Failure to approve the bipartisan amendment sponsored by Senators Tester (D-Mont.), Corker (R-Tenn.), and others to address the serious concerns over the interchange amendment marks a dark day for every bank that issues debit cards and for consumers that have come to rely on them.

I made it mandatory that every panel member be shackled to their chair so that they could hear all panels.

I think it is important that this Committee here work together to try and monitor the work that is done by the CFTC, the Fed, and the SEC to make sure that these troubles with the bill, the concerns that we have, are not compounded.

I do not think right now that they really understand the impact of what is going to happen.

A cut to our funding would mean we could not oversee these markets.

I am in particular concerned about the limited definition the CFTC is looking to instate for the de minimis exemption when defining 'swap dealers.'

I think it is hard to do that until you know what the final definitions are.

Are you going to be able to identify, as we have future hearings, which I am certain we will, be able to quantify those costs or offer us some metrics so we understand this is reasonable, excessive, or out of reach?

The end-user situation, in other words, you believe does make this differentiation so that this is not quite so onerous to other people.

what should our regulators be doing now or what should the administration be doing now to make it more likely that we will have harmonization in a timely fashion?

my concern is that if we do not make it a priority--because I really believe we have to have international harmonization.

I would like your thoughts on that issue.

Well, I think that what happened in 2008 and what was addressed by Congress was to ensure that the transparency comes to these markets and we lower risk in the markets if U.S. commerce is affected.

I am concerned that a large number of regulations that the CFTC is proposing and the huge regulatory costs that will be imposed on industry will threaten the economic utility of derivatives.

We worked to comply with the cost/benefit considerations as laid out by Section 15(a) of our statute.

Why does it make more sense to just simply provide certainty until the new regulations become effective?

I think that the worst example one might say is AIG.