U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

64–556 PDF 2011

THE FINAL REPORT OF THE FINANCIAL 

CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

FEBRUARY 16, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services 

Serial No. 112–6 

( 

(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama, Chairman 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas, Vice Chairman 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri 

BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan 

SEAN P. DUFFY, Wisconsin 

NAN A. S. HAYWORTH, New York 

JAMES B. RENACCI, Ohio 

ROBERT HURT, Virginia 

ROBERT J. DOLD, Illinois 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

MICHAEL G. GRIMM, New York 

FRANCISCO ‘‘QUICO’’ CANSECO, Texas 

STEVE STIVERS, Ohio 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Ranking 

Member 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JAMES A. HIMES, Connecticut 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

JOHN C. CARNEY, JR., Delaware 

LARRY C. LAVENDER, Chief of Staff 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

February 16, 2011 ............................................................................................ 1 

Appendix: 

February 16, 2011 ............................................................................................ 59 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2011 

Angelides, Hon. Phil, Chairman, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ...... 9 

Born, Hon. Brooksley, Commissioner, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ........................................................................................................................ 48

Georgiou, Byron, Commissioner, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ...... 51 

Holtz-Eakin, Dr. Douglas, Commissioner, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission .................................................................................................................. 50 

Thomas, Hon. Bill, Vice Chairman, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission .. 11 

Wallison, Peter J., Commissioner, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission .... 47 

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Angelides, Hon. Phil ......................................................................................... 60 

Born, Hon. Brooksley ....................................................................................... 62 

Georgiou, Byron ................................................................................................ 68 

Holtz-Eakin, Dr. Douglas ................................................................................. 70 

Thomas, Hon. Bill ............................................................................................. 74 

Wallison, Peter J. ............................................................................................. 122 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Cleaver, Hon. Emanuel: 

Written responses to questions submitted to Hon. Phil Angelides .............. 140 

Written responses to questions submitted to Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin ...... 143 

(1) 

THE FINAL REPORT OF THE FINANCIAL 

CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Spencer Bachus [chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Bachus, Hensarling, Royce, 

Lucas, Paul, Biggert, Miller of California, Garrett, McHenry, Bachmann, McCotter, Pearce, Posey, Fitzpatrick, Luetkemeyer, 

Huizenga, Duffy, Hayworth, Renacci, Hurt, Dold, Schweikert, 

Grimm, Canseco, Stivers; Frank, Waters, Maloney, Velazquez, 

Watt, Sherman, Capuano, Baca, Lynch, Miller of North Carolina, 

Scott, Green, Cleaver, Donnelly, Himes, and Carney. 

Chairman BACHUS. Good morning. The hearing will come to 

order. 

In the interest of time, I will reserve my designated 3 minutes 

to make an opening statement and submit my statement for the 

record. Without objection, all members’ written statements will be 

made a part of the record. 

With that, I would like to recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, who is recognized for 3 minutes. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you and the 

ranking member, Mr. Frank, for holding this hearing. 

I want to thank the members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry 

Commission for their testimony today, for helping the committee 

with its work, and for their public service to our country. The Commission’s majority report has received a fair amount of praise I 

think for its honesty and clarity and for the ease with which it explains some very difficult and complex financial issues. 

I am pleased that the Commission identified over-the-counter derivatives as one of the nine conclusions offered as the primary 

cause of the financial crisis. The majority report states that OTC 

derivatives ‘‘fueled the mortgage securitization pipeline by allowing 

investors to protect themselves against the default of decline in 

value of mortgage-related securities backed by very risky loans.’’ 

Additionally, the report notes that CDs were—credit default 

swaps were essential to the creation of synthetic CDO, CDO 

squares, products that I have been very concerned about and which 

amplified those losses from the collapse of the housing bubble and 

2 

were just one example of the interconnectedness that brought down 

the system. 

I realize that the members of the Commission released three reports in total, but many have pointed to the similarities amongst 

the three rather than their dissenting views. I hope the Commission’s findings will help this committee with its work, and Congress 

with its work, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. 

I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. I would like to recognize the gentleman from 

California for 1 minute. 

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Chairman, economists have already pointed out 

that there is little mention of the major role of the Fed in setting 

interest rates too low, setting negative real interest rates for 4 

years running, causing very cheap money and massive speculation—one out of three homes were being flipped because of those 

negative real interest rates—nor the role of the politicians. I guess 

we shouldn’t be that surprised. 

But for example, the fact that politicians muscled the market for 

zero downpayment loans to go to 20 percent down to zero down, the 

politicians backed the GSEs in this effort to allow arbitrage overleveraged at 100 to 1 and thus caused the collapse of the housing 

market to begin with. 

So it is the underlying factors, the other underlying cause here 

that was hit on by a few members of this Commission but does not 

end up in the final report. 

And I think the Wall Street Journal put it best: So the two companies that dominated the mortgage market, Fannie and Freddie, 

that bought or insured hundreds of billions in subprime loans that 

turbocharged the mortgage market with trillions in capital from 

around the world and that have cost taxpayers more than any 

other bailed-out bank, they are innocent. 

Chairman BACHUS. I will give the gentleman from California an 

additional minute. 

Mr. ROYCE. Was their attorney Johnny Cochran, I ask? 

There has been risk-taking and speculation throughout our capital markets for decades but it has not caused a boom-and-bust of 

this magnitude. 

It was the actions taken by the Fed and the GSEs that turned 

a boom into a bubble and led to the eventual collapse. And I think 

it is unfortunate that this Commission couldn’t produce a more 

credible report. 

But I am glad to see the dissent most notably of Peter Wallison’s 

report, which properly accounts for the government’s role in this 

crisis, and that is what we should be looking at today. Thank you. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Scott, for 2 minutes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding 

this hearing today on the final report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. 

In its 633-page report, the Commission mentions massive failures of corporate governance and risk management at several important financial institutions. Many entities are deemed responsible for contributing to the crisis, whether through ineffective government policies or by a lack of proper oversight. 

3 

The Commission further states in its report that failed policies 

under President Bush and under President Obama bear some of 

the blame for the crisis. 

In addition, government regulators and corporations are cited for 

missing key warning signs, including risky subprime lending and 

securitization and growth in financial firms’ trading activities and 

a steady rise in housing prices. 

But perhaps the most troubling is that the report cited that several financial industry figures themselves appear to have acted illegally. Most importantly, the Commission states that the recent financial crisis could have been avoided. It contains to affirm that 

it occurred as a result of human action and human inaction and 

that it could happen again if lessons are not learned. 

So I find it difficult to disagree with this assertion. If those involved in the financial collapse had responded appropriately to 

market indicators and had refrained from unsound lending practices, we would not have experienced a crisis so severe. So it is my 

hope that we could continue to learn from the Commission’s report 

and avoid a similar series of failures in the future. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Scott. The gentleman from 

North Carolina, Mr. McHenry. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was entrusted by Congress to conduct the most significant financial investigation since 

the Pecora investigation of the 1930s, and many were hopeful that 

it would result in a similar unified report with a unified narrative. 

But the FCIC has fallen well short of unity. In fact, it was no 

Pecora. The fact that 3 different opinions have emerged from a 

body of only 10 Commissioners brings into question the objectivity 

of the majority report. 

I am also concerned about the lack of new findings provided in 

the majority report, which reads like a clipping service of already 

published books, articles, and other works on the financial crisis. 

I look forward to speaking with our witnesses today, and I hope 

that they will be able to shed some light on their process and answer questions that have been left unanswered in this report. 

Chairman BACHUS. The gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters, 

is recognized for 2 minutes. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank you for holding this hearing today. It is very important 

that we hear from our Commissioners what they discovered about 

our financial crisis. 

And I am so pleased that we have before us today two persons 

that I know very well: My former colleague, Mr. Bill Thomas, it is 

good to see you. 

And Phil Angelides, from the State of California, I am very 

pleased that you are here today. 

I appreciate the opportunity to listen to the Commissioners here 

today and hear the analysis of what caused this catastrophic economic meltdown in 2008. As we get further and further away from 

this crisis, my fear is that some of my colleagues will try to rewrite 

history and perhaps some in the public listening to their messages 

will begin to forget the true cause of how we got here. 

4 

Of course, the purpose of trying to rewrite the causes of the crisis 

I believe could only serve to undermine the Dodd-Frank Act and return the financial services industry to a nostalgic age of unchecked 

predatory lending, leverage, and risk. 

I consider one of my highest priorities during the 112th Congress 

to continue to reflect on what brought us to the brink in September 

of 2008 and to protect the work we did under the Dodd-Frank Act, 

and importantly, I am committed to pursuing what I believe is one 

of our largest pieces of unfinished business in this Congress, responding forcefully to the foreclosure crisis. 

I voted for the legislation that created TARP in 2008 because I 

believed that the authority would be used to actually buy up toxic 

paper and in turn provide modifications to homeowners. As we all 

know, the Treasury plan changed, and that didn’t happen. 

So I sought the bankruptcy protections for homeowners or loans 

for unemployed homeowners threatened by foreclosure, then I 

sought to strengthen and hamper any robosigning and other service abroad. Despite the efforts of many of us, we have never had 

a sincere robust effort to directly assist homeowners on any scale 

rivaling what we did for the banks. 

As some talk about the need for the market to bottom out or the 

need to end the few programs we do have, let’s remember that so 

many of these foreclosures were avoidable, as the Commission 

points out in their report. 

Moreover, I believe that many foreclosures continue to be avoidable if we actually take the difficult steps needed to confront this 

crisis head on. 

So I am delighted to hear more about the findings of the Commission, and I look forward to being able to read the entire report 

at some point. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Ms. Waters. 

The gentleman from New Mexico, Mr. Pearce, is recognized for 

1 minute. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this hearing. It is 

good to see Mr. Thomas here. 

The mortgage crisis that we found here, the banking crisis to me 

is fairly simple and straightforward. We just poured too much 

money into a market. We did not run the background checks. We 

didn’t have the documentation for the loans. And then we built securities on those loans, and the whole system was built on thin air 

and began to collapse very readily. 

The fact that we couldn’t get a report that actually clarified that 

completely with agreement among all the members talks about the 

politicization of that process. 

So I will be interested to hear the testimony of the panels. I 

thank the chairman and I yield back. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Pearce. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Dold, for 1 minute. 

Mr. DOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I certainly want to thank the witnesses for their time, for 

their effort and service to the Commission and to our Nation. 

By my count, we have had 47 economic recessions or downturns 

since our Nation’s first major economic contraction, the panic of 

5 

1797. That is an average of 1 economic recession or downturn every 

41⁄2 years in the last 214 years. 

Throughout our Nation’s history, our national economy has regular and inevitable economic expansions followed by economic contractions. This business cycle is how our economy properly allocates 

resources, evolves and grows. 

And while business cycles are certainly inevitable, history proves 

that normal and necessary and healthy economic contractions are 

frequently exacerbated by misguided or excessive government regulatory, fiscal, trade, or monetary policies. 

We should certainly learn from each and every economic contraction, and we should do so in the most objective and nonpartisan 

way possible. Our investigation should not be manufactured to support preestablished political philosophies or positions, but instead, 

we should strive to learn what governments can do and, perhaps 

more importantly, what governments can stop doing to avoid aggravating otherwise normal and inevitable healthy business cycle 

contractions. 

In response to our most recent financial crisis, we established a 

financial Commission to investigate the causes. But many months 

before we even received the financial Commission reports, Congress 

passed a comprehensive legislation broadly affecting entire industries, including many that indisputably had little or nothing to do 

with the financial crisis. We should not be manufacturing legislation or regulatory solutions for problems before we adequately assess the actual problems. 

So I am concerned that, once again, Congress has overreacted 

without sufficient information and with a very high risk of creating 

unintended consequences that could result in a weaker economy, 

fewer jobs and overly burden some small businesses and diminish 

Federal competitors. 

We need regulation, not more regulation but smarter regulation. 

And again, I thank the witnesses for their time and I look forward to receiving their most objective and candid opinions. 

I yield back. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Dold. 

And that would—I am going to yield an additional minute to Mr. 

Dold. 

And at this time, I reclaim my time and recognize the gentleman 

from New York, Mr. Grimm, for 1 minute. 

Mr. GRIMM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank everyone on the panel today. 

I have to say that I am disappointed. I am disappointed that the 

Commission was really unable to put together a unified report to 

accurately assess the root cause of the financial crisis. It has cost 

millions of jobs, and it has done fundamental damage to our economy. 

It seems that some members of this Commission were more interested in following an ideological agenda than producing a report 

that would assist Congress in developing a strong understanding of 

what occurred so that we can prevent such a grave situation from 

happening again. 

6 

And with that being said, I am interested in hearing what the 

Commissioners have to say regarding their findings and their assessment of how Dodd-Frank will or will not stop another crisis, 

specifically noting the irony that Dodd-Frank was passed into law 

5 months prior to this Commission’s report. 

Again, thank you, and I yield back. 

Chairman BACHUS. I thank the gentleman from New York. 

And I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Canseco. 

Mr. CANSECO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The crisis of 2008 resulted in a financial meltdown. Millions of 

job losses and trillions of dollars of debt piled upon our children 

and grandchildren. It left Americans wanting to know why it happened. 

The American people deserve an answer, not a history lesson. 

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was created to give the 

American people that answer. On the 27th of January, the Commission delivered its majority report. However, they failed to provide an explanation for why the financial crisis happened. 

It seems that the Commission’s report has produced only a stepby-step accounting of the crisis. The American people lived through 

this crisis. They know what happened. They don’t need to be told 

the story over again. The American people deserve better. 

I hope to gather from our panel today some of the reasons for the 

crisis, and I look forward to hearing from each of you. Thank you. 

I yield back my time. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

And for the final minute on our side, I yield to the gentleman 

from Ohio, Mr. Stivers. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to thank you for calling this hearing on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s report. I am new to Congress, so 

I am not sure I understand the process here, because most problem 

solvers would recognize a problem, study a problem and then find 

a solution, and it seems only in Congress can we recognize a problem, pass a solution, and then study the problem. 

I am also concerned that the report didn’t have detailed recommendations of how Congress can avoid a future crisis. In fact, 

Representative Thomas suggested in his dissent that the majority’s 

report is too broad and provides an account of bad events as opposed to a focused explanation and how we move from here. 

Knowing that this report cost the taxpayers $10 million, I have 

higher expectations. And I look forward to hearing the panelists 

talk about recommendations of how we can avoid a future crisis 

and how our solution hopefully can solve the problem. 

It is my hope that we can learn from the past so that we don’t 

have to relive it. Thank you so much. 

I look forward to hearing from the panelists. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. I thank the gentleman from Ohio. 

And I yield the balance of the time on the minority side to the 

gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Frank. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

7 

I am pleased to welcome an old friend back, Bill Thomas, who 

gives me some affirmation that there is life after chairmanship, 

and I appreciate that. Check his pulse. 

We just heard some criticism on the Republican side that the 

Congress should not have acted on the financial reform until the 

Commission finished. But the point is one very prominent commentator has argued that a significant part of the Commission’s report 

is a justification of the rationale of the bill and, to some extent, of 

its substance. 

Let me read from Peter Wallison’s dissent. We will hear from Mr. 

Wallison later: ‘‘Second, by suggesting that a major cause of the financial crisis was the wholesale failure of bank and financial institution management, this section endorsed a policy foundation for 

more regulation as well as the underlying rationale for the DoddFrank Act. After all, if managements of virtually all the world’s financial institutions cannot be trusted to manage their firms, then 

to protect the public, the government must oversee them.’’ 

This commentator thinks that is an implausible position, but he 

says that is exactly the rationale that Congress used in designing 

and enacting the Dodd-Frank Act, and unfortunately, it is the implicit policy message of this particular section of the report. 

The relevance of that is that the section of the report that is 

being discussed here is the dissent by the three other Republican 

Commissioners. In other words, according to Mr. Wallison, the 

other three Republicans whom he somewhat oddly refers to as the 

THH dissent—I actually was looking when I first came across that 

to see what disparaging initials those were; it turns out it is just 

their last names. But it did seem THH was an odd way to characterize your colleagues. Mr. Wallison says that the dissent went in 

that same direction. 

Obviously, that is I think somewhat unfair to them because there 

are some differences. But there is one very important point of similarity, and we ought to be clear: Yes, there was a 6–3–1 vote, but 

on a number of issues, there was a 9–1 vote. 

For example, the Community Reinvestment Act: Mr. Wallison 

has long been a proponent, and there have been some members of 

this committee who believe that the Community Reinvestment Act 

is the substantial cause of the problems that have compelled mortgages to be given that shouldn’t be. Of course, nothing in the terms 

of the Act says so. And if you compare mortgages granted by institutions which were not covered by the Community Reinvestment 

Act, they are far more likely to have failed and to have been inappropriate than those covered by the CRA. 

But it is clear that the ‘‘THH group’’, to adopt Mr. Wallison’s terminology, his three fellow Commissioners specifically said that the 

CRA was not a major part of this problem. That is, 9 of the 10 

Commissioners repudiate the notion that this was caused in substantial part, or even at all, by the Community Reinvestment Act. 

