stipulations on hope loans now. i'm looking at a credit score of 800. i tucked away $24,000 for over five months and i've got to tell you, this is just -- this has just been an awful, awful process. if you're total cash person like in the movie "wall street"

portrayed by monique, ok, and you can just go out there and buy it, you're in good shape. but you know what i think about? the very same people who are now profitting off this whole awful business, the total cash people are the very same people who in essence help facilitate this along with freddie and fanny. and if anyone gets a chance, there's a "wall street journal" article about where ben bernanke talks about breaking up freddie and fannie into smaller components. that would be a really good idea. because they are so compliss sent in this whole awful business. the housing downturn decimated lower income areas. host: thanks for the call, jim. let's go to flint, michigan. david is a homeowner in flint.

good morning, david. caller: good morning, c-span. yeah, the market is starting to bottom out and hopefully, it'll come back. you had a lot of people that probably shouldn't have been in homes. i think the markets all over the united states, they were inflating these homes. i don't think none of these homes -- i watch hgtv sometimes and i hear different prices around the country and they're ridiculous. host: what makes you think things have hit a bottom in flint there? caller: i've seen people starting to come back and buying homes. they're buying the fore closed homes. and i've got to hope that they're going to -- things are going to get a little better and employment is picking up. so more people be able to get out and buy a home. so i just think it's going to pick up. the next two or three years, i think it's going to pick up. host: david optimistic in flint, michigan.

before we leave the presidential campaign, want to point out one more story in the "wall street journal" -- from the "wall street journal" talking about the v.p. selection process for mitt romney who is the assumed nominee for the republican party at this point. the article from the "wall street journal's" play of the week notes that after being regularly asked about his vice-presidential pick on the campaign trail, mr. romney formerly stated the search process -- formerly started the search process by naming beth myers to head up the effort. she serves as his chief of staff when he was governor of massachusetts and campaign manager for his unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid.

host: one note is expect the romney campaign to approach the selection process with an eye towards intense vetting given arizona senator john mccain's pick of alaska governor sarah palin. she brought mr. mccain large crowds but seemed ill prepared in television interviews. that's from the "wall street journal" today. back to the phones on the subject of the housing market in your area. joan is a homeowner from kansas city, missouri. good morning, joan. caller: good morning. i tell you, it's not exactly that. it's a little different. i haven't heard anyone yet comment, i believe people think this is just for homes. however, the rental market is a complete disaster. and we have -- or i have now. i lost my husband four and a half years ago so it's all on me and i'm having a terrible time, but renters everywhere, people who are needing to rent to make a living -- it's the four

apartment building. i lived in one. and we always had enough income from the three apartments to pay all of our expenses from the building which are horrendous. and right now, i had one man that has been here for nine years. however, when this horrible in 2008 recession set in and it's still here very much. so we always had no problem getting seven or 800 for the beautiful, beautiful apartments. very large and they're gorgeous. he loved it. was transferring here from st. louis. and he lost his job with so many along about 2010 and was going to have to leave here because he simply couldn't afford it. i agreed to let him stay. i wanted him to stay because he takes good care of the property. i had to do that for $300. i just raised it to $370. i have another man, a genius of a builder and a carpenter. he can do anything, but no work.

he is $1,300 behind in his rent. trying to work it out. and my other apartment is not rented. and they are beautiful. so the renting market is absolutely very dismal. and i do want to just say that i have not seen you. i watched this program as much as possible but i like you. you have a very nice voice. very good voice. and your presence is marvelous. host: thank you, joan. let's go to long island, new york. dave, are you buying or selling, dave? caller: i was looking to buy a house, actually. but i'm a little discouraged to be honest. you know, i held off during like -- i didn't get involved in the insanity part to 2008 because it seemed pretty obvious that things were in a manic type state. but i'm frustrated because you know, i'm watching you, i have a decent down payment saved up but i really would like to get like

a fair value for the property and i'm having a very hard time identifying what the fair value is because of the massive amount of government intervention into the marketplace. does that make sense? so i'm watching the house prices come down but then they get sticky. and where i live in long island, it's a suburb from manhattan. host: so what's it going to take to push you to finally get in the market? caller: well, to be truthful, i would look for more of a -- more or less government intervention. they have printed up $2 trillion to buy up all the bad asset offense the bank. you pump that money into manhattan. so i'm looking for, you know, probably, you know what i would assume is a revision to the mean type situation.

so, you know, i don't know. it's hard. it's a tough question because i'm scared. i don't want to be one of these people who puts his money up and then the market tumbles because the government, you know, because maybe inflation hits. to me, everything is hard to perceive the reality because of printing trillions of dollars and pumping it into assets. host: dave from long island, new york, thanks for the call. want to go to one other comment on twitter. this from face it on twitter. when the taxpayers receive the final, final, final bill from fannie and freddie, it will be the final nail in the coffin. again on twitter. want to talk about something else that's going on today. think utah republican convention is happening today. made the front page of "the washington post". the headline for hatch that's senator oren hatch of utah. what a difference two years

makes. two years ago, oren hatch looked like sure goner. the six-term republican from utah enters the state republican convention saturday as the heavy favorite with a real possibility of securing enough support to win the senate nomination outright for going the need for a statewide primary. his standing is a clear triumph both in utah and nationally and it has served notice that the establishment can fight back. paul cane's story in the "washington post" goes through a few of the reasons why it is believed that senator hatch is the heavy favorite in today's convention. he needs to finish with 60% to avoid having a primary. another headline from the front page of the "wall street

journal" on the utah convention. big test set for tea party muscle. it notes that again, oren hatch is up to date on the convention in utah. host: mr. hatch, 78 years old and mr. luge err, 80, were elected to the senate in 1986 and are along its most senior and recognizable republicans. this years, they are the top targets of conservatives looking to knock off republicans that have compromised too much and been in washington too long. so again, a couple of stories in the papers today about the utah convention and tea party targets down the road. just have about three minutes left, but let's go to william

who's looking to sell from irving, texas. good morning, william. caller: i was calling in regards to selling of a home. i see a note from california. my parents' home was -- during the housing boom. made about $400 and $450,000,000. and we had -- $450,000 and we've got it appraised within the last two or three months and the value is about $150,000. so i'm forced to -- the market in california is really unbelievable. i have a question maybe you can answer -- host: are you feeling optimistic, william? caller: pardon me?

host: are you feeling optimistic? caller: in terms of recovery of the housing market? host: uh-uh. caller: well, i believe lit rerecover but i believe the last thing that's -- will be the housing market and probably that's -- [inaudible] host: that's william from irving, texas. i appreciate it. one other thing that we noted this morning in the headlines is the secret service prostitution scandal that's made all sorts of headlines this week. three more agents have been ousted. here's a story from the "washington post" today. -- the scandal continue to mount as the u.s. secret service forces out three more employees as mark sullivan gave his first briefing on the alleged misconduct of those in charge

with protecting him. -- host: so that's the secret service scandal. and one other handle today from the "financial times". a story about whether the scandal has hurt people's faith in governments. -- in the u.s. government. the scandal involving the u.s. secret service agents has run in parallel with revelations of overspend big the property agency and further corroding public respect for the country's governing institutions. that's from the "financial times" today. the daily parade of details of

incompetence and inproprietary among washington agencies -- host: so in just a couple of minutes we have left, i want to hear a little bit of the housing market in your area. let's go to jesse, a homeowner in pennsylvania. good morning, jesse. caller: nice to speak to you this morning. one thing is -- hello? host: yes, go ahead, jesse. we're here. caller: ok. thanks for letting me talk. one thing in my area here, just like the gentleman called from ohio, i mean, house are being boarded up. it's nothing going on here in my

area here. it's just no jobs. like one thing that people -- obama -- a lot of them are being forced out of their homes because of property taxes. we went three years about getting cost of living raised and the older people pass on and like the grand kids or kids don't have jobs to keep these homes. it's devastating. and like all this money that we wasted in other places you and new york city obama, i just have to hold my nose and vote for him. he hasn't been impressing me from him. all i hear is talk and talk. if he don't start paying attention, he's going to lose them. host: jesse from michigan, thanks for the call. reality track has some

statistics of the march and the march 2012 foreclosure map. michigan, 9,262 fore closed properties, which equals one in every 489 housing units. one more article i want to point out for you talking about the president's agenda for next week. this from "the new york daily news" this morning. president obama's begun a push for congress to freeze interest rates on certain student loans and election move aimed at appealing to middle income and young voters. under current law, interest rates of stafford loans are scheduled to increase to 8.6% on july 1. the president propose congress ask to lock in the current rates in his fiscal 2013 budget. the congressional budget office estimates it would cost $1 billion.

he will re-emphasize his pitch in front of college campuses in north carolina, iowa, and colorado this coming week. he will also make appearances on nbc's late night with i didn't meany fallon to reach a wider audience of young voters. up next, we've got tom schatts joins us to discuss the 2012 pig book put out by citizens to talk about government ways. and now, a look at president obama looking at the wounded soldiers. this marks the sixth annual soldier ride that haze taken place to the white house. >> today, there are soldier rides all across the country. they serve as a reminder that all of us can do our part to serve the men and women who serve us and i'm glad so see

you're all decked out with stars and stripes because i want anybody to go by this ride to know that they're in the presence of heroes. i first met a hospital third class max rome when he was in the hospital in fallujah that cost him his life. and plax admit. he was in pretty rough shape at the time. but the next time i saw him at a dinner that we hosted here recently for iraq war veterans, max gained 40 pounds and was training for the upcoming wounded warrior games. i offered him two difference after he finished the first one kind of quick and he readily accepted. after he finished the first dessert kind of quick, i offered him another one and he accepted that one too. it is positive i'm sure anyone has ever eaten in the white house. [laughter] and now he's ready to ride. we've also got captain leslie

smith here today. leslie lost her leg and her eyesight after serving in boss in a ya and this is her first time back on a bike. she's going to be riding if tan depem alongside megan who works with the wounded warriors project. and then there are the shy brothers, eric and devin. when eric enlisted in the army, devin said he would finish whatever his brother started. and during the second fourth iraq, eric was injured. and how the two brothers ride a special made tandem bike with devin leading the way. we are proud of you. your country is proud of you. and now, i'm going to see how you guys do taking some laps around the south lawn. but you've got to do it on the horn. i don't want anybody cheating. [laughter] all right. on your mark, get set,

