the entire interview will re-air tonight at 8:00 p.m. on c-span. on can check it out c-span.org. that is our show for today. make sure to join us back here tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] ♪ >> a picture of a fountain in front of the u.s. capitol. this is a live picture this

morning. the capital itself is half empty this week as the house is in recess all week for meetings with constituents. they will return on monday, may 19. the senate is at work this morning, lawmakers gaveling in a.m. over a-- 9:30 package of expired tax breaks. you can see the senate right now live on our companion network, c-span2. of course, the house, as always, when they returned. down for anill sit interview with the coanchor of news hour, judy woodruff. she is likely to be asked about the russian intervention in ukraine, iran, the aftermath of the benghazi terrorist attacks also. we will have that live for you starting at one :00 eastern here on c-span. sylvia burwell appears before the senate finance committee as part of her confirmation to be

the next health and human services secretary, taking over for kathleen sebelius, live this afternoon you're on c-span. president obama is headed to new york city for a series of fundraising events today and tomorrow. while there this afternoon the president will travel to the tappan zee bit -- tappan zee continuehere he will to call on congress to invest in the nation's aging infrastructure. you can watch that live online at c-span.org. also, the president and first lady will attend the dedication ceremony for the national september 11 memorial museum at the world trade center. >> convergence, you use that word throughout your book. >> throughout the country there is a convergence of left right agreement on very important things that is being pushed down by the corporate grip on both the democratic and republican party and their leaders.

we start, for example, with public opinion around the country. does that matter, red state, blue state, they are upset with the patriot act restrictions on privacy, civil liberties, and free speech. there is a big convergence. they don't like giveaways and subsidies on the backs of taxpayers. especially the wall street bailout, where no crooks were put in jail. i want to crack down on big business, which gets away with a lot of stuff. main streetf this versus wall street nexus. they don't like empire. they don't like us pushing around all over the world and into countries, losing our soldiers, they come back traumatized, wasting trillions of dollars while all of these people around the country see out the quirks. america needs a repair. we are blowing it up overseas .ith trillions of dollars

atralph nader, sunday night 8:00, on "q&a." >> the hudson institute yesterday hosted a discussion on the islamic terrorist institute, bo boko haram. from [indiscernible] where the girls were kidnapped, she told her story about how boko haram killed her father and brother in front of her. this is just under one hour. >> good afternoon. i am the chief operating officer of the hudson in the two. -- institute. i would like to welcome you to the conference center. hudson has had a long history of working on humans rights and one

of the people is nina shea. she is chairing today's session. i want to thank her for her work. i want to mention that nina and her colleagues at the center for religious freedom have been doing this for a number of years. they tell the stories that need to be told. they are bringing greater attention to the suffering that we all need to pay attention to and act to reverse. i want to thank her for her work and dedication. i will let her take over the panel. >> thank you all for coming. especially on short notice. is a privilege and honor for me to be introducing this panel. we have a friend of ours who is

a human rights lawyer for the jubilee campaign. he has been on this podium before. in november. he brought another survivor of the boko haram to washington to tell about his ordeal. he was shot in the head after refusing to deny his faith. he lived. he survived and came here i brought the x-rays.

you can look on our video stream. the video of his testimony is there. today we are also honored to have deborah peter. she is hudson's youngest speaker ever. she is 15 years old. she is from northern nigeria and her family moved. there were 300 girls in slaves. -- enslaved. she is the sole survivor of her household. it was a boko haram attack that she will tell you about today. it is a terrible story. it is an extremely important one for americans to hear stop she -- to hear.

she is doing it and it is very painful for her to tell. she is doing it because there are 300 girls her age who are suffering today in nigeria. please join me in giving them a warm welcome. [applause] deborah, can you start by telling us what happens on the night of december 22, 2011? just bring it close. >> on december 22, 2011, me and my brother rode home. we heard a gun shooting. my brother called my dad and told him not to come home. they were fighting. my father told him to forget about it. it is not the first time that he has come home and they were fighting. he came back home and he told us that he wants to take a shower. he went to the bathroom to take a shower. at 7:30 p.m., three men knocked on our door. i open the door for them. they asked him, where's your dad? i said that he is in the bathroom, taking a shower. they went in.

they dragged him out of the bathroom. they did not have time to wait for him. they take them out of the bathroom and they tell him that he cannot deny his aid. -- faith. they said they would kill him if he didn't deny his faith. he said that he would rather die than go to hellfire. god said that anyone who denied him would be in prison and died. my dad refused to deny his faith and they shot him three times in his chest. my brother was in shock. he said, why did you kill him? they told him to be quiet. or they would shoot him too. there were three that came in that night. when my brother kept quiet, the first -- there were three and one is the leader. one is the person close to the

leader and the other is a servant. the servant said, unless you kill my brother -- the leader said no. he's too young. the leader told them that if my brother stayed human growth and -- state, he would grow up and become a pastor like my dad. they said to kill him too. so they shot him twice in his chest. he felt. he started moving. they went ahead and shot him again in his mouth. and then he fell down and died. i was in shock. i did not know what was happening stop they put me in the middle of my dad and my brother. the next day, they took the to the hospital. >> deborah, thank you for sharing that. that is not easy to talk about.

can you tell us why they singled out your family? why did these men -- did you know them? why did they come to your house? >> i know one of them. the other one lives close to our house and i do not know his name. the reason why they came to our house was because my dad was a pastor. they wanted to warn him. they went ahead and came to him and killed him. in november, they burned his church. he did not give up. they tried to burn it again.

they said they would kill him. >> your father was a christian pastor and he had a church and that was burned down. boko haram is closing in on the area. this area is in northeastern nigeria. >> my dad and my mom are from there. >> you came to the united states to come to a summer camp. emanuel helped you. he brought you here. it was a 9/11 foundation. it was meant to help children of terrorism. you have not talked about your story before.

