for example treasury secretary, jack lew, got an exit package worth over $1 million from citigroup shortly before he joined the obama administration. the contract from citigroup made explicitly clear that his bonus was contingent, and i'm quoting, "on his securing a 'full time high level position with the us government or regulatory body.'" make sense of that for me. >> it's really i think the revolving door is maybe the most important corrupting element of in washington because of -- you have what we call, in this case that's a reverse revolving door, right. but either way what you've got is people who are coming to the government or to be in public service with an incentive coming from their prior employer in this case. you know, you're not forgetting your friends who just gave you a multibillion or a multimillion dollar deal. or you have people who are in the public service who are anticipating their next step, you know, their public service is essentially a stepping stone in their resume to make more money. i don't want that kind of person in my government. i would rather see that we h

but i want to know, for example, when neal wolin in the treasury council got the information the irs was being investigated for targeting groups, did they tell timothy geithner. did geithner tell the white house counsel who learned later but told the chief of staff but they wouldn't tell the president. i think you have to narrow down on all these key individuals, in the irs, in the upper echelons of the treasury, and in the upper echelons of the white house. that's why i suspect at some point you're going to need a special counsel. >> i think a special counsel is something you do when there is a prosecutorial role. we need an independent investigation, outside the role of congress, outside the irs, to have an independent investigator to find out what took place. maybe give that person subpoena power. >> do you give grand jury power? >> i don't know. that goes into prosecutorial function. no allegation of criminal wrong-doing. no one has suggested that. the big issue is the 501(c)(4) status and it's a very complicated role in defining what this is. but you kind of skated over the whol

one of the things that has happened is, for example, when the doj starts its last round of easing, money flowed in to u.s. treasuryspean sovereigns, for example. if you looked at the spanish ten year it went from 5% 4% within 2 months. just incredible fund flows into anything considered yielding. lou: looking at all the anxiety and concern and trepidation that makes up the european union theseays, the eurozone to be holding as it has to know reality in the euro is every bit as strong as it was two years ago, three years ago. you know, it is really a remarkable time. in this country you have a fed that says it will be all over when we get to six and a half% unemployment. we are looking at 20 million folks who are either unemployed, underemployed, or who have given up looking for work. they don't talk about a commodity is that bad. how bad is it really? >> well, the metric that i lik to look at as being important is the pulation ratio. the reason i like to look at that is because it is the brdest gauge of employment. it is not easily manipulated. is different than the participation rate. is the total number of people

reason for these criteria was inappropriate is they did not focus on tax-exempt laws and treasury regulations. for example 501c3 organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention. 501c4 organizations can but it must not be their primary activity. political campaign intervention is action taken on behalf of or against a particular candidate running for office. although these criteria appeared in the irs's own documentation as of june 2011 irs employees began selecting tea party or other organizations for review in early 2010. from may of 2010 through may of 2012, a team of irs specialists in cincinnati, ohio referred to as the determinations unit, selected 298 cases for additional scrutiny. according to our findings the first time that executives from washington, d.c. became aware of the use of these criteria was june, 2011 with some executives not becoming aware of the criteria until april or may of 2012. the irs's inappropriate criteria remained in effect for approximately 18 months. after learning of the inappropriate criteria, the director of exempt organizations changed the criteria in j

they don't like the idea that it's tied to treasury bonds, for example. they are calling for, as much protection as possible for students. and when you look at the numbers, richard, it's really only about a fourth of students who carry loans who will be impacted by this. so here is president obama coming out right now. take a listen. >> good morning, everybody. have a seat, have a seat. welcome to the white house. i know it's a little warm. one of my favorite things about this job is that i get to spend some time with remarkable young people from all across the country. it inspires me, it makes me feel good. those of you who have had to put on suits and ties and show up at the white house first thing on a friday morning may not feel the same way i do, but i appreciate all of you being here. you cleaned up very well. and these students and graduates are here to talk about something that matters to millions of young people and their families, and that's the cost of a college education. because this isn't just critical for their futures, but it's also critic