[horn] . [applause] ♪ >> "washington journal" continues. host: it's been over a year now since congress voluntarily imposed a ban on the practice of appropriations earmarks. we're joined by tom schatz whose groups citizens against government waste has been tracking pork barrel spending for over 20 years now. mr. schatz, how well did congress teach to its pledge? >> since against government waste has a different definition in our view, $3.3 billion in earmarks which is the lowest since 1992 also the lowest

number, $152 we've ever had since the first pig -- >> 152 individual? >> yes. this is a great progress. we think some of these violated the moratorium but we'll let them argue about whether that's true or not but wherever we are, we're way, way down from the last time that we had a pig book which was two years ago. there's -- there are also efforts to get a permanent ban on earmarks. and that's really the solution. a moratorium is not the limitation, it's simply a suspension and our concern is what happens after the next election. host: and we're going to show you some of those top line numbers that citizens against government waste came up with. 2012 as mr. schatz said, 3.3 billion in earmarks that they found. in 2010, there are $16.5 billion in earmarks. we're going to go back to the standard lines here for your

thoughts on congressional pork barrel spending. give us a call on the republican line if you want to chat about this. 202-737-0002. on the democratic line, 202-737-0001. on the independent line, 202-628-0205. mr. schatz, the obvious question is if there's been a ban on earmarks, how did congress get these $3.3 billion through? guest: well, they added money to the president's request. there were some where there was no budget request. their definition says any money to a specific entity in a state or a district and we certainly have some examples of those. the chicago sanitary dispersele barrier, ship barrier, that's in one place. wasn't requested by the administration. and some of them were added by the senate.

i think some of them do violate their own rules. $3 million for something called the aquatic plan control. so there are no museums, bridges -- host: bridges to nowhere? guest: no buildings with the names of members on them so there are earmarks, no doubt, but they have done a much, much better job. and again, the real solution is let's get a permanent ban. there was an amendment by senator tom co-verne of oklahoma to get a permanent ban. he got 40 votes which is a lot more than he would have gotten two or three years ago but that means 59 senators who voted against it are probably the ones that want to restore earmarks and many comments have been made . they're always more interested the senate than in the house and we're not sure what's going to hap happen after november. they could come back and say let's reform it, refind it and

exempt defense and transportation. that's one of the defense we named mike rogers a republican our porker of the month. host: porker of the month if des moines yes. we do the porker every month. and he said that earmarks are necessary to get bills like the transportation bill passed. because you have to get earmarks in order to essentially buy votes. that's what his premise -- host: so if we're talking carrots and sticks, these could be the carrots at the leadership can offer their members to get them to vote? guest: that's right. but the 82 freshman republicans have no interest. they're interested in the cost so you've got the older members saying we have to do business as usual because that's the way to get legislation zphruff the newer members saying don't spend so much money. we don't care about whether we get a little project if your district. host: mike rogers also in one of the stories that it read seem to indicate that people are so

concerned about gridlock. here is a good way to push through some of that gridlock in congress is if we can get people to join in on votes by offering them certain things. your thoughts on his comments. guest: senator mccain who has been a leading the way for many years was at the press conference we held in tuesday with a lot of pigs and he said if we have to go back to bribing our own members to get legislation through, then that would be one of the worst things we could possibly do. because that's what the earmarks really are. you're giving someone a few million dollars of a project to vote for hundreds and hundreds of billons of dollars in other spending in a bill. and earmarks have always led to higher spending, particularly for members that are ordinarily conservative or fiscally conservative because they'll take this little piece of that pie and then vote for the bill that they might be opposed to without the earmark. host: i want to get a few comments in early here before we

go back through some of the more egregious examples that you found. jim is on the republican line from wellington, north carolina. good morning, jim. caller: good morning. i'm jim allen. i'm running for congress down here in north carolina. and i just want to say i think it's a crime against the american people. and i am astounded at the lack of knowledge from people down here in the fourth district concerning the situation with earmarks. if this were taken place in any private sector business, you would have the fibodeau all over them. and i'm very passionate about this. there are billons of dollars over the years in wasted -- you can add our wars up and other wasted situations that are being brought to the attention of the american public and in many

areas, these earmarks just dwarf so many things and we've got to get this message out. it's just thievery to we, the people. host: jim, would you -- you would then support a full ban on earmarks? not just the decision to forego for a limited amount of time? caller: yes, sir, i sure would. i co-sponsor day one any type of legislation that would ban earmarks permanently. host: who are you running against down there? caller: i'm running against a big earmark individual, actually, david price. if we get through the primary election here on may 8. guest: oh, you couldn't come in and you could co-sponsor the bill that's been introduced by representative jeff flake of arizona who as you probably know is now running for the senate. and there's a companion bill in the senate now by senator tomko burn. that's the bill that got 40 votes in favor of a permanent

ban including some democrats by the way, but lacking some republicans. so this is the first step. there will be more votes in the senate. and the house leadership which has opposed earmarks very strongly to bring host: talk about congressman price as he is running against him down there. has he been as big of an earmarker as jim says he is? guest: if i knew all members and senators by heart, i could answer the question. but people can go to our website and they can look up which member has had how many earmarks year by year and certainly for a question like that if somebody wanted to contact us we can find out. host: let's continue with the debate over earmarks and whether they're a good or bad thing.

that seems to go with the argument that rick santorum made during the republican primary. i just wand to point out an article from back in february that's from politico whenric santorum was getting hit for his earmarks when he was a senator. here's his quote. host: and he is where today? and it really was an issue. if he didn't have to bring up earmarks because when he was here nobody knew which members were getting the earmarks, but

transparency rules changed that. the constitutional issue has been going on for a long time. what they're fighting over is a very small part of the budget, never more than 1%, even lower than 1%. $29 billion was the high watermark on earmarks in 2006 coincidentally, really not, the year the republicans lost the majority in the house because they had gone from 7.8 billion in 1994 up to 29 billion. and people saw that as business as usual, that the republicans weren't serious about cutting spending and that was one of the many reasons they lost the majority. plus the fact that some of the members had gone to jail over earmarks. the constitution allows congress to appropriate money, period. the word earmarks does not appear. and the way that it works is after the 1974 budget act the president submits a budget, congress passes a budget resolution, they set general guidelines on how much money to spend. the earmarks are projects that are added sometimes without

authorization, sometimes they have nothing to do with the overall goal of the agency and they have a negative impact on the performance of those agencies. for example, the inspector general at the department of transportation issued a report in september 2007 that said the high priority replacement towers for the f.a.a. these are the towers that get planes in and out of airports were three years behind on the high priority list because members of congress kept earmarking. now, that's a public safety issue. just because somebody wants something back home doesn't mean that it's good for the country but they think it's good for their reelection but most cases it's not good for the country. let's go to tom on the republican line from florida. good morning. caller: good morning.

i have two questions. number one, just exactly is the procedure for getting an earmark on a bill? do you walk up to the majority leader or the sponsor of the bill? or the house speaker? and ask them, hey, i've got this earmark. can you put it on the bill? is that all there is to it? and my other question was, i'm from florida. there was a famous earmark, an off ramp on i-75 that was said to have been added to a bill that had already been passed by congress. whatever happened to that? was the guy, was it ever really established that the earmark did go on after the bill was already passed? and if so, in a legal way whatever happened to the person that did that? guest: the earmarks are added to the bills based on literally pieces of paper, forms that say

to the members we have $5 million for your district in the transportation bill. what would you like? and the lobbyists come in of course and they work through the members of congress to get these earmarks added to these bills. the same has been true for the appropriations committees over the years. but again, this year congress has said that they didn't have any earmarks in any of these appropriations bills and we can again have an argument over the definition but they didn't even send those forms out this year because they weren't having earmarks. the project you're referring to is, was coconut road which was near the exit on i-75 between two exits fairly close together. it was added by congressman done young of alaska not from florida. he was chairman of the transportation committee when that massive bill passed with the bridge to nowhere back in 2005. that provision was written in after the bill had gone through the house and senate.

a lot of things occur when papers get sent to the president. sometimes things get snuck in there that no one knows about. this was a good example. the local folks didn't want that particular project. and how congress had to literally pass the bill to repeal that provision and the money never got spend. a rare occasion where an earmark was literally taken out and congress pass it had bill to not spend the money. host: as we go to the next call we'll show you some of the top congressional pork that citizens against government waste found in the 2012 appropriations process. we'll go to orange, connecticut. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a bone to pick with you. i live in connecticut. we consistently receive between 67 to 73 cents on the dollar for every federal dollar spent. there is about nine states that always come in, new jersey,

california, and consequently where our projects are funded or not funded through states, which of course trickles down through local which of course i pay higher homeowner taxes, sales taxes and all of that to jauch set the money that we don't get from the federal government. consequently, you've got severe disparity at every tax level because we don't get earmarks. now, either i have very bad congress people or we have very bad lobbyists or there's a huge discrepancy not only in earmarks but also in ways and means the way it's appropriated. now, alaska gets over $2 for every dollar spent. arizona gets considerable. you can look yourself, sir. you're well aware of what i'm speaking of. all earmarks are bad.

guest: connecticut was never near the top of the list for earmarks. so if you wanted to complain to your senators and represents that's fine but they were never one of the top states for earmarks, period. just to get back to the transportation bill. when earmarks were included, there were many states that did not get a higher percentage than they would have without the earmarks. what they've done with the transportation bill in the house that's being kicked around and not passed yet is without the earmarks everyone gets about 95% back in terms of the taxes they put in. so the formula has been revised at least in transportation. i also know that connecticut gets a lot of money for deans. there are a lot of facilities up there. i don't recall all the numbers off the top of my head. i don't think any state gets that little back from their federal tax dollars. host: a few supporters of earmarks on twitter today.

fred on the republican line from maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. earmarks are definitely the problem. i was wondering if you could shed a little light, there's a project, new government building just built in hawaii and they put president obama's mother's name on that building. how does something like that happen? is this totally out of control or is there something we can do about this? zpwh guest: one of the things that has occurred is that members are no longer able to offer amendments if they were offering amendments with earmarks for any facility that has their name on it. that does not prevent them from naming buildings for other individuals. it's our view that no building should be named for any living elected official or family member until they have been deceased for some great length of time. that's a whole different level of concern about these really

walking taxpayer funded advertisements to reelect someone. and it's interesting that people are calling saying we want earmarks but earmarks were not even around until the 1980s. we survived without them. first highway bill in 1916 didn't have earmarks. it wasn't until president reagan vetoed a bill with only $1 billion in earmarks that they became more of an issue. that was in the late 19 0s. host: talk about this year's book one of the big projects i saw in there was $255 million for the m 1 abrams tank. something the pentagon didn't request money for. talk about some of the biggest pork that you saw this year. guest: $2 billion out of the 3.3 came through defense. defense has always been close to half of eerks and the pentagon is under tresmeds financial pressure, cuts in place. sec stration goes through the

budget control act cuts go through in january, hundreds of billions of dollars will be cut not to say defense should not be restrained and growth should be slower than it is, but at the same time members are adding some of these projects. the pentagon said we don't need to upgrade the m-1 until 2017 but the representative who states the parts are being made we need these jobs in michigan. so therefore i'm going to stick this money in. the other one in defense that caught our eye is the $120 million for alternative energy research. 40 million apiece for the navy, air force and army, and senator mccain had a hearing in march said this is a solindra like situation. $400 per gallon for 20,000 gallons of allergy based biofuel. and last year one of the members said you're the secretary of the navy not secretary of energy.