this is the first time that you are starting to talk about it. why? why are you coming here to talk about it? >> because i want to help the other kids and i want to help people from what is happening. they told me that i should help them. >> what are you hoping will come of your talks? >> i hope that if people hear my story, they will understand and they will know more of what god said. they will understand what it means to stand strong. >> thank you very much. we are learning now in the papers that these girls, at least 100 of them, have been

forcibly converted. they were christian. is that your understanding -- would there be christians there? >> there would be. it is a small group of people. there are a lot of christians there. they don't really fight. it is the boko haram -- >> the u.s. government finally designated nigeria's boko haram as a terrorist organization. before that, the state department had been saying that the boko haram had nothing to do with religion. this was the assistant secretary for africa who was saying that. i was dumbfounded. it was after an attack on another church. he gave the speech. he said that it had nothing to

do with religion. thank you so much. emmanuel? emanuel just returned from nigeria on friday. he has been in the northeast in cameroon for three weeks, collecting stories from boko haram's victims. >> thank you for having me. thank you for attending this lunchtime event where we are not serving lunch [laughter] we have seen the headlines and we thought it would be a good idea to drill down a little and

put a face to the reality of the atrocities that are going on. this is important. we face a major wall of denial. not from the soviet or the traditional establishment, but from the state are met. -- department stop deborah's story is one that we have known for a few years since we entered into a fact-finding mission. i should point out that she was denied a visa twice by the u.s. government. the reason she was denied a visa is because they said to her, and you cannot make this stuff up, they said to her, you do not have family ties. they essentially traumatized a girl whose family was exterminated by terrorists just because she wanted to come to america. the good thing about the story is that it is a story of what is good about america. the 9/11 victims, the children

of people who died in 9/11, decided to have a camp for other child victims around the world. it was that program that we got deborah enrolled in. we brought her to the states. when she was heading back to nigeria, some folks said, let's find a school here so she can go to school. that is how deborah ended up in this part of the country. we tactically decided not to put her in the public space because she was very frightened. she has nightmares. even though we were facing an administration that was denying the religious genocide going on against christians in nigeria, we felt that we could not sacrifice the mental health of this young child just to get one over the administration. that changed a couple of weeks

ago. the terrorists went to deborah's village and adopted about 300 girls. it was people she has played with. her mother graduated from med school. in a normal world, she might have gone to that school. we reached out to deborah and said, you want to speak out and bring -- put a face to this travesty? she was kind enough to say, yes, i will do the. this brings us to a point we are

at now. let me give you a bit of context for what boko haram has been doing. boko haram is gentlemen terrorists. i say that tongue-in-cheek. the point is that boko haram says they do not kill the elderly or the young or women. those are the three exceptions. the christians, jews, and muslims don't count. a story from a couple years ago is classic. they came in, they killed the pastor. then they made sure that his son, who was an exception to the targets to be killed, he might grow up to become a pastor. this is an example of boko haram shifting the goalposts of those they will not kill. what happens with all be fact-finding missions we have conducted is a christian response to the genocide that

they would move the men out and leave the women behind. we found that there are many account of christian men who left town and left the women behind. boko haram said that they do not kill women. that changed last month. boko haram realized, we have killed all the men. we are in the terrorism business. we need to have a new game plan. the next thing we have is 300 young women abducted. they are taken to this camp and they have become slave brides. we illustrate this to say that deborah. staple it to years ago when boko haram was operating on that rules of engagement. but now, the story has changed. if she was in her village that day they would not have done the gentlemanly thing to stop they would not have left her overnight.

this resident evil is evolving. i want to quickly share a few of the trends we have noticed from this recent trip to nigeria. the first one i shared is the gender based targeting of women now that they have essentially decimated the male population of many part of nigeria. the other trend that i would like to mention is the fact that boko haram is becoming tactically more superior than the security forces on the ground. we have noticed that they are bringing in more sophisticated techniques. in response to the global outcry of the girls, we have seen reports saying that americans are sending us a sense. what happened last week while we were out there is that boko haram blew up bridges. this is a group that is taking

preemptive action. it is way before the u.s. or the french forces come in. that shows you how resilient and deadly they are. i want to mention another concern that we noticed. i do not know whether to call it a trend. it is the humanitarian impact of the crisis. we are seeing population displacement from nigeria in tonight care -- into and chad. we are seeing entire villages, i was at a refugee camp last week in cameroon. entire villages woke up at night and they marched across the

border. boko haram had retreated from the capital. they had moved to the rural areas and they were killing people in their homes. this mass operation and displacement has been going on for almost a year. what is particularly disturbing is that last week boko haram struck a village. they killed close to 300 people. then there was population displacement. people fled again. we have this going on for a year.

you begin to wonder, where is the humanitarian response to this crisis? let me mention two things that concern me. one of them is the u.s. -- u.n. refugee camp. people have fled there from nigeria you stop when we interview them, they say to us, this is the first time that we have been given food in 49 days. this is the people at the official u.n. cap. they have not been fed for the nine days. there are other unofficial cabs. you can only imagine how bad the conditions are there. there is an ineffective military response to terrorism. then we have an ineffective humanitarian response.

we are at the point where the international community needs to response effectively to what is going on in nigeria. maybe i should also add at this point that one of the trends of boko haram attacks that we have been seeing, the one i referred to earlier, about gender and victimization, we have actually -- the jubilee group has encountered a couple of escape child brides. the stories that they narrate are chilling. they are harrowing. on one of our trips in september we literally were told that the terrorists are striking right now. you have to turn back. so we asked, why are they striking right now? there is a girl. she has escaped from the camp was stop they are looking for

her. we suddenly became unexpected superheroes. we realize that the only thing for us to do was get her out of there. we got her out of there. some of you may have seen her on cbs -- cbs news yesterday. she is the only escape child bride to give an interview. we were able to move her out of that location. initially, we thought, this is a one off thing. but we now realize that this is personal. it is the agenda of boko haram to attack women. most of the men have gone to stop i will say in a nutshell that some of the atrocities this girl shared with us was that boko haram takes you back to the camp. i will speak specifically to her case. that was on cbs news yesterday.

i do not think i am doing much harm if i go into details. in the camp she was taken to in the mountains of nigeria and cameroon, every day for a week she was asked to renounce or they were dying. she refused. on the seventh day, one of the terrorists who was related to her came up to her and said, today is the final day. they will clear throat. when i ask you to do yourself a favor, just accept islam. spare your life. even if you do not believe it. when they came and asked her to accept islam -- they put her in

the bunker like the girls on tv. she was assigned to be the wife of one of the terrorists, the lead terrorist. this is an interesting phenomenon. they said, she is an infidel. she needs to go through a purification process before she can become good enough to be the bride of the head terrorist. and so, they did not sexually molest her. they designated her on interpretation plan. the good thing is that she played along with them and she studied the koran and she was

trained in arms. but she realized that her window of opportunity was slipping. so close to the 90 day grace. where -- great fewer, she feigned illness. they got worried. what will we do? someone has to go get her treatment. they would not have cared about the life if she had remade a christian. but now that she had played along for 90 days and she had carried ammunition for them, she was one of the boys. they let her go out for treatment. an older muslim woman took her. when they got to the town, that is when she escaped. we were able to get her and was curled up there. there is a little more per story that is very disturbing. some of it is online. we were very disappointed that the reuters reporter went to nigeria and met her and took her

photograph and splashed it on the internet and gave her name. it was so revolting. what we did is we had to relocate her again within the country. that is why we do not always ring victims out. some people do not have intelligent discretion to realize that you can put this young lady at. -- at risk. this was a snapshot of a slave bride that we encountered. in the last eight months, we have encountered about five. this is the first time that we are seeing huge numbers. we're talking hundreds who have been abducted. >> can i ask you a question? this seems to be an incident that is an escalation for boko haram. there have been these abductions in the past that you are describing. but to take 300 girls all at once, what is going on? why are they escalating? what are you recommending the west do about it? what can be done?