no question it had an impact on their ability and potentially going forward the ability of treasury for example to participate in the required information sharing could well have an impact. >> anybody else? >> not as much in maryland because of the way the law was written for state based exchange and away the funding goes. >> we will see this in the federal one. >> i don't think we know the exact numbers. we do know there was money in the original legislation and we know it was a petition to take care of all of the costs associated with implementation, more money is needed and it seems a peculiar strategy of governance to make legislation fail by appropriating so little money it can't be properly administrated. seems like a light approach to politics that is deplorable. >> it is one of the things i thought was most destructive about your opening comments, that medicare, administrators in the group, this was done in a dramatically different way so we can extract -- >> it also highlights the remarkable challenge. the state federal partnership expected on medicare, dependent on federal infrastruct

there were certain people, the people that you just named -- sebelius, the secretary of treasury, for exampleing at the white house actually didn't have to sign in. they were precleared. so i think we're now kind of resting all this on a distinction that i think really doesn't kind of carry much water. look, the fact is there were nonconservative groups that were scrutinized, and i will ask you and monica both, do we think if it's true that you had to be a social welfare group to qualify for 501c4 status? and if it's true that most of these groups were not -- and i think they weren't by every accounting -- is the taxpayer well served by having those groups get 501c4 status or not? because if we think that's a tax -- jon: you know that the president's half brother got certification -- >> because he was doing -- jon: tax-free status for the barack h. obama foundation. is that a group that deserves tax-free status? >> there are groups out there -- miss america pageant's a 501c4. there are definitely groups that qualify, and incidentally, if they were as serious about going after these tea party

the criteria were ininappropriate, is that they did not focus on tax exempt laws and treasury regulations. for example, 501 c 3 organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention. 501 c 4 organizations can, but it must not be their primary activity. political intervention is action taken on behalf of or against a particular candidate running for office. all these criteria appeared in the irs' own documentation as of june 20112, irs employees began selecting tea party and other organizations for review in early 2010, from may 2010 to may of 2012, a team of irs specialists in cincinnati, ohio, referred to as the determinations unit. selected 298 cases for additional krut snoscrutiny. the first time officials in washington, d.c. became aware was june 2011, with some executives not becoming aware until april or may of 2012. the inappropriate criteria remained in effect for 22 months. after learning of the inappropriate criteria, the director changed the criteria in jewel july 2011. however, cincinnati staff changed the criteria back to target organizations with specific policy positions, but

no question its has an impact on their ability, the treasury for example, to participate in the required information sharing. they could well have an impact. >> anyone else? --not so much in maryland nine nin i do not think we know the numbers. more money is needed. a peculiar strategy of governments to try to make byislation fail appropriating a little money it cannot be properly administered. that is the kind of mud eyed approach that is deplorable. >> it is one of the things that i thought was most struck does about your opening comments. that this was-- done in a genetically different way. >> i think it also highlights the remarkable challenge here because of the state federal partnership. the really dependent upon a federal infrastructure. in this case, you are dependent upon both. they are to be fully funded by their own operations. wouldpectation was it not be federal funds over the long term. the whole question of federal and state responsibility and how that plays out by state will have a tremendous impact. >> state exchanges are supposed to be self funding as well so they are n

these criteria, were, inappropriate, is that they did not focus on tax-exempt laws and treasury regulations. for example, 501(c)(3) organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention. 501(c)(4) organizations can, but it must not be their primary activity. political campaign intervention is action taken on behalf of, or against a particular candidate running for office. although these criteria appeared in the irs's own documentation as of june 2011, irs employees actually began selecting tea party and other organizations for review in early 2010. from may of 2010 through may of 2012, a team of irs specialists in cincinnati, ohio, referred to as the determinations unit, selected 298 cases for additional scrutiny. according to our findings, the first time that executives from washington, d.c. became aware of the use of these criteria was june 2011 with some executives not becoming aware of the criteria until april or may of 2012. the irs's inappropriate criteria remained in effect for approximately 18 months. after learning of the inappropriate criteria the director of exempt organizations cha

is -- this is a level of investigion that he did not apply for, for example, to jack lew, just confirmed to be secretary of the treasuryd been at a bank that actually did not fail, citi, or whawf without the bailout from us. melissa: meeting may 21st in tampa, florida, the big issue is do they want to separate the ceo and chairmanship role? i asked dimon about that the last time. i'll play what he saidand ask for the reaction on the other side. here's what it is. >> boards should have the flexibility to decide what is appropriate for that company with the own circumstances at the time. they are reasonable to separate it, put it together, and board decides what's appropriate for a company. if they decide it should be separate, you know, i will take the advice. melissa: what's the bet? gym, what's going to happen? >> i don't think any of these board members will be tossed out, and dimon will keep the chairman and ceo role. i don't think it's a big conspiracy, but it's easy to jump on the bandway gone, criticizing jp, what people are doing here. i bet it's a status quo next year. messa: james, quick, what's the bet? >> he

