good morning from new york, i'm chris hayes, khalid sheikh mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants refuse to enter pleas yesterday before a military tribunal at guantanamo bay. the next session for the tribunal will be in mid june. and france is voting today, polls suggesting president nicolas sarkozy may be out. and that voters angry about the financial crisis and unemployment may elect their first socialist president in 17 years. i want to start with the big political story of the week. what we talk about when we talk about dhooin. this week, in china, a tense and awkward bit of confrontation

between the american and chinese governments off blind chinese lawyer and dissident guangcheng he scaped house arrest and fled to the u.s. embassy. it was on the eve of hillary clinton's trip to china, making it more fraught. deal to release chen, that deal fell apart. chen's friends and allies took to twitter to express concern that he would be double-crossed. and now it looks like china will grant chen a visit to come study law in the u.s. but the basic contours of the story triggered a predictable round of campaign recrimination. it's hard not to view the tale in moral terms. >> forced abortions and sterilizations, so desperate for freedoms, he climbs a wall, even though he's blind, badly injures his foot and limps his way to the u.s. embassy, hoping against hope to be welcomed into the free world, only to find himself caught up in the delicate

calculation of interest that characterizes the two countries' relationship. and so it's more or less a lay-up for mitt romney to take to the microphones and stay stuff like this. >> some of the press reports coming from china suggest that we may not have been as effective in protecting his freedom as we should have been, and if those reports are true, that would be a dark day for freedom. >> the stories we tell ourselves about china tend to be closely bound up in our own myths about american exceptionalism and fears of american decline. which means in american politics, the nation of china with its 1.3 billion people serves as we see our own fears and neurosis of what we see reflected back at us. a grim vision of where the united states is headed. for those on the religious right, china is the natural endpoint of america's slide, a communist regime that suppresses religious expression and forces

women to have only one child. for the left, china is the corporatist neoliberal nightmare that we're in the process of becoming. a place where the force of the state is used to suppress dissent and aid the bosses to run sweat shops where millions of workers work in misery to produce goods for us. for establishment elites like tom friedman, china can win the future without the roadblocks of democracy and progress. when china needed to relocate people to build the three gorges dam, they just did it. because china con found us, the only reliable rule of our domestic politics is that the party out of power will happily condemn china's abuses and taunt the party in power for its cowardly appeasement. >> i would be firm, i would say if you want to continue most-favored nations status for your government-owned industries

as well as your private ones, observe human rights in the future. open your society. >> less than two years later, president clinton reknewed china's most favored nations status. in 2002, george w. bush had to say. >> the current president has called the relationship with china a strategic partnership. i believe our relationship needs to be redefined as one as competitor. competitors can find areas of agreement. but we must make it clear to the chinese that we don't appreciate any attempt to spread weapons of mass destruction around the world. >> of course, during bush's tenure, the trade deficit with china hit a new record, his administration tried to tamp down taiwan's anti-beijing rhetoric and even attended the 2008 olympics there with mitt romney. who even before the chen guangcheng episode also made getting tough on china a recurring campaign theme. >> i will china as a currency manipulator. >> we've got to clamp down on nations like china. >>. the time will come for a president to stand up to china.

>> we can expect were he to be re-elected or elected, romney would go inevitably the way of clinton and george w. bush in the careful and diplomatic obama administration. because as much as we're convinced of our own flight and influence, we need to recognize that the united states government will not be the ones to change china. not be the ones to bring democracy or protection of rights or accountability to its people. the chinese people will do that. and if there's a hopeful sign, it's that all over the country, chinese people are pushing back against their government and demanding accountability from their leaders. from the estimated 500 protests there every day to the new internet-savvy dissidents who have found increasingly ingenious ways to evade censors and the great firewall like these chinese activist who is posted pictures of themselves in solidarity with cheng. they're going to be the ones to make the new china. not barack obama, not mitt romney. joining me have ann lee, author of the book, "what the u.s. can

learn from china." also a senior fellow at the demos think tank and as a visitor professor of peking university. and also david frum, james fallows of the forthcoming "china airborne" a former speechwriter for president carter and "new york times" reporter, returning to the program, katherine rampall. let's start with what we saw this week. first i think we should stipulate before the discussion is that the facts are incredible difficult to discern. partly because most of this is very much locked down by the u.s. and china and the u.s. government hasn't been forthcoming about what the details are. and emily parker wrote this great piece in the "new

republic" about the new factor. what was formerly would have been a one-to-one diplomatic behind closed door deal was being undermined on twitter because chen was talking to his friends, who were taking to the internet and reporters were saying chen is telling his friends who are going on twitter saying that's not the deal at all. i don't like this. and jim, that struck me as a new dynamic in this very tense and awkward relationship that we're seeing played out. >> you opened the segment saying what we talk about when we talk about china. what was charming to me or striking in the introduction and the episode is when we pretend to be talking about china, we're talking about things in ourselves. i bet you would agree with me that most of what's wrong with the u.s. right now would be exactly wrong with the whether china existed or not. and yet we project our fears on china. and in the chen case, the instant assumption that the obama administration had mishandled this or on the other hand, they're being tough.

had almost nothing to do what gs og on scene. we don't know the exactly the tensions being played out on the chinese side that led to this apparent flip-flopping from the chinese government's position. >> an interesting political subtext in this. which is that you know, as i said before there are different parts of the ideological spectrum in american politics that have different reasons to fear china. and what's interesting politically here in terms of the political balance is much of the work that chen was doing was against the policy that's most hated by christian conservatives on the political right, is one child policy and forced sterilization. so it has kind of a sort of political resonance among republicans and the base of the republican party for that reason, right? >> absolutely. i think that he becomes this lightning rod where people can use him as a way to project their political platforms. and we have to remember that this is just one individual. and the relationship between

u.s. and china covers so many issues and we have billions of people at stake and we need to think about the bigger picture. and not just on his individual case, yes, i understand that. >> this sounds like a tacit endorsement of just cutting chen loose. >> honestly he's a great human interest story. it's great he's getting a lot of publicity. my heart goes out to his family. let's not forget that we have major economic issues to work through, environmental issues to work with. china on. and so these are the things that we want to not forget about. and not let certain political people to take charge and reinvent the conversation. >> yeah. >> just to add one other thing about that as ann says in the political right this was seized as though he must be a pro life guy, we're for him. he's a loyal communist citizen. his appeal is to hold the communist government to its own communist standards. that's why he's popular among a

number ever average people in china. >> what's fascinating is him taking on the policy of forced sterilization, and in some cases forced abortion, they're gruesome stories. he was taking them on after the practices had been outlawed by the nrl party in central party in beijing. and he was forcing local officials to live up to the laws and pronouncements of the central party and that's part of the reason that his life is hell in the local province in which he lives. >> yes, because he actually trusted the central government to be on his side, actually. and i think a lot of people in america don't understand that there's a central government and then there's the local government. and most of the corruption happens at the local government level. not that it doesn't exist at the central government level as we've seen. but that is where the majority of the protests happen. and so this is another way of to

