Mary L. Schapiro

the U.S. financial markets failed to live up to their essential price discovery function.

It is a great question. And I will tell you that I think--and I do not mean to sound Pollyannaish about this, but that the culture of the agency was maybe submerged a little bit over the last several years, but there is tremendous…

I think in the first instance, we have got to take care of retail investors. This is really a disgraceful situation in many ways.

Absolutely not, and I put out a statement to try and make that quite clear that we do not time our enforcement actions by the legislative calendar or by anybody else's wishes.

I think in the first instance, we have got to take care of retail investors. This is really a disgraceful situation in many ways.

But I would also note that in the Senate Agriculture Committee bill, there is a fiduciary duty that swap dealers owe to pension plans and municipalities, and that seems to me to be a very good idea.

Thanks to the strong support that this subcommittee has provided, the SEC has begun to rebuild that confidence by making needed and significant changes to virtually every aspect of our operations.

I believe we can make tremendous use of tips and complaints from whistleblowers.

Absolutely not, and I put out a statement to try and make that quite clear that we do not time our enforcement actions by the legislative calendar.

I believe we need a deeper understanding of the strategies and activities of high-frequency markets and traders and the potential impact on our markets and investors of so many transactions occurring so quickly.

I do believe that we cannot suffer under the too-big-to-fail doctrine as an economy for very much longer.

We have to have an overriding concern that the integrity of a clearinghouse not be compromised.