Richard Shelby

We need regulators who are willing to explain their actions rather than run for the hills.

Under Chairman Gensler's watch, customers of MF Global had $1.6 billion of funds improperly taken from their accounts.

So you really did not know what was going on or the problem with the trade until you read the press reports like all of us?

Chairman Gensler and SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro have jointly created widespread uncertainty about the regulation of derivatives.

But you are in the investigation of that now?

Chairman Gensler nonetheless owes the public, I believe, a full accounting of how they failed to protect those customer assets in the first place.

Chairman Gensler's recusal has impeded Congress' ability to examine every facet of the MF Global failure.

Since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, its proponents have repeatedly claimed that both consumers and our financial markets will benefit from the new law. We now know that both of those claims are false.

Do you believe that this year and maybe next year we will have at least a million foreclosures, as some people predict?

Well, that is the basic property law, isn't it?

At least not three times, right?

What would concern some of us up here on the GSE writedowns is that the GSEs would take the hit, ultimately the taxpayer now, since the taxpayer is holding the GSEs.

A lot of our concern--and I think Senator Corker has enunciated this, too, up here--is we do not want the taxpayer to take the hit.

Do you know of any requirement that----

The American people, however, are tired of bailouts. It is time to take a more serious approach to fixing the housing market.

I think it is disappointing that 4 years after the bursting of the housing bubble, the Committee has still not produced comprehensive housing legislation.

Do you think that a 2-percent capital requirement is adequate--because we are a long way from 2 percent--to protect the taxpayers from bailing out FHA in the future?

Since the Administration admittedly did not have the key data, it seems to me, for evaluating the proposal, what is the basis for your support of this proposal?

Foreclosures remain, as the Chairman mentioned, at record levels.

The latest actuarial report states that FHA's capital ratio is only 0.24 percent. Mighty low.

Do you share my overall concern about the solvency of FHA, which is under your jurisdiction?

Millions of mortgages are underwater, and Fannie and Freddie continue to lose money at the expense of the American taxpayer.

I am talking to you up here now also as an appropriator, I guess, although we are not in the Appropriations Committee.

There have been serious lapses in HUD's oversight in the HOME program.

At that time, Secretary Geithner stated that the Administration would work with Congress to develop housing finance legislation and that, quote, would like to try and do that within the next 2 years.