where it should be done not the pentagon. host: but like in past years you couldn't trace these back to the other guest: other than the east-west, it was the far more difficult to do that. what we found and what we have produced is a list of prior earmarks in these areas that members have attached their names to for the years where we had this kind of transparency. our concern is that since they're funding prior earmarks in many cases they will make phone calls and send letter and text messages or however they will do it to the agencies and say we added this $50 million to national guard counter drug program because we wanted it to go to the same states and districts that it did two years ago. host: let's go to michael on the democratic line. caller: good morning. my basic question is rather simple. being an old graduate from the

university of florida, and an a-plus economic student, we were always told in macro economics that the decreases of the money supply actually reduces the value of the money in the hands of the people that have it to spend. and i'm seeing a double sort of whammy here. the middle class obviously has less money to spend and what they do have is being inflated which of course -- well, i won't put words in your mouth but increasing the money supply is a terrible waste of the value of money held and money spent. but the basic problem is when you increase the money supply by trillions and trillions of paper funny money dollars, what does that really do to the spending power?

especially when the middle class has less and less of that funny money which is worth supposedly less? and the banks get free access to that. so that money supply increase -- host: we want to stick to the earmark conversation though. do you have a question? caller: basic value of money to be spent. thank you. host: we'll move right along to shirley, republican, from texas this morning. caller: yes. right here in texas last summer they announced that they're building a $100 million high-tech, six-lane bridge into the most desslat, the most dangerous part of texas. and that is 35 miles south east of el paso right into chihuahua state, right into the heart of the drug cartel. and not only that, on the

american side there's not even really a town there. there's a little community. but it's a very dangerous thing to i think for our security and nobody seems to question it. i called the gsa office in fort worth and they said it went through on an earmark in 2007 by sylvester raise and that's the only information i could get from them. i would like to drive down there and see who is building it. i know all the earmarks have to be built by davis bacon and texas is a right to work state so i don't know who got the jobs. but this is a very dangerous situation. host: an earmark you're familiar with? guest: not off the top of my head. certainly it could have been from the highway bill back in 2005. it sounds more likely that's where it was from. but there were a lot of bridges

to nowhere. the one in alaska is not the only one. there's one in south carolina and a other states also have these same problems. the problem with earmarks and those that have said that, is that the higher priorities are not addressed. the bridge that collapsed in minnesota several years ago should have been repaired immediately. and i recall after hurricane katrina and it was during the debate, senator coburn offered an amendment to take the money from those two bridges in alaska, $400 million and use it to help restore all of the areas that had been affect bid hurricane katrina. he only got 19 votes. so you can see how earmarks have got ingrained into the members' consciousness thinking we must do this. and it became corrupting over time. host: off twitter. go to jim on the independent

line. caller: well, first, i want to thank thomas for what he is doing because it's the first thing that i've seen go down. 80% down. it's something that we as americans are not we haven't seen over the years except for housing prices. so i want to thank thomas for that. and for you guys for c-span exposing this program to me. i'm on the web site to educate myself more on this process. so thanks for what you do. as far as i'm concerned you're an american hero. host: can you talk a little more about citizens against government waste and where you get your funding from and how long you've been doing this project? guest: the organization was created in 1974.

it was head bid j. peter grace and jack anderson. we've helped save taxpayers more than $1 trillion since 1984. we're funded by individuals and then foundations and corporations as well. so it's really a taxpayer-based operation. the pig book is certainly one of the primary publicications but we also publish prime cuts, we publish reports, defense contractor pensions was one of our most recent. we even look at cloud computing. host: and you've done this every year since 1991? guest: except for 2011 when the bills were passed in one big lump and it was very late in the year and there may have been earmarks but at that point the whole process had been kind of set aside. and it was difficult to even get through that. but this year, as i said, we had to look very closely using our criteria and we found 152.

we hope next year it will be zero. host: memphis, tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i'm calling concerning the [inaudible] that was happening in 2010. i'm not pointing fingers but i know that congressman and the white house both had something to do with it. in 2010, ok, i worked all my life. i've raised five children they've gone to college and everything. but economics has fallen since that time that caused me to go in, to cause me to be on disability. what is happening is i saw president obama give all of the

banks and all of the large car companies more money for them to get out of the hole when he wasn't -- when it seemed like he wasn't providing for the people any more. host: if you want to discuss the difference between earmarks and maybe some of the stimulus funds and some of these other programs. guest: overall spending is up 27% since 2008. so there's a large increase in spending. everyone knows deficits are a trillion dollars plus. it's really unsustainable. and two reports that came out from the government accountability office on duplication and overlap this year and last year analyses by senator coburn and sessions who is the ranking member of the budget committee show that you could save $400 billion a year -- $400 billion a year by eliminating all of that overlap and duplication. we've always maintain that you could cut at least 10% of

federal spending and that is about $400 billion just by eliminating the waste and duplication. now it's in writing from the g.a.o. which of course is congress' official investigative arm. we would like someone to take those recommendations, put them into legislation, and get some votes on eliminating the overlap. a good example there, in fact relates to the pig book, the pentagon has $5 million for something called the star base youth program to teach science, technology, engineering and math, or stem, program to at-risk youth. the problem with that, it's not the department of education, is that there are 209 stem programs costing $3 billion across 13 agencies in the federal government. 80 plus do exactly the same thing. and yet members of congress have created a new program instead of fixing others. we're still in the pack worldwide.

the answer in congress is let's create a new program rather than consolidating the 209 existing programs and find out which ones work. that's one of the big reasons why washington has gotten so big. host: independent line from new jersey. good morning. caller: good morning. and good morning and thank you for the work that you do. i do have a question though. in our -- in your efforts to sort of make the earmarksing process more transparent vrks we pushed earmarking into an actual sort of more secret way to get appropriations? do members of congress pressure agencies or cabinets that they either oversee or authorize spending to, to actually pump money into their districts in other ways that maybe aren't as transparent as an earmark? guest: that's a great question and we refer to that in our summary because in 2008 president bush had an executive ord anywhere january telling

the agencies that they must releases any contact from any members of congress directing them to spend money on an earmark. so it would be after the fact, after the appropriations bills are done. and that's why in this year's pig book we made sure that added kind of another layer, a screen that if you have an earmarks program from the past our concern is that members will start calling the agencies and getting them to put the money in their state or district without competition. president obama issued a memo in november of 2011 pretty much reiterating president bush's executive order but we send out for example freedom of information requests on stimulus spending asking about contacts from members of congress on the stimulus and we're still waiting for answer twoss to three years later. so the omb, office of management and budget, have to tell the agencies they must release this information and then we'll find out if they're sneaking around.

host: about five or ten minutes left here with mr. shats. talking about congressional pork barrel spending taking your calls. donna on the republican line from north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to thank your guest today for putting a microscope on the government spending. that's very much appreciated by the american taxpayer. i also wanted to touch on what a previous caller had mentioned about the monetary base and inflation. in a monetary policy meeting in march of this year, representative out of california address it had question about spending to ben bernanke, the head of the federal reserve. and he was asking him about all the spending. and of course ben bernanke did reply that he has to -- through money creation is how he has to accommodate the spending. most taxpayers know that when

there is money created this is an inflation tax on the american consumer and a silent tax that is not appropriated or anything like that. so when the consumers go into the grocery store and they're noticing the prices are going up, this is how this is getting paid for. so i think it is a very -- something that everyone should be taking a look at. i looked at my grocery bill and even though the federal reserve is saying that the inflation is only 2%, what i compared over the past 18 months with my receipts is i'm a house wife and a mom to two kids that my inflation rate has gone up almost 15% on regular foods i'm buying and gas as well and this is because money creation. host: something in your particular realm of monetary policy? guest: we look at the spending side and don't get too much in the federal reserve. less spending in washington does put money in people's pockets. host: the question from

twitter. can you talk about who is top and lower states are? guest: we had these state by state breakdowns, we had pork per capita. not in this year's book again because there's little identification of where the money is being spent. but west virginia, alaska, hea always came out in the top three. people with k go back to the website. they can find in the past where their states were on pork per capita. host: let's go to thomas on the democratic line from new york. caller: good morning. i first would like to thank c-span. it is a fascinating snapshot of what americans do and do not know about how their government works. my question has to do with the

continuing resolutions that support the ongoing construction that we have in highway infrastructure. it seems to me that without a new bill in place we are going to continue to struggle from year to year and how is it that earmarks work with respect to these continuing resolutions rather than having some highway trust fund bill in place like safetyu that extended for a number of years and funding being something that the states could count on in order to maintain what they had and build necessarily what they needed to for the future? guest: well there is of course a huge debate over the highway bill. the continuing extension of safety lu does not include earmarks and that was the argument we were discussing earlier with congressman mike

rogers who says we have to have earmarks to get the bill done. following the house bill was the funding mechanisms chrp things like the keystone pipeline and the alaska oil separate arguments of course. but the highway funding for a lot of the new members should be limited to what comes in through the gas tax and for other members a lot of this should be devolved back to the states so they can take care of roads that are not federal roads. and that's an argument that goes on. it's going to be a fight. i think thrale probably extend it past the election. host: you said the military bill is always the one with the most pork. where does the highway bill fit into? guest: the highway bill is an authorization so it doesn't appear in the book but transportation generally certainly had a lot of spending as well. housing and urban development, economic development initiative grants so they were really all over the place but defense has always been number one in the highest percentage. host: one more call in from

karen on the independent line from texas. gork. caller: good morning. i appreciate your take mig call. i would like to tell your guest that i do admire what he is doing and i give him kudos and just keep going on it because i believe that our government is completely out of control. i believe there should be a permanent ban from attaching earmarks to any bill like the military bill that president obama signed with 9,000 earmarks on it that i hope that more citizens will become outraged and do something with their vote to get some of these people out of office. i do believe also that anyone that uses earmarks and is bribed for their vote should not be in power or have any

authority. i think they should be voted out. and i do believe that if there are good earmarks that they should stand on their own and not be attached to any other bill. i believe they should be voted on independently. and i think that balancing our budget and the way our government is just spending everything -- it's so out of control that the people like myself and others who are struggling middle, lower class income people, we have to watch just about every penny that we spend and we have to balance our budget. and i keep my household in the black and i think our government should be held accountable to do the very same thing for us. that's their responsibility. host: in the time we have left here, i want to get your thoughts on we had a lot of headlines about the presidential race this morning in his time when he was a member of the senate where did

