Citigroup has received more than $300 billion in financial support from the Federal Government.

Only then could we hope to develop an effective plan of action.

I expressed serious reservations about this plan because I did not believe that a massive and crude bailout bill was the most prudent course of action.

Potentially fruitful leads were not pursued, while significant staff resources were devoted to running down clearly unproductive avenues.

Investigations were unfocused, understaffed, and improperly documented.

Unfortunately, that hearing yielded few answers.

Given that failures occurred repeatedly and throughout different part of the Securities and Exchange Commission, can we assume that other similar frauds are likely occurring or have occurred without detection?

Is it mind boggling to you, as you did your research and investigation here, that a fraud of such magnitude, $50 billion or more--I assume one of the largest the SEC has ever dealt with or failed to deal with--how could it have happened…

Like many Americans, I am stunned and angry that this fraud was allowed to happen.

Are you concerned that even if your recommendations are implemented, we hope, that the culture of the SEC is such that examiners will be rewarded for focusing only on technical violations of the securities laws rather than the real…

Last January, right here in this room, a little more than 1 month after Bernard Madoff confessed to running a $50 billion multi-decade Ponzi scheme, this Committee held a hearing to try to understand how a fraud of that magnitude could go…

Communication across the SEC offices was so badly flawed that Madoff himself had to alert the New York examiners that their counterparts in the Washington office of the SEC had been looking at similar issues.