this criteria were inappropriate, is that they did not focus on tax exempt laws and treasury regulation. for example, 501(c)(3) organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention. 501(c)(4) organizations can but it must not be their primary activity. political campaign intervention is action taken on behalf of all against a particular candidate running for office. although these criteria appear in the irs's own documentation as of june 2011, irs employees actually begin selecting tea party and other organizations for review in early 2010. from may 2010 through may of 2012, a team of irs specialist in cincinnati, ohio, referred to as the determinations unit selected 298 cases for additional scrutiny. according to our finest, the firsthefirst time that excited e washington, d.c. became aware of the use of these criteria was june 2011, with some exec is not become aware of the criteria until april or may of 2012. the irs is inappropriate criteria remained in effect for approximate 18 months. after learning of the inappropriate criteria, the director of exempt organizations change the crite

these criteria were inappropriate is that they did not focus on tax exempt laws and treasury regulation. for example, 501(c)(3) organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention. 501(c) four organization's can but it must not be their primary activity. local campaign intervention is taken on behalf of or against a particular candidate running for office. although these criteria appear in the irs'own documentation as of june 2011, irs employees actually began selecting tea party and other organizations for review in early 2010. from may of 2010 through may of 2012, a team of irs is -- irs specialists in cincinnati referred to as the determinations unit selected 290 cases for additional scrutiny. , theding to our findings first time executives from washington, dc, became aware of the use of these criteria, was june, 2011 with some executives not becoming aware until april or may of 2012. 'an appropriate criteria remain in effect for approximately 18 months. after learning of the inappropriate criteria, the director of exempt organizations changed the criteria in july of 2011 to remove re

just to give you a flavor, over the last three weeks i have, for example, attended meetings with the secretary of treasuryentral bank heads and regulatory chiefs from canada, china, europe, japan, mexico, singapore and switzerland; been briefed for a meeting of the financial stability board and a london meeting of the international reporting standard foundation monitoring board; reviewed, shaped and voted on a thousand-page proposal for regulating cross-border derivative transactions which i'll come back to in a moment; and held courtesy meetings with the vice chair of the japan financial services ministry and the australian securities investment commissioning chairman who is also chairman of the international organization of securities commissions -- commission. and this is only a partial list of my international activities in the last couple of weeks. now, this has all occurred because while i believe that the united states as the safest, most resilient and robust markets in the world, we do realize we are not the only game in town. so throughout the sec we are cooperating with our foreign counterparts

treasury department does oversee this. this is not like interfering in a criminal investigation in justice, for example. >> it's treated that way because a president once in a white house got involved in the irs and led to the great et ceteest political scandal in our history. the head of the irs was a bush appointee. and the acting commissioner was a career civil servant. >> the other question is should congress have known more? were they repeatedly misinformed? look at this exchange questioning going on in march of 2012. watch. >> we've seen some recent press allegations that the irs is targeting certain tea party groups across the country, requesting what have been described as onerous document requests, delaying approval for tax exempt status. can you give us assurances that the irs is not targeting particular groups based on political leanings? >> let me start by saying, yes, i can give you assurances. as you know, we pride ourselves on being a nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization. there's absolutely no targeting. >> now that's not true. there's not evidence that mr. schulman did know at that point. why was congress

some discussion of the kind of policy we would have with banks, for example, discount window lending, would we accept the default of treasury and all kind of things that were contingency plan in case things were to happen. what we did not do was directly engage the private sector for any contingency planning. we were mostly looking at our internal systems and our ability to address whatever, whatever directions, we are the agent of course of the treasury and it's our job to do whatever they tell us to do. and just working to our capacity, both as an agent, managing the payment system, and also as bank supervisor to deal with a possible default, if the debt ceiling was not raised. >> i think -- i see my time has expired. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator bob casey is recognizer five minutes. >> mr. chairman, thank you. vice chair, thank you. chairman bernanke, we're grateful for your presence here and your testimony. and i have to say as well, the work you have done to do with a set of economic circumstances that we have rarely faced in american history, co brought not just a lot of focus but also a lot of passionate we ap

