Richard Shelby

I think the nominee, as far as I know, is probably a well-qualified, very honorable, very smart man.

Forty-four of us have sent a letter that you are very familiar with to the President.

If we rock along like we are doing now, with huge deficits piling up debt after debt----

What are the two top, two or three potential emerging threats as you see it to the financial stability of the United States? I know debt is one.

But you also want to do no harm too, do you not? And that is a dangerous thing.

Perhaps the most fundamental question left unanswered by the Council is: What is systemic risk?

The report is largely a lengthy summary of statistics with lots of colorful graphs.

I had hoped that the Council would have provided the information in their annual report. Unfortunately, the report fails to address these significant areas.

The Coalition of Heritable Disorders of Connective Tissue thanks you for the opportunity to submit testimony regarding the fiscal year 2012 budget.

Did it ever occur to you or Chairman Gensler... that you could possibly overregulate an economy or the derivatives market?

Do you believe that derivatives, as we speak, play, overall, a positive role in the international economy?

There has been widespread criticism of a lot of those rules on grounds that they will undermine the competitiveness of the U.S. financial system without making it any safer.

It is not going to just go away like a Band-aid over it.

The one principle that I think should always drive how we think about this is protection of the U.S. taxpayers.

After more than 2 years of failed Keynesian programs, I believe the President needs to be provided with better advice, Dr. Krueger, that will help grow our economy, not the size and scope of Government.

Are we going to repeat this again? Are we going down that same road? Have we learned anything?

I tried to repeal the CRA right here in this Committee, because what we are doing, we are telling the market to make these loans for political reasons.

We would have to have, one, the political will here to get rid of it.

We cannot get rid of an implicit guarantee. There is no way to do that.

We knew better than that. We knew better.

Is the idea of a guarantee, which ultimately lays the groundwork for a bailout, ... smart in our economy today?

Thirteen trillion dollars that is invested in bonds, including junk bonds--which is what they are buying now because they do not have other investments--is taking credit risk

A private market, in my opinion, will do just the opposite

We are contemplating Government guarantee programs which, in my opinion, will inevitably have the Government providing insurance with low downpayment mortgages

Explain what you mean by G-series. That is Government----