Mark Warner

There have been incentives proposed, both in the House and Senate as part of most climate packages.

I have a state like the Chairman's and I understand Senator Thune asked some questions on this subject, as well.

Which is always less efficient. So it's quite significant, the reduction in net output for adding CCS.

Opening Statement of: Hon. Mark Warner, a U.S. Senator from the State of Virginia.

I think we will get to some stance where we will have some level of regulatory oversight.

I commend you for asking that 'What is the one take-away?' question from each of these gentlemen.

I just do not want to be here 5 years later looking at what the next round of new products would be and say, 'Why didn't we see that ahead of time?'

We need to make sure we get rid of this Swiss cheese approach to regulation.

This problem we are in the middle of the crisis now of too big to fail.

But I think what you are also saying--I know my time is up, I apologize, Mr. Chairman--but you are telling us, Congress, go fix this.

So the vast majority of these counterparties are U.S., not foreign?

We, the American taxpayer, have taken a high-flying company that was doing what most of us would believe in a normal market circumstance was high risk.

AIG still racked up subsequent to that, wasn't it north of $64 billion in losses?

There is a huge moral hazard here.

Why has there not been a more focused effort on making sure that some of these counterparties--you are not even going to tell us who they are--at least take a haircut?

Obviously, I think some on the Committee question that.

And my last--my time is up, but if in just maybe a straight yes or no on whether I am hearing you correctly.

There ought to be some haircut taken by these folks at some point in this process.

But, in effect, what we are saying is consequently folks who bought these instruments should have been doing some level of credit analysis of what AIG was selling who did not do that credit analysis and are going to still come out whole…

I think it has great potential. But the sooner we get it rolled out, the better.

I am very anxious to see the implementation of the TALF. I am concerned that it has taken this long.

I just would again encourage you, and I would ask you to please make some comment on whether you think the TALF or any other instrument could be used, either from a backstop standpoint or from going into the markets and starting to…

Have you all thought through from both a kind of an outreach-to-consumer standpoint and then how you're going to use these new technologies?

How do some of these debt collection groups actually legally check the box that they've notified the consumer?

I want to follow up on some of my colleagues' comments, Senator Begich and Senator Klobuchar.