shed a light on china, and how complex the politics really are. >> the mayor of a city called. >> we haven't heard from him since that announcement. >> to filibuster one more second. as ann was saying, you can imagine different circumstances in which the central government decided to defend mr. chen. a couple of months ago there was an uprising in a province in southern china about local abuses. and the central government decided rather than cracking down on them, they would stand up for the rights of the local people. you could imagine the central government having played this differently if the balance between the foreign ministry and the security apparatus, turned out differently from what it is. >> if you look at local papers, national papers in china. you'll often see stories about local officials getting imprisoned for corruption and that sort of thing. >> and there's also tremendous

kind of publicity and propaganda victories to be garnered by the central party in appearing to be on the side of people against the corrupt locals. >> you and jim have agreed when we talk about china, we're usually talking about the united states and you say that as if it's a bad thing. i think it's a very good thing. we have seen a collapse of government standards in this country over the past 20 years. we're much more indifferent to the situation of ordinary americans, we have been much more indifferent to the competitiveness of the country. i don't think that's a coincidence that it's a period where the united states have felt invulnerable to a great power challenge. and the existence of a great power challenge has been one of the things that's always forced social reform. >> it makes us better. it's what, in a most of the things we need to do to be competitive are things you would do china or no china. in a free trade world, actually it's, the idea of countries

competing with each other is kind of an illusion, but it's a useful illusion, it makes the united states more focused on national savings and less ready do write off the bottom two-thirds of our country. >> barack obama, the president has used china rhetorically in that way, as a way of reminding us what we should be investing in. we're going to go live to beijing. i want to talk to a reporter who has known chen for more than a decade. i went to a small high school. the teacher that comes to mind for me is my high school math teacher, dr. gilmore. i mean he could teach. he was there for us, even if we needed him in college. you could call him, you had his phone number. he was just focused on making sure

we were gonna be successful. he would never give up on any of us. but when i was diagnosed with prostate cancer... i needed a coach. our doctor was great, but with so many tough decisions i felt lost. unitedhealthcare offered us a specially trained rn who helped us weigh and understand all our options. for me cancer was as scary as a fastball is to some of these kids. but my coach had hit that pitch before. turning data into useful answers. we're 78,000 people looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare.

i want to bring in beijing bureau chief for "the daily beast" who recently interviewed chen. thank you for joining us. >> hi. >> can you give us the latest updates? there's been a lot of back and forth, it's been difficult to track the details. where is chen now and how, how

confident is he and how confident are you as a reporter that what has been reported was that the chinese government is going to give him the visa paperwork to come study in the u.s., is going to be seen through? >> chen is still at the hospital where he has been seeking medical attention. and he's in a real good mood today. seems optimistic that this thing, this deal will really happen. i think the deal will happen, i think he will get a chinese passpart and an american visa to go to the states, but i still have big questions about the case. including how long will it take. to get him there. and especially, will he be able to come back. and also, what happens to all his friends and relatives who will presumably be at great risk of retribution, especially after he's gone. >> that seems the big, the big sticking point and one of the sticking points that emerged in the course of whatever details

we've learned about the negotiations. which was that he has a wife and two children and obviously other family members, kin and friends, and if i'm not mistaken, have already been subjected to maltreatment at the hands of the authorities. what is your sense of what's going to happen to his wife and family? >> i think his wife and two children will be allowed to go with him to the states this is a blind man, his wife has been his interface with the outside world so it would be cruel to only let him go. but he, his mother is still here and he's very worried about her. he's got a brother who has been detained. he's got a nephew who may, who is actually missing and may face criminal charges, who got very upset. is say cuaccused of attacking s and all the people who helped him, what about them. the weird thing is, driving him from shandong to beijing should

not have been a crime, he had been let out of prison and served his time. so the house arrest in 2010 was extra-legal, not according to law at all. >> it's been reported in the press that he was under house arrest. but the house arrest was informal retribution from local authorities. i want to read something from the "beijing daily." i want to get a sense of how this is playing in china. what the coverage has been like. it said the so-called rights defense hero has been packaged by the united states and western media and given an eye-catching political label and set up as a representative figure against society and against the system. chen guangcheng has become a tool and a pawn of sicking tob with the tenor of coverage of his case in china right now? >> in terms of the mainstream

media that's been the only coverage. his dramatic flight into the embassy and all that, there was no coverage in the mainstream media until the name-calling. however, the, the blogosphere, microblogging, that is less easy to sense censor, less easy to c. there have been a lot less complimentary tweets about him. i would say the chinese public is probably split and confused about what the case is all about. >> melinda liu, beijing chief for "news week" and "daily beast" had just interviewed chen. thank you. >> i think the last detail strikes me as interesting and important. the fact that the internet has made it harder to keep, keep, to have a monopoly on information

in these cases. >> there's a fascinating detail about the quote you were reading to melinda. the national media in china weren't covering the story, and the burden was shipped on to one of local papers in beijing. one of them last night in its twitter feed was saying we're sorry. we've been put in this awkward position. later in the show i'll call it up. >> apologizing for their own propaganda tone? >> yes. >> i want to play a quick, to get back to the theme of the way that china looms in the american imagination, i want to play a quick monthage of some of the kind of congressional ads or political ads that feature china as the menacing threat. take a look. >> once upon a time, america became its own worst enemy, with all their money ran out, they capped spending. out of control. >> is baron hill running for congress in indiana or china? baron hill supported the $800 billion failed stimulus package

that created renewable energy in china. >> thank you, american senator michigan senator debby spend it now. you made more and more from us. >> super racist. let's, let's talk about why that, why people that make political ads think that is going to be an effective tool, whether or not it is and the gap in opinion between average voters and people that are in government and in big business after we take a quick break. auto-bliss.

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and you speak fluent mandarin i believe and cantonese, both? there's a perception gap of folks between how they think of china and this threatening menace, but sort of being envious of it, because they seem to have their act together and we don't have our act together. what accounts for the gap between people working with china on a day-to-day basis and those that see it from a difficulty sentence. >> i think the folks who work with the chinese understand how complex the system is. and that the central government leaders are really trying their best to move reform forward to try to left a lot of people out of poverty. and so they don't see china as a threat. however, the people who have never had any experience with china, they often are fearful of the unknown. and certain people who are in

establishment and power, would understand this fear and like to capitalize on it. because i think there's a vested interest in making china look bad. so that they themselves don't look bad. >> but, don't you think, i want to push back a little bit. i feel there is, you'll see a lot of praise of china from folks like tom friedman and it always seems to dovetail with an anti-democratic strain with american elite. the problem in america is we have too many of these idealogues who are yelling at each other. in china they can just get things done. it seems to be revealing of a fairly dangerous skepticism of democracy itself. >> well the chinese, i don't think see themselves as undemocratic necessarily. we might spin it that way. but in fact, they see themselves as being quite democratic in that they're helping the common interests. because if you gave the vote to the people, what would they want? they would want to put food on