And that is very important I think for us to have online. 

It is particularly important because we are today continuing the 

debate on a financial reform bill in which the Republican version 

of the continuing resolution assaults three particular important aspects of the reform act. One of the things we did in that bill was 

to say that hedge funds should be covered by a registration requireVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
8 

ment so that we will know what is going on out there. That is entrusted to the SEC, which under the Republican CR will not have 

the money to carry that out. Hedge funds will remain uncovered. 

We gave the CFTC the mandate to begin to regulate derivatives, 

including mostly including for end users, making public the price, 

not for end users in any other way regulating them. 

What we did then with both derivatives and with regard to hedge 

funds and private equity was to get some more information. 

People have been talking about the shadow banking system. One 

of the things we did in the bill was to try to bring that out of the 

shadows. But as a result of the Republican budget, neither the SEC 

nor the CFTC will have the money to do that. And so we will go 

back and from time to time and talk about old radio programs. I 

think we have another one. Who will know what risk lurks in the 

heart of the financial system? And the answer is, the shadow will 

know but nobody else. Because our efforts to put some light on the 

shadow banking system by having hedge funds register with the 

SEC and have them be able to calculate what is up and having derivatives regulated by the CFTC, those won’t happen. 

When AIG needed money from the Federal Reserve, by the way, 

under a section of the Federal Reserve Act which we unanimously 

rescinded on both sides, what the Federal Reserve gave to the AIG 

won’t be possible in the future. We have stricken that Section 

13(3), but when they gave money to AIG, they came in the first 

week and told us they were giving them $80 billion and then they 

needed another $80,000 to $100,000, because no one knew how 

much they had. 

So I welcome 9 of the 10 Commissioners repudiating the notion 

that it was just the government trying to be nice to poor people and 

particularly the CRA that caused this problem. And I am regretful 

that we will be debating later today a budget which will leave 

hedge funds in the dark, prevent the regulation of derivatives, including price discovery for the end users, and will further reduce 

the role of the Consumer Protection Bureau. So credit cards, hedge 

funds, unregulated and unknown and in-the-shadows hedge funds 

and derivatives will all be the beneficiaries. 

And as I said, I do believe Mr. Wallison was right that 9 of the 

other 10 Commissioners give support to the notion that we should 

go forward. I think the majority report in particular is a good argument for the bill going forward, and we will be fighting later today 

to prevent the re-deregulation of the financial economy which the 

Republican budget represents. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

We will note for the record that you agree with Peter Wallison 

on those issues. 

Mr. FRANK. Yes, I agree with him that the initials of his three 

fellow Commissioners are in fact ‘‘T,’’ ‘‘H,’’ and ‘‘H.’’ 

Chairman BACHUS. All right. Thank you. 

I want to introduce the first panel and also acknowledge the second panel and associate myself with Mr. Dold’s remarks that we 

thank you for your service to the Commission and to the country. 

Your compensation was very nominal so you did this I think out 

of a sense of patriotism and duty to your country, so I thank you. 

9 

Our first panel consists of: the Honorable Phil Angelides, the 

Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission; and the 

Honorable Bill Thomas, the Vice Chairman of the Commission. 

Our second panel will consist of four Commissioners of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: Dr. Douglas Holz-Eakin; the 

Honorable Brooksley Born; Mr. Peter Wallison; and Mr. Bryon 

Georgiou. 

So we thank the second panel. 

The first panel will be dismissed at noon. 

And without objection, your written statements will be made a 

part of the record, and you will each be recognized for a 5-minute 

summary of your testimony. 

At this time, Mr. Angelides, I will recognize you. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE PHIL ANGELIDES, 

CHAIRMAN, FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Thank you very much. 

Chairman Bachus, Ranking Member Frank, and members of the 

committee, thank you for the invitation to discuss the report of the 

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. 

First of all, I want to thank my colleague, Vice Chairman Bill 

Thomas, for his service to our country and to this Commission. And 

I want to thank our dedicated and excellent staff who worked with 

us. 

This committee requested that I address three subjects: the Commission’s report; the inability to reach consensus on some conclusions; and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

In 2009, Congress tasked the Commission to examine the causes 

of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States 

and to probe the collapse of major financial institutions that failed 

or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government. We were true to our charge and fulfilled our mandates. 

Our task was to determine what happened and how it happened 

so we could understand why it happened. In doing so, we sought 

to answer this central question: How did it come to pass that in 

2008 our Nation was forced to choose between two stark and painful alternatives—either risk the total collapse of our financial system and economy, or inject trillions of taxpayer dollars into the system and into private companies, even as millions of Americans still 

lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes? 

In the course of the Commission’s exhaustive investigation, we 

reviewed millions of pages of documents, interviewed more than 

700 witnesses, and held 19 days of public hearings in New York, 

Washington, D.C., and communities across the country. 

The Commission also drew from a large body of existing work developed by congressional committees, government agencies, academics, and others. The Commission’s report contains six specific 

major conclusions. 

First and foremost, we concluded that this crisis was avoidable. 

The crisis was a result of human action, inaction, and misjudgment, not Mother Nature. Financial executives and public stewards 

of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, unVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
10 

derstand, and manage evolving risks within the system so essential 

to the well-being of the American public. 

Second, we found widespread failures in financial regulation that 

proved devastating to the stability of the Nation’s financial markets. 

Third, our report described dramatic breakdowns in corporate 

governance and risk management at many systemically important 

financial institutions. 

Fourth, we detailed the excessive borrowing, risky investments, 

and lack of transparency that combined to put our financial system 

on a collision course with catastrophe. 

Fifth, we concluded that the key policymakers were ill prepared 

for the crisis and that their inconsistent response added to uncertainty and panic. 

And finally, we documented how breaches in accountability and 

ethics became widespread at all levels during the run-up to the crisis. 

Our report as well as two dissents can be found on our Web site, 

FCIC.gov. That Web site also contains approximately 2,000 documents, public testimony in our hearings, audios, transcripts and 

summaries of more than 300 witness interviews, and additional information to create an enduring historical record of this crisis. 

In addition to the major causes we identify, the Commission also 

investigated among other things whether this crisis was caused by 

excess capital availability, the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie 

Mac, and government housing policies. We concluded that excess liquidity by itself did not need to cause a crisis and that Fannie Mae 

and Freddie Mac contributed to the crisis but were not a primary 

cause. We determined that government housing policies were not 

a significant factor in this crisis. 

As we undertook our work, all 10 Commissioners were afforded 

the opportunity to fully participate. While we were not unanimous 

on all issues or on the emphasis we placed on key causes, there 

were in fact many areas of agreement among 9 of 10 Commissioners. Importantly, setting aside conclusions and dissents, this 

report contains a valuable and accurate historical account of the 

events leading up to the crisis and the crisis itself. 

Finally, you have asked me to comment on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. With our inquiry and report completed and the 

facts in evidence, I will now speak to this matter. I believe the 

law’s financial reforms are strong and needed and that the law directly and forcefully addresses issues and conclusions identified in 

our report. 

I believe full implementations of its provisions is critical and will 

help prevent a future crisis. In conclusion, it is my hope that our 

report will serve as a guide post in the years to come as policymakers and regulators endeavor to spare our country from another 

catastrophe of this magnitude. 

Thank you and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Angelides can be found on page 

60 of the appendix.] 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Congressman Thomas. 

11 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BILL THOMAS, VICE 

CHAIRMAN, FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Chairman Bachus, Ranking Member 

Frank, and members of the committee. 

You have asked that I address the Commission’s findings, the 

Dodd-Frank Act in light of those findings, and why the Commission 

was unable to reach unanimous agreement. 

I joined a dissent from the majority’s report with Commissioners 

Hennessey and Holtz-Eakin. In our dissent, we describe what we 

believe are the 10 essential causes of the financial crisis. 

Our thesis is that the crisis was at its core a global financial 

panic precipitated by concentrated correlated housing-related losses 

at large and midsize financial institutions in the United States and 

Europe. 

Let’s examine three areas where our findings and conclusions differ from those of the six-member majority. First, our explanation 

of the crisis begins with a global credit bubble fueled by international capital flows. We do not think that you can understand 

what happened in the United States without first understanding 

what was going on in international capital markets. 

There were a series of credit bubbles occurring at the same time 

in a variety of asset classes around the world. This fact undermines, we think, the thesis that it was something about U.S. capital markets or the U.S. housing market in particular that was the 

primary cause of the bubble. 

We focus on the role that economic forces played in causing the 

crisis, whereas the majority focused on individual firms and actors. 

This difference is highlighted in an article by Robert J. Samuelson, 

entitled, ‘‘Rethinking the Great Recession.’’ It is in the winter issue 

of the Wilson Quarterly. Samuelson’s main thesis is, ‘‘There is a political, journalistic and intellectual imperative to find out who 

caused the crisis, who can be blamed, who can be indicted, either 

in legal courts or the court of public opinion, and, if found guilty, 

be jailed or politicly humbled. But in embracing a victims-and-villains explanation of the recession, Americans are missing important lessons about the future of the U.S. economy.’’ 

Second, as you can see from the chart in my testimony, housing 

bubbles occurred in a number of large countries with very different 

systems of housing finance. No two were quite alike, and none 

looked anything like ours. Therefore, we had a hard time placing 

too much emphasis on the structure of our mortgage finance system in explaining the boom-and-bust and focused more on factors 

common to all of the countries, that is the broader credit bubble. 

Third, we observed financial firm failures across a variety of different firm organizational structures in the United States and Europe. For us, this supported the conclusion that the organizational 

form of a financial firm or its specific regulatory regime was secondary in importance to common factors; that is, concentrated exposure to the housing market and poorly managed solvency and liquidity risk. 

When we look at the multitude of different types of firm failures 

in the United States and around the world, it casts doubt on the 

majority’s thesis that a particular feature of the American regulatory regime, a specific type of financial institution or an indiVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
12 

vidual firm and the people who ran it was an essential cause of the 

crisis. 

However, when you are looking for villains and victims rather 

than essential causes, it is easy to examine the same set of facts 

and arrive at diametrically different conclusions. 

This leads me to the central question of why we were unable to 

reach unanimous agreement among the Commissioners. From the 

beginning, I thought that the Commission was created for political 

purposes with a partisan structure and a partisan agenda. It called 

for six of us to be appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans. 

And any six votes were all that was needed to transmit the report 

to the President and the Congress. The math is simple. 

Let’s be clear, the Commission was not created by Congress to 

write a 500-plus page commercially produced book. The Commission was created to determine why we had a financial and economic crisis. 

In our dissent, we conclude by focusing too narrowly on U.S. regulatory policy and supervision, ignoring international parallels, emphasizing only arguments for greater regulation, failing to 

prioritize the causes, failing to distinguish sufficiently between 

causes and effects, the majority’s report leads to incorrect conclusions about what caused the crisis. 

I think we had the money, the time, the staff, and the resources 

necessary for our work to have been a success. But when you have 

the votes, what else really matters? 

And finally, regarding the Dodd-Frank Act, I believe our work 

has shed light on a number of problems in our financial markets 

that have not been sufficiently addressed, as well as cases of regulatory overreach in the Act where the financial and economic crisis 

was used as a cover to regulate activities that really had little to 

do with the financial crisis. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas can be found on page 74 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Congressman Thomas, in your testimony, you spoke about the 

crisis being used as a cover to regulate activities that had little to 

do with the financial crisis. Can you tell us a little more about the 

regulatory, what you described as overreach of the Dodd-Frank Act 

and the use of the financial crisis as a pretext to regulate activities 

that didn’t cause or had nothing to do with the crisis? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am pleased to say that one of the ‘‘H’s’’, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, 

will be on the second panel. He is a professional economist and, 

some of you may know, was the former head of the Congressional 

Budget Office. And he is much more conversant with many of the 

provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act. 

However, a couple of things are fairly obvious. One is the whole 

question that this Congress, at least a portion of the Congress, 

stressed during the Dodd-Frank Act that the so-called GSEs, 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, really needed to be dealt with. And 

I thought it should have been an integral part of the legislation. 

The government bailouts, when you look for overreach, the enhanced supervision, I really disagree with the majority that there 

was information that was available to regulars. In hindsight, it is 

13 

always easy to explain what happened, even if it is wrong. And as 

Samuelson, and I do urge you to read this recent article by Samuelson, because it is so easy to focus on villains and victims, and unfortunately, that is the direction we tend to go politically. And that 

is why our conclusions looked at we think more fundamental 

causes, and if we don’t focus on those, we are going to be doomed 

to repeat, notwithstanding a number of regulatory measures that 

were put in effect, especially a portion of the derivatives legislation. 

I am not saying that there weren’t certain kinds that were clearly part of the problem, but there are many others, and we are just 

now discovering as we are getting testimony recently reported in 

the paper, about firms that use the derivatives to truly hedge 

against their input costs in producing products. That is a long-time 

honored procedure for derivatives, in fact, a historical use. And this 

has to be revisited to be able to allow them to use this in a way 

that is sound and appropriate and was never a cause, in my opinion, in any way of the financial crisis. Those are a couple of examples. 

For example, eating your own cooking, the idea that you are 

going to hang onto your own stuff, and therefore, you will be more 

sober. It was rather frightening for me to hear the testimony from 

Lehman in which a number of the major executives, in fact the top 

executives actually put into their basic portfolio the derivatives 

that were synthetic in a way that they thought they were actually 

worth what they were supposed to be worth because they were Triple A rated. Rating agencies obviously is another area that needs 

to be dealt with. But that they seemed to be coherent of the fact 

that they had to make margin calls if in fact the numbers changed 

relative to what they were holding. That was fairly frightening to 

some of us who thought that these people, at least in some way, 

earned the amounts of money that they were receiving. But that 

was so fundamental as to be shocking. 

So I do think there are some areas that were frankly just gathered up, not unlike the stimulus bill, that had been desired regulatory moves for some time and plugged into the Dodd-Frank Act, 

and there are clearly areas that were left out. Of course, it would 

have been nice to wait for our report to be able to analyze it, but 

frankly, that was not of concern to me. I was pleased that we didn’t 

have to come up with solutions, just to try to analyze the cause. 

If we were supposed to come up with solutions, I wouldn’t have volunteered to be on the Commission. And we thought it was important to try to look at the causes. 

As I said, with a 6–4 vote, especially near the end, Ranking 

Member Frank responded to the fact that there were some 9–1 decisions. Yes, those were early on. I would love someone to ask me 

about all the 6–4 decisions that occurred once it was clear that the 

former majority was no longer going to be the majority and then, 

after the election, what occurred in late November and December 

on a number of 6–4 decisions which wound up producing a rather 

what I consider to be an unfair and bizarre situation on this Commission as opposed to the many other Commissions that I served 

on, especially the bipartisan Commission on Medicare and several 

others. 

14 

Chairman BACHUS. Are those Commissions 5–5 or equal numbers? 

Mr. THOMAS. I can’t hear you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Are those Commissions 5–5 as opposed to 6– 

4? 

Mr. THOMAS. No, they were always, well, rather larger. But the 

point was, look at the President’s debt Commission. That is a good 

example. You require a supermajority; it is very difficult to do. 

That is what we did, we had as a requirement on the bipartisan 

Medicare Commission. There were co-chairs, not a chair and a vice 

chair. Senator Breaux was a co-chair, and I was a co-chair. We 

worked in an absolutely level relationship. I will say that Chairman Angelides allowed me far more ability to be involved than the 

Act required. But at the end, when you wind up with a series of 

6–4 votes, and I can go into it if somebody wants to ask me the 

detail, clearly the decision to move forward was I think a function 

of two things. 

Senator Dodd decided to retire. And whenever anyone spends 

that much time in Congress and wants to move a product, it is very 

difficult to say no. I am not saying the product was fatally flawed; 

I am just saying that there was a desire to get it done before he 

left Congress. That is a pressure that produces a product that perhaps wasn’t as well established. 

My friend from Massachusetts’ name is on it, and I think all of 

the good parts that are in it are attributed to him. The rest of them 

are to those who have left the place. And we can agree on that 

structure. 

But when you have a 6–4 structure, and if I might be able to go 

on for a minute, just to give you a couple of examples, or I will wait 

for other questions. 

Chairman BACHUS. If we have unanimous consent—the ranking 

member says that is fine as long as you keep complimenting him. 

No, he actually didn’t say that. 

Mr. FRANK. My problem is just with the new deadline. It is okay 

with me, but there are other members. 

Mr. THOMAS. I would just like to say that is not hard to do. We 

worked as well as could be expected together given the odd fellows 

that both of us are. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mr. THOMAS. Is that a compliment? 

Chairman BACHUS. Yes. 

Mr. THOMAS. Let me give you a simple example of 6–4 votes. 

This is a commercially commissioned book. On a 6–4 vote, the 

whole relationship that I have known for the 28 years that I was 

in Congress dealing with majority/minority and reports was turned 

on its head. A congressional report is the majority and the minority’s positions. That is the report. What happened here on a 6–4 

vote was dissents in the report, i.e., the congressional model, was 

changed to dissents with the report. Dissents were not part of the 

report. 

