Chuck Schumer

Is it time to create a new regulator whose sole function is the fair treatment of individual customers?

Sweeping reform of abusive credit card and mortgage lending practices will be an essential component of this Committee's financial modernization efforts.

What is a middle-class family like the Moores supposed to do if they were counting on that credit line to help them through a medical crisis?

I pledge personally over the coming months that we will rebuild the nation's financial architecture from the bottom up

By no means is this problem exclusive to financial services.

We looked at everything from predatory lending and foreclosures to the risks of derivatives in the banking system.

It is an historic undertaking, one of the most important debates in which we have engaged here in a long time.

The President has now made clear that regulatory modernization, which will protect consumers and investors in this way, is a top priority for him.

This hearing will focus on critical consumer, investor, and shareholder protections in financial services.

You need only to pick up our morning newspapers to appreciate what people are going through.

When a country, year after year, consumes more than it produces, imports more than it exports, borrows more than it saves, the chickens always come home to roost.

And that is going to mean some real stuff to the stability of the banks and of the whole financial markets, because they are still holding this paper.

I really would say that your program is going to have a significant and deep effect on housing markets, improving them, and that can reverberate throughout the whole economy.

But I think, yes, and Mr. Chairman, I think most of the big banks that have already received TARP money who are servicers have agreed to be part of this, isn't that right?

But if it goes to two-thirds, shouldn't that be a real change in the housing markets and rates of foreclosure, and even shouldn't it help us find a floor?

So this means that right now, two-thirds of the servicers are likely to go along with this plan for those mortgages that meet the guidelines and the guidance that you have put out, is that right?

I think the public has this view that the servicers are little entrepreneurs all over the lot.

The problem of people getting financing is just everywhere.

We are going to have one of the best Housing Secretaries that we have ever had.

You know, one of them might not have caused the problem, but a whole bunch did.

Isn't it true that smaller institutions can cause systemic risk because there are counterparties, it is almost like a ping-pong ball bouncing from one place to another?

There are a lot of institutions with no capital standards, but they were not banks and regulated by you, who used huge leverage, 30:1, 40:1, 50:1.

That is why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is so essential.

Such neglect allowed for and even encouraged a problem that began in the subprime mortgage market to spread throughout our Nation.

Saying that we will be back moving forward in 2010 is pretty much a V theory, not an L theory, if we stabilize the system.