Gary Ackerman

But these, unfortunately, are people that we have encouraged and assured by virtue of the fact that we provide the supervision.

The court-appointed trustee in the Madoff case is seeking to delay and ultimately deny the insurance payments due to Madoff's victims is absolutely shameful.

That Madoff was able to conduct his fraud unmolested by the SEC for decades and despite the repeated red flags raised by Harry Markopoulos is tragic.

Thousands of now penniless victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme are interested in just one thing: making sure their government lives up to its word.

If we could step into our time machines and go back in time before the near collapse of AIG, I have little doubt that we would have near unanimous support for regulating credit default swaps.

We would be naive to consider proposals for regulating and clearing OTC products without also establishing a regulator to protect our markets against systemic risks.

If you want to exercise free speech, you shouldn't have a government license.

Free speech cannot be charged for. You don't charge anybody for exercising free speech.

Would you be adverse to putting a warning on your ratings, much like on cigarette cartons, that says, 'This rating is not a statement of fact'?

You get paid sometimes, I understand, $1 million by clients for your opinion, and the reason you get paid so much money for your opinion is because some people think that this is a professional judgment.

Time and again, we have heard from the agencies that their ratings were really sound, despite the billions of dollars in losses that investors realized on so-called AAA rated mortgage-backed securities.

Let me be blunt. Pakistan's pants are on fire.

One guy, with a few friends and helpers, discovered this thing nearly a decade ago, led you to this pile of dung that is -- that is Bernie Madoff, and stuck your nose in it, and you couldn't figure it out. You couldn't find your backside…

One guy with a few friends and helpers discovered this thing nearly a decade ago, led you to this pile of dung that is Bernie Madoff and stuck your nose in it and you couldn't figure it out.

Which is why the banks are holding onto all that money we gave them.

I have long believed that allowing the SEC to grant the largest credit rating agencies nationally recognized statistical rating organization status is the equivalent of stamping a government seal of approval on the ratings that they issue.

In my view, our examination of systemic risk must include both an in-depth analysis of the role that credit ratings and credit rating agencies played in creating the current economic crisis.

Sometimes some of us think we are living in two different worlds.

When the press makes inquiries as to what you did with the first (INAUDIBLE) of money that we gave you, many billions of dollars, your answer is, it's none of your business.

I think you struck something that strikes me as being a tremendous irony. The people who created the problem now are charged with fixing it. And that leaves us in kind of an interesting--and I think that the reason that I wanted to take a…

What the heck went on? Your mission, you said, was to -- was to protect investors and detect fraud quickly. How did that work out? What went wrong?

Our economy is in crisis, Mr. Vollmer. We thought the enemy was Mr. Madoff. I think it's you.

You have single-handedly defused the American public of any sense of confidence in our financial markets if you are the watchdogs. You have totally and thoroughly failed in your mission. Don't you get it?

You have single-handedly diffused the American public of any sense of confidence in our financial markets if you are the watch dogs. You have totally and thoroughly failed in your mission. Don't you get it?

You have totally and thoroughly failed in your mission.