Richard Shelby

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

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

I just want to tell the Secretary again we welcome him here. We look forward to working with you.

It has to be done right, though. You will have some lawsuits.

Along these lines, it is my understanding of the legal--you have got a first mortgage, then you have got a second mortgage.

Mr. Secretary, will those financial institutions that have already agreed to implement foreclosure mitigation plans be eligible for subsidies under your new plan, the President's plan?

You know what I am asking, don't you?

Until we have a firm understanding, Mr. Secretary, of what is driving foreclosures, I believe assistance plans will continue to be ad hoc and uninformed, for the most part.

I believe, however, that it does so at considerable cost to the taxpayer and mainly serves as a further bailout to the very banks that helped us get into our current condition.

I believe our immediate attention should be to help those most in need who can be helped and are willing to help themselves.

Unfortunately, I believe the proposal is long on good intentions and short on providing a credible solution for our ailing housing market.

Mr. Chairman, if I could ask one more question on lender payments.

How do you get the market to believe that what you are doing is the right thing?

Do you believe that the biggest challenge to our economic system today is rectifying and bringing competence and capital from the private sector, trust to the banking system?

A lot of us don't believe anything is too big to fail.

Are we going down the same road in a sense?

Propping up banks that are dead, so to speak?

Wouldn't we be better off to close some of those banks rather than continue to prop them up and let the American people continue to believe--no confidence in them?

Do you believe, and I know you haven't been in the Fed that long, but do you believe that the Fed has adequately supervised our banks as a regulator, or do you believe there were problems there that were not known or uncovered?

This begs the question of nationalization.

I believe that was a term that Senator Corker used one time.

A lot of people wonder, where were the regulators in the past 5 or 6 years, including the Federal Reserve.

Dr. Volcker...thought some institutions, some banks were too big to exist.

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has more than doubled in size and presently stands at about $2 trillion.

The Federal Reserve will continue to run a virtual alphabet soup of liquidity facilities through April 30, 2009, at the least.