And that is why I would say to my friend Mr. Lynch in his description of three reports, no, there was one report; that was the 

majority. The others clearly were dissents. 

I put blue for the Democrats the way all the people— 

15 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I am for the other members with a 

new deadline. 

Chairman BACHUS. And the ranking member will let someone 

else— 

Mr. THOMAS. Thirty seconds. The blue is the Commissioner’s 

findings in the report. The red are the minority’s dissents. They are 

separated by 400 pages that could easily have been placed together 

so that you could judge the two. Those 400 pages are a political decision decided on a 6–4 vote. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

I thank the Congressman. 

And Ranking Member Frank will be recognized for an additional 

minute. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I guess maybe I, based on this example, can look forward to a 

certain mellowing in retirement. I appreciate the nice words of my 

former colleague. 

I do note that his familiarity with the notion if you have the 

votes, you go ahead; I don’t think this is the first time he encountered that philosophy. I just wanted to begin by saying the typography doesn’t seem to me to be very significant. If the material is 

out there for people to read, whether it is called with the report, 

or from the report, or over the report, I think is irrelevant; the information is out there. 

And I do want to begin with one of the accusations, Mr. 

Angelides, because I am impressed by what seemed to me the fairness and the openness. In Mr. Wallison’s dissent from—the dissent 

from the majority, he talks about Mr. Pinto and says that you were 

not fair to Mr. Pinto’s information. Will you respond to that? That 

is a fairly serious charge. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes, Mr. Frank. 

Yes, Mr. Wallison in his dissent said that Mr. Pinto, who is a 

housing expert, provided information to the Commission that was 

never distributed to the Commission, never analyzed, and that Mr. 

Pinto’s testimony was never taken. 

Let me just point out that Mr. Wallison distributed that information to all Commissioners, including members of the Housing 

Working Group. Our staff met 6 times in person and by phone with 

Mr. Pinto, and his July interview is posted on our Web site. The 

staff undertook an analysis of Mr. Pinto’s work and provided that 

to the Commission. In fact, Mr. Pinto commented on that analysis. 

And on pages 219 through 221 of the report, you can find a discussion of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Mr. Pinto’s analysis, and the 

staff’s analysis. And if someone would like to read the staff’s analysis of Mr. Pinto’s work, it is footnoted, Chapter 11, footnotes 17, 

13, and 19 and posted on the Web, so I am a little surprised by 

that. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you. Let me just say with regard to the scope 

of the bill that came up, I don’t just acknowledge, I am inclined to 

brag about the fact that the Financial Reform Act included more 

than what we thought were the causes of the crisis. It would have 

been irresponsible not to have dealt with other issues. 

I don’t understand when the philosophy came that when Congress is legislating, it should only look backwards; it should not anVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
16 

ticipate potential future problems. Of course, we did things that 

were not necessarily part of the past problem. We tried to take a 

comprehensive view, and we looked at things that might be happening in the future or other factors. 

So I am stunned that it is a criticism that the bill on financial 

reform, and you don’t do those very often, did more than simply respond to the crisis. 

I will say, I will dissent from one thing Mr. Thomas said. No, 

this wasn’t hurried because of Chris Dodd; this was hurried because a whole range of people, beginning with Hank Paulson and 

Ben Bernanke, the Bush appointees who initiated our efforts here, 

said you really need to get this done quickly; because we were told 

by the financial community correctly that uncertainty was a problem and to prolong this for another year or so would have added 

to that uncertainty. So, yes, those were the reasons why we did 

more. 

Finally, as to not including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, my 

view is that we were not ready at that point to do that, that the 

responses hadn’t been formulated. And I now accept graciously— 

people say you should take ‘‘yes’’ for an answer. I have learned how 

to do that, because last year the Republicans offered what they 

said was the solution to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problem 

in the conference. We did not accept it. And they said, this is a big 

mistake. 

Now that the Republicans are in power, that solution appears to 

have become a dissolution. It is dissolved. It is not here anymore. 

We had a hearing on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and that 

wasn’t even the subject of the hearing. So what we now have is 

retroactively the Republicans acknowledging that while we had put 

them in the receivership, the conservatorship, we had stopped the 

bleeding; we were not yet at a consensus as to how to replace them. 

And indeed, I was struck that the Republicans, oddly to me, criticized President Obama’s Administration for not giving them more 

specific advice about how to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I 

was not aware that they were in the habit of waiting for the President to tell them what to do. 

So they have in fact acknowledged by their action or inaction 

that we are now in the process of trying to figure out what to do 

next, and that is why we hadn’t moved on it. 

The last point I want to say is, I will go back to Mr. Thomas, 

and I do think there were some who blamed Fannie Mae, Freddie 

Mac, and the CRA; others who blamed other aspects of the American situation. I am struck by the three-member dissent disagreeing with both. But I do, particularly for those who thought it 

was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or people who thought it was the 

American system in general, Mr. Thomas I will just ask you to 

comment briefly as I read from your testimony: ‘‘This fact undermines the thesis that it was something about U.S. capital markets 

or the U.S. housing market in particular that was the primary 

cause of the bubble. It undermines that thesis. That is a repudiation of the notion that it was the U.S. housing market in particular that was a primary cause.’’ 

And then you say two pages later, ‘‘We observed financial firm 

failures through a variety of different firm organizational strucVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
17 

tures in the United States and Europe. This fact supported the conclusion that the organizational form of a financial firm or its specific regulatory regime was of secondary importance to common factors that concentrated exposure to the housing market and poorly 

managed salvage and liquidity risk.’’ 

Now, I realize that is a difference from both what had been the 

majority view, but it is also very much a difference from the view 

that it was Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the CRA because those 

were particular American institutions managed in a particular 

way. Is that an inaccurate summation of your view? 

Mr. THOMAS. No. I thought the Commission was charged with 

looking at the fundamental causes of the crisis. I really want to 

recommend to you the Samuelson article that has just been written. 

Mr. FRANK. I thank you. And let me just say— 

Mr. THOMAS. Because he is worried that we are going to go off 

on the tangent of investigating villains and victims and not understand the fundamental lesson of what happened, international capital, its interrelatedness, lack of transparency. The CRA was a 

cause. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were causes. There were multiple causes, but they weren’t the reason for what happened. 

We can look at the loosening up of credit under Greenspan, the 

area of moderation. You can look at all of the sovereign funds that 

came in. There are a lot of reasons, and a lot of them have been 

written about. But if our job was to go to the court and try to explain what happened, that is what we thought— 

Mr. FRANK. Okay. Let me interrupt you. Let me emphasize 

again, and that is true for the Commission. I do want to differentiate, that was not the mandate of the legislation. So the fact that 

we consciously included in the legislation things that were not necessarily the cause or not the cause is not a criticism of legislation. 

Our mandate is to go beyond that. 

The other thing I would say is that I did appreciate it, so on this 

question, the notion that it was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and 

CRA that were causal, it is one thing to say they were exacerbating 

factors once the problem started, and I think that is a very important— 

Mr. THOMAS. And are they a problem and a problem today? Yes. 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. And I await the Republican solution now that 

they are in the majority. I yield back. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mr. Royce. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I think in response maybe to this argument about primary 

causes and factors, clearly, one of the underlying factors I think 

was missed in this report. And I remember the British magazine, 

The Economist, making the argument in 2002 that our Federal Reserve had set an interest rate that effectively was below zero if you 

included inflation into the calculation. 

Mark Zandi, in his book, ‘‘Financial Shock’’, and I see, Barney, 

you have had a quote in support of some of his conclusions—but 

I had a chance to have dinner with him and talk to him about this 

particular factor and how, in my view, and I think in the view of 

many economists, the fact that for 4 years in a row you had interVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
18 

est rates which were below zero. And every time that that has happened—and here is what The Economist said at the time, they said 

you are going to have asset bubbles in real estate. And because the 

Fed has done this in the United States, other central banks are 

going to follow. 

I just want it understood that when you eliminate or erase market discipline—as clearly we did with government intervention into 

the market, with the pressure to get those 20 percent 

downpayments down to zero, Congress did that with what we did 

with the GSEs—all of that helps create a bubble. Underlying that 

is this massive infusion of credit. And he goes through the argument, the extraordinarily easy money policies pursued by the 

globe’s central banks helped pump up the U.S. credit and housing 

market. 

As I read the report, yes, there is a mention on page 5—there 

are maybe three different mentions through the report—about interest rates being low. But I think what you missed is something 

that the Federal Reserve and Mark Zandi—at least in the majority 

report here, the thing that you missed was the crucial role it 

played. And I wanted to ask you about that and how you have been 

criticized. This argument has been made by many journalists and 

economists since the report came out. I wanted to ask you about 

that. 

And the other point I think is that I don’t think you can debate 

the issue with respect to the role of the GSEs, given the losses, 

which are probably going to be $350 billion to the taxpayers, and 

given the fact that those institutions were at the heart of the collapse of the housing market. More importantly, the Federal Reserve came here in 2004 and 2005 and warned us that unless we 

regulated the GSEs for systemic risk and gave the regulator the 

ability to bring down those mortgage portfolios, that this would create a systemic financial crisis, and here we are. 

And so I wanted to ask you, Mr. Angelides, about those two 

points. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate the 

questions. 

First of all, we did look at international capital flows. We looked 

at excess liquidity. We looked at monetary policy. In fact, in the 

book, I think it is on page 83, there is a whole section on credit 

expansion. We also have parts in the book where we discuss what 

happened in terms of other countries’ housing bubbles. But let me 

say this: On that issue, the Commission concluded that, yes, there 

was excess liquidity, but in and of itself, that need not have caused 

a crisis, that there could have been—recognizing that excess liquidity, regulators, market participants should have exercised discipline. 

And in particular, let me just give you the example of the Federal Reserve. Knowing that there was that kind of excess liquidity 

in the global economy, it was incumbent on the Federal Reserve to 

use its power under HOEPA to set reasonable, prudent mortgage 

lending standards. 

And by the way, as someone who comes out of the real estate 

business, we should have recognized those asset bubbles. We 

should have had tighter mortgage lending standards. And I think 

19 

that was at the heart. It was our failure to grapple with those capital flows. I think if we take the position that international capital 

flows are detrimental to this country, that is very damaging. We 

want to have capital flowing, and we want to put it to productive 

uses, not merely— 

Mr. ROYCE. You cannot regulate the idea that you are going to 

make money so cheap that it is less than zero, that for 4 years you 

are going to flood the market with that, and that somehow you are 

going to be able—this is what economists would call the fatal conceit—that somehow you are going to be able to overcompensate for 

the fact that that much money is flooded into the market. And on 

top of it, you have erased market discipline by what you have done 

with government intervention with Fannie and Freddie and gone 

to zero downpayment loans, the idea that some regulator is going 

to be able to tamp all that down or keep that under control when 

the government has unleashed, by bad decisions, all of that liquidity into the market I think is a fantastic belief. 

I can’t understand in this day and age how people, unless you 

have central planning able to control every aspect of decisions 

made by people, how could you possibly undo the damage that 

those kinds of decisions create in an economy? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I am sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt you, sir. 

Mr. ROYCE. But even if we concede that some way you could 

overregulate for all of what has been unleashed, why not a real discussion on Fed policy in the majority report in terms of how this 

underlies the problem. And I have read the report, and— 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I would urge everyone to read—I am sorry, sir. 

Chairman BACHUS. Let me say this, let the gentleman respond 

and then— 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Quickly. I would urge everyone to read—and I 

hope as many Americans as possible—the report. We do detail 

monetary policy. We do detail the excess liquidity in the marketplace. But I will say that when you take degrading lending standards, when you take leverage ratios of 40–1, when you take a shadow banking market of $13 trillion that exceeds the regular banking 

system with no transparency, the combination of cheap money and 

excesses in the marketplace and dramatic failures of regulatory 

control, I think you have a formula for disaster. 

Mr. ROYCE. The GSE ratios were 100–1. 

I yield back. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. In fact, they were the kings of leverage, yes, sir. 

Chairman BACHUS. The gentlelady from California is recognized. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to thank the co-chairs of the Commission. I take to 

heart the recommendation that Mr. Thomas is making about Samuelson and what he is explaining about Samuelson, villains and 

victors. 

There is a fundamental debate that is going on in the Congress 

of the United States today. This fundamental debate is about regulation. On this side of the aisle, we believe that we understand and 

recognize the cause of the meltdown and what brought us to the 

brink of a depression. And we have also heard from our regulators 

who are agreeing that they need to be supported, they need more 

20 

funds, they can do a better job, and the Dodd-Frank bill helps to 

do that. 

On the opposite side of the aisle, we are hearing we need less 

regulation. My colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle are 

claiming that regulation is a job killer. And so this debate is so important because it is about which way America—are we going to 

have regulatory agencies that turn a blind eye or that are not supported with their technological capability, or are going to be intimidated? Or are we going to have a regulatory system that is going 

to do the job that they expect it to do, not only to protect the public 

and the consumers, but to help regulate what happens in this economy? That is what it is all about. 

Now Mr. Angelides, you said in your statement that the crisis 

was a result of human inaction and misjudgment, not Mother Nature. Financial executives and the public stewards of our financial 

system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and 

manage evolving risk within a system so essential to the well-being 

of the American public. You found widespread failures in financial 

regulation that proved devastating to the stability of the Nation’s 

financial markets, and on and on and on. And basically, that is the 

conclusion that some of us have come to. 

In your discussion, did you find that there was indeed a consensus about what you have just identified here in some shape, 

form or fashion about the failure of our regulatory agencies to do 

their job? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Let me just say that, certainly speaking for the 

Commission’s conclusions, we really found there was a—first of all, 

that we believe this was avoidable. There were plenty of warning 

signs along the way. You don’t create $13 trillion worth of mortgage securities and have no one notice. You don’t have the FBI 

warn about rampant mortgage fraud in 2004 and 2005 and have 

no one notice. You don’t have unprecedented escalation—and I 

guess Mr. Royce talked about in terms of asset bubbles and housing prices. And there were plenty of warnings, for example, at the 

Federal Reserve about egregious and predatory lending practices. 

Mr. Greenspan said regulation was not the answer; the answer was 

law enforcement, but from 2000 to 2006, the Federal Reserve made 

only three referrals to the Department of Justice. 

But there was a twin phenomenon here. There was a breakdown 

in regulation, and we detail that. And I might add—I don’t want 

to speak for my other members, but I think there was an acknowledgement, we may differ on the cause, but the SEC had the ability 

to curb excesses at the investment banks; they did not. The Federal 

Reserve Bank of New York had chances to curb the excesses at 

Citigroup; they did not. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which 

oversaw AIG, didn’t even understand that its mandate—and it had 

signed a directive with the European Union to oversee the whole 

company. 

So there were dramatic breakdowns, but they were also accompanied by dramatic corporate governance and risk-management 

breakdowns at companies. At Citigroup, this was an organization 

that did not know that it had $55 billion worth of exposure to 

subprime mortgages. They represented to the public all through 

2007 that they had $13 billion. They had about $25 billion in what 

21 

are called liquidity puts off balance sheet that executives themselves did not learn until the fall. And they represented still to the 

public that they had $13 billion on the same day that their board 

was being told our exposure is $55 billion. At AIG, they wrote $79 billion of credit default swaps protection 

on subprime securities. The CEO, Mr. Sullivan, the CFO, Mr. 

Bensinger, the chief risk officer, none of them knew that there 

would be collateral calls made on AIG if the market value of those 

securities fell. So when Goldman Sachs makes their first collateral 

call in July of 2007, they were shocked. And of course, as everyone 

knows, what happened after that is the collateral calls accelerated, 

ultimately leading to the collapse and the taxpayer bailout. 

So it was a twin phenomenon of deregulation, gaps in regulation, 

and failures of regulators to use the powers they had. And I want 

to be clear to all members here of both parties, there were a lot 

of powers that went unused. I believe Dodd-Frank has helped close 

a lot of the gaps that existed, but the fact is there was a twin phenomenon here where there were clear breakdowns in corporate governance and management. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Garrett. 

Mr. GARRETT. I thank the chairman. 

And to the Congressman, it is interesting that the ranking member says that this is what he has to look forward to in retirement, 

the mellowing that we see here, so I don’t know whether we hear 

some pronouncement from the ranking member with regard to his 

retirement. If not, I guess we will proceed. I thought this would be 

the committee hearing of the week then, in which case—in any 

event, to the Congressman, you began your issue with regard to the 

lack of bipartisanship nature of the committee. 

I am thinking back a couple of years ago when we had the 9/11 

Commission. You mentioned some other Commissions where it was 

done in a truly bipartisan manner. So can you just comment very 

briefly if you will, did the majority give you complete bipartisanship with regard to the staff and to the resources, and also to the 

areas that you were going to, as a Commission, study and investigate and file a report upon? I guess that is one or two questions. 

And third, you had some sort of comment you wanted to make 

with regard to the final vote as well. 

Mr. THOMAS. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. GARRETT. Sure. 

Mr. THOMAS. I thought it was pretty obvious, when the move was 

made at the beginning of the Congress to create a committee which 

was structured along partisan lines—six and four—the Democrat 

side got the chairman and the minority side got the vice chairman, 

rather than co-chairman, that my friend from Massachusetts’ argument that I am very familiar with the partisan environment was 

one of the reasons I decided to go into this because it was clear 

from the beginning it was a partisan environment. I was going to 

try to make sure that it didn’t wind up a partisan environment. 