>> they are escalating. they are a resilient group. when the military deploys, they can attack schools. what we noticed is that they would attack empty schools. no one felt the need to protect schools. now they are attacking schools and killing kids. the terror group is way more resilient than the state department. -- state department is in their response to the problem. i wrote an article about the reduction of the girls. i think i ask that it be circulated to all of you. my point there was that the terrorists are energized by the media attention they are getting. that is not to say we should not report it. but they have done so many horrible things and finally they picked up the girls and everyone is watching them.

i said, they're going to strike again and go for more girls. 48 hours later, they struck again and took it more girls. this is a make it or break it time for boko haram. if we snuff them out now, they know what will get our attention. they're going to keep putting it in our faces. as far as recommendations go, the state department in the u.s. needs to pay attention to the core theological basis of this group. this is not an economic rebel movement. i read in a newspaper that said they were rebels. they are not rebels. their anarchic and jihadist. when you frame it in the right context, then you can have an up or print response. -- appropriate response. they do not have the same responses. we do not have a cure for ebola and we do not have a cure for stream -- extreme islamism. containment, not appeasement, is the solution. i want to make one key point to

that we understand how crazy these guys are. in the first place, they want an islamic bureaucracy in northern nigeria. you cannot achieve that in a country where the population is 50% christian. we are talking about massive genocide. here's the thing. in northern nigeria, when they are at -- insisting and demanding sharia law, a guy was sentenced to death by stoning for rape. there is sharia law. but they want a very extreme version.

this is why they were originally called the nigerian taliban. they want to have public beheadings and ace adm where people can gather. -- in stadiums where people can gather they do not like the process were you go into court and you have trials. that is too slow and boring. they want to do it the

old-fashioned way. they are savages that we are dealing with. this is a threat of existential proportions to the inchoate democratic governmental structures in africa. when 9/11 occurred in the united aids, it was an inconvenience to some of our constitutional right to privacy and tsa was a nuisance. but in africa, it is a different ballgame. it is a threat to the legal system and to the rule of law and to democracy. dr. king says it well.

injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere to stop that is why this should be of great importance. >> thank you very much. we have time for a few questions. please identify yourself stop and wait for the microphone. >> thank you. scott newman from abc 7. thank you for doing this. i am curious, deborah, as we talked about boko haram and how much it affects the communities, the neighborhoods, was this something you always feared? is there a day that you go through life without worrying about boko haram? what is it like to be in an area where they are so dominant? >> yes, we move from one place to another. we were concerned that they would attack. my dad always moves, but they kept following him.

>> you said earlier that you got somehow to move out of that region into the capital from another pastore. what happens to that pastor? >> he was killed by boko haram. >> it was may 15 last year. the pastore who paid for her to get out of town, this very pastor who introduced me to her, boko haram came to his home and killed him in front of his kids. >> hearing these stories, you get the sense of boko haram is encircling these areas and targeting sporadically but consistently. it is not systematic, but over time, a lot of people are being effected -- affected.

>> they have different strategies. they were very systematic in some places. they would go out and mark the homes of christians. they would come back at night and kill off e-mails. that is how entire neighborhoods would be. most of the wounds that we see on male christians from northern nigeria our trauma to the head. they shoot to kill and most times it is that my blank range. we have worked with several survivors.

there are only three survivors of boko haram in the u.s.. we have worked of all of them. deborah and one other guy in texas. the guy in texas has trauma to the head. he was shot in the head. boko haram killed his landlords. they came to the funeral and shot everybody to stop he is the sole survivor. he was met he backed -- med-evaced to the u.k.. they said, there's nothing we

can do for you, let randy to america to stop they all have gunshots to the head. that is what they do. people fled inland. in this state, they are back in the rural communities. that is why they are fleeing. there is much for are the people inland. the world people literally ran out of town. entire villages on foot. there is a level of systematic behavior. they are also sporadic. like the assassination of this pastor. >> ryan? >> brian murphy. retired from the department of state. what would you have the international community do that has not been done? particularly in the united aids? >> the first recommendation is a change in the paradigm that they are using to look at this. this must be properly framed in the lands of jihad. then we can formulate appropriate responses. the u.s. has had extensive experience dealing with insurgencies. in afghanistan and in iraq. the u.s. terrorism report says

that obama rahm is the second deadliest terrorism group next to the tall on all stop who has the best experience dealing with the taliban? the u.s.. we can make this works. there needs to be tactical intelligence. we have not seen much of that. again, the humanitarian response. i cannot emphasize this and not. when you have a country that is 50% christian and 50% muslim, if the christians get pushed to the wall, something will give. that is the doomsday scenario

that i dread. there has been an amazing reserve of grace and graciousness. but that is not inexhaustible. when the dam bursts, it is a country of 150 million people.

it will make bosnia look like child's play. one of the things we noticed is that people who did not flee are being re-victimized. i met a widow named naomi. local -- boko haram killed her husband in front of her and they burned her home in front of her. she had nowhere to go. she said to them, please kill me. she had an eight-month-old baby and said, these kill me. you have destroyed my home until my husband. and they said, we do not kill women. she eventually went to live with her uncle stop and then some months later, they came to her uncle's house and killed again stop how she is not in a vegetative eight, i do not know. at some point, people will say, i cannot take it anymore. that is where we will have bigger problems. assistance to the victims will help. that is one of the things we need to be looking at. >> this lady over here. >> you spoke about difficulty in getting a visa for deborah. where is the place now for people like deborah and others who want to come to the united they?