president obama rank on your pig book earmark list? guest: he certainly had some. and then he renounced them as he was running for president for him but then he agreed there should be a moratorium that he would not sign any bills that had earmarks. and we've got this definitional question but in their view they haven't done that and clearly in this race i don't think earmarks are going to be an issue. there may be individual members that keep talking about it for congress but obviously governor romney will not have earmarks and i don't think president obama will have them. i think he will continue to say he will veto any bills. host: but in that primary rick santorum said he sought earmarks. guest: we saw that first question with governor perry. so every governor has nothing to do with earmarks. they are solely requested by members of congress. what governor romney had done, he had sent a memo to his cabinet heads saying go to washington, get more money

which every governor does. but what he was talking about was in the formulas and grants that exist now trying to figure out how massachusetts might fit in. and that's again every governor does. but he can't literally go ask for an earmark or add it to a spending bill in washington. there's no capability for that. that hopefully has settled it. host: appreciate all the time and the pig book. guest: thank you very much. host: coming up next, a discussion with bob deans of the natural resources defense council and a discussion on the international monetary fund with douglas red the ker. the president and c.e.o. of the chamber of commerce talked about the 100 anniversary of the u.s. chamber. you can see the entire interview at 10:00 and 6:00. but here he grades president obama on his handling of the economy. >> well, first of all, you have to give the president a little bit of cover. he took over the economy at a

very difficult time. we had worked with president bush on the tarp funds and other issues but the first step out of the box for the president was to fail to get a stimulus bill out of the house. at that time, our view was without action by the united states, without regard to what the action was, that you were leading across the world to the possibility of a global depression. and that's when the chamber stepped in and helped him to get the stimulus package. which we all knew was going to have a lot of problems. so in the beginning you have to say he stepped in at a tough time. but i believe that the president's efforts to drive a health care bill that turns out to be extraordinarily expensive and with a great deal of new regulation, 258 new bureaucratic groups or whatever they're going to be, and then

to push very, very hard on a bill that he got out of the house but couldn't get out of the senate on the whole committee of the environmental side. and that bill if it had passed would have been an extraordinary problem for the economy and not the right thing to do. and there came a lot of regulation. now, the next issue wasn't the president's issue but the dodd-frank deal which was done in anger. it was done by people that were necessarily frustrated. and it will add $255 or $250-some mandated regulations and 188 suggested regulations. and if you go -- if you go back to look at other issues that we've done that had 15 regulations in it and take two or three years to do it. so you can imagine. and then finally there was a major effort to try and play to

the unions on card check and other issues which didn't work. and so what do i give him as a grade? as a new president, i give him a c plus. host: tomorrow is earth day and with that in mind we want to turn to the subject very much on the minds of the environmental community, fuel consumption. new trend data out is showing that $4 a gallon gasoline is resulting in lower fuel consumpions. and bob deans of the natural resource defense council joins us now. do you think the lower fuel scl sumption that we've seen is the beginning of a long-term change in america's usage or just a knee jerk reaction to current prices? guest: i certainly hope so because it's good for consumers if we can begin to reduce our consumption because that does have an impact on price wefment know that right now we're using 800 million gallons of oil

every single day in this country. that's enough to fill the empire state building three times. if the empire state building were our national fuel tank we would be pausing to refew every eight hours. that's how much fuel we use in this country. and about half of that oil goes to motor gasoline so to the extent that consumers are cutting back on their consumption, whether they're cutting back on their driving or not. and one of the exciting thing that is we've seen is that consumers now have more options than ever before. detroit has responded with some automobiles, the chevy cruise now gets 42 miles to the gallon. it starts at $16,000 new. so we're finally getting some affordability into high mileage option force consumers. that's very important. host: i want to point out an article from the "washington post" yesterday on that very same subject bringing up a lot of the points you talked about. $4 a gallon gas reinforces trend toward lower consumption.

this will be the third year in the past five with historically high oil prices even before the latest price spike gasoline consumption had dropped 6%. the federal highway administration adds that the number of vehicles miles driven or a 12-month period ending in january was lower than in any year since 2004. guest: that's real progress. when consumption is down 10% since about 2005, 2006, that's a significant drop. and americans i think have begun to understand certainly the american car industry understands that gas prices are not going to get a whole lot lower. they've been fluctuating in

that range for quite some time now. and china was not importing oil not that long ago. now they're a huge and growing oil importer. ippedia. as these countries grow and are using more and more oil, that demand is driving up prices on the global oil market and americans understand that global oil prices are two thirds of the price of your gasoline. so when oil prices are $100, $120 a barrel, those gasoline prices are going up and there's not a whole lot we can do about it except use less gasoline. host: talking with bob deans. if you want to talk about rising gas prices, global energy policy, with mr. deens, give us a call. the numbers are on the bottom of your screen.

you're talking about the effects, what is actually affecting global gas prices. talk about the action that president obama took this week in terms of speculation. what speculation is and the action he took. guest: speculation of course is when investor bet on the price of a commodity, oil or anything else going up, and they can create a mentality which itself drives those prices up. and we have rules that address that kind of speculation to prevent undue harm to the economy. so the president is just insisting on dubbling down and making sure that those rules are enforced, that the practice being employed are scrutinized so that the consumer is not being harmed. it was a good move to make. pts have done it in the past. some people say that this is largely symbolic but it matters. host: so if this is more symbolic than anything else, what is the biggest factor on the price of people's gas?

guest: the biggest factor is the price of global oil. so what we're seing is demand rising from countries like china and india growing, and also nervousness in the market because of what's happening in the middle east and also with respect to iran. as the sanctions that the world has put in place to try to urge iran to step back from what we believe is an attempt to build a nuclear weapon, as those have begun to bite markets have reflected a little bit of nervousness and that is helping to keep the prices up as well. host: so this political debate, everyone sort of agree that is finding ways to bring down gas prices is the proper role of government. but there seems to be a little more debate about the role of government when it comes to lowering consumption. what does the government, what is the government's role you think in terms of conshumpletion policies? guest: i think it's the same role that our government has assumed throughout our country's history. the government is basically the way we organize ourselves around national goals so that we can pull together resources

to attain those goals. we've done that whether it was building the canals and railroads that first knit this country together, we did it for world war ii. that's how we put a man on the moon. we need to recognize that the energy future is kind of the apollo project of our time. so we need to invest in the kinds of automobiles thator going give us more options whether that's electric, hybrid, higher mileage engines, low sulfur diesel. natural gas, there's a range of options. and as consumerers have those choices and are able to pick those cars that match their requirements, then we can move in the direction of continuing to reduce our reliance on oil. host: when we're seeing this trend of higher prices, lowering the amount of consumption, republicans have said that the obama administration actually wants higher gas prices as part of their policy and they point to a statement made by energy secretary steven chu before he

became energy secretary. his quote was in the "wall street journal" was somehow we have to figure out how to boost the prices of gasoline to the levels in europe. he has since walked back from that quote. but talk about the debate is this something that the obama administration wants in terms of high gas prices to bring down consumption? guest: absolutely not. i think what the administration has been doing has been to open up opportunities for exploration and development of oil and gas in this country to levels that we haven't seen in decades. we drilled 23,000 new oil wels in this country last year alone. very few people understand that. that was a higher record of drilling than we've had going back to the mid 190s, that was more than we had under george bush, it was more under clinton, more under george h.w. bush. host: how do you feel about that? guest: how we feel is the drilling needs to be managed in a responsible way and that has not always been the case. that is why communities across this country are terrified by

some of this hydraulic fracturing or fracking because in many cases it's been done in an irresponsible way that has put ground water to risk, wild life at risk and it has put all kinds of farm lands, crop lands at risk. and so people are terrified by this fracking. what we need to do is three things basically. we need to protect our communities and our air and our water. we need to take certain very specific places off the map completely for fracking like important water shed areas like the mountains outside of new york city for example. and we finally need to keep our eye on the prize with respect to our energy future. we're not going to be able to go back to a 21st century fossil fuel model in the 20th century. we need to keep moving forward with investments in energy efficiency and wind solar and other forms of renewable energy. host: before we take a few calls i want to get your response. we talked about the president's proposal to regulate the oil market and crack down on speculators.

i want to give house speaker john boehner's response to that proposal earlier this week. guest: yesterday's gimmick was this new focus on oil manipulation even though the white house can't produce one slid of evidence that this manipulation is take plation. and if they thought it was taking place, they have the tools and the laws already in place to go after it. so here's the president using the rose garden for an announcement on tackling a problem that they have no shred of evidence even exists. host: does john boehner have a point? guest: well, the speaker has a political point. he certainly does. but it's not a gimmick. it's a law. and enforcing that law is important for the president of the united states who is after all our chief magistrate, our nation's highest law enforcer to send a strong signal. other presidents have done the same thing when oil prices have gotten high. and we don't want market

manipulation, speculation to make matters worse than they are. but the speaker is right. if there's evidence of wrongdoing we have the tools to put in place to prosecute that wrongdoing and i think the president was sending the message that's what he intends to do. host: let's go to a few phone calls. mark on the democratic line waiting to talk. caller: good morning. i was calling, i commend you on your work with nrdc. great organization. real quick. i want to outline a few points. back in the 199, don henlly had a song out called the end of the innocence and one of the great lines from that song is finding a place where we can go still untouched by man. and this is what i wanted to touch on. i am a fly fisherman and these, all these republicans are saying drill, drill, drill. and what nobody says is, they

don't realize what a great therapeutic effect it has when you can go somewhere and fly fish and enjoy nature and not have to listen to a drilling rig or see trucks on these roads that they're building in our forests and doing things like this. host: how concerned are you about gas prices? is that something that you're concerned at all about? guest: that's what i wanteded to get into. i'm very concerned about gas prices. the thing is though the gas market right now is not, if you look at supply and demand, we have a supply of oil right now. and the thing is, if the market was working, simple economics, the more supply the price should be do you know. that's not working right now. so it's manipulation and speculation. guest: well thanks for calling

in. i used to fly fishing myself and i think it's great to be fly fishing in the buck aye state. appreciate your call. and as you know, ohio does have a lot of this shale oil and gas that we've been talking about earlier and ohio is grappling with the fracking issue. and it is a threat if it's not managed in a responsible way it can be a threat to exactly the kind of waterways you're talking about enjoying. but i think it's important for americans to be able to connect the dots here. drill baby drill. we have more oil wells in this country operating today than there are in every other country around the world. in fact, 56% of all the oil wells operating in the world today are in the united states. because we've been at it for a century and we're very, very good at it. and we drilling 23,000 new oil wels just last year alone. so drill baby drill, we've been doing that. we've been doing it for a century it can only take us so far and here's why.

