weill. dr. witt? >> chairman angelides, vice chairman thomas, members of the commission, my name is gary witt. for the last two years, i have been teaching full time at temple university in philadelphia. and no longer have any affiliation with moody's. i am pleased to be able to participate in today's discussion the options i express are mine alone, the opinions express are mine alone. theinancial stabili act that recently passed both houses of congress expands the powers of e sec. the sec will determine over th coming months and years how best to use these new powers to foster more accurate credit ratings. i hope they find our deliberations useful. i waan analyst and then managing director in the u.s. derivatives group in moody's from septeer 2000 to september 2005 when i was reassigned within moody's away from cdos. i wa one of three team managing directors in is cdo group fro march '04 to september '05. i was responsible for e following eas. cash flow, abs, market value cdos, collateraliz

what therime minister said aboutcumbria and expressi o heartfelt family d friends of all those who weilledand jud. the police investigation unrway. can he updatehe worthe vements ing? can ask him is he in a posionet toell the house if the vernment h anyans reconside the regulationf guns as the home secrery riy said in their statement, we have to learnny lesso we n? >> can i thi the right honoe ladies for her words appallg tredy and think ho best we go forward. ecifically on the gun ws w edo be clear fir aut the full facts of the se. we also need, think, to determine the type a the spe of reviews that will take place crse, the home office will look again at the gun laws in light of that. and i can noun todays we that the chief const of cumbriaccounng him to conduct a peer review o firearms licensin the police firems respoe and firearms tactics. ese reviews wilall come publicly available documts. i do believee shouldt leap to conclusions i don't lieve in knejerk legislatn. we do have somof the tightt n laws in is country but, of course, we shod ok again. in terms of this issue of wha of revi

weill have to see how it works. the ability to measure ratings over multi-yea perd is something that we can do and we think that it is going to provide god alignment for our senior management. >> keeping with the idea of town at the top, in your communications with the rank and le of moody's, it is clear that quality tromps mark share. >> i have to be concerned with all different aspects of managing a successful business. beforeore junior eloyees, their compensation, our analysts and support analyst, their compensation is in no way tied to the number of securities they rate or the number of companies that follow. >> for the share that they gain in the market. >> or that they lose in the market. >> so what were t real goals that they had when ty were working at moody' >> i care about market coverage as much as i care about mart share, if it is produced on an unpaid basis. i still want to have market covered. i also appeared the front -- deeply about ratings quality. part of my job iso balance those interests properly

that is what we do tooay and that is what weill do onhe first of september. we are there. think it is the right time to go to 50,000. i believe, it is my assessment, that they can provide the governmental formation to be completed. >> is there a danger in doing it so quickly. if you can pull out 50,000 in four weeks, is that the way you want to do it? do not want to take a longer time? >> again, i have been looking at this for a very long time. we have done an awful lot of work. i feel very comfortable with what we are doing. i would argue that we might wa tootake out a few more in april and may. but because the elections were not certified, we decided to push a few more to the right. i feel very comfortable with what we are doing. >> how many contractors and does the u.s. and sll maintain in iraq? >> we're down to 85,000 or 90,000 contractors. by ptembe1st we will be down to ,000 or 65,000 contractors. we will then go down further as we continue to reduce our size. it wl pbably be behind us by about one or two months. a lot of the contractors are returning to iraqis part

weill miss himearly and, again, our prayers and our condolences goes out to judy and to the family ani yiel backhealance of my the kepro tempore: mr. jones of north carona. m moran, kaa ms. kaptur of ohio mrdefazio of oregon. mr. lincolnaz-balart, flida. ms. maloney, new york. mr. boozman, arkansas. under the speaker's unce policy of januar6, 2009, the gentleman fr tex, mr. gohmert, irecogned for 60 minute as the designee of he minority leader. mr. gohmert: thank you, mr. speaker. tee different iss feel compeld to bring up and dicuss one, rsof all, is what's going on in the gulf of mexico. being from texas,we are particularly sensitive to what happens there. en so many days on the gulf of mexico coas on texas coast, louisiana, alabama, missisippi, florida, all of those areas. ante what's happening is heartbreaking. two things nd to be done. e is immediely do everything we c to stop adition oil from flowing into tharea, at the same tcleaning up the area before we do a more devastation. and then the otherhing is we need to find ouwhat caused the spill, what could have been do better to p