the table. the right to eat is democratic human rights. and the fact that they've been able to lift so many people out of poverty and enable them to make a living, a decent living and put food on the table. is frankly quite democratic. >> and you shouldn't allowor feelings about tom friedman to shape your views about china. the fact is china is growing richer. wealth is power. and a 21st century china is more powerful, very different kind of 21st century than one dominated by traditional liberal democracies. it will be run by different rules and we'll find it more uncongenial. the campaign ads you showed, you may dislike the language, but they're speaking to something real. the experience of decline is a true experience for millions of americans. they are worse off. they are worse off than their parents were. >> but that's conflating decline as decline in wages and decline of the great power in the u.s. >> people are looking for

language to express this. and language that is effective in, we have shown an amazing willingness to live with absolute declines in the living standards of very large numbers of people. if you're trying to get people to focus on that in a way that the political system acts on saying this will also translate as it may, into decline of american power vis-a-vis china in a much less congenial 21st century. now talking in ways that will influence the american elite and that they will hear. i would like to live in a 21st century world order totally dominated in the united states, one that doesn't share power with china because it will be much less comfortable for those with human values. >> motivate people for change. i approve of the use of china in that way, if it spurs us into doing things better. i like the chinese professor add from the 2010 election cycle. i that the it was a not

particularly ominous version of the chinese menace. i think if it portrays them number one as this undifferentiated foreign yellow menace, that's bad. number two, if it suggests that they are much more successful than they are, successful in some things, it's still a poor country. their political system is blowing up right now. and so, if it suggests that overall, they have more influence than we do, that's just wrong. >> the two things that my pet peeves on china coverage. one is the notion which you saw in some of the ads, all of those ads were from 2010, all republican ads. in the past there have been democratic ads that use a version of china as the competitor. >> as a new red scare. >> it is a new red scare. >> the two things that drive me crazy one is that china owns all our debt, which is just not true. >> we have all their money. >> and the other thing i think that drives me crazy is this vision of china as this sort of

uncomplicated success. when the fact of the matter is, it's really an open question of how sustainable the political system is in the long run and how, how much it can engender the high-wage growth. which is conveniently the theme of the book. >> chris, in the 1980s, the united states and its closest allies, the democracies of europe and japan produceded half of the output of the planet. the united states and other countries will produce a third of the output of the planet. that's going to be a different planet. i find it a, to some degree inevident annal. but to the degree it's not, i find it's unattractive future. >> the only way in which it couldn't happen is if our relative wealth compared to the chinese remained the same disproportionate gam gap. we have four times as many people as they do. >> let me button this up with mitt romney in 2007 giving some

real talk on exactly this topic. here he is singing a different tune about china in 2007. >> it's important first for the american people and our leadership to understand that china is not like the soviet union of old. the soviet union crust chev wanted to bury us, china's gdp is going to surpass us, we have to recognize they're going to be an economic powerhouse like us. >> mitt romney echoing david frum's point and making a different rhetorical mode. i want to thank ann lee, author of the book "what the u.s. can learn from china" for joining us, we'll have you back. wall street dismantles reform

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> dowd dodd-frank, another piece of the president's agenda this was a piece of the legislation aimed at the financial services sector. it was advertised as having as part of its mission keeping the too big to fail banks from getting too big. what's happened since it's been passed? they've gotten bigger. and the small community banks are the ones that have been most hurt. because again, the burden of regulation falls heaviest on the smaller enterprises that don't have the funds and the personnel to follow all the new government regulations. >> the folks at the table are taking deep breaths because the sheer jiu-jitsu disingenuousness

of that comment. but wall street reform and consumer protection act, was signed into law two years ago. at the time, president obama called it the toughest financial reform since the ones created in the aftermath of great depression. the law was passed over near total republican opposition and is one of the chief reasons that so many wall street donors who rallied to the president in 2008 have turned on him, now fighting full force to stall and weaken the actual implementation of dodd-frank in a whole variety of fierce battles over regulatory rule writing. which means the degree to which we will have actual accountability for wall street remains unclear. it's important to know one of the reasons that dodd-frank passed is the la was writ within enough ambiguity that it left many of the real battles over financial reform to the regulatory process and the folks on wall street knew it now the financial power brokers are trying to game the regulatory process if they continue to succeed at it, the risk of another global crisis will be just as great or greater as it was before the last one.

joining me it's my great pleasure to welcome to the table the deputy director of the consumer financial protection board. created by dodd-frank, the brain child of elizabeth warren, a former merrill lynch and morgan stanley information technologist. >> and new york attorney general eric shoo schneiderman. great to have you all here. >> maybe, raj, i'll start with you. i've been incredibly impressed by the work of the consumer financial protection board. i'm giving you a real question to start off here in terms of the way the transparency on the site, the ease with which you can navigate it its openness to the public, tell me a little bit about what, what the vision is for the entity and how you guys are staffing up. you really are building the first 21st century regulatory agency. >> we're so excited about what we're doing at the consumer

financial protection bureau. dodd-frank created the agency to have a simple mission. that's to major sure that the consumer finance markets work for american families. markets like mortgage and credit card and student lending. people should know what they're getting into. people should understand the risks what they're signing up for. they should be able to participate in markets where there are clear rules and where cheaters don't prosper. there's a reasonable set of aspirations. a pretty reasonable set of objectives, but getting it right, just like anything worth doing is hard work and i'm proud to assemble a team of economists and lawyers and market experts and former bankers and i.t. specialists who are up to the task. it's hard but we take it seriously. >> the article by elizabeth warren, in some ways the genesis of this entire bureau, she talks about the consumer product safety commission. consumer product safety commission has to clear products before they can go on the market. she has a great analogy. in you sold a toaster that had a

one in three chance of blowing up and burning down the house, that would never be allowed. but certain kinds of mortgages that had crazy teaser rates and ballooned in the end would be allowed. she draws the analogy. the question is, do you have the power that the consumer product safety commission has. does the consumer financial protection bureau have the authority to say no, you cannot make that kind of loan? >> well two things about the toaster situation. first, what we're doing is actually more important than toasters. can you live without toast. american families can't get by without mortgages, access to student loans. a way to save money for the future what we're doing is just fundamental to americans and their success over time. in terms of authority, congress has given us the two sets of authorities that matter most. one is a range of tools. so that we're not trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. we have the ability to make rules. we have the ability to supervise

entities, we have the ability to enforce the law and to educate consumers. with that full suite of tools we're actually able to do a better job over time. no federal agency has had that before. second, we regulate the entire waterfront, so it doesn't matter if you're a bank or a thrift or an industrial loan company or an investment bank, if you want to be in the consumer finance market, you ought to play by the same rules as everybody else, it's a pretty common-sense approach and congress has given us that ability. >> the power to regulate and accountability for those who break the laws is one of the themes for today and something i want to turn to you, attorney general schneiderman and you, alexis, after we take a quick break. [ male announcer ] this... is the at&t network. a living, breathing intelligence teaching data how to do more for business. [ beeping ] in here, data knows what to do. because the network finds it and tailors it across all the right points, automating all the right actions, to bring all the right results. [ whirring and beeping ]

