republican or democrat you want to have a strong military and that is a bipartisan consensus. the u.s. military is a sacred institution in this country and no one wants to see it completely eviscerated. the secretary is absolutely correct. this would be a meat ax approach, disastrous. i would say even a meat ax attached to a chain saw. that is how bad sequestration would be. we can t look at this through a political lens but through have to look through a national security lens. our national deficit is a national security problem. we need to do our fair share. but we can t go too far or we risk harming the finest military in the world. our goal is to protect america s security and the strongest fighting force the world has ever known. let me ask you also to weigh in on the latest in syria. secretary of state clinton accusing russia of shipping attack helicopters there and the russian foreign secretary or foreign minister firing back accusing the u.s. of hypocrisy,
credibility, with his inability to push back, there will be a meat ax. if you follow comments this weekend of carl levyn and barney frank, their guns are loaded. shotguns are ready. and they are coming after the banks. and i think we have to be careful about that. you can strain the banks too much. you can put them in a position of taking more risk if you don t allow certain kinds of hedging that reduce risk. sore th or they cut back on lending, and that s not good for the economy. and i do disagree with ezra in the sense that of course banks can fail. of course we can have another systematic failure about. you this is not an example of that. this is a modest, modest loss from a group, by the way, that has made billions of profits for this bank over the past several years. which is part of why this problem happened, because this group was allowed to keep going. but isn t aren t they cutting back on lending? no. loans are going up at the moment. the number of loans are going up?
trying to point out, not this? it would have led to it not happening. you would have derivatives which were part of this trade. these credential swaps that were used would be more transparent, which it s supposed to be. it s just that the delay has been very long in terms of getting a real exchange up and running and allowing that transparency there. that might have been one part of it. but it s still unclear whether this hedging activity would have been allowed or not under the vocal rule. even when we finally get it, the interpretation of the vocal rule is going to be left largely to the federal reserve. you know this, steve. at the end of the day, it s not clear they would have disallowed this kind of trading, especially if you re saying we re hedging for the overall bank. instead of actually making proprietary trades, as we know they really seem to be. my key point is that i think whatever happens now, as we finish the vocal rule, as we finish implementing dodd frank, we should
his energy plans, his jobs plan, the first stage he has been attacked and criticized for not having a plan and he s bringing it out today. he was on american morning an hour and a half ago and one of the highlights i thought was the comment about his wife. in south carolina making some interesting comments. take a listen to what she said and what he said this morning. it has been a rough month. we have been brutalized, by the press and brutalized by our opponents and our party. down on this as anita seemed? you know, family members always take these campaigns than the candidate. i have been doing this for a long time and that s a diversion, frankly. this is the big leagues. everybody understands it s about the presidency of the united states and we re committed to this campaign. you know, some pundits criticizing perry, is he really into this? perry says, yes, i am. kyra? we re also hearing more from perry with regard to the mormon issue this morning. he briefly t
he is very precise in his deliberations, very precise in carrying out various operations, and this whole operation, i think, says a lot about who and what he is, because he is the one who ordered that it be done this way rather than some other way. that s why he works on budgets that way. and not with a meat ax, but a scalpel. all right. congressman jim clyburn, number three democrat in the house of representatives, and thank you for sharing your perspective with us this morning. i want to bring in nbc s jim miklaszewski with details of the secret mission that began with a tip eight weeks ago, and mick, what a 48 hours? absolutely. and despite the gee whiz bang technology that the u.s. military and intelligence agencies have at their hands, it was human intelligence.