sperling, about the authorization for $5 billion in bonuses to be given to merrill lynch employees at the time that the merger took place between bank of america and merrill lynch? i have read accounts in the paper and i have heard information that bank of america new, and signed this agreement, that these bonuses could take place. later i am told that the ceo said that he was made to sign an agreement, understanding that these bonuses were going to be given. normally these bonuses were given at the beginning of the year. they rushed them so that they would be given toward the end of the year, and prior to the signing of the agreement. what do you know about this? >> congresswoman, there is obviously been very contentious discussion as you know that is gone out to the public between former secretary paulson, the chairman and the chairman of bank of america over what transpired during that transaction, which as you know, was months before i entered the obama administration. i would have to, i would need to go back and would be happy to do so to get what our administration's best unders

in september b of a had quickly installed 200 people at merrill lynch to thoroughly review their books. were any of the 200 bank of america employees responsible for analyzing merrill lynch aware of the potential for the $12 billion loss before you allegedly discovered it in mid december? >> i apologize if i haven't been clear. we did have people there and we did know that there were losses. it was clear both at our company and theirs. we could see that that was happening. and there were rumors on the street that that was happening across all financial institutions. and we saw evidence of that after the fourth quarter close because we saw most everybody had losseses. the thing that caused us to be concerned was the acceleration that we saw when we got those -- when we got the numbers that we did on the 14th. >> did you feel that the reviews of merrill lynch's books were thoroughly adequate? were they researched and analyzed adequately? >> yes, ma'am. i thought the due diligence was done adequately. we identified the instruments that we thought might have issues if you have credit deterioration, but we did not expect the magnitude o