Jack Reed

I was a strong proponent of self-funding even though I am also an appropriator.

I think this issue of sort of, well, if they do not have appropriate oversight by the appropriators, they just will not be accountable to the American people defies the financial system we have in place today.

I think one of the dilemmas or sort of contradictions is that the presumption, of course, is that corporations are run for the benefit of shareholders, but I think particularly when you look at the companies that failed--Lehman Brothers…

If capitalism cannot turn to the owners to hold companies accountable, then we should not be surprised when we have the problems that we do.

In many respects, shareholders are the least powerful people in corporations, and they are, according to corporate law--and I will defer to Mr. Pitt and others.

Effectively without this majority--without the ability to nominate directors and then without the ability to insist they at least get a majority vote, the leverage of shareholders is diminished.

Is this now the time for additional stress tests of our banks and major European banks to determine the exposure if a larger Euro economy or other economy defaulted?

The foreclosure backlog is really inhibiting not only the banking industry, but overall economic growth.

It raises the question, do you believe, not just FDIC but in other supervised entities, big as well as small banks, there will be adequate capital measures?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and let me commend you, Chairman Bair, for your extraordinary service----

The idea of coordinating as much as we can imagine, a unified set of rules that apply to the SEC-regulated entities.

I think, you know, the challenge we gave to regulators was come up with an appropriate balanced mechanism that exempts certain loans from the requirement to hold.

Of course, the other concern is if you do not have any of these rules of the road, you get exactly what we had, which was gaming, no money down, great products, et cetera.

In general, more, and in general, if the entities are too big to fail, they should be smaller.

It is less effective--and we saw this particularly in the case of predatory lending--when the national standard is rather low and State standards, much more effective, are legally sort of avoided under Federal regulatory preemption.

I have seen sort of this debate in many different contexts, and a national standard is terrific if it is tough and strong and reaches all the players.

They should be held accountable by this Committee.

The U.S. law applies to the U.S. business.

Is it feasible, practical, to insist that we have jurisdiction--if it is an American entity that has set up the center overseas, that we have jurisdiction and that we can at least inspect, investigate, and correct?

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellent testimony.

I want to commend you for holding this very timely hearing.

I think one of the aspects of this crisis was the huge cost to taxpayers which may have been mitigated or avoided with better regulation.

There is no doubt that the SEC has many more tools given to it by Dodd-Frank to regulate the institutions.

But that would be very disturbing if, in fact, market information was much different than what regulators had.

I want to commend Mr. D'Agostino for his outstanding service in the United States Navy.