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just so people know the way the process works, a rule is put out for comment and taken with the comments and revised and put out again and finally made final. and generally what happens is the comments come from the industry. because they're the people that are keeping the closest amount of attention. i'm not going to the s.e.c. to see what, how big should a bank be to qualify for a swap facility or whatever the rule is. what would you say is happening broadly in terms of dodd-frank implementation, is it encouraging or worrisome. >> i think it's worrisomworriso have a lot of rules that haven't been finalized yet. we're starting, dodd-frank is big, a big chunk of it is is what's called title seven, derivatives reform. it's under attack right now in congress. about eight bills toeth total that are chipping away at different pieces of title seven

about derivative reform and dodd-frank and some are getting bipartisan support. >> let me remind people, derivatives are financial instruments whose value derives from an underlying asset. which is why they're called derivatives. they can be used to make bets. in some cases they can be used to hedge. i use a lot of oil i bet on oil. in some cases you can say, i bet greek bonds are going to go up or greek bonds are going to go down. if you're right you get a lot of money. if you're wrong, you lose. aig was doing a lot in a certain kind of derivative called credit default swap. which was the thing that magnified the crisis from a housing bue ining bubble crisis global financial crisis. the stakes are huge here. talk about the bills, you're telling me one that has to do with a small part of dodd frank, a little bit of information that has to be disclosed. >> this is not about derivatives, it's hr 1062 and there's a part of dodd frank that says you have to publish

the ratio the ceo compensation to median worker compensation. if you're a mubly-traded company, tough publish that. there's a bill called the burdensome data collection relief act. that is basically says, strike that you do not have to publish ceo-to-worker pay ratio. >> does the bill only strike that or -- >> that's it. so when you say there's bipartisan support for this, is this something -- >> that one does not have bipartisan support, there's lots of other things that do. >> there are things that would march back parts of the dodd thing that you're worried will gain democratic support in congress. >> it's really under fire and it's a lot of this is not being reported on or only in the financial media. a lot of people don't necessarily read the financial media. and what drives me crazy is we are, we have so many people out in the streets now. there is such clear popular support for financial regulation. for reining in the banks.

and yet we, one thing you see at occupy wall street a lot is when the cops go and stand in front of the banks when we're protesting outside and people trying to move their money. the cops look like they're guarding the banks. and we're saying, who do you serve, who do you protect. that's my question for congress, are you serving the american public who are on the side of the reform or are you serving your wealthy campaign contributors. have. >> the american public doesn't necessarily understand what is or should be in the financial reform. it's a giant piece of legislation. a lot of the regulatory and other statutory pieces of it that you're talking about are in the technical stuff. and maybe in the big picture, you know, americans would say, well, we kind of like this idea or kind of, we kind of don't like that idea. the problem is that so much of it is so -- technically small-bore. even if it has big financial consequences. i think it's sort of hard to have a greater narrative about what it should be. >> but it can be broken down and explained. >> i think the public gets in

the broad picture, that what mitt romney was just saying is absolutely false. the idea that there's an effort to rein in a period of reckless deregulation, people get that. i think we have to keep the story as simple as we can and explain it it's not like we don't know how the bubble went up. we know that they made a determination not to regulate derivatives in the commodities modernization act. we know in 2004 the banks tried to rein in states for predatory lending. all of the lobbies you're talking about, have doctorates in complexity. they benefit from the newances, nuances. the message the pred is carrying now. nk pays their fair share, everyone gets a fair shot. the bizarre conduct to me of some of the folks on capitol

hill, really you know, talk about the consumer financial protection bureau. who is opposed to protecting consumers from financial fraud? well, a lot of people in the house of representatives seem to be. these guys have been under attack since day one. >> and they're trying to change the funding stream to make sure that you have to get yearly appropriations. right now you get your money through the fed. i want to talk about the final piece in this which is the only way regulators actually can have an impact is if there's accountability on the other side. [ male announcer ] how do you trade? with scottrader streaming quotes, any way you want. fully customize it for your trading process -- from thought to trade, on every screen. and all in real time. which makes it just like having your own trading floor, right at your fingertips. [ rodger ] at scottrade, seven dollar trades are just the start. try our easy-to-use scottrader streaming quotes. it's another reason more investors are saying... [ all ] i'm with scottrade.

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attorney general schneiderman, you were at the center of a whole lot of publicity and press about first a big mortgage settlement ha was being negotiated because of systemic malpractice and fraud being conducted by the banks in the foreclosure proceedings. you were appointed by great fanfare, announced by the president at the state of the union, to head up a working group on mortgage-backed securities that was going to look into the possibilities of fraud and malfeasance in the run-up to the big crisis. where are you at on that? there was a very savage op-ed in the "daily news" that said there's no headquarters, there's no phone can you call, this whole thing is smoke and mirrors. you wrote reply saying we have 55 attorneys from the doj, we're getting more, i want you to lay out where we are in this.

>> the the earlier settlement, the focus was the abuse in the foreclosure proceedings, after the market wind up and crashed and people were under water there were a lot ever problems, people should have been allowed to keep their homes, people being misled by the lenders. we got a lot of money in new york going into legal services and housing council to make sure that nobody is foreclosed on. the point i made in the process, we still needed more resources and a better-coordinated investigation into the conduct that blew up the economy in the first place, that's what the president announced with the working group. so for the first time we have coordinated investigation and it's take an little bit of time to get the framework up because it's such a big operation. but the doj, heads of the civil and criminal divisions, co-chairs, the s.e.c. co-chair and representing the u.s. attorneys office who is are critical in this, john walsh from colorado, i think ten u.s. attorneys' offices engaged. we've had them in and out of our

office, i've had direct contact with six or seven prosecutors working on different institutions, we have about 14 or 15 people in my office still working on it the advantage now is we're sharing information. they're working on setting up a database, we're going to have 11 or 12 other states to join to participate. so for the first time we have state jurisdiction, the federal laws have in some cases a ten-year statute of limitations on criminal and civil penalties. woo have broader jurisdiction under the martin act. there's a combination going on that's never happened before. >> let me articulate the concern people have, resources, 100 investigators on enron, 1,000 investigators on the savings and loan crisis. obviously everything in the space feels like david and goliath. whether you're talking about regulatory rule-making, talking about trying to go up against deutsch bank's lawyers or

suisse's lawyers. i want to hear from you what the resources are and what they're going to look like, and talk about alexis in your office this week after this. the top academic performers surprised some people. so did the country that came in 17th place. let's raise the bar and elevate our academic standards. let's do what's best for our students-by investing in our teachers. let's solve this. people will have doubts about taking aspirin for pain. that's why we developed bayer advanced aspirin with micro particles. now we're challenging you to put it to the test. visit fastreliefchallenge.com today for a special trial offer.

