I can also promise you rating agencies are going to be very much a part of our overall effort.

I'm disappointed, frankly, that those who requested this kind of a change didn't have the courage to stand up a couple of days ago and admit that they were the ones that asked for it.

The administration had expressed reservations about the amendment. They came to us and asked for modifications.

A year ago, this Committee heard from witnesses on two separate occasions that the banking system was sound.

Doesn't that lend itself to shopping again here?

Just following up on the Senator's question, how many of those banks did you find that violated your guidelines?

There were hundreds of thousands of bad loans. Hundreds of thousands of them.

We are going to want to have as many conversations as we can with you as we move forward on how to develop these ideas.

People are furious right now, and they should be.

We have got to figure out a new direction--that can't go on, in my view.

We do not have a table big enough.

I have said over and over again I am sort of agnostic on all of this. I want to do what works.

I get uneasy about the fact that the Fed is the lender of last resort.

It seems to me you get, like in the thrift crisis years ago, the regulator becomes also the one that also deals with these resolutions.

I do not think you can get away by suggesting--I say this respectfully to you--that because they have not been held at the institution...

With all due respect, this is the problem. In a sense, we talk about too big to fail in the sense of private institutions.

But shouldn't that have raised a red flag? You are the experts in this area, and you were watching people get loans with no documentation, these liar loans and so forth. Was anyone watching?

I think that should be preserved.

A year later, taxpayers are forced to pump billions of dollars into our major banking institutions to keep them afloat.

The alternative was losing, in my view, the entire section on executive excessive compensation. Given the choice -- this is not an uncommon occurrence here -- I agreed to a modification in the legislation, reluctantly.

When I left the Senate, it was not in there. So, when I wrote the language, there was no such language like that. I can't point a finger at someone who offered the change at all.

If this is the way Wall Street and AIG and all the others continue to do business, we cannot help with any amount of money we put forth to them.

The only reason that they even have a job is because of the taxpayers and their ability to put forth money to this.

The American people, as we all understand, are outraged, and they should be.

This is incredibly unacceptable, and the fact is that these companies going broke, companies like AIG, it makes perfect sense to me now.