we have about 3% of the world's known oil reserves. about 3%. every single day, we are consuming 20% of the oil that's produced in the world. that's simple math. those numbers don't work. so we have to continue to have a balance of mixed program that reduces our reliance on oil, increases our use of alternative energy fuels that are out there which is what we're talking about earlier whether it's a mix of electric cars, better, more efficient combugs cars, low sulfur deesle these kinds of things in addition to mass transit, bike paths, to driving. so i appreciate your reference to the don henlly sonk and i'm going to go home and listen to the last resort. host: on twitter. guest: i appreciate the

comment. electric cars don't work for everybody. certainly. and electricity, 40% of our electricity does come from coal, another 20% from nuclear. and we are getting a growing amount of our electricity from wind. wind has been responsible for about 35% of our new electricity growth in recent years. that's important to remember but here's the magic of an electric car. for those people to whom it will work. when i get into my internal combugs driven 12-year-old chrysler mini van, about 8 gallons out of every 10 are wasted. here's why. 65% of the energy is lost due to the inefficiency of the internal combugs engine. the rest is lost because my engine is idling, burning gas when i'm at a stop sign, a stoplight. go into an electric car the economics flip. about 70% of the energy going into that electric motor is actually used to move that car forward. about 70% of the energy is used

to move the car forward in an electric car. only 20% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline pushes an internal combugs car forward. that's a big difference. that's why electric is so efficient and why it makes sense for those people who can drive them and who can afford them. right now they're expensive. the prices are coming down. we need to keep at it. that's part of this national investment i was talking about and part of the billions of dollars that's being invested in our industrial heartland to develop the next generation of battery technology. so that we can continue to power electric cars better and further. host: let's go to new river valley, virginia. democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to bring up a couple of points speaking of wasted gas. one would be a website that brian lam used to promote, the cost of war.com. i'm wondering what we pay in raw dollars for every gallon of

gas that's used over there in afghanistan and what we pay in terms of carbon footprint. and what we cowlingd do with that money to construct an infrastructure here to support a renewable energy source. i understand we need a new grid to connect the wind farms to hone homes. so i imagine we probably could have strung one around the country several times by now for the $1 trillion plus dollars that we've spent in the last ten years. but just on the issue of gas, getting that gas into afghanistan, what's that run? guest: well, it's a great question. and the new river valley is one of the most beautiful parts of our country i went to school out there in radford for a while and was driving near there just yesterday. the main price that we pay for putting fuel into afghanistan or iraq or anywhere else is the risk to our men and women who are in harm's way when we have to convoy that fuel through

dangerous terrain and expose them to roadside bombs and other threats. that's the main price that we pay. by the time you pay to fly in and truck in and ship in that fuel, i couldn't tell you what it is per gallon. but it's important to note that this is part of the hidden cost of oil and gasoline as a subset of that here in this country. because we have to pay to deploy american men and women all around the world in the deep water navy to protect our shipping lanes, to protect our oil splice, to protect the middle east. and this is a huge cost that the american taxpayer bears that is not reflected fully in the price of our gasoline and never has been. host: let's go to the republican line now. marcus from pensacola, florida. caller: good morning, gentlemen. i own a 1981 volkswagon rabbit diesel. i get 56 miles per gallon on the highway. now, this is a 31-year-old car.

and you would think that in 31 years that our technology would be able to take that gallon of diesel and extend it to 100 miles to a gallon. there's a lot of questions here that the general public -- we don't get answers to. my question to you is that in reference to the large pocket of oil that lies beneath the dakotas up here why is canada tapping the north end of this pool of oil and we're just sitting on our end of it? guest: thanks a lot. first, i really appreciate your point about the 56 mile per gallon diesel fueled rabbit. that's an amazing number for a car 0 years old. and what's -- 30 years old. what's important to remember the cars on the highway are getting something like 23 miles to the gallon, which is very close to where we were 20 years

ago. it's maybe two miles per gallon above where we were. we've lost two decades in this quest to get more for less from our automobiles. and what the president recently did was reached and agreem with the auto manufacturers to reach a goal that our fleet average would be 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. now, that's an important goal. and if we can move toward that we can reduce our oil consumption in this country by several million barrels a day. that's important. it's important to our security, it's important to our economy, it will be important to the health of our children. now, with respect to the balken shale formation you mentioned its straddles the canadian border with the dakotas and it has a lot of oil in it. and believe you me if you go out there to north dakota you will see that they are drilling the daylights out of that shale getting a lot of oil out of the it. north dakota has become wup of our largest oil producing states and the canadians are

drilling on their side as well. host: let's talk about another place where the canadians are drilling the deposits in alberta that has led to the debate over the keystone xl pipeline. what's the natural resource's defense council's position? guest: that it's a disaster for the country. it's in in our natural interest for three reasons. number one those oil sands being developed are in the heart of the boral forest which is one of the last great wild places anywhere in the world. that needs to be protected, not destroyed. this oil that comes out of these tar sands is the dirtiest oil in the planet. that has been verified independently by government sources and to take that dirtiest oil on the planet and then dig a ditch across our country all the way to the gulf of mexico, and pipe it across the great plains of america, the bread basket of this country, exposing aquifers, important water sources in

nebraska, in our great plains, an area where we have 250,000 ranches and farms to expose that to the kind of destruction we've seen from oil blowouts in the gulf, from pipeline disasters on the river in michigan, on the yellowstone river and elsewhere across this crountry is not in our interest. it's only in the interest of the big oil companies. host: but they would argue that there's a lot of jobs that could be created through all this digging that you're talking about and pipeline laying. guest: the problem with that is there's not a lot of hide ro static welding testers sitting around in nebraska look forg work. this is specialized work for a couple thousand people for a couple of years and then those jobs go away. the company has said itself that there will be maybe a couple hundred permanent jobs manning pumping stations once this is all done. it's not a job creator for this country it threatance the real jobs in that region, which is the people that work on the

ratches and farms in our great plains. host: has transcanada worked with some of your concerns? they proposed a work around one of those aquifer that is you're referring to out in nebraska when we've actually got the proposed corridor here on this chart, the green line is what they newly proposed and i believe this is just this past week the original one ran through the sand hills. guest: the problem we have with that is the, what the company is proposing is that we expedite the environmental review of that plan in a way that would make it so we're not quite sure whether it actually goes around the aquifer completely or around the sand hills another environmentally sensitive part of nebraska. there are people out in nebraska some indiginous farmers, ranchers, and others who are very skeptical about that route. they're not convinced it gets

around the sand hills and they want more information and more studies required. host: let's go to the plirn line. thanks for waiting. caller: my pleasure. first, i would like to say i've been watching c-span now for over a year. honestly you're probably one of the most informed people that i've heard on this show. and i really appreciate that. you haven't skirt around any issues. so i don't think you or your organization has any political motivation and i appreciate your honesty. i have got three little things here. first of all, i want to say fracking is a horrible thing. we can't control that. how much fuel does the government itself burn? now why i say that, i went on line trying to get individual statistics. and i saw it with my police department. i wanted to know how much gasoline i'm watching the police drive around in their cars policing the communities, running their air conditioning

24/7. i'm kind of curious if you had any idea how much individual municipalities and how much does our government motor cadse -- how much of that is actually used and wasted. guest: well, thanks george so much for the call. the pentagon of course is the largest oil consumer in the world. it consumes roughly 10% of our national oifment and the pentagon has been doing a lot of cutting-edge work to try to reduce its oil consumption. in fact, navy secretary has set as a goal that by 2025, sometime in the 2020s, that the navy will be using oil for only half of its fueling needs. and when you think of the ships we have around the world, you think of the navy erik we have, the hornets off the air craft

carriers, that will make a huge contributions but the navy is experimenting with all fuels and on its ships and planes and motor vehicles. the rest of the pentagon has buildings and let's remember all the basis that -- bases that we operate around the country and as well as new type offense renewable fuels and different types of vehicle operations that that the pentagon can reduce the oil consumption. as to what the rest of our government is doing, it's vital that we take a look at that because that's where the savings are for us. host: george brought up the political actions in our d.c. you guys do have a political arm, right? guest: correct. host: have you endorsed? guest: our fundamental belief is this. safeguarding the environment is

bipartisan work. no single party has ever been able to get this job done alone. we have a long history of bipartisanship on environmental safeguards on protecting our health. it goes back to teddy roosevelt, the greatest conservationist in the american history eisenhower created the arctic wildlife reserve. comes up through ronald reagan, he got the lead out of our gasoline. george h.w. bush who got rid of acid rain. we want to point out the fact that the congress, since the republicans took off congress, the house of representatives has waged the worst campaign against environmental safeguards. now, this is a radical departure from the party's own history.

i don't think there's any evidence to suggest that it's in true -- like independents and looking into our future. and so the party seems to be gotten out of step wits own here. it's out of step with what the american people want. host: and i was reading your book and it's entitled "reckless" that the argument that the republicans make is a lot of the policies that you're critical of was for job creation at a time when they're trying to spur the u.s. economy out of its deepest recessions since the great depression. guest: it's not about jobs. it's about profits for corporate polluters who spend hundreds of mps of dollars to pay for lobbyist zposs pump up the campaign coughers up on still. -- capitol hill. the way we create job is invest in our future. the bureau of labor statistics, the most authoritative source

for over a century in this country came out and said we have 3.1 million americans who suit up every single day and go to work helping to build the next generation of energy efficient cars, homes, and workplaces, helping to make our homes more efficient, helping to invest in new battery technologies, new automobiles, new kinds of wind power, wind turbines are ploying 100,000 americans in this country. 100,000 workers work on putting solar panels in all 50 states. that's 2.4% of our workforce. and these jobs have grown during hard times. globally, these clean energy is going to be a $3 trillion market. host: how much does your book zpweet the picking of the winners and losers that

republicans are concerned ann especially in the wake of -- concerned about especially insulin dra. -- cilindra? guest: that industry grew 70% because of the price of the solar has fallen. it's not about picking winners and losers. it's about equiping american workers for success in a global marketplace where $3 trillion. we need our peep to be out there -- people to be out there winning and succeeding. host: back to the phones. larry is a democrat from tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to -- the supply and demand aspect of the conversation about the price of gasoline, i would like to focus on the supply end of it, where i

believe -- it's my belief that we have plenty of holes in the united states to get oil out. there's plenty available. my concern is we can't burn that oil until it goes through our refinery. and these refineries are -- the operation of -- control of these refibrosis are in the hands of the oil company. when they restrict and i've seen this happen, restrict these -- the production of these refineries by shutting them down , it increases the price of gasoline. and that is where the problem lies. it's not the hoes in the -- on the ground, it's the hoes out of the refineries. host: bob deans? guest: thanks for the call from

the bluegrass stachte it's greet hear from you. our 16-year-old daughter is in nashville and hope she's having a good time and sure she is. refineries from time to time have imposed restrictions on our ability to meet the darkt demands for gasoline but they typically run somewhere between 89-9 0% capacity. in the last couple of years, we have been exporting a great deal of refind product that has back major u.s. export. we have had a little bit of excess compass advertisement but you're right. at some point, refining capacity can a limiting factor. it doesn't afear be right now. host: let's go groonled forks, north dakota. mark is on the republican line. caller: i believe with the guest's comments about speculating oil prices. look back at the 2008, the oil

was about $150 barrel and it dropped down to below $40 to $38 with an few months because $70 billion and even more of that of speculative money came out of the oil markets in just a few months. i don't believe obama is doing anything about it. v.p. have one of their executives and these big oil companies are monopolized the quote-unquote clean energy industry so obama wants oil prices up. he wants to divert oil to places like communist china where they're building our solar panels and you can find much more information about this at my website standupforyourrights.

