Tom Coburn

We did nothing in the new health law about $250 billion worth of medical tests that nobody needs.

So there was no secondary follow-up by OTS to changes that were requested by OTS.

In both of your assessments, as you looked at this and you look at OTS--and this is a huge example of regulatory failure.

We see over and over again that OTS dedicated a great number of hours and personnel to the supervision of WaMu, yet problems never got truly addressed.

Was it common practice at OTS to issue recommendations to banks and then simply take their word?

Where was the Congress in looking at OTS? What was the last time Congress did an oversight hearing on the effectiveness of the OTS or the FDIC prior to this downfall?

Because now we have become criminally negligent if, in fact, we are using selective tools of enforcement for one thrift organization as to another.

OTS relied largely on WaMu management to track progress in correcting examiner-identified weaknesses

I would put forward that we are about to make the same mistakes that we are claiming and accusing those that are coming before us of.

The lesson of OTS is not that we necessarily need more regulators, because clearly regulators can suffer the same flaws as banks--selfishness, shortsightedness, ineffectiveness.

But the data that we showed showed that the people on the ground, the ones that are actually doing the auditing, actually were following guidelines, were they not?

Well, I would have no doubt that OTS has a system today, especially in light of the hearings that have been held.

I come to the conclusion that actually investors would have been better off had there been no OTS

What that says is, we are once again back to the point where we refuse to make the hard choices to pay for things we need to do today by eliminating things that are not as important. We have $12.8 trillion worth of debt as of today. We are…

The real question, however, is what will we do to make sure that effort is an effort that has some real meaning behind it and that these are not hollow words. The debate around here becomes partisan and labels get applied, and I admit that…

Would it have been as advantageous as the relationship with Freddie Mac?

Were you ever concerned that heavy emphasis on sales with no oversight risk management was problematic?

Many banks try to isolate the risk managers from sales pressures. But at WaMu, the first performance goal for the Home Loans Risk Manager... is growth.

Well, your company is gone, and for us to get to the bottom of this, we need to know every detail.

What did you intend be bold?

Does it strike you as strange that the performance goals for the head of risk management is small risk management but sales volume and profit?

If I were a shareholder in a bank that I became aware had big problems of fraud in its origination process, I would not want to own the shares of that bank.

How important was the relationship with Freddie Mac in the bank's decision to Option ARMs?

Because of reckless Federal policies, too many families found themselves locked into mortgages they did not understand.

I think it is going to be beneficial as we go through the process of all of these hearings in looking at what happened, and why it happened.