Given the taxpayers' dollars at stake and the impact on our financial system, this Committee has an obligation to thoroughly examine the reasons for AIG's collapse.

If the American taxpayers' money is at stake, and it is, big time, I believe the American taxpayers and people in this Committee, we need to know who benefited, where this money went.

Well, I hope you are right, but I believe you are totally wrong.

Your answer might be the Fed answer, but it is not going to be the answer we are going to accept, and the American people aren't going to accept.

I also hope that today's hearing will shed new light on the origins of our financial crisis as well as inform our upcoming discussions on financial regulatory reform.

The collapse of the American International Group is the largest corporate failure in American history.

I am not ungrateful for what the Fed did because it permitted us to untangle this.

AIG insurers got the upside. The taxpayers got the downside.

There is no question that many home buyers were sold inappropriate mortgages over the past several years.

I hope we will not rush to consolidate all the bank regulatory systems. But I do believe that we need to go down that road and we need to do it right.

The Fed is the central bank, supposed to be the lender of last resort. Now it has become the lender of first resort, it seems to me.

There is also no question that many home buyers were willing parties to contracts that stretched them far beyond their financial means.