guest: in 2008, when we paid record oil prices in 2008s, american families were forced to play -- 4 when exxon made $40 billion that year, the most profit. this year we know that the big oil companies have made $137 billion in profits in just this past year. so your point is well taken. the one of the things the president is trying to do is to eliminate the $4 billion a year subsidy that american taxpayers are providing to these oil companies and most americans are left pretty breathless when they stop and think these industry that made $137 billion in profits is getting a $4 billion handout from a hard-working american taxpayer who are struggling to pay the mortgage, struggling to keep that senior in a health care facility. that's just wrong. and the sooner that subsidy

ends, the better. host: addison is an independent from forth royal, virginia, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. you're on with bob deans. caller: thanks for taking my call. i agree with the previous caller. and in short, the problem is greed. if the greed doesn't go away, the problem won't go away. that is all i have to say. host: thanks, addison. let's go to sy on the republican line from plain view, new york. good morning. caller: good morning. i'd like to know why since gas is so abundant in this country, natural gas, why we don't have flex fuel vehicles man dated -- mandated, why we cannot run cars on natural gas, but the obvious reason is because it's so cheap that the oil companies choose to have a fuel that's high-priced rather than one's cheap and

abundant and it's also the aspect of why we can't have hybrid diesels which probably could get 80 miles a gallon. it seems to me that by now, we should have been able to develop filters that can filter out all the nocuous chemistry. so i'd like your comment. guest: thanks. i think you're right and to a large extent, what we have seen is that particularly in large fleets, trucks, and fleets for commercial operations, natural gas can make a whole lot of sense. we don't have in place an structure of natural gas fueling consumption that would serve consumer needs but fleets can use natural gas. and natural gas prices have come down. we're in a period of high supply of natural gas and it's important that we continue to invest in a mix of energy sources that have diversified, that gives us a choice to use some of these to take advantage of the natural gas prices.

hybrid diesels are another area where there is, as you say, a lot of potential. and electric cars immediate to be part of the -- need to be a part of the mix as well. this is the industrial heartland that helped us win world war ii. and we can retool right now just like we did then and produce the energy efficient vehicles of torment we can produce a car that is safe to operate, economical to own and we'll get an honest 60 miles to the gallon of gunshot lean or even more with deals. that's where we need to invest that way as a nation. host: real quick, take us through the history of the natural resource defense council. guest: we came from a collection

of lawyers. john adams and some others at a time when there was no environmental law. and we took a page out of the civil rights movement and did what the civil rights leaders was doing was to look at the kind of law that we did have and see if we could help clean up our air and our water. we also then advocated for the kind of foundationle safeguards that we were able to pull together through democrats and republicans working together. and we basically do three things, john. we tell the truth about what's happening to our environment. and we hold people to account we courts in our lazarus to hold leaders with account. host: and what's your yearly budget? guest: our yearly budget is not something that i'm familiar with because it's a development issue. i just don't know what it is. host: let's go to carter who's been waiting on the independent line from maryland. good morning. caller: good morning.

i thank c-span for all that they do. mr. deans, my question is you referred earlier to the consumption of oil to automobiles and i think you said 50%. my question is how much do we consume to make oils to make plastics and for agriculture and those types of sources? guest: it's quite a bit. it's not a small number. and you're right. about half of our oil goes to motor gasoline and the rest goes for diesel fuel for trucks, a lot of it goes a you say, for the petrol chemicals industry which creates plastic and all manners of things that we use every day in our lives and a little bit is burned to make electricity. but that is where it's going. some of it ends up on our roads as asphalt, tar, the kind of thing that we're pulling out of the tar sands in alberta. and so all of that is a piece of

the pie. host: bob deans in the minute and a half we have left here. yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the oil spill in the gulf of mexico. take us through how you think the nation's energy policy has changed over two years since then. guest: not enough us the -- is the answer. that treasure tragedy which we lost 11 workers out on the deep water horizon, we had 180 million gallons of toxic crude oil dumped in the gulf of mexico. thousands of watermen were thrown out of work. thousands of people in the hospitality industry and thousands of people in the oil industry was thrown out of work because of that disaster. and what we needed to do at that moment was to rally ourselves and say we're going put in place the strength and safeguards to make sure nothing like this ever happens again in the gulf of mexico or in the arctic or anywhere else. we haven't done that. congress two years later has failed to pass a single piece of legislation to make it safer. that's inexcusable. it's an outrage.

the administration has taken some important measures. the industry has taken some measures but it needs to go further. we need to learn a lesson from this. we are getting 1.6 million barrels every day from oil in the gulf of mexico. we need to reduce our lines on that oil so we don't have to be going to riskier more dangerous waters. host: bob deans of the natural resource defense council, thank you for joining us. guest: thank you. host: up next, we'll be joined by douglas rediker at the look at the international monetary fund. >> we're going to be going to birmingham, alabama, to visit with talia moore, an eighth grader at john herbert phillips academy. good morning, talia. >> good morning. >> why did you choose to focus

on the first amendment as a topic of your documentary? >> well, as a birmingham native, i thought it would be great to delve with my history and what better great for the civil rights movement. it was a hot bed. >> what role did the first amendment have in the history of birmingham? >> my first place was killing gram park. it was known as west park before that and that was where d.j. was held when all the african-american school boards and school girls left out of their classrooms to go and march for their freedom. >> how did the different sides utilize the first amendment? >> well in terms of the foot soldiers, they really, really, really used the freedom of speech when they transient while they marched and they helped dr. martin luther kick. i think that he really wanted to see the world in a better place and he thought that the speech and religion and government help us. >> what about the other side? >> will connor, for example, he was the birmingham health

commissioner back during the 1960's in the civil rights movement. he dumping laws that said there were boycotts and he said that african-americans shouldn't do this, they shouldn't do that and he use his first amendment rights. and he also petitions them saying that they shouldn't be able to have the same right as caucasian. >> how important do you think the first amendment was during the civil rights movement? >> i honestly believe that if the first amendment bhnt part of the bill of rights we wouldn't have civil rights voting act until 1965 or we wouldn't have the civil rights act of 1964. i think the first amendment truly is the best amendment there is in the constitution because it entitles us to our opinions. otherwise, we wouldn't know our differences, we wouldn't know what wouldn't be this or that and we wouldn't have creative ways or creative people and that's a great way for

innovation. people to delve into their own careers that they want to go forth. >> what was your favorite part about making this video? >> my favorite part -- [laughter] i think my absolute favorite part had to be running warned the cameras shooting video footage. it was very funny because we went to go shoot everything, i believe, on dr. martin luther king junior day which was back in january. and we were running around. we've got a lot of -- but i've been a bit of attention hog. and i really like that and i want to put as many people as i could in there whether they're bystanders or not. >> what would you like others to take away after watching your documentary? >> you can't take life for granted. you should go out and help the world. you should do to do what you can do to make the world a better place. you only have one life and you really need to live it to the fullest.

>> thanks, talia and congratulations again on your win. >> thank you. >> here's a portion of talia's video. >> in 1957, civil rights activists tried to enroll his daughters into school. clansmen were waiting nearby. he was beating with scommains brass knuckles. his attempt was crucial to the history of the school. it was later integrated and has become john herbert philipps academy k through eight. the principal of the cool, mr. mark sullivan without the efforts of the first amendment will not be in the will not be in the position he's in now. >> he tried to get his child into school because the brown vs. board of education did pass. he used the freedom of speech. all of those things are important because-so-that in our school because of the history that we have here. the children like yourself who are coming along, they are able to have the freedoms that many people in the past did not have. >> you can watch this video in

its entirety as well as all other winning entries on our website, student cam.org. -- studentcam.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: the fund is in the midst of the spring meeting in washington today. former i.m.f. board member douglas redi connection, r joins us now. give us a primer on who's in town and what's on the agenda today. guest: in the i.m.f. was established as part of the bret onwood institution. and the i.m.f. is really there as the global financial truth teller. that's been its job for the last 60-odd years. the world bank has much more of a develop mandate and the i.m.f. has stability mandate. it's largely the finance ministers and the central bank

governors of roughly every country commt world that come together for organizational they need fuel raise their hands and say aye to a legal procedure that has to take place every year and the other meetings are bilateral meetings, multi-lateral meetings that are extremely important whether people realize it or not to the global financial stability. whether it is the-your-crisis, the american economy, whether it is currencies, global imbalances, all the things that sort of often are considered to be highly technical. they really are important and the way you get everybody together is having these meetings. so once every spring and once ever fall, they all come together for the i.m.f. world bank annual and spring meetings. host: the big thing that's been on the agenda is this drive to raise more funds for the i.m.f.'s sort of emergency reserves. tell us a little bit about that. guest: we have to draw a distinction. the i.m.f., if you read the

language, a quota-based institution. what that really means is the institution is supposed to get its funding from its members, again, basically every country in the world, and they are supposed to sandribt return for that, they get votes. and i.m.f. jargon, that's called a quota. the u.s. is the largest contributor to the quota and the u.s. has the largest shoating -- voting share. the u.s. has veto over the decisions that the i.m.f. takes. that's a opportunity but it's also a problem. it's that problem because in in the political environment, the congress have decided the last quota reform which is simply an update of more resources and a shift in voting power amongst global nations, we have not chosen to rad i that yet. it has not happened yet. if you need more money, you've got time other ways to get that

money. so the debate that's been ongoing and that seeps to be culminating with today's headlines and yesterday's about a $400 plus billion increase is not traditional funding to the i.m.f. it is being done through credit lines, bilaterally although coordinate without the participation of the u.s. thus far watt that commiserate increase in voting rights and so that's where it gets very tricky. because the u.s. maintains a veto and the u.s. maintains the largest quota and they are not participating in the resource enenhancement and that's a tricky dilemma right now but the funds are coming in and they're going to come in through other means. host: i want to show you a clip here of christine. here's a picture of her from the "new york times" talking about these -- this increasing of the i.m.f. war chest. talking a little bit about how this process works as well. listen in. >> the i.m.f. does not receive donations.