And as we began, it was clear that there was an attempt to try to 

get a broader base. 

22 

However, as the Commission went on and decisions needed to be 

made—and more importantly, the use of the Commission started to 

shift, I have no question that this body and the Congress should 

not have held up in passing legislation. I just think a lot of the legislation was off-the-shelf stuff that people wanted to do with derivatives in general, they hadn’t been able to do—as I said, a lot 

like the stimulus bill, here is a chance to dump some stuff in that 

we wanted to do for a while—and became part of the Dodd-Frank 

fresh and new movement. 

What can you do with a Commission that is created, and less 

than a month after it was created, the President offers his solutions and the Congress moves forward with their solutions? There 

are a lot of things you can do with it, especially, I believe, because 

the former majority thought they were going to be a majority in 

this Congress as well. It is very difficult. I will tell you, when Republicans were in power and the Administration was Republican, 

we could not go back to the Dingell playbook and go after the Administration because they were Republican, and we were Republican. Democrats did a great job of oversight for decades because 

the Republicans were in the Presidency and the Democrats were in 

the Congress. 

So when you look at what you can do with this Commission, one, 

you can use it to go after the villains and help the victims if that 

is the result and you are in the majority. You can use it, even if 

you are in the minority, to hold hearings about those issues. And 

so when you wind up with a series of 6–4 votes that literally, in 

my opinion, split the Commission on a partisan basis, the result is 

a partisan conclusion. And I have no qualms about that. I thought 

that was what it was going to be to begin with. I just was trying 

to overcome it. 

Mr. GARRETT. So let’s go into a little bit of detail. As far as the 

things that were done and that were not done—and both of you can 

answer this—what was done, I guess, is case studies of 10 specific 

financial institutions and finding the problems or lack thereof in 

the financial institutions but not, I understand, any specific case 

studies with regard to the regulatory failures. Can you comment on 

why it wasn’t done? And how then can you come up with the conclusions if you are not going to do it in that same fashion, the conclusions that you came up with? 

Mr. THOMAS. Is that a question for me or the chairman? 

Mr. GARRETT. I will go first to the chairman, and then you can 

respond as well. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes, we did the following, and this is important 

to understand. 

First of all, let me just say very quickly that I really do stand 

on the report and the integrity of the report. The facts are in it. 

The facts themselves have not been challenged. And everyone can 

draw their own conclusions, but that 400-some pages Mr. Thomas 

talked about— 

Mr. GARRETT. We were looking at you for the conclusion really. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. And we laid them out. But I want to say that 

every member had a full opportunity to participate. All members 

had an opportunity to attend hearings all over the country. In fact, 

I went to Bakersfield. I had a great chance to go with the vice 

23 

chairman to Bakersfield for a very informative hearing about what 

had happened at the community level. All materials and interviews 

were made available to all Commissioners. All drafts of all the reports and all the chapters were made available to Commissioners 

for comments; some chose to, some did not. And all staff were jointly approved by Mr. Thomas and me. 

What we did as a general kind of approach to our work is we did 

a look at overall research, the large picture. And because of our 

timeframe, we then did 10 case studies of financial institutions, including a very deep scrub on Fannie Mae. We also looked at other 

institutions at a lesser level, but we looked very specifically at the 

roles of policymakers and regulators. We looked at the FDIC, the 

Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

And let me just speak to the nonpartisan nature of this. If you 

look at this report, sir, we were very critical of the Federal Reserve 

Bank of New York’s oversight of Citigroup when Mr. Geithner was 

in charge of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. We looked at 

HUD, its affordable housing goals. We looked at the role of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. 

So we looked at both financial institutions and regulators, and I 

think you will find that we found, without regard to party, without 

regard to private sector or public sector, that this crisis was avoidable, both in failures of regulation and failures in corporate risk 

management. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

The gentlelady from New York. 

Mr. GARRETT. Did Mr. Thomas want to respond? 

Chairman BACHUS. Thirty seconds. It is hard to get Congressman— 

Mr. THOMAS. Look, Warren Buffett came before us in New York 

and said he didn’t think housing prices would go down the way 

they did. People who are supposed to be gurus in this said they 

weren’t aware of it. 

You have to read a clever book by Michael Lewis if you haven’t, 

‘‘The Big Short,’’ because he winds up writing a book about those 

three or four people who actually made money on it. I asked him, 

well, what about John Paulson? And he said, ‘‘John Paulson has 

been around for a long time; he was a joke.’’ We all laughed at him. 

He had this view of what was going on. 

It turns out he was right, but it was after the fact. If Warren 

Buffett didn’t know it was coming, how can you say very nonchalantly that it all could have been avoidable? 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mrs. Maloney is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. 

And I welcome the panelists, particularly my former colleague, 

Congressman Thomas; it is very good to see you again. 

I would like to mention that one of my constituents is here— 

Brooksley Born. We are very proud of her and I thank her for her 

public service and her courageous leadership in pointing out reforms that need to take place. 

I would like to say, first of all, that I thought it was an excellent 

report, and my biggest disappointment in it was that it was not 

24 

more bipartisan. I truly believe one of the best actions of this Congress was the 9/11 Commission report that was totally bipartisan, 

and we worked together to implement their charges and their suggestions of how to make this country safer. 

Republicans and Democrats lost their jobs. Republicans and 

Democrats lost their savings. Republicans and Democrats lost their 

homes. And they are both suffering, Republicans and Democrats, in 

the worst recession that we have ever had in this country. So when 

a house is burning down, it would have been helpful if everybody 

could have come together and worked together in a positive way 

with concrete solutions and analysis. 

I would like to begin by asking Mr. Angelides, can you elaborate 

on the role of unprecedented liquidity and your response that it 

doesn’t have to be a problem; in fact, we should welcome it if it is 

used responsibly? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. And this is a follow-up to Mr. Royce’s question. 

Clearly, as we detail in the report, there is monetary policy made 

for cheap money; there are capital inflows into this country. But in 

the end, the availability of capital need not be the maker of a crisis. The fact is that, as I said earlier, the Federal Reserve could 

have set tougher mortgage lending standards. They allowed a tragic deterioration of mortgage lending standards, notwithstanding all 

the information they had. 

Companies levered themselves up. The investment banks were 

levered to about 40–1. Take Bear Stearns, for example, they had 

about, in 2007, $11 billion in equity; about $380 billion in liabilities; and they were borrowing up to $70 billion in the overnight 

markets. That is like a small business that has 50,000 equities borrowing $1.6 million, with about $300,000 due every day. So, in this 

environment, you have to be careful for excesses. 

But this idea that reasonably priced capital is necessarily the 

maker of the crisis I think is a flawed one. It can be channelled 

into productive uses. Unfortunately, where the money went was to 

create $13 trillion in mortgage securities, many of which were 

wholly defective. Institutions either didn’t care to know, didn’t examine, or knew they were defective but still moved them in the 

marketplace. And instead of building the economy, we built a house 

of cards built on financial engineering. 

As to the matter of consensus, I do want to say that there were 

a number of areas, if you look, where in fact 9 of the 10 Commissioners did find common ground. And the dissent, which I would 

say by Mr. Thomas, Mr. Holtz-Eakin, and Mr. Hennessy noted that 

we find areas of agreement with the majority’s conclusions: Fannie 

Mae and Freddie Mac did not by themselves cause the crisis, but 

they contributed significantly, and that is our view also. These organizations were poorly managed. They were seeking market 

share. They were seeking profits and big compensation for their executives. But I want to point out, yes, they added helium to the 

housing balloon, but they never represented a majority of the purchase of mortgage securities, they followed Wall Street. They didn’t 

lead it. 

And finally, this is important to note, the value of GSE-backed 

mortgage securities from January of 2007 to the day before conVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
25 

servatorship never dropped, so they did not cause the financial 

losses at the big financial firms. They caused huge losses to the 

taxpayers, that is a fiscal issue, but they were not the cause of the 

big financial losses that happened at Merrill Lynch, at Citigroup, 

that began the cascade that led to the bailouts in September. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Could you comment on the lack of knowledge or 

understanding in AIG? You touched on it, but I recall the hearing 

we had here and Treasury and many others came, and they asked 

first for $50 billion; that is all they needed—$80 billion, that is all 

they needed, then they came back 2 days later, they needed $50 

billion, and they kept coming back, showing that they clearly did 

not understand the exposure or the problem. There was no understanding. And the head of AIG didn’t understand the exposure for 

the $79 billion in credit protection. And furthermore, the Office of 

Thrift Supervision didn’t understand. Even the chief credit default 

swap salesman at AIG did not know about the terms he was selling 

with. No one seemed to understand anything about it except for the 

counterparties when they started calling it in. 

Can you discuss the extent to which this lack of knowledge by 

regulators, by leaders, by salespersons, by everyone contributed to 

this? I believe it is astonishing. Some were saying, buy the product, 

others were saying—within the same company—that it was a problem. There was a total lack of knowledge. And could you comment 

on it and what you think— 

Chairman BACHUS. Mrs. Maloney, your time is up. But I will— 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I will try to deal with it in 1 minute. I will be 

very quick. 

Chairman BACHUS. Absolutely. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I will try my best. 

Three items. First of all, as I noted earlier, AIG sold $79 billion 

worth of credit protection to holders of subprime-related securities. 

There are conditions in those contracts that said that AIG would 

have to post collateral—by the way, AIG had no cash reserves. 

They had nothing set aside, no reserves. They had a model that 

showed that there was a 99.75 percent chance they would never 

lose a dime. The contract said that they would have to post collateral if AIG was downgraded, if there was an actual economic loss 

on those subprime securities, or if the market value declined. The 

market value of those securities started plummeting in 2007. Not 

the CEO, the CFO, or the chief risk officer knew anything about 

these collateral provisions related to market value. They were 

stunned. 

Second, in about 2006, the people actually writing credit protection began to look at the quality of these subprime loans, and they 

start to stop writing. They kept writing a few more new protection. 

At the same time, though, AIG ramps up its securities lending program and starts buying tens of billions of dollars more of subprime 

securities on behalf of their insurance subsidiaries. 

Finally, as to regulation, the Office of Thrift Supervision signed 

an agreement with the European Union to become a consolidated 

supervisor. Mr. Reich, who was the head of OTS, told us that he 

wasn’t aware that they had the authority over the holding company. He said they had no understanding of these credit default 

26 

swap provisions, and in fact, he said, having the OTS regulate AIG 

was like having a gnat on an elephant. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Hensarling. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for 

calling this hearing. 

I certainly think the establishment of this Commission was an 

important act. 

I do still find it somewhat ironic, somewhat perplexing, and 

somewhat amusing that we ended up passing the entire DoddFrank Act before we even had the conclusions of the Commission 

in the first place. So the whole reason for being I am not sure if 

it hasn’t passed. 

Having said that, before I get into the conclusions of the majority, I did have a couple of process questions, something I am somewhat sensitive to since I served on the Congressional Oversight 

Panel for the TARP Commission. I know that one of the minority 

members held the 9/11 Commission up as a model of bipartisanship. If I recall right, there were an equal number of Democrats 

and Republicans that served on that Commission, and I believe the 

resources were equally shared. 

So I would like to ask you, Mr. Mayor, a couple of questions 

under your chairmanship. Number one—or actually, Chairman 

Thomas, let me go to you first. And welcome, it is good to see you, 

sir. 

Were the minority representatives of the Commission, what type 

of access to the resources of the Commission were they granted? 

Mr. THOMAS. As I said— 

Mr. HENSARLING. I am sorry, I missed your testimony. I was not 

here. 

Mr. THOMAS. As I said, I don’t think the problem was a lack of 

money. I don’t think it was the staff. I think we reached a point— 

and it is very easy to do when you have the kind of makeup that 

you have. And remember, the charge to the Commission were 22 

specific agenda items which were reached in a partisan way in this 

committee. I, early on, was contacted by folks who said we wanted 

to get these particular items on the list and we weren’t allowed to. 

So that what we were guided to look at was structured from a partisan point of view. 

Now why in the world would I, if I know anything about that, 

go into this situation with my eyes wide open? I went into it with 

my eyes wide open. We were asked to get to the fundamental 

causes, and I thought that was really, really important. And I was 

concerned about this business, as Samuelson calls it, looking at villains and victims. 

Just let me run a quick analogy. It is like this budget right now. 

We are spending all this time on discretionary spending; it is a 

dime. Nobody is moving to the fundamentals, which is the entitlement reform area. I was hopeful we could move as a Commission 

to the fundamental causes and understand them. We got siderailed in a partisan, political way. 

I will tell you that the chairman says, well, we shared leadership. Of course, we did. Look at the early agendas, there is the 

chairman’s report, and the vice chairman’s report. Look at the last 

27 

few agendas; there wasn’t even a vice chairman mentioned on the 

agendas. It turned partisan at the end on a 6–4 vote—multiple 6– 

4 votes that drove the structure. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Chairman, I think I get that. 

I also heard, in this vein—I just want to ask you, Mr. Mayor, if 

this is true or not. Was it true that the majority— 

Chairman BACHUS. The mayor? Who is the mayor? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I was treasurer, but— 

Mr. HENSARLING. I am sorry. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. That is okay, don’t worry about. I don’t think my 

own town would elect me mayor, Mr. Hensarling. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Treasurer, Mr. Chairman—whatever the 

appropriate title is—I understand the majority report is 400 pages 

long. I have read summaries. I have not read the entirety of the 

report. Is it true that in the authorized addition, the dissenters 

were limited to 9 pages apiece; is that correct? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Sir, first of all, let me comment. The 400-andsome pages is actually the report of our investigation. Our conclusions, the Commission’s conclusions, are actually shorter than the 

published dissent, and here is how it worked. I think our conclusions are about 20-some pages, it reminds me of the Mark Twain 

line— 

Mr. HENSARLING. Weren’t the minority limited in their dissent in 

the authorized addition? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. In the authorized addition, any Commissioner 

could give an additional or dissenting view of up to 9 pages, people 

could combine. But let me add, in the government report and on 

the Web, folks were unlimited. Mr. Thomas, Mr. Holtz-Eakin and 

Mr. Hennessy chose not to use that additional space. 

Mr. HENSARLING. If I could, I see, unfortunately, my time is running out here. 

You did say in the report you determined government housing 

policies were not a significant factor in the crisis. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Correct. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Clearly, there was strong dissent. So be it the 

affordable housing goals of Fannie and Freddie, HUD’s best practices, CRA, you found no significant factor in the crisis. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Sir, let me talk about each of these very quickly. 

Let me tell you about Fannie and Freddie. And I just want to say 

very quickly that a deeply flawed business model, this publicly 

traded corporation with the implicit backing of the government, 

was a bad model. The fact is that those entities used their political 

power to ward off effective regulation. We conclude that they did 

contribute to the crisis, but they were not primary. 

They did add helium to the housing balloon, but keep in mind, 

they never represented a majority of the purchases of subprime 

securitizations that were emanating out of Wall Street. They did 

ramp up dramatically their purchases and guarantees in 2005, 

2006, and 2007, but one of the most— 

Mr. HENSARLING. I am sorry; I am running out of time. 

Can I get a quick comment out of you, Chairman Thomas? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. There is one important point I would like to add 

if we have time. 

28 

Mr. THOMAS. Look, the majority, six votes, owned over 400 pages. 

At the end of each chapter, our Commission conclusions on chapter 

14, Commission conclusions on chapter 15, they owned the 400 

pages. We were given, on a 6–4 vote, 9 pages each total out of this 

entire document. They had 400 pages to do whatever they wanted 

with. What they did was what they wanted. You can’t explain away 

the fact that on a 6–4 vote, I was given 9 pages. That is why the 

three of us came together so we could have almost 30 pages to try 

to explain our fundamental concerns. That is partisan. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Chairman, I will yield back just on this 

note: I think it is sad that such an important work is hard to take 

seriously when it was conducted on such a partisan basis. It is 

going to be hard to take the nature of this work seriously. 

I yield back my time. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Sir, could I make one comment very quickly? I 

just would say that I would stand on the facts of the report. And 

the facts are truthful. They have withstood scrutiny. I guarantee 

you every financial institution, every— 

Mr. HENSARLING. Apparently, not the scrutiny of several of the 

dissenting opinions. 

Mr. THOMAS. Could I briefly respond, just 25 seconds? Because 

I have been sitting here very quietly—for me. 

Mr. Congressman, again, in my opening statement, I said when 

you are looking for victims and villains rather than essential 

causes, it is easy to examine the same set of facts and arrive at 

diametrically different conclusions. It isn’t the facts; it is the conclusions that we should be focusing on. 

Thank you. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

I will say that this has been a very informative hearing. It has 

been rather loose, but I think we have learned quite a lot. And I 

think it has been very thought-provoking. 

With that, Mr. Lynch, what we are going to do now, with your 

permission, the panel’s permission, is we are going to extend your 

panel 30 minutes, which will take care of all the 27 minutes that 

we have gone over and give some of our very talented younger 

members an opportunity to ask questions. 

