I have got an idea, a bipartisan idea that I am introducing with Senator Rick Scott today: get the big bankers off the Federal Reserve boards of directors.

Welcome to the hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy.

Now I think it is long past time that Congress finally acts, and I have bipartisan legislation with Senator Scott to do that.

Senator Scott and I also introduced a bill, which was included in a separate bill with Sen. Tillis, to give the Fed a true, Senate-confirmed independent Inspector General to serve as an agency watchdog.

the Fed should have used its authority to apply stronger rules to banks with more than $100 billion in assets.

I've got an idea--a bipartisan idea that I'm introducing with Sen. Rick Scott today: get the big bankers off the Reserve Banks boards of directors.

So let me just get this straight. Two-thirds of the people that oversee each of the Reserve banks, and hand-pick the leadership, are elected by the very same banks that are regulated by the Reserve bank, and three of those people actually…

The actions of the Chair of the Federal Reserve and a Governor of the Federal Reserve were unambiguously inconsistent with the Fed's rules.

the Fed failed at every step along the way, from the Board of Governors at the very top to the San Francisco Fed Bank examiners on the ground.

the Fed continues to stonewall Congress, stonewall the public, on the underlying information about these trades.

It is time to end the Fed's culture of corruption.

It is to say pull back on this regulation and give a green light for massive and undiversified growth.

I have got an idea, a bipartisan idea that I am introducing with Senator Rick Scott today: get the big bankers off the Federal Reserve boards of directors.

Do you think that creates a conflict of interest?

the loosening ends up having multiplier effects, that once you loosen a little bit you lose other discipline in the system.

This is not strong oversight. In fact, it is not even competent oversight.

Welcome to the hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy.

This is the most severe ethics scandal in the Fed's 110-year history, yet other than a few officials taking an early retirement we have seen no accountability.

you do not get to write a law that shoves the Fed in a strictly deregulatory direction and then turn around and say, 'Gee, we wish they had not deregulated.'

So it sounds like to me that this is clearly a case of the fox guarding the henhouse all the way through the system here.

the tailoring rules meant that Silicon Valley Bank, for example, did not have to do a lot of incredibly important things.

the Fed should have used its authority to apply stronger rules to banks with more than $100 billion in assets.

the Fed heard that message loud and clear, and then it used that message to open up and start to deregulate even further.

The Federal Reserve must not seem and must not be supervised by itself.

That was just a massive neon light saying 'grow, grow, grow.'