this wasthe minimum level and weill put it on the table. let them discuss thawith them. why is this minimunot acceptable? you cannot do a swap with large percentages. that would destroy the unity of palestinian terriries. >> good morning mr. president. allow me to ask my questn and arabic too. >> translar: whyon't we see initiaves by arab leader as we have in the past by going to jerusalem and entering into direct negotiations with isrli leader do you believe that the arabs cept the con of normalization with israel, and how woulthis normalization be like? >> piece is very precious for any people, but also people are influenced by events. let's talk about peace and normalization in the-- that took place aboard the ftilla. they would have to take measures to eress their desire for peace, their intention to make peace. that the arab states were not on conscience when they signed the arab peace initiative. they knew very well what was the price. however, peace is more precious than anything else, more precus than any other thing. we see things go up and down. the attack on g

what we kw by doing so weill hurt not only the individual and this country as well. of so i coend the gentleman r his worinhigard and the m.r. that we wl se a few momentbecain that m.t.r. st as reclaiming the invial liberty act, we recogze that the constitution prohibits the expansi of gornment authority in the are if we had t ability to do that , uldn'te have donit la year with gard to th au industry? could maate peopeo buy autobiles. we can't do it in ts area. and i mmend your work. mr. cai thank the ntlen for his coents ande mas a very important point and in osing, i just want to s we look at the sts th the individualandate i particlarly go to go hit hard on sll businesses d how icult that's going to make it f them toontito be able to expand and hire workers and know that the small is rtually a frau that 90% t smallusinesses wot ableo qualiffor that because is snarrowly draft. the rhetoric of saying we are doing all these grt things, but the rty, there is nothing there. ae end of t 2010 when the indual income tax rates crease as wells onividends and capital gains,

this you man, weill cal him steve, should have en worrying aboutettingis drir's license or what he w going to wear to the hecoming danc instead was concern for his very basic survival. evand his family wer told he on had5% chance of iving because head a soball-sized tor, whichad own thrones of his rib cage. luily, he lived t cleveland area. he was ing treated at rainbow babs and children's hospital in clevelandwhic one of eeading pedtric hospitals in the world. rainbobabiess a wrld-cls facily ancares for patients from around wod. the doctors, nurses and suppor staff at rainbow workediracle on is young man. he h intee chemond surgery h remod the tumor. his boneswhich had beenaten aw by th cancer, were replaced th tit arned how to wa ag, remarkable feawhich few wod have the emotional mental maturity to handle, let alone the physical despite the expe ontinuing radiation d chemo, it was not ou to event the relapse that os. th four months, steve ha to reat the pcess of removing t another tumor. e tumor smoved byainbow babies. thankfuy this particular type ofancer did t retun. ste ulgo on

to create a major disruption of along the mover so they can that is one possible explanatio host: weill get to calls in a minutes -- your calls, mails and twes. e toheresident's announcement that he will troops. tional guard made a milarh his administration. when the two presidents deploy to the border, political or practical decision oboth? gues in little of both. think when we did operation jumpstart in 2006 and 2007, it in many ways, the practical not haveon that we did border control resources we at the southwest border time and to get to the equping training and agents, we needed a stopgap, a bridge. the national g deployment guardsmen was it. in many ways,he national guard is aeasy political gesture, too. easily depyed and you show immediate action. it isn't nessarily going to make a big impact on the borde even with the 6000 troops deployed uer operation justart. the first thing people have to realize is when you deploy in of national guardsmen, an average for every field, there are them in the suppl chain. it in the case of national guard deployment and jumpstart, we saw deploym

i think together weill try to make a case, secondly, for a holistic and multifaceted agenda for democraticorm. and try to moe that agenda forward. i think will take some additional steps towards endg the silence nation of the work thatoes on on so many of those issues. sharing information about the efforts woul change, giving ourselves as more as part of a more comprehensive effort for reform and hopefully begin to work even more closely in the future. will also develop some common ideas and thinking about how we message, how we talk about these democracy issues in a way that not only brings them together, but also resonates withthe public. that has to beenaged in these issues if we're going to make real progress. and lastly, will ask fo some nextpps from the resident and om congress. passing legislation, much of which is up for discussion that will make a real difference. developing a embracing new ways of governing with greater civic participation. what about the idea of a white house summit odemocracy issues? we've had a summit on the fiscal deficit. wh about on democracy stuff is and w

if we get tt from her, weill see if we can fund a project like tt. we are on the lookout. we are also trying to think of ourselves, what are the kinds of areas and projects thate could do with the organizations that exist now on the ground, as well as looking for new opportities. >> one other common tour was speaking on your progress promoting economic initiatives. could there be something with geer empowerment within the economic arena? could you incorporate women into the labor force? we have looked at and i think we have made some progress at empowering women entrepreneurs, especially in the smaller and medium business enterprises. that is a project that we're just getting off the ground very slowly. it is another area that offer some potential. we want to get women from the homes into the worlace. e thank you -- >> thank you. >> thank you. i just want to add some comments about what my friend did said. he h been making this statement for maybe six or seven years. whenever he made this statement publicly, the great lear would come and contradict him completely. i doot t