Mr. WATT. Does that exclude me, Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman BACHUS. I was talking about the talented members. 

Mr. WATT. I am neither talented nor young. I think I have just 

been excluded on both criteria. 

Chairman BACHUS. You would be included under talented, but 

probably excluded under new. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. We are matching ends of the dais. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Watt, you are recognized. 

Mr. WATT. Oh, I am both talented and young now. Hey, I got in 

at a good time. 

I am not sure I want to take time to ask a lot of questions. I actually have looked at the report and will look at it more thoroughly. 

I want to use my time really to comment more on a couple of 

things that I thought were important because it is ironic that I got 

beat up a lot back in 2007 because I was the chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee of this full committee. I got beat up by people 

29 

who said the Oversight Subcommittee ought to be doing what you 

all ultimately got tasked to do. And it was bipartisan because a lot 

of folks wanted me to have hearings that would blame the meltdown on the past Administration; a lot of folks wanted me to—and 

I just said, look, I think it is more important for this committee to 

be focusing on how do we get out of this mess, rather than spending the resources of our committee looking backwards trying to figure out how we got into it. 

That doesn’t mean, and I didn’t mean at that point, that it was 

not an important undertaking to look retroactively at it, but we 

were trying to focus more attention on how to move forward. And 

I am glad we did, but now we can take a look back. 

To the extent that the report contradicts anything we did in 

Dodd-Frank, I think it is worthwhile for us to do that. To the extent that it reaffirms some of the things we did in Dodd-Frank, I 

think that is important. 

But what is most important is we need to try to avoid this kind 

of economic meltdown in the future. And I heard one of the opening 

statements over there saying we go through these cycles periodically, that cycles are inevitable. They may be inevitable, but they 

are incredibly painful. And if there is anything we can do to avoid 

them, I think we need to be trying to avoid them. I think you all’s 

work perhaps will have a very important salutary effect in that, 

and I appreciate all of the work that all of the Commission has 

done. 

My good friend, Mr. Thomas, who wasn’t always my good friend 

when he was here, but— 

Mr. THOMAS. No, we were good friends; we just disagreed on a 

lot of things, but that is how it works. 

Mr. WATT. You know I am joking. 

Mr. THOMAS. I hate to keep repeating this on a small article in 

the winter addition of the Wilson— 

Mr. WATT. Yes, I heard that part of your testimony. I will go 

back, and I will look at the article. You know I will. 

Mr. THOMAS. No, this is on a different point. That is, he said that 

in looking back at what has happened, where we got complacent 

because we thought we did control the universe—which was one of 

our problems—that maybe—no one could get elected standing up 

and saying I think we should have a lot of little recessions, but had 

we had a few more little recessions, we wouldn’t have necessarily 

had the great big one that we had. And he wants us to focus on 

the belief that if you can control—just need a few more regulations, 

just need more this, more that—that you are kidding yourself 

about some of the dislocations, not just in this country, but in the 

international— 

Mr. WATT. I understand that, but you can have a bubble in the 

international capital market and still people have to make decisions about how to use that capital. 

That is why I had a major disagreement with what you were saying. Maybe that did create the environment for this to happen, but 

somebody had to make some decisions. And the industry made 

some bad decisions. The regulators made some bad decisions, and 

to the extent that we can incentivize people to avoid those decisions 

in the future, we need to do it. 

30 

Mr. Angelides. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes, very quickly. We do not believe you can repeal the business cycle, but we don’t think you need to end up with 

26 million Americans out of work, who can’t find full-time work, 

who stopped looking for work. We don’t think we needed to end up 

with 4 million families losing their homes—that may go to 13 million—or $11 trillion worth of life savings and retirement wiped 

away. 

As to where we go from here, again, I hope our report—I hope 

everyone has a chance to read it, and draw their own assessments. 

If we stir a healthy debate, that is healthy. But where we go from 

here is an important question. I very studiously with Mr. Thomas 

focused on the work in front of us, but my belief is we need to fully 

implement the new law and provide the resources to do it. We need 

regulators with backbone, will, and capacity. One of the things I 

talked to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about is, Wall 

Street is a little like a greased pig; they keep moving fast. We need 

regulators. We need to give them the resources. We need to have 

the talent there. I believe we need to stay vigilant because the financial system is constantly evolving very, very quickly. 

I do think there has been an absence of self-reflection on Wall 

Street, partly because the U.S. taxpayers bailed out Wall Street, 

but I do think the— 

Mr. HENSARLING. [presiding.] The time of the gentlemen has expired. If you could wrap up the answer in 30 seconds, please. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I will. 

A new ethos of responsibility, and if laws have been broken, prosecutors should pursue where civil and criminal violations have occurred. There ought to be a sense of fairness. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Angelides, the accusation has been made that the Commission failed to conduct an objective investigation. And I know you 

discussed this immediately with Mr. Frank, his question to you 

about Edward Pinto’s report on housing. And you referenced page 

219 to page 221. You are being a bit generous. You used three 

paragraphs to rebut—to explain Mr. Pinto’s report. 

And the crux of what Mr. Pinto is saying is that there were— 

49 percent of the mortgages out in 2008 in America were Alt-A or 

subprime or equivalent to that. Of these, Mr. Pinto counts 11.9 million or 45 percent that were purchased or guaranteed by GSEs. In 

contrast, the GSEs categorized fewer than 3 million of their loans 

as subprime or Alt-A. 

Did you verify Mr. Pinto’s work? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. And let me just say one more— 

Mr. MCHENRY. Why is that not included in the report? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. First of all, it is discussed in the report, and the 

staff’s analysis of Mr. Pinto’s work, full analysis— 

Mr. MCHENRY. Where is that? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. —was placed on the Web. It is footnote numbers 

17, 13, and 19 in this chapter. So you can see—first of all, everyone 

can see—first of all, the staff did an analysis. The staff put toVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
31 

gether a database of 25 million loans to see how loans purchased 

and guaranteed by the GSEs performed, how those guaranteed by 

the FHA performed, how those created by Wall Street and other 

private lenders performed. And the fact is that we did that analysis 

and an analysis of Mr. Pinto’s work. And here is something that 

is very important: You can’t just lump all those loans together; 

they perform differentially. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Obviously, sure. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Look, the GSEs were a disaster, but can I point 

something out, sir? 

If you take, for example, loans purchased and guaranteed by the 

GSEs versus those created by Wall Street and private lenders, for 

similar loans to borrowers with FICO scores below, credit scores 

below 660, by the end of 2008, the default rate in GSE-guaranteed 

or purchased loans was 6.3 percent; for the Wall Street or other 

private firms it was 28 percent. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Okay. Reclaiming my time, I certainly appreciate 

that. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. But the information is more fully available. 

Mr. MCHENRY. I read that in your report, and you outline that 

very well. But the GSEs are saying that it is 3 million; Mr. Pinto 

is saying it is closer to 12 million that are at these lower quality. 

Did you analyze the GSEs’ portfolio? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes, we did. 

Mr. MCHENRY. And where is that? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. We had a staff analysis, a high-quality staff 

analysis prepared for the full Commission, and again, on the Web. 

I don’t have it handy at this moment. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Sure. Okay. I have a brief amount of time. I will 

say you two gentlemen are fantastic at filling the time, so I do 

want to ask short questions here. 

Can you give me a specific example, Mr. Angelides, where you 

changed your mind after doing research, after a lot of input and 

looking at the facts, where you changed your mind about this financial crisis? Give me an example. Is there one? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. I didn’t come in with a predisposition about 

Fannie and Freddie’s role, and frankly, when I looked at Fannie, 

their management practices, how they operated, I was taken aback. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Is there a preconceived notion that you had that 

was changed? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. The other was that I did not necessarily assume 

that this crisis was avoidable, but when I looked at all the facts— 

because a lot of the narrative is, no one saw it coming. What 

changed my mind was when I saw the full record, for example, of 

what was before the Federal Reserve, what they knew about predatory lending, what they knew about lending standards from the 

late 1990s, and yes, I changed my mind and I came to the conclusion that the Federal Reserve fell down badly on the job. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Reclaiming my time. 

Congressman Thomas, look, there is this sort of notion that you 

were there just to sort of battle it out, that at the end of the day, 

they were going to go their own path and it was going to be a 6– 

4 vote. Walk us through this. At what point did things turn where 

32 

you realized that you were not going to have a unified narrative, 

that they didn’t really care about that? 

Mr. THOMAS. To me, it was very difficult from the beginning because I chaired a number of conference committees in my 28 years 

in the House, and the only way you can get to almost a near unanimous or unanimous position is frankly accommodation and compromise, and there virtually was no real accommodation and compromise. 

There will be any number of indications where we were able to 

do this or do that. I invite you to listen to Peter Wallison in terms 

of his level of frustration—and frankly, my level of frustration—in 

trying to direct where we might be going in terms of the investigation. 

This was a top-down structure from day one. He was the chairman. I was the vice chairman. So I tried to deal with it as best I 

was able to create a broader willingness to share. Early on, it was 

easy. It is easy to share on all the easy stuff. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Chairman Thomas, the time of the gentleman 

has expired. 

Mr. THOMAS. But when it came down to the crunch, all the votes 

were 6–4. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, 

Mr. Lynch, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I don’t find the lack of unanimity in this report as troubling. I 

find it as a strength, especially with respect to the position of the 

dissent that asserts that derivatives were not a major factor. I 

don’t want the majority to cave on that issue. I don’t want you to. 

I don’t believe it. And the reason I don’t believe it is because I have 

been sitting here for the past 10 years. 

I had an opportunity to listen to Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke sit at that same table you are sitting at right now, 

and they were unable to tell us when the meltdown started to 

occur—the first meeting they had with us, they said, we have a 

problem; it is not a major problem. We have a good sense of the 

size of it, and we are going to take the necessary steps to stop this 

meltdown. Then, 3 weeks later, after the meltdown continued to 

occur, they would come back in, and they would say, well, we have 

it contained; it is worse than we thought, but we have it contained. 

And then we would have them in 3 weeks later or a month later. 

The problem they had, as brilliant as they are, we had a completely dark market for derivatives. They could not tell the exposure. They could not tell the range of counterparties that were out 

there. At one point, if it wasn’t so disastrous, it would be laughable. We had E. Stanley O’Neill come out and report a $4 billion 

loss. Then, 9 days later, he comes out and says, sorry, it is a $14 

billion loss. And then 20 days later, he comes out and says it is a 

$21 billion loss. The reason that he couldn’t tell us or the markets 

was because he didn’t know his exposure because the markets were 

so dark. There was no need to register. We didn’t know who the 

counterparties were. 

Derivatives, if you read—and I am not just—although I have 

read everything that is out there in terms of, including your report, 

33 

on this crisis, you listen to Warren Buffett, someone that both sides 

respect, calls derivatives ‘‘financial weapons of mass destruction.’’ 

You read Michael Lewis’ excellent book, ‘‘The Big Short.’’ Gretchen 

Morgenson, another writer whom I greatly respect; Hank Paulson; 

Alan Greenspan who said, sitting here before the committee, he 

made a mistake. 

So there is an abundance of consensus out there about the danger that derivatives presented, not only because of the opacity 

there, a dark market, but also the leverage. It allowed us to have 

this massive leverage. It allowed banks to reduce their capital requirements. And it provided the impact for this financial crisis. I 

liken it to the economy being the Titanic and derivatives being the 

iceberg. That is what brought this economy to the bottom because 

of the uncertainty it created, the leverage, the impact, and because 

it was beyond the ability of our leaders in the financial industry 

to understand the impact and the implications that were at hand. 

So I am glad in this report that we have a difference between the 

majority and the minority as to the play of derivatives here. And Mr. Angelides, I know you cited the $79 billion in credit de- fault swaps in your report. There was also $150 billion that the 

U.S. taxpayer had to contribute to AIG to cover collateral calls on 

AIG’s derivatives, collateral debt obligations. A lot of that money 

went over to—direct pay over to Goldman Sachs at 100 cents on 

the dollar. But I just wanted to hear from you as to the majority’s 

assessment regarding the impact of derivatives on this crisis. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. Very quickly, let me just say that Ms. Born, 

of course, can speak in more detail on this, but we found that there 

were three principal impacts. First of all, credit default swaps enabled the creation of a lot of the mortgage-backed securities. So 

that is one way in which they contributed. And of course, AIG and 

others wrote those with no capital behind them, and so when that 

market went south, it created a huge wave of collateral calls. 

Second, they allowed for the creation of synthetic mortgage securities, which were merely bets, as you know, on real mortgage securities. So, instead of having one investor investing or betting, so to 

speak, on a mortgage security, this was amplified many times over. 

The bets on the housing market were multiple-fold because you 

had synthetic securities. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Could you please wrap up your answer in 30 seconds? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. Finally, at the end, there was such confusion and chaos and lack of knowledge about derivative positions. It 

is only 4 weeks before the crash of Lehman that the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Board of New York are trying to figure out what exposure is created by 900,000 Lehman derivatives 

contracts. This was a completely opaque market and therefore contributed to the panic. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman from Massachusetts 

has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Mexico for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Angelides, I am trying to get some understanding. You are 

saying that CDS’s pushed through, the MBS’s, mortgage-backed seVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
34 

curities, that was a key to the problems that were going on; is that 

correct? I just want a yes or no answer because we really have a 

long way to go on that. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. I believe that they helped create the 

collateralized debt obligations that made it possible for senior— 

Mr. PEARCE. So you have mortgage-backed securities that don’t 

have much value. Those mortgage-backed securities that don’t have 

much value are based on a combination of individual loans that 

have very little value; is that correct? Just yes or no. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. What the CDS did is give the purchasers the 

‘‘assurance’’ that if these things went bad— 

Mr. PEARCE. No, I understand. But mortgage-backed securities 

were basically packages of loans that had almost no capability to 

repay. They were worthless. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. They were highly defective, yes, sir. 

Mr. PEARCE. And they were worthless because we had reduced 

the underwriting standards for the loans. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Terribly. 

Mr. PEARCE. And the underwriting standards that were reduced 

were accelerated by the Federal Reserve trying to prop the system 

up. In other words, the ability to repay is based on our income and 

the price of the house combined. And so the Federal Reserve was 

driving the price of interest down to where people could dedicate 

a larger stream to the principal payment and keep the illusion 

alive, so we are moving lower and lower. And Mr. Greenspan, in 

testimony, said we are having a little bit of a problem with this 

housing bubble, but we are going to work it out. 

And so I am seeing this sequence where underwriting standards 

generated bad mortgages, which generated bad bonds, which generated bad CDS’s. At the heart of it is the decline in underwriting 

standards. And when I pursue that upstream, then I find an aggressive affordable housing policy to be a culprit. And I am amazed 

then that you draw the conclusion on page 3 that says, ‘‘We determined that government housing policies were not a significant factor in the crisis.’’ I am amazed at that conclusion. Can you help me 

understand why the government’s position—they could—the government as the regulators, they are achieving a position right now 

that is not allowing bad loans to be made. And the government, 

therefore, could have done this 2 years ago. We didn’t pass any new 

law saying that you can’t do this. It was an option on the part of 

the government. And for you to draw that conclusion is amazing. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. So we were speaking here about the Community Reinvestment Act and the affordable housing goals at 

HUD. I agree with you that the Federal Reserve fell down on mortgage standards. 

Mr. PEARCE. I am glad you said that. But I am asking about the 

policy that says we are going to lower the underwriting standards 

and— 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Let me just take, for example, the one reason we 

found the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t have an impact. 

Most of these lenders or many of the subprime lenders, the 

Ameriquests of the world, the New Centurys of the world, many of 

those lenders, they were not regulated thrifts or commercial banks, 

they were not governed by government housing policy, they weren’t 

35 

Fannie, they weren’t Freddie. The most aggressive loans, the worst 

loans in the marketplace were being made by nonbank financial institutions. They were supported by bank financial institutions. 

Mr. PEARCE. Just reclaiming my time, isn’t it correct that eventually most of those loans were repurchased by someone, and about 

50 percent of the Community Reinvestment Act loans were purchased by Fannie and Freddie who were getting a wink and a nod 

from the regulators saying it is okay? And so, again, I drive at the 

point of your conclusion that the government policies had nothing 

to do—they didn’t get in your top six. You write out your top six 

complaints, but government policies didn’t make the top six list, 

and I find that amazing. 

Mr. Thomas, do you have a comment? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. You are right. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you. That is enough. If I get that from you, 

I am ready to go. 

Mr. THOMAS. But I still have 30 seconds. When I talked about 

the overreach in Dodd-Frank, I didn’t mean that there wasn’t a 

need to deal with some derivatives. The synthetic CDOs absolutely 

were a major problem. The move in terms of originate to hold as 

a mortgage pattern, to originate to sell was a major problem. 

Transparency was a major problem. Through Republican and 

Democratic Administrations, the desire to get people into houses as 

part of the American dream definitely was part of the problem. The 

cheap money from the Fed was part of the problem. 