ok? we receive loans. from members of the i.m.f. who become creditors. and we only draw on those loans if need be. so we don't receive donations. i wish we could but no, we don't. not in the articles. and at the time back in 2009, all members committed to -- well, many, many members, committed to increase their participation in the lending part of the i.m.f. and the united states of america, which is my leading member in terms of quotas and voices and governance and all the rest of it did participate like many others. host: that was christine lagarde, the i.m.f. chief talking about this process. 2k we want to hear from you

about the i.m.f. give us a call on the republican line, democrats line or independents line. if you're outside the u.s., 202-628-018 4. want to show the viewer one more clip of ms. lagarde why she wanted to raise some of these funds because of the dark clouds that on the horizon. here she is. >> looking at the world economic situation, it's obviously very diverse. and if i was to use weather analogy because we're all very fond of weather reports, we are seeing light recovery blowing in a spring wind, but we are also seeing some very dark clouds on the horizon. which is another way to tell you that there is a bit of a

recovery, timid, and a fragile situation with still high risks. host: so the headlines today are that they raised $430 billion towards this fundraising goal that we've been talking about. that's not though what the number that they were originally trying to reach, correct? guest: yeah. undeporl, the number was always supposed to be confidential. precisely because if you seat bar at a certain level and you come close and you don't reach it -- unfortunately, washington being what it is, numbers leak out and several months ago, a number was bandied about which was so far off where the i.m.f. board agreed to seek funding that the i.m.f. managing director had to go out and temper expectations. and at the time, she said they were trying to raise $600 billion which actually provides a funding capacity of $500

billion because there's a certain amount that has be held for credible reserve purpose. but they downsized that to $400 billion. one can argue because they didn't think they could get to the 600 or that was because the pressure offense the global economy at the time the 600 was put out there had abate a bit. 400 seemed like a prudent number. i think the reality is they deserve a lot of praise for getting the 430, especially without u.s. participation. that's a heavy lift. and they succeeded in doing so. but again, i don't think the viewers should focus on the fact that it was supposed to be 600 and now it's 400. the war chest has now been enhanced and that's the main number. host: why is the u.s. not participating at this time? guest: i think the u.s. position has been that we have participated in helping address the european crisis, largely

through the fed and opening up dollar swap lines last year which were enormously important. widely unreported, mind you but important in creating dollar liquidity in the european financial system at a time when that could have become a big problem so the u.s. position is we've already made our contribution. there's a second layer to that argument which is the u.s. believes this is primarily a european crisis and europe is not a poor set of countries. they're actually quite wealthy and the europeans ought to put up more of the funding themselves and take on the lion's share of trying to resolve the crisis themselves rather than relying on the international monetary fund to do so for them or with them. there's a lot of back and forth on that. but the lion's share of the argument really is in a political year, it is very sensitive to go to congress and ask for additional funding along the lines of $100 billion or so which is what the u.s. contributed in the last round. and the u.s. has made the

decision that via the fed, via the swap lines, we have given significantly in terms of contributing to this recovery or this rescue and that should be supplement i should point out that the $100 billion is not $100 billion. when as christine lagarde mentioned, when a country contributes to the i.m.f., it is not a donation. you contribute money to the i.m.f. in return for basically an interest bearing certificate back which means the u.s. has never lost money. in fact, the u.s. makes money on its contributions to the i.m.f. and because we do that, the $100 billion that we contributed several years ago was actually scored by congress at $5 billion and even that could be consider to the be a more conservative approach than is warranted. host: james is on the independent line from san bernadino, california. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you. i have heard that there's going

to be a coming crash of the dollar or the globalists are going to try to devalue the dollar. my question would be if that were true, would the i.m.f. be able to recognize this? and my second part would be would the i.m.f. will able to stop and it i'll take my question, sir. thank you. guest: first of all, there's a lot of alarmist rhetoric out there. the forces of evil that are seeking to undermine the dollar, i'm not sure who they are and there are a lot of people who scare monger about this for whatever reasons. i don't see it as being a viable possibility. the dollar remains the dominant currency in spite of the threats and the scare mongering over many, many years and decades about the threat to that privacy and we haven't seen but in resp question about whether the imf could do anything about it, they are supposed to be a

global financial truth teller which does mean the imf is supposed to get out there and warn of potential vulnerabilities. it's not supposed to be alarmist and wave big red flags about every potential risk to the global economy. that could be counter productive. in terms of the dollar, there are constant discussions at the imf both privately and publicly about what the role of the dollar is, what the imball answers are and what currencies are supposed to be the job of the imf is not to support a given currency. it is to warn of imball answers that could play out in the market. host: for those who may want to read more, in the "washington post" the recent column, why america won't go the way of europe. levts go to steven on the independent line from connecticut.

caller: thanks for let meg have my say. i agree that standard and poors made the wrong call on the dollar. it's the euro that i'm concerned about. i'm concerned whether, can the europeans hold? and if they can't hold can the core countries like germany, france, even the u.k., can they split from greece, the so-called pig countries, ireland, portugal, spain? can europe sustain a split? can they get through that? host: on the future of the euro zone. guest: well, for the last two years we have seen a lot of people lose a lot of money assuming that if you did a straight line trajectory, greece being the obvious one that the euro would collapse and the european union, would collapse along with it and they have been wrong. the europeans have had a very

successful, i would say, short-term policy response to many of the crises that have come before them in the european debt crisis. greece and the other countries. we by the way don't call it the pigs any more. nevertheless, these are countries that have some very significant financial problems and clearly greece went through one major restructuring and it's not out of the woods yet. but in terms of whether europe can hold together, they are doing a very good job in their own way. it may not be the way that we in america would like to see them address it. it is their way. it is slow, it is painful, it is consensus-driven with 27 countries sometimes and 17 another time and a whole bunch of process driven solutions that really aren't the most efficient way to get there but thus far we seen remarkable resilience in the european currency. the euro is still trading above

130 and fr those who bet against it they bet wrong. can the europeans -- can the euro and can the european union continue if a country leaves? there's no mechanism to leave the euro zone but there are those in the markets who believe particularly greece might have to do so. i don't see, especially with the lead time that we've seen so far, i don't see the european union at all at risk and i don't see the european currency at risk. host: on twitter. guest: well, the answer is no. but it's not supposed to be. so let's just be clear that the money going to the imf is not exclusively for any given region that was explicitly made in the statement in the commune kay issued yesterday. but it is -- and this is consistent with the u.s. position mind you that it is really primarily the europeans' money and the europeans' own

initiative that need to take the lead role in addressing the european crisis. the money that comes into the imf is largely there for the broad global systemic risk of a spillover of the european crisis. that doesn't mean it can't be used for europe. it just means it's not supposed to be used exclusively for europe and certainly not without regard to the other pools of money that are out there including that provided by the central bank and the union and other related entities itself. so 400 billion not enough to contain the crisis. it is not expected to be enough to contain the crisis. host: again talking with couglass red der former member of the imf. nominated by president obama and currently serves as chair of the world economic forum geopolitical risk global agenda council. and what does that do? >> well, known primarily for its annual event is a great

organization that is a lot of different subsets but the global agenda council are effectively the intellectual backbone of the world economic forum and there are 70 odd councils that put together papers and roundtables and conferences and provides the intellectual think tank aspect of the world economic forum and i'm privelidged enough to be chairing the risk council this year. host: we'll go back to florida. nelson on the republican line from cape coral. good morning. caller: good morning. i do see that i agree with one of the previous callers. what's happening with the imf and the real story behind it is that it is an attack on the u.s. dollars, the world currency reserve known as the petro dollar. there have been deals that have been brokered outside of the u.s. where other countries have decided to trade in oil without

using the u.s. dollar as the currency for it. and as a matter of fact, russia and china, certainly middle eastern countries, iran leading that aspect, brazil, they've participated in that against the wishes of, sometimes without the knowledge of the u.s. and since 2010, iran has speered that against the u.s. to broker some of these deals. and that is why this country is really probably going to get into war with iran. and not because of the nuclear aspect and what have you. but the way the system works, they don't get that out to the public. guest: well, where to begin on that. i think -- let's take a step back when we talk about currency and the u.s. dollar. the u.s. dollar trades on the foreign exchange market. that means it is exchanged against in other currency. so for many years our government has been badgering

and particularly the chinese to let their currency appreciate and there are a lot of benefits that are perceived to drive in this country if that were to happen. if another currency appreciate yates against the dollar by definition the dollar depreciates against it. so in fact some of the dynamic that the caller has just described which again i think widely overblown in terms of impact. but i think to some degree that is consistent with what has been at least one school of u.s. policy regarding the dollar, which is to let it weaken against other curns sis there by strengthening our exports and making our goods cheaper on the world market. so let's just be clear that a weaker u.s. dollar is not always a bad thing. we're not looking for a dramatic decline. a steady progression one way or another may or may not be appropriate for any given circumstance against any other given currency. in terms of pricing oil and iran's initiative, you're correct several years ago the iranians went out and said we

are not going to price our oil in u.s. dollars. the impact on global markets on that was zero. the iranians tried it. no one else bought in. i think that hugo chavez in venezuela tried to go along for a little bit. the market for oil is priced in u.s. dollars and iran is not going to be able to change that unelatly or even with a couple of helpful friends. host: let's go to kansas city, missouri. daniel on the democratic line. caller: i'm 24 years old. i'm an evangelical christian as well i would say before any political party. i think the most of my concerns is with the euro and wondering what percentage of the world is on the euro versus the dollar. and also, if -- especially i was hearing you say that basically all the funds that go to the imf are for euro.

and because i am an evangelical, i base my world view off of the scriptures and in revelations well we understand what the currency that's going on now and how the plight and the dark cloud on the horizon, just wondering, could -- the national bank currency to gow through the euro 20 years from now? also greece is the main place where revelation was wrote on the island. host: let's give him a chance. i think you misinterpreted some of what was talked about keerlier. riveragetsdz white the contrary to what i believe the caller suggested the funds going to the imf that have been disclosed or announced yesterday are not specifically for any given region in the world. they are for the broad use of the imf in its global financial stability mandate and other mandates the imf has.