we spoke about helping them there and in afghanistan, people were brought to the united states. >> i wish i could say there was something in place. even after deborah -- the sole survivor of a massacre was denied twice by the embassy. we end up spending so much time fighting the administration on issues like these -- visa, that we cannot devote enough resources to the actual work of saving the people. we got involved with a congressman. deborah and another victim, it took international intervention to get them to come to the united states. >> the state department has been reluctant to talk about this in terms of religious or seclusion. -- persecution. i'm thinking about a speech in 2012, or a congressman said that

this was a problem of poor delivery of government services. that is what was motivating boko haram. poverty. and the response to that was economic at the time. they were trying to develop and ignore. that has been counterproductive and we lost a decade of stop unless the analysis starts changing, it will be a continuing problem. they do not recognize the human rights crisis. maybe this incident will change that. over here. >> deborah, i would like to hear

a little more of your story. could you tell us about your family and your mother and what happened to her? you said you did not play with the muslim children. is a very segregated? are you divided into two different communities? >> no. it is -- my dad and my brother, he always told me to stay. when i am with the muslim kid, they tell me that my goddess they. i try to avoid them. -- my god is fake. i try to avoid them.

when this happens, my mom travels. my brother, the only person i have. i don't have any other sisters or brothers. >> did you have a question? >> i am with the christian post. for years there have been atrocities in northern nigeria stop i am curious, why do you believe that this particular instance has garnered so much attention compared to other messages? >> maybe i should follow from

where she left off. it is not so much the question of segregation between christians and muslim communities. her case is interesting because her mom is muslim. her dad was christian. it is one of those strange love stories that does not end well. they got married. it became a problem. the mom had to move south to avoid persecution. i should add here that after they killed her brother and her dad, they sat down and made a

mental evaluation of stop we got it wrong. she is the spawn of an apostate. we should have killed her. they revised the rules of engagement to make an exception for deborah and her mom. that is why she is unsafe. but let me frame it this way. persecution in northern nigeria has been the new normal. it has been that way for decades. every couple of years, a christian girl will be abducted and converted to islam and married off. her parents do nothing. this is not terrorism. it happens every year. as a child, a friend of mine who was american, they took her off and married her off.

there was a newspaper headline celebrating the fact that a top christian's daughter had become a muslim. and she is an american citizen. what is happening now is persecution on steroids. northern nigerian christians are used to being killed a couple of times a year. there's a lunar eclipse -- i am not making this up. you can google it. there is a sense of infidels coming from the moon. this is normal in northern nigeria. for terrorists to come out and adopt 300 kids -- abduct 300 kids. you cannot kill us all the time. this is gaining international attention. the timing of this event -- remember that we are going through the trauma of the loss of flight 370. we did all we could and we could not save them. then we had the horrific incident with the ferry in south korea. this is the third traumatic

experience in our collective humanity recently. unlike the other two, this is redeemable. they can still be saved. i think that we are trying to say, what can we do to redeem the situation? i do not want to psychoanalyze the globe, but i think there are some elements of hope within all of us that says that something will come out of this. >> i want to add that we abolish slavery about 150 years ago. that has become the norm. this was a really bold move of boko haram to say, no, we are going back to the bad old days. these are slaves. we will sell for $12 apiece. it shocked the conscience of the world. i know moderate muslims have

stood up. they have protested this. i know that the nigerian muslim community in washington has access to full it has caught on around the world. it is an escalation and something that was so shocking that we cannot turn away. >> i'm from the institute on religion and democracy. emanuel, you were talking about the fact that northern nigerian christians have been treated as second-class and false top this kind of behavior makes clear the cognitive dissonance that the state department was under where they have said that it is muslims who are marginalized and impoverished and that is why the poor things do it they do. isn't it true that the state department has pressured the nigerian government to share power with people who were not elected? >> yes. the u.s. has put a lot of pressure on the nigerian government. some of the pressure has been misleading. it has misdirected the government of nigeria.

at a time when the nigerian government should have had a military risk on to the insurgency, the state department was saying that it was economic. you need to throw more money at the problem. it was not until the terrorist captured significant swaths of territory and some governments that, you have to help us out of our the nigerian government realized what was happening and sending troops. yes, we have seen some of that misguided. we do need to hold the u.s. to properly reevaluate situation stop let me walk through the poverty argument again. his mom has some basic safety net for the poor -- islam has basic safety net for the poor stop muslims are some of the most contented human beings that i have ever met. they believe that if they are not rich, it is god's will.

they are not malcontents as the state department is trying to try. i interviewed an american survivor of the u.n. bombing in nigeria. she said to me, exactly the same words to me. this is not economic. muslims are not the average material of the western model. i do not operate like that. it does need to be changed. >> there was on unemployment issue. with young men in northern nigeria stop it may have been exacerbated by the boko haram. the ideology is being against

education. but there is massive unemployment. i will emphasize that we had the militancy in the south. that was clearly economic in nature. what we have in the north is not the same. i should point out that a lot of

the unemployment in northern nigeria is self-inflicted. there is a warped theological practice that some say is not genuinely islamic. someone will have 40 kids and essentially they will dump them on the streets. it is a specific system. northern nigeria is intentionally drawing street kids. we have farm reducing unemployable -- we have farms producing unemployable street kids. it is kind of like southeast d.c. here. it is intentional in nigeria. there's a bill in the nigerian congress.

they want to send kids to school. muslims are up in arms against it. you cannot force us. it is hampering the ability of nigerian democracy to deal decisively with some of these problems. the system is not because of no schools. it is because they believe they should be the kids on the street to get koranic instruction from radical mullahs. they are the ones who are responsible for a lot of violence against christians. >> i think that our time is up. i want to thank you all for coming. [applause] >> deborah has one last message she wants to share with you. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> that hearing took place yesterday. reuters has this story looking at how the u.s. is involved in searching for the missing girls. the headline -- u.s. surveillance aircraft joins hunt

for kidnapped nigerian girls." huntof an international for 200 girls kidnapped one .onth ago by boko haram thousands of nigerian troops have been sent to the region while the united states and britain also have teams on the ground to help with the search. during prime minister's question time earlier today, david cameron had this to say about the uk's participation in the search. >> order. order. let's have respectable silence for mr. william cash. >> my right humble friend will know that interventional international -- development on gender equality came into force last night. will he note that this will protest -- protect women and girls throughout the world?