But if you go out looking for villains and victims, you miss some 

of those fundamental shifts that we ought to be focusing on. I spent 

more than 3 decades in government. I will tell you, if you want to 

bet on conspiracy versus incompetency, incompetency wins every 

time. We need to look at the fundamentals and not point fingers 

at various folks. Yes, some derivatives too much. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the rest of my time. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The rest of your nonexistent time. The Chair 

now recognizes the gentleman from Calilfornia, Mr. Sherman, for 

what I hope will be 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think you have produced a high-quality report in both sections. I realize there are 

some differences, and that is what the press is focused on. And 

they focused on arguments amongst the members. Whether you 

guys had a good time preparing this report is an absolute 

irrelevancy to anyone other than yourselves. My own belief is, if I 

was writing this report, it would have been much shorter, because 

I focus on one thing as the ultimate cause and that is the credit 

rating agencies. 

Senator Franken and I were able to get something in the bill 

which is not as artfully drafted, but, if properly interpreted, I think 

will solve the problem within a year or two. And perhaps one of 

the more brilliant aspects of the report is that both the dissent and 

the report in chief say pretty much the same thing. The report in 

chief says: ‘‘We conclude that the failure of the credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction and 

point out that Moody’s was giving its Triple A stamp to 30 mortVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
36 

gage-related securities every working day and had to downgrade 83 

percent.’’ 

And I see our friend, Mr. Thomas, nodding his head. I don’t know 

if he embraced those exact words, but his part of the report said 

much the same thing by saying: ‘‘The credit rating agencies assigned overly optimistic ratings and this contributed to the creation 

of toxic financial assets.’’ 

One thing I didn’t spot in the report is that not only did it create 

the toxic assets, but it created a housing bubble. Providing all this 

‘‘no questions asked’’ capital to anybody who would sign the papers 

to move into a home greater than they had ever dreamed of, let 

alone could afford, creates a housing bubble such that good mortgages become bad mortgages. 

Now, the credit rating agencies gave Triple A to Alt-A. And we 

have had testimony here that says, it is up to the investor, it is 

up to the portfolio manager, to see through the false ratings. What 

happens to a portfolio manager short term if he or she gets 20 or 

30 fewer basis points on their portfolio investing in bonds with a 

lower rating than the portfolio manager down the street? Can a 

portfolio manager be highly respected getting a lower rate of return 

on lower-rated instruments and expect to attract additional capital? 

Mr. Angelides. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Could you just repeat the last part of that, Mr. 

Sherman, very quickly? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Can a portfolio manager who had the brilliance to 

recognize that the credit rating agencies are wrong, and therefore 

invests in different instruments, instead of seeking the best rating 

with the best return says, the ratings aren’t worth anything, I am 

just going to try to get the best return investing in things that may 

be lower rated by the credit rating agencies but in my own analysis 

are better, and then presents to the investors saying, instead of investing in Triple As, I invested in Double As and I am getting 30 

basis points less than the guy across the street, but trust me, it is 

a better portfolio. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Certainly, investors have a responsibility to do 

their own due diligence. And I think one of the important things 

about Dodd-Frank is it removes a lot of the statutory requirements 

that people have to rely on rating agencies. It makes the rating 

agencies produce for public view their models. 

Mr. SHERMAN. But let me interrupt. Let’s say I have $50,000 to 

invest and you would advise me to diversify that by investing in 

a portfolio of 100 different debt instruments, perhaps through a 

mutual fund. How many minutes am I supposed to spend of my life 

to invest that $50,000 looking at the 100 different debt instruments, not to mention the 400 or 500 that I reject and don’t include 

in my pool of 100? Is there any way I can invest $50,000 except 

by relying on the credit rating agencies? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. On financial advisors who have fiduciary duties 

to you. The ratings are important, and therefore the oversight, the 

exposure of models in Dodd-Frank, the provisions that you worked 

out with Mr. Frank to take away issuer pay, so that these aren’t 

biased, these are all important reforms. 

Mr. SHERMAN. It is not so much issuer pay, it is issuer select. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes. 

37 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. If the 

witness has completed the answer, the Chair will note that there 

are five remaining members in the room who have not had a 

chance to question. It will be the Chair’s intent to allow— 

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, is there a way that our former colleague could have 20 seconds? 

Mr. HENSARLING. Yes, after I finish my announcement that we 

will allow the five members who haven’t asked questions to question the witnesses so that we may dismiss this panel at approximately 12:30. We will give Chairman Thomas 30 seconds before 

going on to the next member. Chairman Thomas. 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much. Big, big, big problem. In our 

New York testimony, we had people who were former participants 

in the ratings tell us that they changed their business model or 

they were going to lose business. We haven’t focused on the shortterm financing, the commercial paper, the repo paper, repurchase 

paper, overnight financing. Based on the ratings, people would accept or they wouldn’t. 

What scared me was the first regulation coming out of DoddFrank was on the rating agencies, and they said they wouldn’t do 

it and you guys blinked. And it scares me to death in terms of getting on top of what I think, as we said in our dissent, one of the 

major problems—transparency, the rating agencies, and the willingness to accept three letters versus factual investigation of what 

happened. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 

Missouri for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you very much. In your report and in 

the summaries that I read, you talk about the different causes. I 

have yet to see in there community banks, credit unions, insurance 

companies, household lenders were the cause of this debacle. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I do not believe that community banks were a 

driving cause of this. They had large real estate portfolios. But the 

primary losses that set off the cascade in 2007 were driven by the 

larger, first of all, nonbank financial institutions; then it went into 

other areas of the shadow banking. But they have suffered greatly, 

I might add, tons of community banks and— 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Let’s just run then with the question. Mr. 

Thomas. 

Mr. THOMAS. Community banks, basically when you move from 

that model of originate to hold to originate to sell, got pushed out 

of the home mortgage market pretty significantly. They wound up 

in the commercial market. And although a number of local community banks have failed hanging on to that, it was the depreciation 

of property and not the similar problem with synthetic CDOs and 

that sort of thing. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. So basically you agree that the list that I 

gave you, they were not the root causes of what happened. 

Mr. THOMAS. Certainly not root causes or fundamental. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Even though they were, as a result of DoddFrank, more grafted into that and other regulations put onto them. 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. That is a prime example of overreach, in my 

opinion. 

38 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. That is where I am headed. One of the 

things, as a former regulator myself, to me as I go through this 

process, what you detailed, the number of things that you listed 

here as causes over and over again, it is not necessarily the lack 

of regulation, of a regulation that is there; it is the lack of enforcement of the regulation. And then when we go to Dodd-Frank, we 

create a new bureaucracy of the Consumer Financial Protection 

Board, which, in my mind, it is kind of like at home if you have 

a fire department that doesn’t work, is not answering your fires, 

instead you have a chain of firing everybody and putting a new 

group in charge who will do the job. We put another fire department in place, so we got it paid for, that actually unless we give 

them the right tools and the right job and do the job they are supposed to do, we are not going to improve ourselves. 

And so I guess I ask the question, in Dodd-Frank do you see solutions to our problems not from the standpoint of more regulation 

but from the standpoint that we will enforce—do you see a reason 

to believe that this is a true solution from the standpoint that you 

see a willingness to enforce from all the different agencies that you 

haven’t seen before? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Very quickly, in our conclusions we did say that 

there were powerful regulations on the books that were not enforced. And I would hope that the regulators would have the backbone, political will and your backing to enforce. 

But I do believe that there were big gaps that Dodd-Frank does 

fill. It cuts off regulatory shopping, it does create oversight over 

nonbank financial institutions that kind of escape scrutiny. So I 

think it filled some important holes. But I will say that there were 

powers there. Dodd-Frank helps make sure that the gaps were 

closed, derivatives, shadow banking markets, credit rating agencies. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Very good. Thank you, Chairman Thomas, 

and if you could add to that, do you see some gaps of things that 

we need to put in there as well? Very quickly. 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. We can fill every gap. And the next time it will 

be something we hadn’t anticipated. So when you talk about overregulation, I think this Commission especially, and others in the 

Congress, have an enormous responsibility in the oversight. 

Yes, Dodd-Frank has become law. But as the Administration begins to move in the direction of regulations, you ought to bring 

them in and examine it again, because I think many of them overreach. I think some of them were off-the-shelf concerns that people 

have been worried about, literally for decades, that may not directly apply to the concerns that you might have. Yes, you do need 

to have oversight and regulation. But if you have so much that 

nothing bad goes on, you don’t get the dynamic financial flow which 

has made this country what it is. And it is always going to be a 

judgment question. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. I apologize here. I have one more question to 

ask. With regards to all the hearings we have had so far, and as 

we go through the review of Dodd-Frank, I have yet to see anything that says something about pre-approval of any of the new financial products. 

39 

Through the last 20 years, we have had a whole lot of new financial products that have come to the marketplace, most of them 

without regulation, most of it beyond, in fact, with the derivatives 

market, beyond regulations we found out. 

Do you believe in your discussions in 3-year findings that we 

need to have some sort of mechanism in place to pre-approve new 

financial products, or are you going to allow the market to continue 

to develop all these new products and then, after the fact, regulate 

them? 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thirty seconds please. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think the most valuable thing, rather than try to 

set up pre-approval, is to have transparency, to let the marketplace 

see what the upside and the downside is, and then make sure people can get the information. So that if you have full disclosure and 

transparency, I do believe most of the problems that we face will 

be at least moved to minor items. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 

North Carolina for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. 

Angelides, just one quick question in response to Mr. Pearce’s questions just a few minutes ago. 

Did you compare how well mortgages perform that were originated by depository institutions, subject to the CRA, to the kind of 

borrowers that the CRA would encourage lending to that were purchased by Fannie and Freddie, versus mortgages to the same kind 

of borrowers originated by nondepository institutions, not subject to 

CRA, bought by investment banks, private label securities, government policy, having nothing to do with that? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. So do we compare the performance of loans 

made under CRA? 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. Bought by Fannie and Freddie 

versus loans of the same kind of borrowers. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I can’t speak to that specifically. I will have to 

get back to you. I do know that we looked at studies that showed 

that of the high-cost loans under HMDA, which is a good proxy for 

CRA, approximately 6 percent of the high-cost loans were made 

under CRA. And they looked at neighborhoods and found that to 

similar borrowers, CRA loans performed better than those loans 

made by non-CRA-regulated institutions. But as to your specific 

question, I will have to get back to you, sir. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. I don’t have much time, but if 

you have a quick answer. 

Mr. THOMAS. Just a quick response to that. The overall portfolio 

wasn’t all that bad for a period of time compared to some of the 

newer stuff coming on. But once Freddie and Fannie became actually market commercial structures, there was a drive to please 

their shareholders and they had to maintain not only the government number but a high enough number in terms of mortgages. So 

in essence, they were partially forced to go into some of these other 

areas. And they were the insurer of last resort. 

And frankly, when you look at the relationship between Countrywide and its willingness to provide Fannie and Freddie, and Fannie 

and Freddie’s willingness to use Countrywide, that really pulled 

40 

that whole structure down. They were still buying even after we realized the market was as bad as it was. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. Mr. Thomas, you mentioned 

Michael Lewis earlier and his book, ‘‘The Big Short’’, but Mr. Lewis 

has actually been pretty complimentary of the Commission. He said 

it did an excellent job. He said it found some nuggets of facts that 

were not available earlier because you had subpoena power, but he 

said really to have a complete story you needed not just subpoena 

power but waterboarding power. So he thought there were some 

natural limitations to what could be gained voluntarily. 

Mr. THOMAS. As a Republican, I assume that is a positive comment. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. Without getting into that 

whole debate, allow me to move on. One thing that most people, 

and certainly the rules of evidence allow you to consider in whether 

to believe a witness is, is it consistent with what they said before? 

And we are now hearing or have been hearing since September of 

2008 that government policies made banks make all these bad 

loans, and the banks would never have made those. 

I was right here as part of that debate. I remember very clearly 

what everybody said. I don’t remember anybody saying a word 

about that before September of 2008. I don’t remember banks sitting in our office or sitting at that table or saying in the popular 

press, we shouldn’t be making these loans; please, please, let us 

stop. Do any of you remember—what I heard from the banks, from 

the industry, was that subprime mortgages were a great thing. 

Mr. THOMAS. One of the real values of this Commission, notwithstanding any differences we might have, is that we agreed early on 

to create a repository of all the information that we gathered. It is 

now going to be held at Stanford, and there is going to be an interactive relationship. And my hope is that we use it as a resource 

and expand it so we can do exactly that; this is what was said back 

then in terms of the in-depth testimony. And Congress needs to realize that there is help in getting data that will lead you to the best 

conclusions, and one of those resources will be the Commission’s 

Web site location is going to be located at Stanford University. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. Mr. Angelides, do you remember anything like that? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I was a private citizen at the time, but I will say 

this. We did look at, for example, the affordable housing goals set 

by HUD. We interviewed I believe 46 people on this subject. Only 

two folks said that the affordable housing goals is what pushed 

Fannie and Freddie to do what they did. The overwhelming majority of evidence we gathered—documents, witness testimony—said it 

was their drive for profit, therefore compensation, regaining market share, catching up to Wall Street, that drove their activities. 

But we did conclude that the affordable housing goals that went 

up above 50 percent, I believe in 2005, did marginally contribute 

to Fannie and Freddie, was called their targeted loans, that they 

did contribute to some of their losses; that, in fact, when you did 

move the goals above 50 percent it did have a marginal impact. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. The 

Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio for 5 minutes. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

41 

I thought Mr. Thomas’ comments on transparency were a very 

important lesson. And I assume Mr. Angelides agrees that transparency was an important cause here. I think a lesson that we can 

take in any market is that investors need transparency about what 

is going on with—whether it is counterparties or what is going on 

in the marketplace. Is that correct, Mr. Angelides? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I absolutely concur, and to have transparency, 

you can’t have dark markets; you have to have reporting. And that 

didn’t exist for the repo market, the derivatives markets. And so 

there is a correlation between regulation derivatives. You have to 

start by asking for disclosure. That is very important. Yes, I think 

we agree on transparency is a very key factor here. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you. Mr. Thomas? 

Mr. THOMAS. And with the rating agencies, who today would design someone to provide a gold standard or a Good Housekeeping 

Seal of Approval in which they earn their money by having people 

pay them for those ratings. 

Mr. STIVERS. I am glad you went there. That is my next question, 

actually. 

Mr. THOMAS. And a failure to appreciate how little they were 

worth. 

Mr. STIVERS. I think that is something we still haven’t addressed, and it kind of takes off on what Mr. Sherman talked 

about. 

But I do have a concern about issuers being able to pick their 

own credit rating agency. And in fact, I prefer a blind draw. I don’t 

prefer the method that the Senator from Minnesota proposed, 

which creates a big-government structure. I would just create a 

trust essentially, and they pay into the trust and there is a blind 

draw. It doesn’t create more government, it is a more efficient system. 

But I do want to ask both of you, quickly, about the current rating agencies, because I think that there is a view on some in this 

committee, and I think other places, that we need to reduce our dependence on the credit rating agencies. And while I believe that is 

partially true, I think it is also we can’t go too far with that because so many things in our investment structure in this country 

and worldwide are based on credit rating. 

So if we took away the conflict of interest and created something 

like a blind draw, how would both of you view that as creating a 

system that would work better? And please be brief, because I have 

one more question. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Okay. One quick question. I think one of the 

most important things—and Dodd-Frank is exposing the methodology—we had to play, ‘‘Where’s Waldo?’’ We had a whole team trying to figure it out. It wasn’t until 2006 that Moody’s actually had 

a model to analyze subprime lending. I will tell you, having sat on 

two pension boards, that a lot of pension boards don’t have the capacity, so ratings will be around. 

Mr. STIVERS. And they always will be. 

Mr. THOMAS. Ratings are easy and they had a history. And what 

they gained, that positive history, overlooked nothing like what 

they were rating at the time that the world fell apart. 

42 

I don’t think you can create a government structure. I happen to 

agree with you. It will always be a dollar short and a day late in 

trying to cover it. But creating a system where people can’t link up 

on their payment versus their rating is fundamental, and you can 

do that fairly easily. 

Mr. STIVERS. And I believe that, too. Thank you. 

I have just one more question for Mr. Angelides. How is the book 

selling? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I think there is—let me just say something. 

Here is what has been surprising. There has been a tremendous 

hunger in this country to have answers. And while we have a debate going on, I don’t say this as a matter of hubris for this Commission, but I guess this weekend it will be listed as number 10 

on the New York Times best seller nonfiction paperback. But I 

think what that speaks to is still a lot of anger, confusion, people 

in this country wanting to know why so many people are out of 

work, why they lost their homes. I think that is really a credit to 

all the Commission’s work that we put forward facts and we have 

put forward a debate. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you. 

Mr. THOMAS. I have been told by a number of people that the 36 

pages, 400 pages in, are definitely worth the price of the book. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Yes, I always go to the back. 

Mr. STIVERS. I do hope the taxpayers get their $10 million back, 

so that is why I asked about— 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Very quickly, though. From the day we announced this report to 2 weeks after, there were 330,000 unique 

visits to the Web site, so people are going there. 

Mr. STIVERS. That kind of access is important, too. And I do want 

to thank both of you. I think the fact that even though there is 

competing ideology in the report, there is always going to be that. 

