Richard Shelby

Recent events--most prominently, the stunning collapse of insurance giant AIG--have only further demonstrated the pressing need for a review of our insurance regulatory structure.

It looks to me like they would be intertwined some.

Thank you, Chairman Dodd.

I think we are going down the road of looking at a very comprehensive regulator for all our financial system.

I agree with everything that you and your colleagues said, for whatever my humble opinion is worth, that those bonuses should not be paid to Financial Products division employees of AIG.

Even before the start of the present financial crisis, there were legitimate questions about whether our insurance regulatory system was adequate for the 21st century.

There is no system that is built to withstand an insolvency the size of the notional value of the credit default swaps AIG was invested in.

The circumstances that permitted AIG's securities lending operation to potentially threaten the solvency of several of its insurance companies and their counterparties suggests that our regulatory system has not been keeping up with…

I am extremely concerned about continuing to make investments in infrastructure without any requirement for maintaining a state of good repair long-term.

Our nation is facing the worst financial crisis in nearly a century.

We need to know that we have a real cop on the beat, not just one in uniform standing on a corner.

We were pleased, therefore, to hear about the recent bipartisan effort, led by Senators Charles Schumer and Richard Shelby...

Congress needs to remedy this promptly with legislation Senator Shelby introduced 7 years ago in 2002.

But laws aren't worth the paper they are written on if they are not properly enforced.

Something is just simply wrong when that is allowed to occur in our Nation.

Principles matter, but rules matter, too.

If Franklin Roosevelt were to come back today and he would find we had these enormous pooled funds that were outside, virtually outside of any form of regulation, I think he would say, 'I thought we solved that problem in 1940.'

The concerns you raise are profound and important ones.

Obviously poorly regulated.

The No. 1 thing in the system has to be independence.

I am probably--because I spent an awful lot of time in this Committee when I was the OTS regulator----dealing with the RTC, and what I learned through those 3 years brings me to a very firm view on opposition totally to nationalization of…

Why should we continue to prop up banks that are basically insolvent, some of our large banks that are walking dead, so to speak, give them a transfusion, and there is no end in sight?

We need to get that credibility back into the system.

The greatest challenge in dealing with this financial crisis is understanding its multiple, complex, and interrelated causes.

I firmly believe that had the Fed simply regulated the mortgage lending industry, as Congress directed with the law passed in 1994, much of this could have been averted.