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or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet? from new york, i'm chris hayes, we have raj date, deputy director of the new consumer financial protection bureau and "new york times" bureau reporter, katherine rampell and alexis goldstein with the s.e.c., and new york attorney general eric schneiderman, co-chair of the president's financial fraud task force. you were on the program, attorney general schneiderman, were you on the program five months ago. and we asked you about what we can expect to see from the task force, i want to play this little bit of sound. >> in the next few weeks, i think you will see indications that this is an active investigation going forward.

you will see more subpoenas, 11 were announced on friday, you will see action by other agencies, you will see cases being filed. >> is there a timeline to it? settle there's no timeline. but i assure you, if we don't have some concrete results within the next six, eight months, i'm going to be very disappointed. >> and at the time that it was announced, there were a lot of stories published, people at your office, off the record, saying look, if this isn't serious, we're not going to have anything to do with it after a certain amount of time. we're getting to the point where five months now. we haven't hit your six to eight-month window. there is i think a sense of frustration that the process isn't moving fast enough or you don't have the resources you need, that was of the big terms. so that was what motivated the s.e.c., they held a sit-in. >> it was not occupy the s.e.c., it was break up the e of a.

>> this was an action that happened on thursday. >> friday. >> in your office take a look. >> aim to disrupt ours will be different. our goal is to propel you forward. president obama has asked you to co-chair the residential mortgage-backed securities fraud task force. and the last thing we want to do is to get in your way. however, since the creation of this unit, over 400,000 homes have been foreclosed on. that's over 4,000 a day. and not a single bank or corporate criminal has been brought to justice. >> over 400,000 homes have been foreclosed on, over 4,000 a day and not a single bank or corporate criminal has been brought to justice. i want to ask you, what do you need to make this work? what slingshot does david need

to bring down goliath? because it seems very likely that the resources are not going to be sufficient, given what the resources are on the other side. and given the profound complexity, i mean i understand making a case like this and i'm not a lawyer, but i know enough lawyers to know this is not easy stuff. this takes time and it takes resources. the question is, what resources do you need. >> it takes time and it takes resources. but prosecutors all over america all the time go up against larger numbers of lawyers and prevail. this is not, it's very important for people to understand that this is very doable. when the president set up the task force, he gave us a combination of agencies that have the jurisdiction. the department of justice has been the driving force in putting new resources in. there are people being detailed. contractors showing up. i was on the phone saturday, yesterday, with one of my colleagues at doj, talking about setting up a way they can view the massive number of documents, remotely through technology. we're working on making sure we can do a thorough investigation. there are a lot of institutions

involved. the big cases that everyone is waiting for, platform cases of patterns of conduct will take more time. i'm sorry i was out of town, but you know, i appreciate what the effort to call attention to the problem and to continue to keep the public focused. i think that the working group is certainly grown the last 60 days have been an extraordinary change. i think there will be announcements about staffing and offices and all this stuff that ordinarily prosecutors don't talk much about. the one thing you will not hear. is people saying we've issued another ten subpoenas, we've called in, sent innocences to these five banks and they have to go to the s.e.c. and argue essentially why they shouldn't be pursued in a case. people from my office have been at meetings like that. we've had had people from different u.s. attorneys' offices doing briefings in new york with us. we have shared depositions, we're sharing documents. the kind of comprehensive

investigation that everyone was asking for, had started up. am i happy with any level of progress? no, i'm always impatient, i'm from manhattan. but it is happening. it is coming, it is building. and i think the most important thing is to help me and my colleagues stay on track, encourage us if you want. i always want more lawyers, i always want more help faster. but i think you're going to see some announcements in the next week or two that are going to do a little of a, identify numbers of folks who are working on things, just to get that nonissue off the table. because we have i think two weeks ago i spoke to the congressional progressive caucus and we did a count. at that point it was over 50 people, it's more now than it was then and i'm getting a couple more people in the next week who are going to be helping us. we've got folks from the consumer financial protection bureau. we've got folks from hud. the inspector general that oversees freddie and fannie is working with us and in addition to the people from the justice,

the state attorneys generaled a the s.e.c. the count we're keeping is to show the new people who are being deployed, essentially by doj. there are a lot more people than that working on it. >> i have a question about all of this. staffing in terms of quantity is great but the argument that i often hear that expresses concern about the ability of regulators to actually have, utilize the power that they've been granted is that you can't really pay your employees. comparable wages to what they would earn in the private sector, given the body of knowledge that they have. >> do you have trouble finding the talent that you need? >> no, no. >> given the people are turning down multimillion-dollar salaries, bonuses. >> the job market is not quite as good as you're making it out to be there are a lot of really good lawyers and there are a lot of people who want to take a break from private practice and come to work in our office, we have not had a problem with getting good people to work -- >> recruiting them from the

death star to the rebel alliance? >> thanks for letting everyone know, chris. we're looking for great lawyer who is want to get involved in the cases. people do want to do it. the challenge here is for us to be able to move forward as aggressively as we can, with the understanding that we're not regulators, we're prosecutors and we can enforce all the laws that were previously in existence, it's very important for us also all to keep track of the fact that we're fighting over what the next set of laws are going to be. >> i want to keep -- >> we're enforcing the securities laws as existed and there were changes that in the law that weakened the prosecution and we are working on changes to that as well. >> i'm of the theory that nothing focuses the mind on compliance like people going to jail. like your peers going to jail, right? bp is going to pay $8 billion or $15 billion or $30 billion for what happened in deep ocean, but you know what, they make $12

billion in profits a quarter, they're going to write it off on the balance sheet. there's a certain specific visceral emotional force to the threat of actual criminal sanction that i think is unlike a fine on a balance sheet. alexis? >> we have so many questions. you've said repeatedly no one is above the law and no one is too humble for the law. but i think there's a climate in this country where people do think that the banks think they're above the law. and about the task force, i'm curious if you could explain to me why there aren't banking regulators on the task force. i'm talking about the fed, the fdic, the occ, the people that know banking law, banking regulations in and out. why don't we see representation from them on the task force? >> we have access to all of the other federal agencies and information. we wanted this to be an aggressive prosecutial task force, i'm not sure if you've named groups that fit into those categories. i think the folks involved are the folks we need to do something more quickly, more

effectively. the consumer financial protection bureau, the doj, the s.e.c., my office, hud, the irs, the fbi, it's a pretty carefully-selected group. >> so the fbi is on the task force? >> yes. we have fbi agents that have been deployed. we don't go around saying hey, here's a list of the fbi agents. >> there are 500 fbi agents announced a couple of days ago, looking into health care fraud. why don't we have 500 people looking into the biggest financial crisis since the great depression? >> well the health care fraud project started up a few years ago and they have staffed up. we started in february, we had bloggers attack us in march that we hadn't done enough it takes a little time to get the confidentiality and the database set up to recruit the people to, you have to post listings for people to comply with the law. we now have, there's a lot of people working on it the count is way over 50 at this point. >> are they full-time? >> yes. >> these are full-time?

except you of course, you have two jobs? >> this counts as one of my full-time job. >> there are folks that have other projects, but it's essentially full-time work for everyone that's working on it and more people coming every week. i think the point that about personnel is very important. it's important to have the personnel but it's important to plan out a structure of how to seuss them. we set up a coordination team. that's going to make sure that we all know what each other is doing. we're trying to to do this smart. reviewing all of the other civil cases that have been brought out there. so we're looking at other cases, we're trying to do this smartly and efficiently. knowing the number of people you have doesn't do you any good if they're not deployed correctly. >> alexis made mention of the banking regulators and what you said was interesting. one of the things i think is underappreciated in people's understanding of the crisis is the degree to which existing regulations were not enforced or regulators went easy on the banks they were regulating.

partly as a process of regulatory capture. partly a process of the massive pay gap that's opened up. the difference in pay between regulators and people in the finance sector and a huge wedge opens up. and part of that produced a culture that wasn't a culture of zealous enforcement of regulation. a culture that was cooperative and cowed. i want to talk about it after this.