And I think people get to see both and choose for themselves. So 

it doesn’t bother me that it was a partisan system, our country is 

a partisan system. But I appreciate the fact that both of you were 

willing to be involved, and that the taxpayers and the citizens of 

this country are getting more information. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. HURT. [presiding.] I thank the gentleman. The gentleman 

from Texas, Mr. Green, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the chair and the 

vice chair for the service that you have rendered. I would also like 

to thank the other members of the committee because they, too, labored long and hard. And I think it is worthy to note that they 

should be appreciated as well. 

I would like to for just a moment peer through the vista of time 

and harken back to that era before 1977 when we had in this country something known as redlining. Redlining, for edification purposes, simply means that there were areas in the country wherein 

lending institutions would not lend, notwithstanding credit worthiness, they would not lend to people simply because of perhaps the 

location and, to a greater extent, who they were. Redlining was a 

dastardly, ugly thing to have perpetrated upon you. It usually happened to people of color. Usually. My suspicion is that it happened 

to some others as well. 

43 

But in 1977, the CRA was enacted, and the purpose of the CRA 

was to address redlining. For some of us, when we talk of the CRA, 

there is a much deeper meaning because of how it impacted us directly or indirectly. 

And so today, I approach the CRA from the perch of a person 

who saw the actual devastation that was created by virtue of something known as redlining. And I do not believe any other persons 

who are antithetical to the position that I approach, I don’t believe 

that any of them occupy their positions with malice aforethought. 

I believe them to be honorable people who have a different opinion. 

But I know why my opinion exists, because I saw the devastation. So when I hear people make an effort to blame the CRA for 

the crisis, it has a greater impact on me than it may have on some 

others, because I knew what the CRA meant when it was enacted, 

and I know now what it means to people of color who try to have 

equality of opportunity: Not to get more than you deserve, but to 

do what others do, to succeed on their merits or fail on their demerits and have their creditworthiness be appraised just as everybody else’s creditworthiness is appraised. 

So I ask now this simple question: Was the CRA the major cause 

of the crisis? 

Mr. THOMAS. A large part of the debate, or one of the fundamental causes, in my opinion it clearly was one of the causes, but 

not a fundamental cause. And let me hasten to tell you that I agree 

completely with those early days. 

Mr. GREEN. Permit me for just a moment, Mr. Vice Chairman, 

because time is of the essence. And I do beg that you forgive me. 

I don’t mean to be rude, crude, and unrefined, but I do have to 

move forward and ask this. Given what you said about it not being 

a fundamental cause, would you eliminate the CRA because of 

what happened with this crisis? 

Mr. THOMAS. I would talk about going back to what the CRA was 

earlier. What happened between both— 

Mr. GREEN. My question, though, is—I do have to intercede because my question is, would you eliminate it? And I have the yellow light. Would you eliminate it, would you do away with it completely? 

Mr. THOMAS. I would modify it. 

Mr. GREEN. Okay, thank you. 

Now, let’s move to the chairman, if I may. Mr. Chairman, do you 

believe that the CRA was the cause of the crisis? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. No, I do not believe it was. We found that it was 

not significant in subprime lending. We found, therefore, it was not 

significant with the crisis. Many of the subprime lenders were not 

even regulated by the CRA. Only 6 percent of the high-cost loans, 

which is a proxy, those are under HMDA data, were even originated by CRA lenders. And studies show that CRA loans, loans 

made by CRA-regulated institutions in neighborhoods to similar 

borrowers, the non-CRA-regulated institutions performed better. So 

the answer from my perspective is no. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Chairman, can I ask unanimous consent for 30 

seconds to respond outside the question structure? 

Mr. HURT. Thirty seconds. 

44 

Mr. THOMAS. One of the reasons I would talk about modifying it, 

Mr. Green, is that we have a fundamental problem with our Tax 

Code, that if you are able to own a home you have many, many 

advantages under the Tax Code. We need to change the relationship between renting and ownership. 

There was much political thrust, both Republicans and Democrats, to get people into their own home for the tax advantages, 

and that shouldn’t be the case. That is how I would change it in 

terms of modification. 

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Chairman, if I may, Mr. Chairman, may I be 

recognized, please, for a question? 

Mr. HURT. Thirty seconds. 

Mr. GREEN. May I please ask that the chair respond to the comment that was made by the vice chair? Thank you. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. This comment? 

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. First of all, I started my career in the affordable 

housing arena. And I do think we have to pay attention to the 

needs of renters in this country. And I want to say one important 

thing. Here is the tragedy of this crisis. It was supposed to be 

about creating new homeownership. The homeownership rate 

peaked in this country in the spring of 2004. From then on, it was 

all about financial engineering, mortgage-backed securities, CDOs, 

not about putting Americans in homes. That is the real tragedy of 

this crisis. 

Mr. HURT. I now recognize myself for 5 minutes. The question I 

would like to ask—and let me first thank you all for being here, 

and I appreciate your testimony today—but it goes to the heart, I 

think, of what has been discussed. I think Mr. Miller from North 

Carolina was talking about this as well. 

It seems to me that irresponsible lending certainly has played a 

role in where we are, for sure. And so, I find it interesting that in 

your report and in your testimony, Mr. Angelides, that you say that 

government housing policies were not a significant factor in the crisis. 

And so my question is: Are there any housing, government housing policies that you think should be changed? And how do you defend that statement in light of what I think we would all agree, 

at least a significant—I think a significant part was caused by irresponsible lending. And so I would like to ask that question to you, 

and then I would like to have a comment from Mr. Thomas and 

then another question. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Let me be very specific. We looked at the affordable housing goals of HUD and believe they contributed only marginally to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s massive losses. We looked 

at the Community Reinvestment Act and found that it was not a 

significant factor in subprime lending, therefore the crisis. Clearly, 

Fannie and Freddie were publicly traded corporations but with an 

implicit government guarantee which became explicit with many 

subsidies from the Federal Government, and clearly that model is 

flawed and broken and ought not to be returned to. And we did 

say, I will say majority of the Commission, and the dissent by Mr. 

Thomas et al., that they did contribute significantly. We say that 

and we say it clearly. 

45 

Mr. HURT. But are there any specific housing policies that you 

can recommend to this committee that we look at to help prevent 

this from happening again? You said that this was avoidable, and 

I think we want to avoid this in the future. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. I think the most important, at least homeownership policies, is to make sure we are always studying reasonable 

mortgage lending standards. And anything that the government 

backs ought to be on strongly underwritten loans in terms of quality. That was a major failure and we should never let that happen 

again. I believe Dodd-Frank helps in that regard. 

I would have to give some thought—I spent a lifetime on this, 

but I agree with Mr. Thomas that we do have to pay attention also 

to rental housing as an option, so that we are not stretching to put 

people in homeownership who can’t quite reach it by virtue of income. I think that is a very legitimate comment by Mr. Thomas. 

Mr. HURT. Just briefly, Mr. Thomas. 

Mr. THOMAS. Government housing policies did contribute to the 

problem. Government tax positions also contributed to the problem. 

The real difficulty is that owning a home was ‘‘the American 

dream.’’ But it was also the source of what people believed were 

their primary savings by virtue of the inflation associated with the 

value of the home and the so-called equity. We failed in the Tax 

Code to not let them cash in on that equity. 

So for someone who had been in a home for 20 years and you 

had the downturn, they had virtually no equity in it because of the 

tax structure. But ultimately everyone contributed, because it had 

been so long since we had a difficult time and it was easy to make 

money. But there is no question that a number of government policies, including the drive at all costs to get everybody in a home of 

their own, was one of the contributors. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. 

I would like to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman 

from New York, Mr. Grimm. 

Mr. GRIMM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief. 

Chairman Angelides, you mentioned earlier that the Federal Reserve could have done things; they had the power and authority, 

but they didn’t act, specifically, relating to overleverage. What 

could they have done? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. First of all, I was commenting specifically on 

their failure to adopt mortgage lending standards, which they have 

the full authority to do, that would apply to all institutions, and 

in that regard they failed miserably. 

In 2001, they adopted some regulations. Our regulatory bodies 

had the ability, bank holding companies, other institutions, to control leverage and didn’t. And as you know, these institutions 

levered up tremendously such that, for example, the investment 

banks—which, of course, was the SEC’s purview—a 2 or 3 percent 

drop in values could wipe out all equity. 

Mr. GRIMM. But isn’t it—and I understand there are multiple 

reasons that lead to this crisis—but would it be fair to say that an 

absolute major part of this crisis was overleverage? 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Absolutely. Oh, yes. 

Mr. GRIMM. So doesn’t that beg the question, then, that it really 

is not a complete lack of regulation but a lack of enforcement and 

46 

proper oversight? And that is why I am a little perplexed by the 

overreaching of Dodd-Frank, because a lot of this could have been 

avoided simply by enforcing rules we have had on the books for 

years. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. But here is what we said in our conclusions. We 

said there was a lot of power and it wasn’t used. However, we also 

note that there were significant gaps that were opened up, and 

there was regulatory shopping. Take Countrywide. You can read 

here how they decide. They don’t want to be regulated by the Fed, 

they don’t want to be regulated by the OCC, they want to go to the 

OTS because they are the weakest. 

Mr. GRIMM. My time is up, so I just want to make a point, and 

I concede. However, doesn’t prudence and common sense—let’s forget we are in the government now and let’s actually try to apply 

common sense. Doesn’t it make sense to first fix the problem where 

rules and regulations exist, so that we enforce that before we go 

ahead and go to the next step, which I would think would be logically, then add any additional rules or regulations that are needed 

at that point? But to have a set of rules we didn’t listen to because 

of for whatever reasons, and then add more on top of that, I would 

think they are not going to listen to the new rules either. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. Quickly, I think you need both. And I will just 

say that more than most of my career has been in the private sector, and so I come at this with a belief in free markets. But the 

financial sector is so central, it is like the heart of our system; we 

don’t want arrhythmia, we want to make sure there is—you don’t 

want to kill innovation, but I think there are two problems. We 

said very clearly here, by the way, that we don’t accept the view 

that regulators didn’t have power, but we also say there were big 

gaps open. I think it was a dual problem. 

Mr. HURT. Mr. Thomas, just very briefly. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think there is a real opportunity because, clearly, 

Dodd-Frank was passed in a very partisan environment. And we 

have an opportunity, you folks do in the House, to review the proposed regulations in another partisan environment and make sure 

that some of the clear overreaching is tempered. 

So I really think this committee is absolutely fundamental to getting it right. Because yes, there were regulations that should have 

been carried out. Have we gone overboard in dealing with them? 

You are seeing testimony now about certain types of derivatives. 

Some derivatives need to be transparent and regulated. Some are 

going to be killed, a useful financial tool. 

You folks now in the majority have the chance to go back and 

revisit those proposed regulations, bring them in here, make them 

explain why they need all the bells and whistles, because, frankly, 

my bigger concern is going to be a choking up of the financial structure in various ways. It is going to force creativity, because creativity will move to areas that you haven’t anticipated. It is best 

to keep them comfortable but under a structure. Thank you very 

much. 

Mr. HURT. Mr. Thomas, thank you. The Chair notes that some 

members may have additional questions for this panel which they 

may wish to submit in writing. Without objection, the hearing 

record will remain open for 30 days for members to submit written 

47 

questions to these witnesses and to place their responses in the 

record. 

I want to thank Mr. Angelides and Mr. Thomas for being here. 

We appreciate the dialogue. With that, the first panel is dismissed. 

And the second panel will quickly take their place at the table. 

Mr. ANGELIDES. And by the way, I want to thank the committee 

for your courtesy, and thank my colleagues, all my colleagues on 

the Commission and the staff, who did an excellent job. So thank 

you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. THOMAS. And I want to echo my comments as well. Thank 

you very much for your leniency. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Wallison, you are recognized for 5 minutes for your opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF PETER J. WALLISON, COMMISSIONER, THE 

FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Mr. WALLISON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Bachus, 

Ranking Member Frank, and members of the committee, by June 

of 2008, there were 27 million subprime and Alt-A mortgages in 

the U.S. financial system. That was half of all mortgages. These 

weak and risky loans had begun to default in unprecedented numbers when the 1997–2007 bubble began to deflate. And by 2008, 

many financial institutions that held these mortgages, or mortgagebacked securities based on them, were in trouble. 

No one doubts that it was the failure of these mortgages, what 

was known at the time as the mortgage meltdown, that caused the 

financial crisis. Nothing like this had ever happened before. In previous bubbles, the number of subprime loans was very small and 

losses, when they deflated, were generally confined to local areas. 

In this bubble, the mortgage losses were large and the losses were 

international. 

In light of these facts, the question the Commission should have 

answered—and did not—was why there were so many bad mortgages outstanding in 2008. Obviously, there had been a serious decline in underwriting standards, something else that had never 

happened before. Neither the Commission nor the other dissenters 

advanced a plausible explanation for the decline in underwriting 

standards. Both seemed to assume that easy credit automatically 

produces subprime loans, but this is far from obvious. 

Before the 2008 crisis, the United States had frequently experienced periods of low interest rates, large flows of funds from 

abroad, and housing bubbles. We also had the same regulatory 

structure and relied on financial institution management to anticipate risks. None of these conditions or factors, separately or together, had ever before resulted in a mortgage-based international 

financial crisis. 

Under these circumstances, it is logical to focus on the one unprecedented element in the U.S. financial system before the crisis: 

the large number of subprime and other risky loans. 

My dissent focuses on the only plausible explanation for the 

buildup of these loans, and that is U.S. Government policies, specifically housing policies. Beginning in 1992, with the imposition of 

affordable housing requirements on the GSEs, mortgage underwriting standards began to erode. HUD caused this erosion by raisVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
48 

ing the affordable housing goals through the Clinton and Bush Administrations, until more than half of all loans the GSEs had to 

buy were required to be made to borrowers at or below the median 

income where they lived. 

In addition, the GSEs were put into competition with FHA, with 

insured banks under the Community Reinvestment Act, and with 

subprime lenders, all of whom were looking for borrowers who were 

also at or below the median income. Prime loans were difficult to 

find among these borrowers, so to acquire the loans the government was demanding, underwriting standards had to be reduced. 

By 2000, for example, Fannie was offering to buy mortgages with 

no downpayment. My dissent details how these weak governmentmandated loans caused the growth of the bubble, how the bubble 

created the private label market for securities backed by subprime 

loans, and how the failure of all these weak loans destroyed the 

value of the mortgage-backed securities and thus weakened financial institutions around the world. 

Finally, the Commission’s majority report propagates the false 

idea that the GSEs bought these risky loans not because of the affordable housing requirements but to regain market share, or for 

profit. 

My dissent documents that this is not true. For example, this 

quote from Fannie’s 2006 10–K report: ‘‘We have made and continue to make significant adjustments to our mortgage loan 

sourcing and purchase strategies in an effort to meet HUD’s increased housing goals and new subgoals. These strategies include 

entering into some purchase and securitization transactions with 

lower expected economic returns than our typical transactions. We 

have also relaxed some of our underwriting criteria to obtain goals 

qualifying mortgage loans and increased our investments in higher 

risk mortgage loan products that are more likely to serve the borrowers targeted by HUD’s goals and subgoals, which could increase 

our credit losses.’’ 

Fannie and Freddie are deeply insolvent, and will cost the taxpayers almost $400 billion as a result of the kinds of decisions they 

made to comply with the affordable housing goals. 

Now, could anything be clearer than that statement in their 10– 

K? I don’t think so. The deterioration in underwriting standards 

was caused by U.S. Government policy, and this caused the financial crisis, not a lack of regulation or a failure of risk management. 

In my view, then, the Dodd-Frank Act was not soundly based and 

will not prevent a future financial crisis. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wallison can be found on page 

122 of the appendix.] 

Chairman BACHUS. I don’t mean to rush anybody, but we will 

have votes at about 1:00. And I enjoyed your testimony. I wasn’t 

trying to cut you off, but I would like to get to, as rapidly as possible, the questions. 

Ms. Born, I recognize you for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BROOKSLEY BORN, COMMISSIONER, THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Ms. BORN. Thank you, Chairman Bachus, Ranking Member 

Frank, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me 

49 

to appear before you to discuss the report of the Financial Crisis 

Inquiry Commission. As a member of that Commission, I voted to 

adopt the report and I agree with its conclusions which have been 

discussed by former Chairman Angelides in his testimony. 

In my testimony, I will describe several conclusions of the Commission about three specific components of the financial system 

that contributed significantly to the financial meltdown. First, the 

Commission concluded that collapsing mortgage lending standards 

and the mortgage securitization pipeline lit and spread the flame 

of contagion and crisis. Many mortgage lenders became so eager to 

originate loans that they took borrowers’ qualifications on faith, 

often with a willful disregard of the borrower’s ability to repay. 

The Federal Reserve and other regulators were aware of the increase in irresponsible lending, including predatory and fraudulent 

practices, but failed to act effectively to restrict such behavior. The 

securitization process led lenders and securitizers to believe that 

they were able to pass the risk of these toxic mortgages to investors in mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. However, the financial crisis revealed that in fact a number 

of systemically important institutions remained significantly exposed to them. 