particularly in places like nigeria and syria it provides an opportunity to be able to do whatever we can to prevent tragedy? will he be good enough to have a word with our excellent secretary of state and do whatever we can to use this fact to help those people who have been so severely abducted? >> i'm sure the whole house will join me in commending the honorable john -- honorable gentleman for his bill. if you're, britain is taking some huge steps forward using the tower of -- power of our budget. in fact, we have really tried to drive change in our world and and the scandals that are forced into early marriage and genital mutilation. he mentioned nigeria, and today, i can offer that we have offered them further surveillance with military ed draft -- aircraft,

and a team to work with u.s. experts to analyze information on the girls location. as i said last week, this was an act of pure evil. the world is coming together not just to condemn it, but to help the nigerian chinese young girls. >> you can see prime minister's questions live every wednesday at 7:00 on c-span2. coming up today, national security adviser susan rice will talk with judy woodruff. she is likely to get asked about russia's intervention in ukraine, iran, and the aftermath of the benghazi terrorist attacks. we will have that starting live at 1:00 eastern on c-span. coming up at 2:15 p.m., silvio burwell will be before the senate finance committee as part of her confirmation for the health and -- health and human services committee. the futuresads of

andission and commodity future trade commission will testify on ways to strengthen financial markets and protect consumers. you can see that live at 2:00 eastern on c-span threes -- c-span3. >> i was looking at the real estate and saw the destruction. in most expensive house connecticut was priced at 34 million dollars, but then marked down to $25 million. what a bargain. withs a cozy charmer 14,000 square feet and 52 acres and a river. i was curious who owned it. i imagine it might be the chairman of general electric, perhaps. i looked on the town website and i saw a note in the zoning records that said this house has been unoccupied since this owner bought it. in 1951. .hat didn't seem possible

i went over the next day to see it. , he said,ker asked me you know, i have not seen any clark. this is clark's house. paid by her lawyer every month. her lawyer send me a check. nobody lives here. there is no furniture in the house. i take care of it. it seemed more like a bird sanctuary. as i was leaving, he said, can i ask you a question -- do you suppose she has been dead all of these years? is one of the authors you can watch this weekend at the gaithersburg book festival starting just after 10:30 a.m. eastern. ross on1:15 a.m., john world were to soldiers. -- world war ii soldiers.

all live saturday on book tv on c-span2. clubnline, our book reading "it calls you back" by luis rodriguez. >> the head of the federal housing finance agency, which oversees blenders fannie mae and freddie mac, has said his agency will say out of the housing debate on capitol hill. of watt added it is the job the it ministration and the congress and not the fha to determine such legislation. at the brookings institute yesterday, this is about an hour.

>> good morning, everybody. welcome. president and director of economic studies here at the brookings institution. i'm pleased today to introduce today's keynote speaker, mel watt, who is the director of the federal housing finance agency. we are thrilled to have director walked here today -- director wa tt here today. we are now approaching 60 are since fannie mae and freddie mac were placed into conservatorship. much has changed since then, including the profitability of , but theries fundamental structure in many ways is unchanged. while congress actively debates whether and how to reform the housing finance system, the decisions that director watt and fha make are critically important in determining housing affordability and the degree to which taxpayers will bear risk in the mortgage market. director watt has been in his

current job for about four months now as the regular and conservator of fannie and freddie, and a regular of 12 banks. ther to that, he was with u.s. house of representatives for over 20 years representing his home state of north carolina after set -- serving for two years in the state senate. before that, he practiced law for over 20 years, specializing in minority business and economic development law. theker watts served on subcommittee on capital markets and government-sponsored enterprises -- director watt served on the subcommittee on capital markets and government-sponsored enterprises. he introduced anti-predatory lending legislation to combat abuses in the mortgage market. with that, i'm going to let him take it away. after he speaks, he and i will have an answer that question and answer session and then we will open it up to you for questions. he and i will have a question and answer session and then we will open it up to you for questions.

discussionill be the of the state of the housing market, fannie and freddie's role in it, as well as reform currently in congress. please join me in welcoming director watt. [applause] >> well, good morning. good morning. that is good. let me start by thanking the folks at brookings for hosting us, and thanking ted for his kind introduction. i do understand that a number of you have been waiting to hear , and that some of you have been expecting me to say some things sooner than now.

after all, i was sworn in on january 6. and except for speech last week about the federal home bank system you have not heard a word from me. not a peep. not a press interview. not a speech. not a word. so some of you are probably wondering, well, has this guy made a cold turkey transition from member of congress, outspoken, to policy wonk regulator? what is up with this guy? i welcome you this morning to talk for a little bit. you have not heard much from me but it has -- does not mean that we have not been working since january. fha has continued to carry out

fhfa has continued to carry out its responsibilities as the regulator of the federal homeland banks and as the conservator and regulator of fannie mae and freddie mac. many of these decisions and responsibilities are often considered routine and may go unnoticed but they are absolutely critical to the effective and efficient operation of the housing finance market. i cannot touch on all of my responsibilities in my remarks today but i wanted to give you a summary of what we have been working on since i arrived and i hope this will provide you some insight into the direction we

will be headed in the future particularly with reference to fannie mae and freddie mac. in addition to overseeing our day-to-day operations, my work has also involved an overall fhfa as well as fannie and freddie. during this time i witnessed the dedication and expertise of fh fa staff at all levels as well as the tenacity and indication of the employees of fannie mae and freddie mac who continued to stay the course during these most if a cold and -- most difficult and uncertain times.

i would be remiss not to acknowledge and thank the staff's for their hard work. there has been a constant urgency since the financial crisis. athas been a marathon, but times has felt like a sprint. i also want to thank ed dimarco for his lifelong career in public service including the time as acting director of shf hfa. in the face of general great economic collapse, the biggest one since the great depression, fhfa director for event an helped prevent an extremely bad situation from getting much worse. it is hard to imagine

things being worse gives -- given the depth of the housing market collapse but i very much believe and add dimarco's leadership prevented an even deeper financial collapse by stabilizing fannie mae and freddie mac. throughout his time at fhfa ed was ensure mental in ined was instrumental establishing the foundation for all that we will do going forward. so while you may notice for my comments today certain changes in focus, you should know that i firmly believe that we will be building on a very solid foundation. as part of an overall assessment of the agency we have been very focused on the numerous policy decisions that were and are in the pipeline. in making decisions about the future strategic direction of the enterprise conservatorships the principal we are following

nciple we are following is how best to fulfill our current obligations under current law. this means first and foremost that we must ensure that fannie and freddie operate in a safe and sound manner. it means that we will work to reserve and conserve fannie and freddie's assets and it means that we will work to ensure a liquid and efficient national housing finance market. our job at fhfa director and is to balance these

obligations and that is a message i will come back to throughout today's remarks. another way of stating the principle that will be guiding us is that fhfa director is focused on how we managed the present. the present conservatorships of the enterprises at the present housing fight market. under the present statutory mandates. let me say that again. the role of fhfa is to manage fannie and freddie in the present under current statutory mandates. as a result one topic that is not on the agenda because it is not part of our statutory mandate is housing finance reform legislation. my guess is that they are many -- there are many people who expected i would talk about gse reform, legislation, the minute i got to fh fa.

