Bob Menendez

I think part of that disconnect, when I look at that Goldman has set aside an astronomical sum of $16.2 billion in compensation for 2009...

I have got to be honest with you, when I walk the streets of New Jersey, the average person comes up to me and says you know what? When I make a mistake, I have to pay for my mistake. And when they--meaning some of our financial…

If I may, one last, final question, Mr. Chairman? I think I would like to have a conversation with you outside of the hearing to get a better sense of this before I make a judgment here.

There are 2 ways to solve a problem. I can solve it with a blunderbuss, or I can solve it, when it is possible, with a surgeon's scalpel.

I want to pursue something that is very important to the people of New Jersey, and that is the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

You have said, Mr. Chairman, that there is, quote, 'not a shred of evidence that financial innovation has improved our economy,' and, in fact, that innovative financial products, quote, 'took us right to the brink of disaster.'

So the Volcker Rule alone, if we are concerned about more broad systemic risk outside of even banking institutions, needs to have it be augmented by some of the other proposals.

Isn't one of the risks here--I have posed this question throughout some time now of these hearings--that if you are too big to fail, haven't we failed already?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, a great deal.

Now, it seems to me that one of the--asking whether proprietary trading played a role in this crisis is missing the biggest lesson of this crisis, which is how do you avert the next one.

If we don't act, we are destined at some point in the future to relive a crisis, and that would be the worst situation perpetuated on the American people.

That's why I, along with Senator Sanders, championed the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program.

I'm all for leveraging.

Well, if you speak to the Madoff victims, they don't particularly have that view, and I would like to elicit from you a commitment that if you are confirmed by the Senate, that you will meet with a group of representatives of the victims…

I believe he is the right man for the job.

I have real concerns about having sensitive U.S. technology fall into the hands of countries that weren't supposed to get those technologies.

You may have a heart attack because of counterfeit medicine.

Chairman Dodd is a busy man these days. He is in the midst of achieving the most important reform in our health care system in a generation.

I would like to, first of all, thank Chairman Dodd and Ranking Member Shelby and Senator Vitter and their staffs for working with us to put together today's hearing.

We will still be in the position that it will be our national security interest to have security and stability in Afghanistan

This dictates that we have a long-term obligation to Afghanistan

I see it as clearly aspirational. And I think we need to be honest with the American people.

I am hopeful that we will see the creation of a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency to police some of these products.

It angers me when I see schemes and scams that seem almost exclusively geared towards unfairly stripping money out of the pockets of working families.

The measures you have taken to put the financial system back on track have left a handful of banks larger than they were prior to the crisis.