criteria were inappropriate is because they did not focus on tax exempt laws and treasury regulations. set -- for example, 501(c)(3) organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention. organizations can, but it must not be their primary activity. political campaign intervention, action taken on cap of or against a candidate running for office. although these criteria appeared in the irs documentation june 2011, the iressa began selecting tea party and other organizations for review in early 2010. may of 2010 through may of 2012, a team of iressa specialist in cincinnati, ohio, referred to as the determinations unit selected 298 cases for additional scrutiny. according to our findings, it is the first time that executives in washington, d.c. became aware of this practice 2011.ne with some executives not becoming aware until april or may of 2012. the criteria remained in effect for approximately 18 months. after learning of the inappropriate criteria, the director of the organizations change the criteria in july 2011 to remove references to organizations with names or politics positions. howev

or other federal trust funds holding treasury bonds. for example, medicare trust funds, deposit insurance, highway and airport trust funds, and the federal housing authority. in a word, this is irresponsible . default is default is default. the republicans are playing with fire. i think to gain political leverage. instead they should think of the national interest. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from michigan yields back. the gentlelady from new york reserves. the gentleman from texas. mr. sessions: thank you very much. we have had an opportunity once again today as we did yesterday to hear from the ranking member of the ways and means committee, the gentleman from michigan. and he brought his ideas, the best ideas he had up to the rules committee yesterday on this same issue. but the issues that the gentleman speaks about are attacking our answers. their answer that they propose is, tax increases and spending increases. and that way we'll simply have more money into the system, because as we have alread

these criteria were inappropriate is that they did not focus on the tax-exempt wall and treasury regulations. for exampleical campaign interventions. the 501c4 organizations khan, but it must not be their primary activity. political campaign intervention is action taken on behalf of a candidate running for office. although these criteria appeared in the irs documentation as june 2011, the irs employees began selecting the tea party and other organizations for the review in early 2010. in may of 2010 through may of 2012, the team of irs specialists in cincinnati ohio referred to the determinations' unit, selecting to wondered 98 cases for additional scrutiny. according to our findings, the first time that executives from washington, d.c. became aware of the use of these criteria was june, 2011, with some executives not becoming aware of the criteria until april or may of 2012. the irs inappropriate criteria remained for approximately 18 months later after learning of the inappropriate criteria, the director of the wixom organizations change the criteria in july of 2011 to remove the references to organiza

example out here is that of the u.s. in the in the iran your own war you had the us sitting back and saying kill all each other's young men use up each other's treasuries and we will go in on the side of the weaker power that was saddam hussein's iraq to make sure that it stays more or less even so that the war will continue it's what we're seeing right now in places like syria whichever side wins who benefits follow the money the benefits go to the arms dealers the arms industry the arms producers so that becomes a very useful thing so the notion that all right now you have to jump in here economic we're going to do what short break we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion of washington's open ended war state of the art. leave. children from want to financially and have a special say as how it's going to. mama. child should live in an orphanage for a long child should be raised in a family during these years only to leaven children the company returned by dump to families. of the willing to eighty percent of the children from zero or more from each place to silence. the child has brought us so much ha

example out here is that of the u.s. in the in the iran your own war you had the us sitting back and saying kill all each other's young men use up each other's treasuries and we will go in on the side of the weaker power that was saddam hussein's iraq to make sure that it stays more or less even so that the war will continue it's what we're seeing right now in places like syria whichever side wins who benefits follow the money the benefits go to the arms dealers the arms industry the arms producers so that becomes a very useful thing so the notion that all right we're going to jump in here economic we're going to go to was short break we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion of washington's open ended war state of the art. we've received. well. science technology innovation all the latest developments around russia we've got this huge earth covered. the worst. white house of. never seen anything like this i'm cold. mission three could you take three. more charges. to make amends three. three. three. moseley braun video for your media project a free media oh don carty dot com. welcome back to cross talk

but even with these measures, the brunt of the cuts is being felt by treasury's hard working public servants. at the irs, for exampleworkers will have to stay at home without pay for as many as seven days between now and september. this will erode our ability to provide quality service by forcing the irs to answer fewer calls and creating unexpected and unwanted delays in responding to taxpayer questions. it will also lead to fewer enforcement actions and reduced revenue collection. the fact is the sequester is not only hurting treasury's employees, it's or hurting taxpayers as well. as i said before, sequestration must be replaced as soon as possible. the president's budget does that, and i hope this committee and your colleagues will take action so we can get this done. with that, i thank you, and i look forward to answering any questions that you have. >> senator johanns? >> thank you, madam chair. secretary lew, thank you for being here again. let me, if i might, focus some questions on a piece of legislation that was passed a year or so ago, dodd-frank, which you're very familiar with. and i'd like to review --

