mr. walsh? do you think there are more? >> we have actually encountered problems. >> so you think the likelihood is there are more? >> yes. >> mr. khuzami? >> there are always more, senator. >> could any of them be in the tens of billions. madoff was $50 billion. could they be in the billion dollar range? >> there is no guarantee that there isn't, but i agree with mr. markopolos that the economic cycle has shaken out a lot of the schemes that would otherwise exist, and that's why we've been able to bring with concerted effort 45 this year alone. >> the other thing that concerns me is that with new technology and increasingly dark markets, it is harder to uncover some of these things and it makes it more difficult. do all of you agree that it would be more difficult given we have less transparency in the markets these days than more? >> you are absolutely right, senator. less transparency equals a greater possibility for fraud and wrongdoing. >> and it would be one of the arguments from the fraud point of view that we ought t

mr. walsh, do you have anything to add? >> no. i agree with my colleague on that. >> and what about the second comment -- mr. markopolos's were really two. the second was too many lawyers, not enough market-experience people. i sort of asked you that before. >> i'm sorry, go ahead, please. >> look we are all about increasing o specialization. that's the thrust behind so many of the reforms we've implemented. i will say at the same time, there are, you know, astounding examples of work in complicated capital market areas that the staff has done. just to take an example in the new york office, one of our flagship offices, many of the same -- the same groups that were involved in this case did the sham finite reinsurance cases involving aig, renaissance and others. highly complicated structured transactns in which no risk was being transferred, transactions done solely to augment balance sheets and earnings. we did those cases. we did them well. $800 million worth of discouragement. and penalties that went back to investors. we can do

mr. walsh. >> chairman d ooh, dd and members of the committee, i appreciate the opportunity appear before the committee today to testify on behalf of the securities and exchange commission. my name is john walsh and i am the acting director of the office of compliance and inspections and investigations at the s.e.c. first let me say, without qualification that we all sincerely regret that we did not detect the madoff fraud. as i believe i speak here for everyone in the examination program, we view the madoff case as terribly unfortunate example of what happens when we fail in our mission. the type of fraud perpetrated by mr. madoff is the kind of misconduct we spend our days trying to uncover. and that is why we feel the way we do. and that is why we are working so diligently to address the problems that -- that contributed to this failure. let me assure you. we have not been sitting idley by awaiting the report. indeed from the time when we first learned of madoff's fraud, we have been working

markopolos, seven, mr. walsh, mr. khuzami five each so we have time for questions try to keep your statements within those limits. there is a little clock up there, and your entire statement will be read into the record, so it will b part of the record. mr. markopolos, you may begin. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you ranking member, thank you numbers of the committee. i was approximately one third of the inspector general's 477 page report either directly or indirectly, so i can speak to that one thirdf the report. i did submit three different complaints to the sec in may 2000,arch of 2001 and in the fall of 2005. if the inspector general's report was falsified, inaccurate or a whitewash, i would be denouncing it before you today, but i find his report to be extremely accurate, exceptionally well written, phenomenally well researched. it is a very comprehensive. it is hard-hitting. it gets right to the fact of the matter. in a nutshell, the sec staff was not capable of finding ice cream at a dairy queen. but i nev

mr. walsh? >> members of the committee. i appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee today to testify on behalf of the securities and exchange commission. my name is john walsh and i am the acting director of the office of compliance, inspections, and examinations at the sec. let me say it without qualification that we all sincerely regret that we did not detect the madoff fraud. as i believe i speak care for everyone in the examination program, we view the madoff case as a terribly unfortunate example of what happens when we fail in our mission. the type of fraud perpetrated by mr. madoff is the type of misconduct we spend our day trying to uncover. that is why we feel we do. that is why we're working so diligently to address the problem that contributed to this failure. let me assure you we have not been sitting idly by awaiting the inspector general's of report -- inspector general's report. the time when we learned about the fraud, we have been working hard to revamp the way we operate. since being appoin

khuzami or mr. walsh? no. >> i like metaphors, as people know. thank you for coming. and the hearing is closed. . as well as the potential side effects and consequences of cell phones news. live today at 2:00 eastern on c- span 3./ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> this week on q&a, our guest is christopher caldwell. he is the author of a new book. >> i have always been really interested in immigration. in the late 1980's i started to get interested in latin america. i began to write about it in late 1989. i went to panama, and i thought this is a really great thing to do, i am so interested in this. then the berlin wall came down. editors were totally an administration -- on tenor has been -- uninterested. one way to cover this was by covering immigration into the united states. i love the topic of immigration. about mid-way through the 1990's when i was thinking about going to tijuana it occurred to me that immigration in europe was not really developing along the same lines that the a

i don't know where mr. walsh is getting his numbers.t want the government health care period. >> anyone of the options are not considered an option by the gop, then? >> the co-op model looks a lot like gsc. we saw that happened with freddie and fannie. it did not work. have the federal government under write the health care, who is setting the trigger? the federal government. and if you get olympia snow, it's really not a bipartisan bill. >> howard dean was saying the president has to show strength on this. let me play that clip. >> we already know this is going to be part of the fight in the senate. they are not going to be interested in helping put together something on the republican side. so i think he has to stand up and lead and be strong. what people value in a president is strength. >> mark, we previously heard from power dean saying if there was not a public option, then it's not health care reform? >> well, first of all, this is not a government-run program. the 70% that i talked about were the people that want the option. and