so while europe is in fact right now the center of a lot of concern both of the imf and global financial markets, there is no allocation of those funds specifically for europe. and i can tell you that a lot of member countries that did just contribute made that very clear both in the contingencies of the conditions of when they were going to submit their commitments and made it clear it's not explicitly for europe. just to be clear on the euro itself, i keep saying this. with all of the bad thing that is have happened in europe over the past two years, the euro has declined in value less than 10%. it is still very strong by historical standards. and i don't see that being a -- that there's going to be a dramatic decline in the euro any time soon. i think you asked about a global financial currency. academics and pundits have been talking about that for years. it's not going to happen. it's not going to happen at the

imf. it's not going to happen in our lifetime. there's a lot of reasons why it's not going to happen. i would not be holding my breath for that. host: forms for justice on twitter adds his comments. let's go to randy on the republican line. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. as i was watching the show, i would just like to make the comment that the dollar is actually 738 grains of silver while the paper money we're using is actually federal reserve note. and that is in there is the problem of the currencies of the world and the debt-based monltry system. and we need to get rid of that or we're never going to solve nf of our problems. host: let's go to cape cod, massachusetts. mark is on the independent line. good morning. caller: thanks for outlining

the cause and effect for currency trade. and putting it out there to give people an idea, too. that when the currency does go down. also i'm reading on line it says that the u.s. isn't the only one against this $400 million war chest. i guess canada and mexico are also thinking about not funding it. if you could just comment on that. guest: it's not that the u.s. is against it. the u.s. has not agreed or committed to additional funds via this mechanism at this time. that's different than being against it. in terms of canada, yes, canada has also not agreed to increase its commitment at this point. i can't speak to what their motivation is or isn't but i'm sure that they have similar concerns to the u.s. in terms of making sure that europe takes the lead in the response that the imf is not used as an answer larry pool of money

unnecessarily. in terms of mexico i would have to check that. i'm pretty sure that mexico is going along with this although i can't speak with 100% currency. mexico currently holds the chair and the g-20 has been a very successful and instrumental organization in terms of husbanding these resources together and making sure that the announcement chris teen made yesterday was something that had some teeth behind it but again i would have to double check but i know the central bank governor of mexico relatively well and i think they are supporting this. host: a question on that subject in this fund raising from the daily news egypt had a story talking about the imf funds that we've been talking about being caught in the global power shift. the article notes that emerging markets countries like china brazil and russia are willing to provide more money for the imf but want something in return. greater voting power. did they get it in this

process? has the voting system been changed due to this fund raising drive? guest: no and that's why their commitments remain ambiguous. and many of these brick countries so called have said we'll discuss it in greater detail at the g-20 meeting in mexico in june. and that's in part because of the issue that you raise. i alluded before to quota which is the traditional way that countries put money into the imf and in return for that they get increased voice. if you do it through these bilateral credit lines you don't get an increased voice. and that has been a sticking point. there was a quota reform which was agreed to by the executive board about two years ago, 2010. and that needs to be ratified by a requisite number of member governments and parliaments and lors around the world, the u.s. being one of them. we have not yet done so. so there is a bit of a friction that's developed because although agreed it has not been

ratified by sufficient countries around the world to make it operatives. and a lot of these countries are saying you want more of our money but you refuse to give us even the voice you agreed to give us before. that's not fair. to give you a prime example. china which clearly is an important economic power in the world under the new quota would become the third largest vote at the imf. under the current one, they are not even in the top ten. host: let's go to michigan. james object independent line. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. i just have a couple of comments. i heard him say that the u.s. dollars, you know, if it's weak is sometimes a good thing. i work for it so i don't see it that way. another thing is i think they'll get whatever they want from the federal reserve and no one will ever know because they'll have to get sued to find out how much they actually get. host: when you say they are you talking about the imf?

caller: right. the federal reserve gave away $8 trillion. 70% of that went to foreign banks. and bloomberg news had to sue them to get that information. now, why do we have to go through court to get information where our money goes? host: james from michigan. if you have a comment on it. guest: the only thing i can say about that is i can say with 100% certainty the fed does not provide funding in the least in any way shape or form to the imf. host: we'll go to david on the democratic line from tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for having me. i wanted to ask you if -- well really, what's going on in the media where this switch has been made from referring to the european union as the euro zone? has the financial instability in europe led to sort of lack of cohesion amongst the european union? what is the reason for the nomen clay tur change i guess is what i'm trying to say?

guest: well, it's not a change. the european union is 27 countries that have come together to form this political union. it's not a political union the way the united states is in any way but it does have the european commission that represents the 27 countries on the broad political agenda where they have harmonized regulation and an agreement on borders and immigration and other international outward looking policies. the euro zone is 17 of those 27 that have agreed to a monetary union where they use the euro as a common currency. so the difference is the 17 form the euro zone. 27 form the european union. and what we're talking about in the european debt crisis is primarily about the euro and those euro zone countries. but obviously the impact is dramatic on the rest of the european union as well. host: appreciate the explanation. bob, independent from north carolina.

go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. you have very intellect tull, very understanding person about international mon exchange and banking. and britain, i just have a general comment. brenten woods was really when the world decided to go off the gold-based monetary that backed all the currency, especially our currency, to facilitate world trade. and actually, the paper money that we have in the world, whether it's the dollar or a yen or a ruble or anything else, is just a promise to pay. it's not really backed by anything. and the new currency, my opinion is the newer currency that is worldwide is gold. and it's been a traditional medium exchange for thousands of years and i think the base

of this exchange is about 1600. and you will see that gold will probably not fall too far from 16 for the foreseeable future if you would like to pay attention to something like that. host: do you want to take a stab at the gold market? guest: i don't, actually but i will throw my voice in very quickly. i'm not going to predict whether gold goes up or down but just to clarify what the caller said. the brenten woods agreements, which established the imp mf and the world bank in the 1944 did not have curnssizz go off the gold standard. quite the contrary it was actually the nixon administration in this country in 1973 i believe that took the u.s. dollar off the gold standard prior to that one of the imf major mandates was to ensure how that connection between currency and gold was maintained. in 197 , we moved on to the fee yat currency universe that we are in today.

and again, i'm not going into whether gold standards were or were not the appropriate thing at any given time and certainly not pricing. i would say that there's been some analysis done certainly not by the imf but by outside analysis that is said if you went back under the gold standard now there's simply not enough gold relative to where the curnssizz in the world are in terms of the amount of money out there. so i don't see that happening any time soon. it would probably undermine global financial stability in the ways people don't understand. host: let's go to steve on the republican line from pittsburgh, p.a. good morning. caller: good morning. first time caller. so this is a little weird watching what's going on the tv versus talking to you. but anyway, inflation. kind of off the subject. but how -- why is that considered a good thing that the fed has a target inflation number? doesn't that by definition weaken the currency? and how that in-- or how that

goes against with the imf? and them getting their money, guest: well, i'm not sure in relation to the imf getting their money because the imf gets its money. we think in u.s. dollars, most people use it as simple shorthand. they actually have their own unit of account which some people think is this big global threat to the u.s. dollar. it's not. but that's a very highly technical discussion. but now, i just totally spaced on what the caller asked and i apologize. host: that's ok. we have more questions for you. guest: i am absolutely appalled at my lack of ability to keep that thought in my head. host: on twitter. guest: the swiss fraverpbing, i

do remember the caller before so i'll get back to that. the swiss frank because it was considered to be such a strong safe haven started to appreciate so dramatically last year that the swiss national bank went out and said we're drawing a line. they had a 120 to the euro basically a black line that they said we will not let the swiss frank appreciate more than that point. and they intervened in the currency markets to ensure that was the case. interestingly, that was a very successful fire wall in that they set it, central banks can always print money therefore people who bet against it simply said ok, we give up which was exactly what they wanted to do. to go back to the previous caller asking about inflation why did they target inflation. the reason you target inflation and something like 2% which is the general target is because what's even worse than inflation is deflation. because deflation means i know that if i don't buy something today, it's going to be cheaper

tomorrow. so i don't buy it. and if i don't buy it then that is a terrible dynamic for the economy because it means i don't spend money and the combhi goes into a death spiral downward. so you will hear economists always talk about the worries of deflation being far more pernicious than those of inflation. host: i want to get a couple more caults in. linda, democrat from nashville, tennessee. caller: thank you so much for explaining the details of the imf and its functions. i was wondering if the proposed fire wall for the euro zone was actually something that came about because of the effects of the downfall of our economic system here in the united states. first, was there an imf fire wall for the united states or was that something that was inconceiveable at the time and did this idea of having the firewall for the euro zone

actually develop from the experiences that the united states has had? guest: well, i'm not sure i can agree with the premise that we've had an economic downfall in the country we've had a very serious recession. we have had a serious financial crisis. i'm going to change some of the language that you used and rephrase the question and say was the european financial crisis of today in the last two years a directly related to or caused by the u.s. financial crisis over the last four or five years? and i would say we do live in a globally financially connected system. it is scomb possible to say that one is unrelated to the other. having said that the european financial crisis was born of the creation of the euro which agreed to a monetary union without the necessary political and fiscal yunions to go along with it and some would say they understand that this would be a bumpy ride.

but they created something that really expected all countries to act in not only their own self-interest but in the common interest of europe to the detriment of their obe self-interest and that was naive. but there was a structure created in the euro in the euro zone with the european central bank which created some very distorted incentives for both borrowers and lenders. and that's really what happened to europe over the last ten years. host: let's go to the last call today. charles an independent from boston, massachusetts. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. i would like to ask you just a quick couple of questions about a single currency for the pacific rim and single currency for the world. we've been heading in this way for a long time since currencies were developed. we've had smaller and smaller amounts of curns sis. so i'll listen to your answer. guest: let's start with the last one first. again, there will be no single

currency for the world that is basically mandated from on high and it won't be at the imf and it won't be anywhere. as i said earlier those who think that the sdr is somehow a template, they should realize that is arktly a u.s. initiative and it was not some foreign imposition of some threat to the stumplet. if you look at all global foreign exchange transactions around the world, the u.s. is still by far the dominant currency in at least one side of every foreign exchange transaction. so i don't see the u.s. dollar weakening as the global reserve currency in any meaningful way and i certainly don't see there being the rise of a global reserve currency other than the u.s. dollar. in terms of the pacific rim, i think that the chinese currency as it becomes increasingly useable on the international stage is likely to become a very real player in the pacific

rim in terms of trade in terms of the currency of choice. i also don't think americans should be afraid of that. we as the u.s. have been trying to get the chinese to open up their markets so that the currency is more freely useable on the international markets fre pre-sicely because that allows for the pressure that the chinese currently have where there are these art fishly constrained capital restraints. it allows that to open up. that is good for global trade. it is good for global curnssizz, it is good for global imball answers so i wouldn't be afraid of it. but in terms of your question if there's going to be a pacific rim dominant currency other than the u.s. dollar it will likely be something along the lines of the chinese currency. but i don't see that as a threat and i don't see it as anything we should worry about for any time soon. host: thanks for joining us. i appreciate all the information. guest: my pleasure. thranchingse. host: that's going to be our show for today.

make sure you come back here tomorrow. we'll have anita mcbride, the former chief of staff to former first lady laura bush. camille johnson will also be on, the former communications director for first lady michelle obama talking about the roles of first ladies and presidential years. we'll also have danielle brian of the project of government oversight and robin wright from the u.s. institute of peace, the wilson center, distinguished scholar for the u.s. institute of peace. thanks for joining us. that's our show for trade. we'll see you tomorrow. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] cable satellite corp. 2012] .