white house might have known, for example, about the secret subpoena for wiretapping or getting the records of the associated press? do you think that through the treasurytment or maybe directly they knew that the irs was going after these conservative groups? or even worse, leaking tax returns? do you think the white house is -- can you get into that? is can you find that information out? >> well, the attorney general, of course, will be asked about all of this tomorrow over on the house side. what i'm telling you is, an investigation into the irs abuses by congress will have a lot of credibility. we have the tools to get to the bottom of what happened. who knew about it, when did they know about it, who may have ordered it. also, there's evidence that the irs actually leaked confidential material to left wing groups. >> right. >> this is a huge scandal. >> a lot of people are saying they leaked to the group pro publicca. a lot of people think they leaked tax returns to the campaign, sir. a lot of people think they leaked tax returns before the campaign. let me just ask you one final question on this. how can the irs possibly regulate obamacare? they h

example or here is that of the u.s. in the in the iran your own war you had the us sitting back and saying kill all each other's young men use up each other's treasuries and we will go in on the side of the weaker power that was saddam hussein's iraq to make sure that it stays more or less even so that the war will continue it's what we're seeing right now in places like syria whichever side wins who benefits follow the money the benefits go to the arms dealers the arms industry the arms producers so that becomes a very useful thing so the notion that all right now you have to jump in here economic we're going to go it was short break we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion of washington's open ended war state of art. we've. but i will only react to situations i have read the reports for. the pollution to know i will leave them to the state department to comment on your latter point of the month to. secure a call is on the docket no god. no more weasel words. when you have a direct question be prepared for a change when you throw a punch be ready for a battle for the speech and down the street into q

>> well this andhink, an example of left-hand knowing what the rig hand of government is doingthis is related to the irs investigatns, what is happening here is that the treasury deparrmen since barack obama entered into office has made a high 54 or -- priority trying to clampdown on the offshore accounts, they have gotten an agreement from swiss banks to open the record and allow treasury department, and potentially irs to go into t the foreign bank accounts and find out how much money they have there. a lot of people, myself included, think this is an invasion of privacy, and higy trucive. neil: a lot off folks suspect, f you are keeping money in awiss bank account you must be hiding something, irs national will be, this is probably big money, mitt romney-time money, maybe doing nothingrong but they are clearly targeting a group they suspect they can squeeze. >> n question. they want toind out how much money is thisnese accounts, not causehey think that people have been cheating on their taxes but they are looking at ways --here isal sorts of leslation both iunited states and 94 countries -- other country to tax global transactionsthis is a wayo find out how

example where government isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. >> it seems the white house decision is they want distance from everything, treasury will fix the irsy had a problem on their hand, they could have punted it, the bp oil spill, they could have punted it to an agency and they took it over. should the president gets more hands on in fixing the irs? >> probably. >> but they won't by the way. >> they won't. and it clearly tricky because it is a quasi independent agency. once you have this out there, it seems the more active the president is, the better it is for the irs, the better it is for the white house and the better it is for the country. this needs to get fixed. the question is will people believe he has the credibility. he said he didn't know anything about it until lois lerner made the odd comment about it. the white house is going to face more scrutiny about who knew what when. >> jay carney last week that this was not news, and that she didn't tell the chief of staff or maybe she did and they chose to keep the president out of the loop. on one hand you understand the logic there but it creates this idea an absentee leader. >> a

these criteria were inappropriate and did not focus on tax-exempt laws and treasury regulations here for example, 501(c)(3) organizations may not engage in political campaign intervention, which is defined as action taken on behalf of or against a particular candidate running for office. 501(c)(4) organization's main engage in such activities aligned it is not their primary activity. iris employees began selecting tea party and other organizations in early 2010. from may 2010 through may of 2012, a team of virus specialists in ohio referred to as determination soon it selected 298 cases for scrutiny. we found that first-time executives are washington d.c. became aware of the use of these criteria was june 2011 with some executives not becoming aware of the criteria until april or may may 2012. these inappropriate criteria remain in effect for approximately 18 months. after learning of criteria, the director of exempt organizations changed them in july 2011 to remove references to work in a station name some policy positions only to have staff in cincinnati change the criteria back again to targe