i am well aware and regularly express my belief that conservatorships should never be viewed as a permanent condition or as a desirable in state. state. and that housing finance reform is necessary. our task is to continue to fulfill our statutory mandates to execute our strategic plan and to manage the present status of fannie and freddie. so today we're releasing a new

strategic plan for the conservatorships of fannie and freddie along with their 2014 conservatorship scorecard. both documents are built around three strategic goals. maintain, reduce, and build. i would like to walk through each of these goals and discuss how they build upon and in some cases reformulate fh fa passed past conservatorship goals. number one, maintain in a safe and sound manner foreclosure

prevention activities and credit new mortgagesor to foster liquid efficient competitive and resilient national housing finance markets. our first strategic goal -- our first strategic goal, maintain, requires fannie and freddie to carry out in strength and where possible three aspects of their core operations. first, we expect fannie and freddie to take actions that improve liquidity in the present single family housing finance market. second, we believe they should continue to improve servicing standards and foreclosure prevention actions. and third, we think they have a critical ongoing role in the

multifamily sector particularly for affordable multifamily properties. across these three areas our overriding objective is to ensure that there is broad liquidity in the phones -- housing finance market and to do so in a way that is safe and sound. the maintain goal is not a new one for the agency. but we are placing an increased emphasis on it. we are leading with maintain as the first goal in our strategic plan and scorecard. we have doubled the scorecard weight from 20% 40%.

let me begin my remarks about single-family liquidity by discussing representation and warranty standards and when these trigger repurchased demands. i know that repurchase risk remains a top concern for the mortgage industry. lenders believe there is still too much uncertainty for this area to ease their credit overlays. and ultimately, this undermines the goal of improving access to mortgage credit for credit -- credit worthy borrowers. after extensive discussions with fannie, freddie, and lenders over the past several months we are making a number of refinements to address some of these concerns. as we authorized and as fannie and freddie announced yesterday

they're going to relax the payment history requirement for granting representation and warranty relief by allowing two delinquent payments at the -- in the first 36 months after acquisition. lenders also get loan level confirmations when mortgages meet performance benchmarks and when they pass a quality control review. the enterprises will also eliminate automatic repurchases when a loan's primary mortgage insurance is rescinded. these refinements build on work 2013 and demonstrate

our commitment to making the process work better for one. -- for everyone. we now that more of prevents are needed to provide additional clarity. one area we are proud -- prioritizing is addressing the scope of life of loan exemptions. we know that lenders are concerned about how these exemptions apply to loans that have passed quality control reviews or have met the 36 month , and we will work toward clarity on this issue. over the course of this year, we will also explore the following. establishing an independent dispute resolution program when lenders believe it repurchase is -- believe a repurchase is unwarranted.

developing mechanisms for loan defects rather than relying solely on repurchases and providing additional clarity on fannie and freddie underwriting rules. there are two other issues i want to comment on that relate to the overall scope of single-family mortgages guaranteed by fannie and freddie. the first one involves loans with debt to income ratios above 43%. current fannie and freddie guidelines make some of these loans eligible for purchase when the borrower has other compensating strengths. permitill continue to these compensating factors in

each company's underwriting standards. as part of our ongoing safety and soundness obligations we will of course continue to monitor performance data relating to these factors. the second issue involves loan limits. as market participants are already aware, fhfa released a proposal last year suggesting that the agency might use this conservatorship authority to lower the mortgage amounts eligible for guaranteed by fannie and freddie. many groups and individuals submitted feedback in response to the request for input. fhfa has thoroughly reviewed and evaluated those responses.

i am announcing today that fhfa will not use its authority as conservator to reduce current loan limits. this decision is motivated by concerns about how such a reduction would adversely impact the current health of the housing finance market. the next part of our maintain goal involves continuing to refine and improve service he -- servicing and foreclosure prevention standards. experiences in recent years have revealed serious weaknesses in the servicing industry and in the foreclosure prevention alternatives offered to borrowers. substantial work has been done to get things right, but there

is still much room for improvement. as part of the focus in this area is working to stabilize communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. as a result, we are launching a neighborhood stabilization initiative with fannie, freddie, and the national community stabilization trust. phase one of this initiative is a pilot program in detroit, michigan. we are pursuing pre-foreclosure and post-foreclosure strategies that include deeper loan modifications and partnering with nonprofits earlier in the real estate-owned sales process.

fhfa expects to use the experiences in this -- in detroit to expand this to other parts of the country. we believe this will be a win-win for hardest hit communities and for our conservatorship objectives. we have also received a number of inquiries about changing the eligibility requirements. because the number of borrowers we could add by extending the eligibility date or by changing performance requirements is relatively small, we have decided not to alter eligibility parameters. fhfa is, however working to reach our good our outreach

efforts to the approximately 750,000 borrowers who already qualify and would financially benefit from refinancing. we are exploring outreach efforts designed to gain the trust of these in the money borrowers so they will take action to refinance. it is already in their financial interests to do so. the goal extends to fannie and freddie's multifamily loan businesses. this is a critical part of the plan,trategic particularly in light of the increasing number of households who are renting and in recent of owning

years, and the fact that the affordability continues to be a significant concern for many households. consequently, our way 14 -- our 2014 strategic plan does not require a reduction in fannie and freddie's multifamily production levels and it provides additional capacity for affordable multifamily projects. consistent with safety and soundness, our affordability focus will include multifamily lending for small properties and manufactured housing rental communities, much of which takes place in rural immunities. we expect market competition in 2014 to actually result in lower multifamily levels for the

enterprises but fhfa will not mandate that the enterprises prematurely shrink their multifamily footprint. i am on to the second goal. [laughter] strategic goal number two. reduce taxpayer risk through capital in the mortgage market.

