Jeff Merkley

The situation is offensive to me; it is offensive to the American people.

The task of modernizing the insurance regulatory system is absolutely essential.

We have a duty and obligation to fix our insurance regulatory system.

Your approach is refreshing and energizing and thank you very much.

Transit in Oregon has been incredibly important, certainly from the viewpoint of economic development, from the viewpoint of reducing our carbon footprint.

I just wanted to make sure I captured your comment correctly, that the credit default swaps were the great enabler of the major financial meltdown we are experiencing.

I will say it is kind of a sad commentary on our regulatory system if all it takes is changing the name from insurance to swap in order to bypass regulation.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a senior member of the New York Stock Exchange.

There has been discussion about whether you could have categorized credit default swaps as insurance.

So several people have spoken to the role of the AAA rating as being borrowed or used, if you will.

I am not sure this point has really been addressed.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Would it be appropriate to back up what the market has done with a specific ban on teaser rates and prepayment penalties?

I appreciate the diversity of models that you are presenting for us to wrestle with.

The failure of regulation has turned the American dream of home ownership into an American nightmare of home ownership.

I think that your team and the Treasury team and Larry Summers' team are to be saluted for really wrestling with a lot of nitty-gritty details and trying to lay out a road map of how to make modifications work.

This is an incredibly important plan for millions of American homeowners, certainly important to the financial foundations for our families, but also for the health of our economy.

It appears very likely that the number of Centigrade degree increase per decade is very likely to increase substantially beyond that.

I did find your chart very useful.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for bringing this panel of esteemed scientists together.

I just have to comment on the parallel you drew to Prohibition.

The possibility of bankruptcy judges to be able to renegotiate the terms.

I really encourage the Administration to look at it in a much more direct way.

We need to make sure that those mortgages provide a foundation for successful families. Not a mechanism to strip wealth from families.