Later a look at the International Response to the Ebola Outbreak in west africa. Wednesday the Senate Banking Committee Held a hearing on freddie mac, fannie mae and the state of the Housing Mortgage industry. Congressman mel watt took the updated members on new efforts to assist homeowners. This is 90 minutes. I call this hearing, your honor, welcome back to the committee. Since this is likely my last hearing regarding gses i would like to encourage my colleagues to for the past three years, we and our staff have spent count less hours wrestling with the possible solutions and pittal falls. Some options are not practical, while others are too it logical, yet we still need to find a solution. The enterprises remain trapped today. Fhfa continues to perform the dual role of both regulating and rating the business of the largest entities in the Mortgage Market. This is not sustainable. And there is no consensus in Congress Regarding how to move forward. All the while, the credit box remai
Are pose a high risk for terrorist financing, or perhaps the weak spot may be with the other federal regulators, that the other federal regulators arent focussing and emphasizing on whether or not these banks are in compliance with the counterterrorist financing regulations under the bsa. But it seems to me its unacceptable, two banks, if you look at the actual orders issued, only two banks where i could find references in those orders to threats regarding terrorists claims. Yes, sir. In that light as we look at our partners throughout the world, we have relationships with him, many of whom we give tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid, its always of concern to me of how we are not honored by our relationships with our partners and particularly in this situation thats so critical for the National Security and for theirs as well. To what extent, what would you advise us as a congress in Going Forward and how we could put greater pressure on these respective countries an
Like you were at some of these meetings where some of these things were discussed no, the nsa was there, i just got the tapes. Im sorry. So we dont have a public listing, per se, but in the first phase of power africa, we did very carefully, through a rigorous interagency process, discuss which would be the six focus countries. And the factors that you describe are, indeed, many of the things that we looked at, to try to assess who would be the good partners. And we will go through a similar process as we think about the expansion. One of the ones that i theres plenty to say about all of them, but one of the ones that ill just spend a moment on is the host countrys commitment. Because as some of the other testimony alluded to, if youre trying to have viable electric utilities, if youre trying to solve some of the problems that are private sector, investors have encountered, in trying to do viable deals, youve got to have a commitment to do things differently. So that was a very one of
Kuwait as the two jurisdictions in the gulf where additional steps could be taken. Time of the gentleman is expired. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from massachusetts, mr. Lynch. Thank you, mr. Chairman, again, mr. Secretary, thanks for your willingness to testify. I just want to make one observation. I do share the frustration that some of my colleagues across the aisle have expressed about staunching the flow of oil and degrading some of the facilities that are currently under the control of isis. But i do want to point out that, for instance, the beiji oil refinery, i dont know, about 75, maybe 150 miles north of baghdad, ive been there a couple of times. It is not really its low tech, but its the largest refinery that they have there in that region. If we had destroyed that a month ago i think the iraq government you know, last week, two weeks ago, the iraqi forces retook that refinery. So now it is pumping oil for the Iraqi Government. Its a key asset, if we had gone in there
Get the turks and the turks wont do it unless we go after assad. So are we getting sucked deeper and deeper, and back to the original question, what should we do, jim . Well, i mean, i think theres no doubt that isis eventually will be driven out of the Population Centers in iraq or at least lose control of them. I mean, they may go underground but they will lose control because theyre a minority of the sunni population which is a minority of the iraqi population, and so the kurds and the shia between them with whatever marginal help they get from the sunnis are eventually going to retake that territory with our assistance, and i dont think that means that you have to put american infantry on the ground. There are boots on the ground. There will be forward observers and advisers and some of them may get killed, but thats a different level of engagement. The real question is syria. I mean, this group emerged out of syria. Many of them are iraqis, but essentially emerged out of syria. It