reduce taxpayer risk through increasing the role of private capital in the mortgage market. fhfa's second strategic goal, reduce -- it is focused on ways to bring on additional private capital into the system in order to reduce taxpayer risk. we have reformulated this goal so that it no longer involves specific steps to contract the enterprise's market presence , which could have an adverse impact on liquidity. instead, the reduced goal focuses on ways to scale back fannie and freddie's overall risk exposure. this approach allows us to meet our mandates of upholding safety and soundness and ensuring broad market liquidity.

while fhfa has reformulated the strategic goal, our strategy is to reduce taxpayer risk, build on much of fhfa's past work in this area. this includes having fannie and freddie conduct additional credit risk transfers for their single-family guarantee business. these transactions have opened up private capital to share and credit losses which protects taxpayers from bearing all of the potential losses. our 2014 scorecard requires each enterprise to triple the amount of risk transfers in 2014.

this will be an increase from $30 billion of unpaid balance -- principal balance transfers last year to approximately $90 billion in 2014. on top of increasing the amount of credit risk transferred, the we also expect each enterprise to try new risk transfer structures to assess sustainability in different market conditions. all of this is consistent with the commitments i made to the senate banking committee during my confirmation process. in addition, we are requiring ongoing reductions in the enterprises retained portfolios. the senior preferred stock purchase agreements with the

treasury department require the enterprises to reduce their portfolios to no more than $250 billion each by 2018. fannie and freddie must develop plans to meet this target even under adverse market conditions. we are also requiring them to prioritize selling their less liquid assets to reduce risk and take advantage of current investor interests. -- interest. as their portfolios continued to decline, the effect is to transfer interest rate risks and liquidity risks from these portfolios to the private sector. on multifamily purchases we are requiring the enterprises to continue sharing risks with the

private sector which freddie mac does through a capital market structure and fannie mae does through risksharing model. both approaches transfer a significant risk to a private market and have had strong performance even through the economic crisis. we expect these models to continue. finally another risk reduction priority in 2014 involves private mortgage insurance counterparties. this work will strengthen master policies and eligibility standards for private mortgage insurers. mortgage insurance is a critical source of private capital in the

mortgage finance market. however, as we all know, the crisis revealed severe weaknesses in the system. the objective is to ensure that private mortgage insurer counterparties to fannie and freddie are able to provide adequate credit loss projection -- protection in times of market stress. onto strategic goal number three. strategic goal number three. build a new single-family securitization infrastructure for use by the enterprises and adaptable for use by other

participants in the secondary market in the future. build a new single-family securitization infrastructure for use by the enterprises and adaptable for use by other participants in the secondary market in the future. fhfa's final strategic goal is to build a new infrastructure for the enterprises securitization functions. the core of this effort is the common securitization platform and i want to talk about two aspects of this today. first, after extensive discussion within fhfa and the -- and with the enterprises we

have clarified that the agency's top objective for the common securitization platform is to make sure that it works for the benefit of fannie and freddie. over the last four months we have identified the risk involved in transitioning to a common securitization platform and reviewed how to manage those risks. we found that the cause of the -- that because of the many variables involved, the main danger to the csp effort would be preserving too many -- pursuing too many objectives at the same time. since any stumbles along the way could have ripple effects in the $10 trillion housing finance market, there is a lot at stake in getting this right. as a result, our decision has

been to de-risk this project. moving forward, we will focus our efforts on creating a common securitization platform that can undertake fannie and freddie's current securitization operations. a successful outcome would be a seamless transition from the current in-house systems that issue new securities for each enterprise to a future joint venture owned by fannie and freddie that operates one system with updated technology. defining the scope in this way acknowledges that building a csp for a future housing finance

system that is not yet defined is extremely risky and could add needless cost. this scope does not mean that our csp effort would be at odds future housing finance system or that our process will take place in a vacuum. to the contrary, we are requiring that the csp leverage the systems, software, and standards used in the private sector whenever possible. this will ensure that the csp will be adaptable for use by other secondary market actors including private label securities issuers when the future state is more defined.

our second objective for the common securitization form is to thelatform is to move enterprises toward a single common security which we believe will improve the quiddity in the -- liquidity in the housing finance markets. it would also reduce costs to the enterprises, particularly freddie mac since freddie's security has historically drew -- traded at a this is compared -- at a disadvantage compared to fannie mae. adding a common single security component to the csp scope will require fhfa and the enterprises to define security partners -- parameters along with shared contractual and disclosure acquirements. -- requirements. fhfa along with fannie and

freddie have made great progress on developing the common securitization platform. but all the components of the csp, including the common single security will require a multiyear effort before final implementation. having defined the parameters of as i have described today we are well-positioned to move forward. throughout this process we will provide opportunities for stakeholder input our decisions along the way. in releasing the 2014 strategic plan, my goal today has been to provide a clear sense of

s'rection for the enterprise' ongoing conservatorships. implementing these objectives will require ongoing analysis, evaluation, and input. fhfa will proceed with these steps in a transparent way that correlates the feedback of the public and stakeholder groups wherever possible. one example of this approach is our upcoming request for input on the guarantee fees charged by fannie and freddie which we will release very soon. as many of you know on my second day as director, i issued a directive to fannie and freddie that they delay the increase announced in december of last year.

in our quest for input we will -- request for input, we will pose a number of questions the agency is considering and we solicit and encourage your feedback. we will review your responses and we will announce a decision later this year that is consistent with the goals that we have outlined in our strategic plan. this concludes my remarks. i want to thank you for your time today. i look forward to working with all of you as we implement our strategic plan, and as fannie and freddie and fhfa implement the 2014 scorecard. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you again. that was a terrific speech and there is lots in there. i want to start by, you do not want to talk about housing finance legislation which i can understand. there is something that intrigued me after that. you said, conservatorship should never be it is permanent.

-- be viewed as permanent. i guess my question is i think increasingly likely we might not have a housing legislation or at least not for a number of years and so then my question is, what happens to conservatorship where we are approaching six years, you say it should not be permanent. do you have the authority to and -- end conservatorship and if so what does that look like, at what point do we say it is over and what conditions have to be met? >> we have the authority to and the conservatorship. the statute gave us the authority to start it. and i think it goes with that. the authority to end it but the alternatives would not be desirable so i think i will -- our role and the reason we worked so hard is to make sure we have a solid plan for continuing the operations of fannie and freddie and the federal home loan mortgage so

that there will be liquidity and efficiency in the housing market and that we continue to operate as we have operated without interrupting housing finance in in this country, because housing finance is such a critical part of the economy to stop or stand -- of the economy. to stop, or just stand in place is simply not an option. we will continue it and our goals are consistent with continuing the operation of fannie and freddie in the here and the now. we will do that until there is legislation passed.

