michael, you have no slips? >> no speaker cards for this item. commissioner moranving on, first of all, a word on the agenda. i think we will end up having to skip around a little bit. let me just say what my intent is. on the regular agenda, the public hearing on hetch hetchy -- first of all, it was noticed for 1:30, so we cannot proceed before then. also, later in the agenda, we have a workshop on the budget for next year and a suggested rate policy. it would make sense to have that discussion first. my intent would be to move that took after that. in order to accommodate that, i will call the budget workshop item no later than 3:00, to make sure that we are all here for that discussion. we also have two items from mr. chang, and i would give him a choice. i do not want to have to have him necessarily stick around to the end of the meeting. depending on what he would like to do on that, we could consider both items 10 and then item 13 at the beginning of the regular calendar. so we are kind of shuffling as we go, but i think that should probably get the job done.

for a look on the job market, we spoke with a chief economist michael moran. >> the u.s. economy has had several head winds that have been slowing the economy down and preventing strong job growth. but those are diminishing. because they're starting to diminish, we should continue to see improved in the market. deleveraging in the household sector. households are making more progress in fixing their balance sheets. in addition, bank credit is starting to grow now. another factor of this is that the budget problems are becoming less severe. they have made good progress in fixing their problems. even the housing market which is the weakest area of the united states is starting to show signs of improvement. there are some downside risks such as problems in europe, but i think if we can avoid a meltdown in europe, the u.s. will remain on the solid growth track. >> meantime, the unemployment rate in eurozone nations remained at a record high of 10.3% in november. it shows that the region's spreading credit worries are still having a negative impact. the eu statistics office re