white house officials because in part the fed and the treasury have their own internal data -- >> you remember they put together that data room, for examplering the crisis. if you could actually figure out what the folks in the data room were looking at and if you looked at those functions, that's pretty interesting. separate piece, we haven't talked about the eric shatzker moment. it occurred a year ago. talked on the air directly on their network about using this function and my understanding is the ceo of the company tried to shut it down then. thought it was shut down. now the last piece that i think is the most interesting is not the journalism aspect. we're talking about whether stories have appeared. the entire business operation of bloomberg at some level uses this data to create new products. that's what they're constantly building new screens. they're constantly going to goldman sachs, jpmorgan and saying, you know what, we understand that you guys like to do x so we now made it more convenient for to you do x. and at some point they are eventually -- not eventually but already competing with their own clients because some of th

example, we did have longer dated gilts. we sold out of that. we had longer dated u.s. treasuries significantly on those as well. and we've reallocated toward corporate debt, and particularly low rated investment grade corporate debt rather than an allocation to high yield where we think that's looking a little bit overpriced. >> it was amazing to see bp's bond issue, i think, was yielding 2% and their stock's yielding 5%. i mean, it's -- it maybe explains why we got equities doing so well, right? when you look at those differentials. good to see you. thank you for joining us. head of fixed income at sandlin investment. >>> cnbc learned carl icahn is te teaming up countering the $24 billion buy outfounder from michael dell. reportedly offering $12 a share and cash for pc maker and finance the rest of the deal with $5.2 billion in debt guaranteed. icahn and southeastern own 16%. wall street journal says in a letter to dell's board icahn and southeastern have proposed replacing directors and management. >>> dell's stock up over 4.5% in frankfurt. >>> and julia has been speaking to m

examples would be the lobbying arm and -- by the way, it's possible to be part of both camps. the nra also runs several charities, including the organization's civil rights defense fund. treasury secretary says -- but the report also shows how mixed messages as well as a lack of communication and oversight inside the agency let the problem fester for years. michigan congressman sandra levin is the top democrat on the ways and means committee and they're going to be holding the first hearing friday. good morning. i want to start with the ig's report, are you satisfied with the thoroughness of the investigation by the ig? >> i think they did an effective job. i think they showed total mismanagement. there was use by the irs to exempt organization outfit -- i think there was a failure of oversight within that agency. also, they failed to really tell us in the congress what was going on. surely after they knew it was going on -- well the acting -- steven miller, asked about the politically active -- that complain they were being harassed. how their applications were handled and he said they grouped those organizations together to ensure consistency to -- the noise we heard has aba

just to give you flavor, over the last three weeks, i have for example attended meetings with the secretary of treasury and central bank heads and regulatory chiefs from canada, china, europe, japan, singapore and suiters land. a london meeting of the international reporting standards foundation monitoring board, reviewed and shaped and voted on 1,000-page proposal to regulating cross derivative transactions. i also held meetings with . pan's agencies this is only a partial list of my international activities in the last couple of weeks. this has occurred because -- well, i believe the united ates is the safest, most resilient, robust markets in the world. we realize we're not the only game in town. roughout the f.c.c., we're cooperating with our counterparts to drive economic growth and create jobs and to do so in a way does not lower the bar or relax the regulatory and oversight standards that will protect investors and stabilize markets. hat happens overseas matters every day. american investors and fund managers make decisions, financial statements are audited over seas. after bad trade executed by

example, discount window lending. would we accept a default at treasury and all those kinds of things and contingency planning in case this were to happen? what we did not do is directly engage the private seblingtor for any conting -- sector for any contingency planning. we were mostly looking at our internal systems and our ability to address whatever directions -- we are the agent, of course, of the treasury and it's our job to do whatever they tell us to do. we were just working through our capacity. both as an agent and managing the payment system and also as a bank supervisor to deal with a possible default if the debt ceiling was not raised. >> ok. i see my time has expired. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. senator bob casey is recognized for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, thank you. vice chair klobuchar, thank you for making this opportunity available to us. chairman bernanke, we're grateful for your presence here and your testimony. i have to say as well the work you've done to deal with a set of economic circumstances that we've rarely faced in american history. so you brought not just a lot of focus