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♪ ♪ ♪ shake your rump-a >> still mourning adam youk from the beastie boy who is passed away. >> the culture of litigator, a lot of literature has to do with the culture of wall street and

the culture of the complicity of wall street regulators. are regulators, are the bank is the reason that you're necessary because the other regulators are too captured. >> the reason why i'm so confident that the consumer financial protection bureau is going to do a great job at our big mission is that we have features that make us pretty uniquely immune to what people call regulatory capture. so here are a few examples. a clarity of mention. when i started at the treasury department helping geithner and elizabeth warren set up the bureau we had 20 loiemployees, have 800 today, we're making these markets work for average ordinary american people so clarity of mission. two, a sensible structure. you know before dodd frank, the bank regulators literally had to compete for bank's business, if you were a bank, you could choose a charter. and the long-term effect of that is you should expect a bit of a

race to the bottom in terms of standards. now, i'm not particularly calling out anything in particular. but that is what one would expect at the time. and we have an advantage. >> we have evidence of regulators referring to their banks as clients, a lot of them, the occ is funded by bank fees and they need the bank fees to survive. there becomes a client-dependant relationship. >> the s.e.c., if they make fees above their budgets have to give it back to the treasury, the occ does not have to do that. >> this is literally the case, the consumer financial protection bureau has supervisory authority over the biggest banks and nonbanks in the country. it doesn't matter what charter you choose. you've got to play by the same rules as everybody else. and then finally, talent and capabilities really matter in this. if you depend on everything thaw know about an industry, on its paid representatives to tell you, you are in trouble. you have got to get the best people in the marketplace, you have got to get great people.

>> how do you do that, right? it's exactly the point that katherine was making. >> when i talk to people i know through work and through you know, college friends and other friends of friends who work in finance, one complaint that i've actually heard frequently is they wish that the s.e.c. in particular paid more money, because they're tired of dealing with people who don't know what they're doing or whatever. i mean maybe they would say that regardless of who they're dealing with. but that the argument is that they're because they can't afford to pay the best people, they're getting lower quality. >> you know i've, i'll just speak from personal experience, i've hired people in the consumer finance business, in the commercial banking business, investment banking business, i have never seen anyone who doesn't want more money. that's is always a constraint. the reality is no once to the cfpb in order to retire early. they do come to the cfpb for clarity of mission, because it matters, it's hard to do. they know they can succeed. because they know that we are being built with a set of values that will stand the test of

time. >> sometimes people quit the industry because they cannot, like me, i mean i didn't, i wasn't fired from my job, i quit because i couldn't take it any more. and there are a lot of people on wall street that are disgruntled who do not believe that what they are doing is helping the wider world. i do think there is room not just for bribery, right. i think there's room for ethics and wanting to do the right thing. >> i didn't quit my law firm because i couldn't take it any more, but i did decide i was interested in doing more public interest work and you know, lots of people make that decision all the time. there are great people who want to work in government, again, if you have the sense of clear mission. i mean i hope that we -- >> when the pay gap is so phenomenally huge -- >> people still are coming. >> that's a good point. >> the point is we should pay regulators more and -- >> but who's trying to cut funding for the cfdc and the s.e.c.? you know, it's big campaign under way in the hill. >> we should talk about about

the appropriations here, because they are key, there's an appropriation request from the white house for staffers. >> we're staffing up and the doj has the resources for us to hire more people and we're doing that. the october budget that the president has requested a $55 million addition just for the mortgage-backed securities working group and that's going to be very important. i'm sure it will be a fight. >> and cfpb has a $200 million annual budget, more or less. >> they're trying to cut it down. >> right. i'm sorry, you're right. you right now get your money from the fed and so it's not congressly appropriated every year. is that correct? >> like the bank regulators we're not subject to congressional appropriation. the idea being you're going to have a banking system and you're going to have a credit system. you should not want it susceptible to short-term political influences. that is what the nation has embraced over the past century and a half and that's the system that we work under as well. >> that might be a good model for solving some of the issues you're raising. >> and republicans are now

moving to change the funding stream so that you do have to be approved for appropriations. >> the house financial services committee on over completely partisan lines, passed something that said, the cfpb have to go hat in hand, after 2013, you have get a $200 million budget through 2013, you have to go beg for a budget. they killed something called the office of financial research, they're trying to. this is what the bill says. and something interesting happened which is barney frank put in an amendment which ultimately failed that said, if you're going to do this to the cfpb, the fed can no longer print money and the occ has to go hat in hand, those amendments were killed, but that was an interesting thing that came out of committee. >> it gets us to the point of independence and accountability. what it comes down to. as bob dylan once said you're going to have to serve somebody. no one is truly independent in any profound complete and total sense, you're going to be dependant on someone, your money

is going to have to come from somewhere. how do you increase the structure that increases the likelihood of regulators and prosecutors acting as independently and frankly as adversarialy in certain circumstances to the industries it's regulating. we clear have not gotten that right up until now. >> distinguish between two periods, we're coming out of a period of reckless deregulation and efforts to defund lots of agencies, we have to understand how that led to the bubble and the crash. the response to it has been -- going forward over the last couple of years. dodd frank was really one of the key steps, setting up the cfpb, the investigation, the working group i see as a part of the response. there are people in government who do want to do the right thing. i think there are folks who are a little more inclined to go along with industry, we have to support folks who want to do the right thing. the president has turned around a lot in response to the rising pressure -- >> pressure. >> >> that's good political leadership. i believe in movement politics,

leaders do what you get them to do, and you have to help people, even your friends, do the right thing. >> you strike me as someone who has quite a bit of leverage. if you felt things weren't going well. if this was a dog-and-pony show and you walked away in a public way this year, that would create a huge amount of political fallout and it's something that i would imagine the white house would not like to see happen. will you walk away if you feel it's a dog-and-pony show. >> yes. but we have no dogs and ponies, just lots of agents. if you can't talk about subpoenas and depositions, at least let's open up a little more and talk about what we're doing in macro sense, talk about how many folks we got doing it. i think you'll see websites going up and things like that over the course of the next few weeks that will make it a little more clear what we're doing. this is so far, appears to all of us involved to be a pretty aggressive effort. but we'll keep talking about it. >> eric schneiderman, attorney

general, head of the working group on residential mortgage-backed securities. and raj date, head of the consumer financial protection bureau. we'll be back. time for your the your business entrepreneurs of the week. ken whiting and his nephew, jeff, own whitings foods which run food concessions on the santa cruz boardwalk. they employ high school and college-aged employees. they've learned managing this generation means you have to speak their language.