>> maybe you have already answered this. the end of conservatorship, you can see the different things being debated on the hill. but two outcomes is they get wound down and the other is they exist as they currently are. they become wholly private entities outside of conservatorship. i shouldn't say wholly private, because the government has a large share. that final outcome, you do not see at the end of, do you? -- of conservatorship, do you? >> all of my focus for the last four months has been in the present and doing what we are doing in the short term letting congress run its course there and we will see what happens after that. >> as i said, there was a lot in

your speech. there is one thing you did not mention. that is principal reduction. reduction, the benefit was too small. is this something that is still >> i do notered? know if that is past. we have evaluated in the short term and found other things that we need to focus on at the present. we continue to study not only that issue but a number of other issues that i did not talk about in today's speech. i told one of their reporters -- the reporters earlier that it would be interesting if all of the things we talked about today, the focus would be on the things we did not talk about. i keep this running list of

issues that i call my water hose issues. they started out coming at me as one big fire hose and we have separated them into individual water hoses. there are a bunch of them on a list that i did not talk about today. principle rejection is one of of those.on is one that doesn't mean that we are not considering it. it means that we are not ready to talk about it at this point. and that is the same category that a lot of other issues fall into. >> let me take this back to the multifamily caps. i would like to get your sense of -- it seems to me like you started your speech by acknowledging your predecessor and mentioning a shift in focus or maybe priorities.

does this substitute one of the shifts in focus? and not lowering the cap and giving additional flexibility, if so, what is your thinking on the role that fannie and freddie play in affordable housing? >> i have not thought about this whole focus issue. we have tried to make good, reasoned decisions create -- and we tried to understand the history of how every decision was made and why it was made. i'm not focusing on whether we did or did not shift focus. everything that has taken place in the past has created the foundation that allows us the flexibility to make good decisions in the present. we actually think that competition in the multifamily sector will decrease the role of fannie and freddie.

we think it will mean they will not reach the caps this year. the more important part of it is there seems to be a lot less competition in the affordable space and we want to incentivize fannie and freddie to continue to play that role in the affordable space because people need housing and they have played the role successfully and with minimal risk through a very difficult time in the economy. it is not as if we are increasing risk, but for us to arbitrarily decrease your footprint without knowing that somebody is stepping into this space was not something that we thought was a prudent thing to

do. in your strategic land, you lay out out a lot of your statutory responsibilities and there are many. i do not envy the task. one of them is you are responsible to insure that fannie and freddie maintain adequate capital. that is a little bit of a challenge. given that all of their profits are being swept into treasury. i am curious what your thoughts on that is, is that something you spoke to treasury about or will this be current policy and how do they build their capital space? >> i cannot control that i do not think. the taxpayer is in effect, providing significant capital to back fannie and freddie at this point. so capital has not been an issue that we have had to focus on for some time.

obviously, it was a major issue because fannie and freddie were making draws. their financial conditions have stabilized and while a lot of their income in the last two or three years has been a recoveries, financial recoveries, tax adjustments that will not be sustainable in the future, we want them to continue to operate in a sound way and we are focused on that. we do not spend time fixing -- vexing about things we cannot control. i am sure i would think that treasury would feel the same way but i have not had any discussions about that.

>> another thing intrigued me, i will get the quote correct or close enough. you said that your goal is to reduce taxpayer risk through increasing the role of private capital. this is number two. but after that you rejected the goal of contracting the enterprise's market presence. you want to increase the role of capital. but not contract enterprises. i am figuring out how you square those two. and then you said this is a decision to come so i know that you are not going to announce it now. in my view you can look at an increase in the guarantees fees as either of those, contracting of the market presence or entering private capital. how does that fit in those criteria? >> we are balancing in a number of instances sometimes what appear to be contradictory mandates.

i do not think it is the role to contract theo footprint of fannie and freddie. our role is to maintain an efficient credit market. as private capital demonstrates it will come into this market i think it will be clear that fannie and freddie will step back. to arbitrarily say that the footprint should be reduced without assuring that there is a responsible way to make the transition to private capital would dointo the space serious damage potentially to

the housing finance part of our economy. i think that would be irresponsible. we are not into doing something that is irresponsible. i hope everybody picked that up from my comments this morning. >> if the market presence contract due to market forces and a revitalized private sector that is fine. >> exactly what i said. in the multifamily space. we did not arbitrarily contract them but we think this year the private sector will step into the multifamily space at least in the non-affordable multifamily space. they're already doing it. there is no reason for us to think that they will stop. there are some things that we could do arbitrarily that i think we are not intending to do.

>> i will take questions from the crowd. i will take questions from the crowd. what about in the back corner. wait for the mike. -- microphone. state your name and affiliation and keep it to a question. >> i'm with bloomberg news. following up a little on the discussion of the role of fhfa. how does the fact that fannie mae and freddie mac are posting record profits factor into your thinking about how much they should be helping troubled borrowers undertaking initiatives to stabilize the mortgage market, is that something that is getting some -- that is guiding some of your policy decisions now?

>> i have not looked on -- a lot at profits as a driving force in any of our decisions create i -- decisions. i think as i have indicated already, the record level of profits that you have seen are not sustainable. it is clear and we have said that over and over. they made substantial tax adjustments and they are releasing those now and we have had substantial major recoveries in litigation that will not be repeated over time. in fact, nearing the end of those kinds of recoveries, i do not think we should let profits drive decisions that we make.

we are trying to make responsible decisions. we are trying to increase the availability of credit to credit -- credit worthy borrowers. we are trying to do it in a safe and sound way and not be irresponsible and i do not think looking at the bottom line is a productive way to try to evaluate how we proceed. >> also in the back here. wait for the microphone again. >> judy kennedy, affordable housing lender's. thank you so much for the focus on small rental properties because that is the 90% of the market that fannie and freddie have not been present in. i wanted to follow-up on one thing you did not talk about. the same laws in 2008 that enabled the conservatorship also tried to focus fannie and freddie on affordable rental thr

it is fannie mae trying to count the blanket loan on the dakota property on central park west, the ago no property as affordable housing or other devices they have developed. i would like you to speak to how you better enforce the mission related part of how the -- of the economic recovery act. >> the first step i just heard this morning is changing our focus to pay some more attention to it. the affordable housing goals we're looking at aggressively. they are in place for 2014. we have been issuing -- issuing new goals for 2015. there is a lot of focus on that issue and it is part of the statutory mandate and the