banks in america now having like wachovia which is out wells fargo half a trillion dollars of the mexican drug cartel money laundering was there a big kind of scramble for that kind of money laundering business that the u.s. wanted from european banks and as such targets what's the one you know i think a convenient target i think that's the first thing politically it's very easy to sell the idea that switzerland is all bad i read the moment into the development of the u.b.s. where they have decided to cut back i think they have understood the american environment will be made impossible for swiss banks and the indeed a number of other supposedly too big to fail banks. because at the end of the day there is yet another inner circle even more protected too big to be to fail banks who benefit from the protection of the i.c.c. the c f.t.c. and other many other institutions which are designed to basically monitor and control what goes on but they also decide who lives and who dies and if you look at u.b.s. his decision to withdraw virtually from the fixed income business because you know banki

it out and we are almost frustrated because they can't cover and the headline the next day after wachovia put together since the u.s. still faces a huge fiscal problem. what we really want to do is put in place a plan big enough to fix the problem and that's going to be what's going to have the upside of the certainty of stability around the corner and importantly finally showing to all of us that this country can govern itself. the whole world is watching right now i'm rooting for us. people want the united states to claim out and fix this problem and the clock is ticking as we wait to see if they'll be able to do it. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> frank oliveri is the policy writer for congressional quarterly. they've been on the authorization bill they finally found a way to start consideration of amendments. ..

too big to fail banks become too bigger to fail, such as j.p.morgan, or wells fargo which bought wachoviabut there are others who find they can't hit their stride with the asset they say accummed a decade ago. >> ifill: what we're watching happening at citigroup. does that make them an outlier or a sign of things to come? >> i think it's a little bit of both. citigroup, let's not forget, had to go in for two rounds of bailout money. there was even scuttlebut that the white house suggested this was a bank that should fail, that it was beyond rescue. it still has $1 fent billion of bad seeftz its sheets it's looking to get rid of. there are no easy answers for it. there is no overnight turnaround. and at the same time, it's a public company and shareholders are saying, "show me the progress." >> ifill: roben farzhad of "bloomberg business week," thank you very much. >> thank you, gwen, have a good night. >> woodruff: still to come on the "newshour": senator bob corker on the fiscal crisis; the threat of chemical weapons in syria; florida's endangered coral reefs and the life and music of ja

successful firms included fannie mae and freddie mac, bear stearns, lehman, merrill lynch, citigroup, wachovia, ubs, aig, and wamu. with variations they exhibited similar shortcomings in organization, governance and management. many of these institutions had become so unwieldy that they were virtually impossible to manage. managers may have profited from organizations of $1 trillion or more, it is not clear that this massive size benefited marketed the efficiency or the financial system or firms that failed their shareholders. we forget how large our financial conglomerate actually are. in 2008, citigroup with 350,000 employees and 20,000 subsidiaries the complex financial institution. aig, stronger than most of the major firms comprise 223 companies that operate in 130 countries and 116,000 employees and in my book i try to share with the reader exactly how complex these firms are and the aig chart, they are really small compared to our large complex financial institutions, take the four pages of fine print and a huge number of organizational boxes. we -- governance, compound and organization

wachovia has been fined but it's one of the few u.s. banks in the past, fined for similar things.ied to move into the u.s. market and they tried to find ways, of course to build quickly in the u.s., acquisitions and other things. they're such big banks. are they so big they couldn't follow what the u.s. was doing, what their people in the u.s. were doing? were they able to get away with things in the u.s. not complying with u.s. law because headquarters here in europe couldn't keep control of it? that's one of the questions. the other one is, were they aggressively trying to build their business so much in the u.s. that they closed they're eyes to what was going on? that's why they're all facing fines, i think. >> thank you. >>> traditional ethiopian music meeting jazz rhythms. an artist who never touched an instrument until ten years ago. now changing the face of ethiopian music. when we got married. i had three kids. and she became the full time mother of three. it was soccer, and ballet, and cheerleading, and baseball. those years were crazy. so, as we go into this next phase,

citibank, wachovia, wells fargo, also e-trade and paypal also targeted.as the spring. no response from the banks we've contacted or the government, which monitors cyber warfare, cyber crime. >> so we have till spring to work it out? >> well, the fdic ensures your deposits up to $250,000. >>> republicans in the house have been warned santa claus might find them at the capitol for christmas if they can't get a deal on the fiscal cliff done before then. >> with coal. >> with coal all around, because they can't get a deal done on the fiscal cliff. we want to talk to congressman james langford, a republican from the state of oklahoma. nice to have you with us, sir. we appreciate your time. >> thank you. >> you have in all seriousness been warned not to make plans for christmas. what do you think is the likelihood in fact that a deal would be done before christmas, number one? and what exactly are they telling you to do or not do? >> at this point we've been told by eric cantor and speaker boehner just to hold the schedule through the rest of the year. that's t