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this is your moment. let nothing stand in your way. devry university, proud to support the education of our u.s. olympic team. our analysts are back at the table. you saw the conversation we were having on regulation. david, regulation has become a signatory kujle for the republicans.cudgel for the republicans. do you think it's a winning rhetorical strategy? do people still have the same appetite this abstract sense that regulation is bad? >> i think it is a sign of a backward-looking turn in the party. in the 1970s and '80s, some of the most important and dramatic successes in the american

economy came about through the deregulation of transportation and energy. those were things that were good to do. the end of the energy shortages, to deregulate oil and gas. and we're all dramatically better off by the deregulation of trucking and rail and air. >> i'm not sure about that, but continue. >> especially rail. one of the stories is that success is boring. it's transformed the way we -- >> particularly in transportation, trucking, rail and airport, there was a left-right synthesis on that, ralph nader, steven breyer. >> those lessons were taken to the next frontier, the last great regulated industry, which was finance. and it turned out that treating finance like energy and transportation was a terrible idea. which is by the way, also a left-right coalition, most of the work was done in the clinton years. it is a rhetorical -- >> it was a democrat/republican coalition, i don't know if it was a left/right coalition.

>> the important work was done in 1998, 1999 and 2000, not during the bush years. it led to the trauma. but i think people want -- you want to be careful with your language. no one would want to go back to regulating rail rates and no one thinks regulating the price of natural gas is a good idea. finance is different. >> i would beg to differ. >> we don't have to get into that. but -- >> that's an answer that is so old we've already forgotten the question. >> as a matter of the politics in this. almost nothing in public life is ever all or nothing, black or white. and over the eons in american history, it's a matter of business and all of its energies being subject to some kind of control. from the time of alexander hamilton onward. so the chance for whatever administration is in power and the years challenge for democrats, is explaining as raj date said, is making business work better. talking about china earlier, part of the reason that things are bad in china is no

regulation of environmental problems or workplace safety. so the achievement of teddy roosevelt, as an activist republican and making business work better through the right kind of regulation is a point that can be made. >> a cap-and-trade regime or a carbon tax. >> taxation is not regulation. >> but let me make this point. cap and trade i think you can call regulation and one of the things i think is most important about this is that regulation gets talked about incredibly abstract terms. right. you're a deregulator, you're a regulator, are you for regulation, against regulation. it really matters what the regulation is. a tremendous amount. it's like saying you're for laws or against laws. i mean there are bad laws and there are good laws and what ends up happening is that regulation becomes a sort of ideological signaling device and because of the asymmetries of information and resources of power that we've talked about in terms of the gaming of the financial system and dodd frank. >> to the extent this is

discussed as an issue of regulation, the democrats are losing. and to the extent it's discussed as an issue of -- >> there's a case to be made and i think the president has done this, in reviving the semantic power force and prospects of the word "regulation." that it's not a dirty word. that it is something -- >> i don't feel that. i feel like regulation still seems like a pretty dirty word and it's used politically. >> you're making things harder for yourself if you use that word. >> i think there's a tremendous amount of public will to regulate the financial industry. >> the president talked about regulation in the last state of the union. the he emphasized his deregulatory successes, not his regulatory successes. >> so nobody cares about the process of regulation, they care about the results. >> so you tout the results. and what you tout the results of in as we go into you know the purity and after the crisis, although the crisis continues to

cast this incredibly long shadow and grind people down to missery and debt is what the last era of what it produced. an epa regulator who gets crucified, when we come back. (female announcer) most life insurance companies look at you and just see a policy. at aviva, we do things differently. we're bringing humanity back to life insurance. that's why only aviva rewards you with savings

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it's not just wall street that tries to game the system by going after regulators, on tuesday, an obscure bureaucrat in the environmental protection agency resigned after republican snowstorm james inhov call aid tension to him at a meeting at a town hall in texas. residents expressing fear and concern about the effects of fracking. regional epa administrator responded by assuring residents that the epa would go after drilling companies or polluters who broke the law. he specifically says he's talking about companies that violate the law. >>

>> in artful but a fairly standard explanation of the logic of deterrence more broadly. he said those words on may 10, 2010 and received no attention for his comments. but two years later, senator inhof staffers got hold of it and decided to make an example of him. and fox news, as well. >> if you can't beat them, crucify him. >> the rogue administrators that president obama appointed that are out there, killing american jobs, the administration has to be held accountable. >> faced with the standard

conservative hissy fit, the white house cowerered. >> the white house comments are not only inaccurate as a representation of or characterization of the way that the epa has operated under president obama, they are provably inaccurate. by our record on these issues. >> and so for articulating the very purpose and process of enforcement, that is to hold to account those companies not in compliance with epa regulations, the regulator found himself joining the club of casualties of right wing campaigns that put fears in the hearts of regulators everywhere that they will lose their job if they step out of line. that's whey found so disturbing about this. the grand irony here of course is that the reason that the effects of someone like that regulator having to resign is that regulators will be watching

what they say and making sure not to run afoul of the people they regulate. it should be noted, that regulator is a civil engineering, environmental engineering professor at southern methodist university. before he became a regulator he was doing studies showing that particular matter that was being emitted from natural gas exploration to the west of dallas-fort worth, was contributing quite a bit to smog and ozone in the dallas-fort worth area. and dallas-fort worth is what's called an epa nonattainment zone, it's not in compliance with levels of the clean air act. and was having contentious back and forths with the natural gas industry. >> if you're in public office as he was after his academic career, there are certainly things you can't say. you can't say we're going to be out crucifying people and there's a texas angle, too. which is remember governor perry

was talking about lynching ben bernanke. i think it is unfortunate that he said these things. it's understandable having said them, he got in trouble. >> i don't think that's true. >> i think, i was saying this during the break. there's a cultural sensitivity for some things and not for others. we see references to nazis all the time or this person is behaving like hitler. and i think there are people who find that offensive. >> the sensitivity is not what is said, it's who is saying it. this is a man charged with some portion of the power of the state. he's not an adjudicator. but he comes from an agency that does adjudication. and the suggestion that that adjudication, that agency is one of the sees its role as prosecutorial, is one that's going to make people nervous. >> but should it make them nervous? >> it should make them nervous in the same way that criminals are nervous. >> no one talks tougher than prosecutors, right? we all love that. >> if you heard, if a federal

district judge gave a speech about how much he liked sending people to prison, that would make people nervous. a judge is supposed to be neutral on whether any particular defendant deserves to go to prison or not. if you're the agency that enforces the environmental laws -- >> is it a proper analogy for a regulator, the judge or the prosecutor, that's the question. >> it's a specific case of while he is in this job. it's the wrong kind of thing for him to say. if he were not in this job, he could say things more flamboyant. that's the problem. >> he could have said he was declaring peace on the war on christmas. >> let me reaffirm that as colorful as the analogy was, he specifically mentions in the quote, that's what, this pertains to people that are out of compliance with the law. this is not that just -- >> for the first half, equating it to the romans, the romans are the people that are actually guilty. the quote starts as being a defense of random terror tactics in law enforcement and random terror is not the way to enforce

environmental laws. >> it's the way that the crucifixion analogy was set up was that was not necessarily fair thing. >> is it strikes me as the power, the ability of the conservative media to pluck something from obscurity and turn it into a story that ends with someone resigning a week later. which we have seen before. miami, florida. in here, great food demands a great presentation. so at&t showed corporate caterers how to better collaborate by using a mobile solution, in a whole new way. using real-time photo sharing abilities, they can create and maintain high standards, from kitchen to table. this technology allows us to collaborate with our drivers to make a better experience for our customers. [ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪

