greg curl replaced amy brinkley as boa's chief risk officer. given the fact that mr. curl fwaled to unless $12 billion of merrill lynch's losses, it is wise to have mr. curl be your chief risk officer? and did you approve of that decision? >> mr. curl didn't miss the instruments which caused the loss. what happened is we did not anticipate the meltdown of such a significant proportions in the fourth quarter. so we -- he identified everything properly. no one thought things would get as bad as it did in the fourth quarter. and i made that decision. >> you made the decision that mr. kerl should go ahead and become the coo. >> i made the decision for him to become the cro. >> let me announce that we have two votes on the floor and that we will recess for until 12:30, we will be returning at 12:30 and of course continue the questions. so the committee is in recess until 12:30. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> in your testimony you stated that nine days after the shareholders approved the me