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all at 150 calories or less, there's definitely a temptations for you. unless you're one of those people who doesn't like delicious stuff. temptations. it's the first jell-o that's just for adults. ♪ ♪ talking about the epa administrator, al amandarez who used the word "crucify" to talk about his regulatory enforcement approach and has found himself now out of a job. i compared him to van jones and shirley sherrod and other figures elevated about i this conservative media complex that's able to take a discrete

incident that has completely flown under the radar. for instance the comments at a town hall in 2010 and amplify them through a series of different parts of the machine. james inhof takes the senate floor, there was an editorial published in "the wall street journal," fox news and talk radio and a firestorm and he's out of a job. >> what's significant is it shows the machine in action and also unfortunately he made himself vulnerable to this. which shows you how remarkable it is the obama administration has been so scandal-free. because that machine would be cranking. you know. >> that is a really good point. i remember when darrell issa was coming in as the new chair of government oversight in the house, there was all this talk about how he was going to town on scandals and there was a ton of subpoenas that happened and we have not seen anything like the payoff from that that was being hyped at the time. >> there's a term "makaka moment" it happens to be a democratic administration, so

they're going to be the casualties. >> i think the interesting difference here is that this is the random civil servant, essentially and he's not a presidential candidate, right? that to me is what is chilling about this. whether the language is right or wrong, the guy has a career and here, let me read you something. i thought it was funny. this is after the regulator has to resign. this is the coke brothers statement. the coke brothers talking about this man. we worked koogtively and productively with the epa and mr. armenzariz concerning air permitting issues under the clean air act in texas in 2010. and were able to resolve those issues in a mutually satisfactory manner. the point is how should he doing his job should be the way he's judged. >> this is, i'm afraid, all of our futures, i'm now going to forget the name of the obscure pastor in fayetteville, north carolina, who gave the sermon about smacking kids who don't conform to gender stereotypes, that guy is also one of the most famous people in america and he

may not be resigning from his pulpit. but he's had a pretty uncomfortable couple of weeks. the point is, we live in a world in which we are all liable to surveillance, by not by the state but by our neighbors. at all times. >> and by the state as well. i think there's a big difference between that sermon, which was odious and hateful in a way i don't think the regulator's statements were. >> there are going to be little league coaches, and school superintendents who are going to find themselves saying something bad or stuthd stooupd stupid or wicked. >> one of the things we have done, the word is that privacy erodes for private citizens, while secrecy metastasizes among government and big entities. if you're someone who gets caught on a camera phone because you're saying something stupid. you're on fox news, and we still don't know how many drones are

flying over waziristan. >> these are points about the top-level secrecy and the pan-optican state. but this is the wrong fact case to attach them to. this was a public official. >> in a public speaking. >> it was an unfortunate case for him and even 20 years ago, i think he might have got in trouble for that. >> i spent time last night going through the regulator's work and cv and he seemed he was doing really righteous work. so i hope he can return. what you should know about the week ahead after this. makeup artists have everything to make my skin look its best.

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so what should you know for the week coming up? the family of junior seau will allow scientific researchers to study the deceased player's brain to see if he was suffering from the effects of traumatic brain injury after a 20-year nfl career. seau killed himself by shooting himself in the chest, same method of suicide used by dave

do y deurson shot himself. deurson found he suffered degenerative disease linked to multiple concussions, the evidence is mounting that professional football takes a toll on the lives of its players that is difficult to square with basic commitments to each other. in the wake of disappointing april jobs report, there is a net private sector job racks of 35,000 jobs, but also way more than under george w. bush that oversaw a net job loss in the private sector of 663,000 jobs. since president obama took offense the nation has lost nearly 600,000 public sector jobs and you should know that usually government increases public sector hiring during a recession as this chart shows, and if republicans had allowed it to increase in this session, we would be in much better shape. you should know that chen

guongcheng is still in china. chi china's defense minister will meet at the pentagon with leon panetta and others on monday. the u.s./china relationship is easily caricatured by opposition politicians. those criticisms seem to be forgotten by each american administration. china is home to some of the most courageous, spirning, and innovative protesters in the world and it is those people who will change china, not us. i want to know what my guests think we thud should know. mr. fullows? >> another look at american politics. an alliance report on the state of the judiciary. one federal judgeship in ten is vacant. a historically high number blockages. in the first three years of

geor government w. bush's time in office, it went down. one more thing showing how our government is working. >> what happens in terms of the norms of the senate and how the rules have failed to keep pace with the degrading norms is a huge source of that dysfunction. catherine? >> over 300,000 people jumped out of the job force. they say my friend got a job, maybe it's time for me to start looking again, pounding the pavement. and instead people are dropping out. not clear why that is it's very concerning about the state of mind of workers. >> the jobs reports, a little noisy in each individual month. a feeling in january, february. >> we have the exact same pattern the last two years, where the beginning of the year

started out quite strong and dipped and a lot of concern that will happen now, it is noisy as you say, so who knows? you know, a lot of economists i talked with about this report on friday, had said, well, maybe the numbers will get revised upward. they are wrong, maybe the numbers are wrong. >> alexis goldstein, quickly? >> we mentioned before, a big fight against the derivative of dodd/frank. americans for financial reform can read more. and next week on may 9th, bank of america shareholder meeting in north carolina. i think we'll see a lot of people protesting that, and so if you want to learn more, go to nc against corporate power.org to hear about some things they have planned. >> may 9th. a variety of shareholder actions this is proxy season in corporate america, a lot of annual shareholder meetings, a lot of shareholder meetings directed at too big to fail

banks. david frum, what should folks know? aside that you have a new book out, "patriots," you should give it a read, it's fiction. now go. >> french voters have faced an agonize ing choice. americans should welcome hollande. the hopes of averting a european depression is improved. is he apposed to labor reforms that france needs to do to be right for the long term. >> i want to thank my guests, james fallows, catherine rampell, alexis goldstein and david frum, author of "patriots" also with "newsweek" and daily

beast." check us out on up.msnbc.com. up next, melissa harris-perry. >> thank you for then concert today. i appreciate every bit of music in and out of break it was fantastic. we'll dig into the president's re-election launch message and we'll ask a counterintuitive question that maybe we're better off than we think we are and look at the other side of the stand your ground law and ask why women who try to use self-defense can't get a break in our courts and then we're going to talk about the dream of every little girl to grow up and bring a ballerina. we have misty copelands here. >> we'll definitely be checking it out. melissa harris-perry, up next. stay tuned for that. and as for you, thank you for watching this weekend, as always, we'll see you next week here on "up." for three hours a week, i'm a coach.

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