Second, the Commission concluded that over-the-counter derivatives contributed significantly to the crisis. After being deregulated 

by Federal statute in 2000, the OTC derivatives market grew exponentially to almost $673 trillion in notional amount on the eve of 

the crisis in June 2008. This unregulated market was characterized 

by uncontrolled leverage, lack of transparency, lack of capital and 

margin requirements, rampant speculation, interconnections between firms, and concentration of risk in systemically important institutions. 

Derivatives known as credit default swaps fueled the 

securitization frenzy by encouraging investors in mortgage-related 

securities to believe that they were protected against default. Credit default swaps were also used to create synthetic collateralized 

debt obligations, or CDOs, which were merely bets on real mortgage securities. Such bets significantly amplified the losses from 

the collapse of the housing bubble. 

Insurance giant AIG’s sale of these credit default swaps without 

adequate capital reserves brought it to the brink of failure and necessitated its rescue by the government, which ultimately committed more than $180 billion because of concerns that AIG’s collapse would trigger cascading losses throughout the financial system. 

In addition, the existence of millions of contracts of other kinds 

of OTC derivatives created interconnections among a vast web of 

financial institutions through counterparty credit risk, exposing the 

system to contagion and helping to precipitate the government bailouts. 

Third, the Commission concluded that the failures of the credit 

rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction. Without the high ratings issued by credit rating agencies, the mortgage-related securities at the heart of the crisis could 

not have been marketed and sold in such vast quantities. The credit rating agencies issued top ratings to tens of thousands of mortVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:21 May 25, 2011 Jkt 064556 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64556.TXT TERRIE
50 

gage securities, which reassured investors and allowed the market 

to soar, and then downgraded them wreaking havoc across markets 

and firms. 

The agencies’ rating failures resulted from pressures by financial 

firms that paid for the ratings, the use of faulty computer models, 

the desire to increase or maintain market share, and the absence 

of meaningful public oversight. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Born can be found on page 62 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. [presiding.] Dr. Holtz-Eakin. 

STATEMENT OF DR. DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, COMMISSIONER, 

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Mr. HOLTZ-EAKIN. Acting Chairman Miller, Acting Ranking 

Member Green, thank you for the chance to be here today. I want 

to begin by acknowledging and thanking the staff of the FCIC for 

their superb work throughout the Commission. And the fact that 

the Commissioners failed to come to a consensus report should not 

diminish their efforts in any way. 

The committee asked me to discuss three things: the findings of 

the majority and minority reports; the issue of lacking the ability 

to come to consensus; and the implications for Dodd-Frank. Let me 

briefly discuss each of those. 

In the dissent that I filed with Vice Chairman Thomas and with 

Commissioner Hennessey, we differed in three important ways: 

First, we felt that you could not describe the causes of the financial economic crisis, the mandate which Congress gave to us, 

through a simple narrative that relied either on the greed of Wall 

Street or the failure of government policy but, instead, there would 

be 10 specific and essential pieces that led to the crisis. And we detailed those in our report and would be happy to expand on those. 

Second, it is is not U.S.-centric. Much of the evidence about the 

cause of the financial crisis can be gleaned by looking around the 

globe. This was a global phenomenon. We had housing bubbles and 

a credit bubble around the globe, in Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain, and other places, even though they had very different 

mortgage finance systems and very different regulatory structures. 

And we had large financial institutions fail around the globe, 

again, in the presence of very large differences in regulatory structure. So it struck us that focusing on U.S.-centric regulatory phenomenon missed the point. 

And third, we tried to focus on deep underlying causes, without 

an emphasis on institutions and individuals, as we saw in the majority’s report. In particular, again, we did that because we thought 

it was closer to answering the truth. 

On the second point of a failure to come to agreement, I think 

in many ways this isn’t surprising. I have been studying economics 

since 1978, and among my professional colleagues, we have yet to 

agree on the causes of the Great Depression. 

I believe we will continue to disagree on the causes of the financial crisis of 2008. Particularly given the scope and the timetable 

the Commission was handed, I think it is in many ways an 

51 

unsurprising outcome, and I don’t feel that it enhances the report 

for us to disagree, but it is not entirely a shock. And I am disturbed 

that late in the game, it appeared to become partisan in nature 

when, in fact, what I saw during the vast majority of the Commissioners’ deliberations were 10 individuals with views that did not 

agree and a willingness to look at the data and try to work that 

out. 

Finally, in terms of implications for the legislation that was ultimately passed, if you look at our dissent, we found around the 

globe credit in housing bubbles in these various regulatory environments. While we certainly acknowledge that bad people did bad 

things, and there is tremendous evidence that mortgage organization standards declined in the United States, we don’t find the 

broad mandate for erecting, for example, a Consumer Financial 

Protection Agency. There was never any quantitative evidence 

brought to bear by the majority in the Commission about the extent of fraud or its contribution to the crisis, and outside of mortgages there is no evidence whatsoever. 

The second is that we found no real role for the repeal of GlassSteagall or proprietary trading in the crisis. And so efforts to impose, for example a vocal role, appear to be misguided. 

And then in the interest of time, let me just close with the last 

I think implication, which is the crisis itself was a tribute to the 

financial sector spilling over into the real economy, the Main Street 

economy, and it doesn’t exist in isolation. And as this committee 

and the framers of the legislation go forward, it is useful to remember that the costs imposed by that legislation are going to spill over 

to the real economy as well. 

The scale of the rulemaking is enormous. It takes place at a time 

when the Affordable Care Act and the EPA’s activities are also 

leading to record Federal Register pages for regulations, and I have 

a deep concern that this will inhibit the growth that is necessary 

for the 8 million Americans who are out of work. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Holtz-Eakin can be found on 

page 70 of the appendix.] 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Doctor, for your testimony. 

Mr. Georgiou. 

STATEMENT OF BYRON GEORGIOU, COMMISSIONER, THE 

FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION 

Mr. GEORGIOU. Thank you, Acting Chairman Miller and Acting 

Ranking Member Green. I am pleased to join my colleagues today. 

I would like to join Dr. Holtz-Eakin’s commendation of our staff 

who worked under incredibly strenuous circumstances and extraordinary hours and contributed enormously to this process, and 

thank my fellow Commissioners. 

We concluded that the financial and economic crisis was caused 

by widespread failures of financial regulation, breakdowns in corporate governance, a volatile mix of excessive borrowing and risktaking, key policymakers who were ill prepared for the crisis, and 

systemic breaches in accountability and ethics at many levels in 

the private sector. There were many warnings, and the Commission concluded that the crisis could have been avoided. 

52 

I will address three key areas we investigated. These matters included: the roles of excess capital availability and liquidity; the 

Government Sponsored Entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and 

government housing policies. 

First, the Commission agreed that the availability of well-priced 

capital, both foreign and domestic, is an opportunity for economic 

expansion and growth if encouraged to flow in productive directions. Excess liquidity by itself did not need to cause a crisis. 

The Commission determined that low interest rates, widely available capital, and international investment were prerequisites for 

the creation of the credit bubble, creating increased risk that 

should have been recognized by market participants, policymakers, 

and regulators. However, with proper safeguards in place, such as 

prudent lending standards and adequate attention to risk in the 

private sector, excess liquidity need not have led to a crisis. 

Second, the Commission investigated the role of Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac, using Fannie Mae as its in-depth case study. We concluded that they contributed to the crisis but they were not a primary cause. These Government Sponsored Enterprises had a deeply flawed business model. As publicly traded corporations with the 

implicit backing of and subsidies from the Federal Government and 

with the public mission, their $5 trillion mortgage exposure and 

market position were significant. And they used their political 

power for decades to ward off effective regulation oversight, spending $164 million on lobbying from 1999 to 2008. 

As you know, through the third quarter of 2010, the Treasury Department had provided $151 billion in financial support to keep 

them afloat. Still, GSE mortgage securities essentially maintained 

their value throughout the crisis and did not contribute to the significant losses seen at other financial institutions that were central 

to the financial crisis. The Commission report explains how prices 

of Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities actually increased 

slightly in the 2007–2008 time period while the prices of private 

label mortgage-backed securities have dramatically declined. And 

the purchases of non-GSE mortgage-backed securities added helium to the housing balloon, but their purchases never represented 

a majority of the market. The GSEs participated in the expansion 

of subprime and other risky mortgages, but they followed rather 

than led Wall Street and other lenders. 

In 2005 and 2006, they ramped up their purchase and guarantee 

of risky mortgages in order to meet stock market analysts’ expectations for growth. The evidence shows that they did so to regain 

market share and to ensure generous compensation for executives 

and employees. 

We sampled about 25 million mortgages. Some of our data indicated that subsets of borrowers with credit scores less than 660, 

those GSE mortgages were far less likely to become seriously delinquent than were private label securitized mortgages to the same 

types of lenders, 6 percent on the part of the GSEs, 28 percent on 

the private label. 

Third, the Commission studied government housing policies and 

concluded that they did not cause the crisis. Based on the evidence 

and interviews with dozens of individuals, the report describes how 

the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s affordable 

53 

housing goals for Fannie and Freddie contributed only marginally 

to the GSEs’ participation in risky mortgages. And we concluded 

that the Community Reinvestment Act, enacted in 1977 to expand 

safe and sound lending to creditworthy borrowers in certain neighborhoods, was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the 

crisis. 

On the matters of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the CRA, there 

was considerable common ground among the Commission’s conclusions and the so-called ‘‘dissent’’—which I would characterize really 

more as a concurring opinion authored by Commissioners 

Hennessey, Douglas, Holtz-Eakin, and Thomas. 

As to the Dodd-Frank law, I haven’t studied it in considerable 

depth, but I do think that its full and effective implementation is 

important to helping this country avert a future crises. 

Thank you for your courtesy. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Georgiou can be found on page 

68 of the appendix.] 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. I have really enjoyed the 

testimony. Even my good friend, Mr. Thomas, who has come back, 

I served with him for a number of years and he has always been 

a lot of fun. 

I really enjoyed the testimony. The problem I have had in recent 

years is who is getting blamed for this problem out there. Everybody keeps pointing to Fannie and Freddie. And yes, they have 

been involved in some problematic issues. I remember when Secretary Jackson first took over. The first meeting I had with him, 

I was concerned about their raising requirements on their affordable housing goals; I thought they were problematic and could lead 

to trouble. It didn’t do any good at the meeting. I remember introducing amendments in 2000 and 2001 to define ‘‘predatory’’ versus 

‘‘subprime.’’ I got it to the Senate numerous times, but couldn’t get 

it back. 

But the data I received, and it is bothersome, is that we are 

pointing just to Fannie and Freddie. I think it is much broader 

than that; I think it is global, too, but definitely systematic and industry-wide in the United States. 

Between 2002 and 2006, Freddie’s mortgage-backed securities 

share of the marketplace dropped from 70 to 40 percent. Only in 

effect, non-agencies went from 20 to 60 percent. At that point in 

time you had a lot of groups like Countrywide and Washington Mutual and Ameriquest HSB Finance putting out a lot of predatory 

subprime loans, I believe, and then backing them into mortgagebacked securities and selling them off. In fact, I believe that what 

took Countrywide down was the inability to basically bundle those 

and sell them off to the marketplace. 

But when you look at the current numbers out there and default 

rates, I think we have a systematic problem. And Dr. Holtz-Eakin, 

I think you addressed that. Non-agency loans in the subprime 

ARMs, serious delinquent, are 38.7 percent today. Subprime loans, 

seriously delinquent, are 26.5 percent today. Prime loans, seriously 

delinquent, are 5.4 percent. On GSEs Freddie and Fannie, serious 

delinquency is 4.2 percent. Freddie Mac’s serious delinquency is 3.1 

percent. Now, those are both high, but when you compare them to 

the industry, you think they are performing better than the rest of 

54 

the industry. So to shine a light on them and just say they are the 

problem, I think we are missing a lot in what is going on out there. 

And I think that is a problem. 

A lot of the losses that Fannie and Freddie have taken are because of the way they bundle their mortgage-backed securities. If 

you have a nonperforming loan, they take it back, they eat the loss, 

and replace it with a performing loan, where in the private sector 

and all these other groups, many of which are not in business 

today, they are bundling them to where you can’t debundle those 

loans. And if anybody loses money, it is the person who invested 

in the mortgage-backed security. That is basically where the loss 

is today, because the GSE mortgage-backed securities are very safe 

and sound, investors are making the return they were promised. 

So I am looking at that and I am hearing some say that it is just 

the GSEs. Now, yes, there is a problem. And a lot of the problem 

I believe was being encouraged to change your underwriting standards to be able to make more loans and broader-based loans. But 

the question has never been answered. 

The last time I think Fannie Mae lost money was 1995; Freddie 

Mac has never lost money. From 1986 to 2005, the only years I can 

see that they were making bad loans that were really causing the 

problems were from mid-2005, 2006, and 2007. Does anybody have 

any data different than that showing how the loans in previous 

years performed when the downturn occurred? And I open it to 

anybody. 

Mr. WALLISON. I would just add that up until 2002, Fannie and 

Freddie made subprime and Alt-A loans or bought private label securities that were backed by such loans, equal to $1.2 trillion. That 

is far more than the private market did after that point. The private market in 2002 exceeded $100 billion for the first time that 

year. So Fannie and Freddie were 10 times the size of the private 

market before that. This is very significant. 

Now, what you can’t do exactly is tell when those particular 

loans were purchased and what their particular delinquency rates 

were. We know what the delinquency rates were at the end, but 

we don’t know the vintages of those particular loans so we can’t 

really pinpoint what the losses were for those particular years. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. But your current subprime loans make up about $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion of an $11 trillion market 

is all, and much of that is the private sector. 

Mr. WALLISON. I am sorry, I couldn’t hear— 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. The subprime loans make up about 

$1 trillion to $1.5 trillion total of an $11 trillion mortgage market 

today. And Freddie and Fannie did not own the bulk of those. 

Mr. WALLISON. Right. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. The bulk of those were in the private 

sector. 

Mr. WALLISON. No, I don’t think that is correct. 

What I was saying was the number of subprime loans that were 

bought—subprime and Alt-A loans that were bought between 1992 

and 2002 were $1.2 trillion. Now, the point here is simply that they 

were buying subprime and Alt-A loans all along. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. My time is up, so I will let one of 

the witnesses respond. 

55 

Mr. GEORGIOU. Mr. Acting Chairman, let me just say one thing. 

Nobody, I think, can defend entirely the activities of Fannie Mae 

and Freddie Mac in these circumstances, and I certainly would not 

do so. But I think it would be an enormous mistake if we came out 

of this crisis and attributed the crisis exclusively to the problems 

with those institutions. It would let the major difficulties of failure 

of accountability in the private sector completely off the hook. 

In the private sector we had mortgage brokers who were 

incentivized and paid at the front end to originate mortgages which 

they knew were not likely to be paid back, and they had no economic consequence when they weren’t paid back. We had financial 

institutions— 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. I am going to have to have you conclude because my time has run out. But my whole statement was, 

based on default rates today, the GSEs are outperforming the private sector by— 

Mr. GEORGIOU. They are outperforming them extraordinarily. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. But that is not an excuse. 

Mr. GEORGIOU. Right. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. And the former chairman, Mr. 

Frank, is recognized. 

Mr. FRANK. I thank you. 

I would like, on the GSEs—and I appreciate that because there 

has been a lot of talk about the urgency of GSEs, but the point is, 

as a result of the legislation that passed this committee in 2007 

and in the Senate in 2008, putting them under conservatorship, the 

GSEs today are very different institutions than they were before. 

In fact, there is some hope that we may even be able to recover 

some money. 

So we ought to be clear. And I only say that because obviously 

we need to reform that, but I think the urgency is not as great, 

they are not now bleeding, and we need to figure out how to replace the function. But it is important to note that as of today, 

these are very different institutions. 

Mr. Wallison, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. I noticed 

in your testimony—and I appreciate this—you talk about HUD’s 

role and you state that HUD was part of the problem. And you list 

three statements from HUD in which you say they are in effect 

saying it is a good thing what happened. But I did want to note, 

of the three—and to make clear that this is an across-the-board 

problem—the first statement came in 2000 under the President Bill 

Clinton. The second two that you quote come in 2004 and 2005 

under President Bush. 

Mr. WALLISON. Right. 

Mr. FRANK. And I would note in 2004, it was under the Bush Administration that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were instructed by 

the regulators to increase the percentage of loans they bought from 

people below median income. And I criticized that at the time. I 

thought that was a bad idea. But I did want to get back to efforts 

to deal with that. 

The gentleman from California mentioned that in 2004 and 2005, 

the Federal Reserve came to the Congress and they asked for action and were pointing out the problems with Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac. Of course at the time, the Republicans were in the 

56 

majority. And in 2004, Mr. Oxley began an effort to do legislation. 

And in 2005, the House actually passed a bill—I voted for it in 

committee; I voted against it on the Floor because of things that 

they did with regard to the Low Income Housing Trust Fund, not 

Fannie and Freddie. But there was an effort, under Republican majority rule, under the chairmanship of Mr. Oxley, to respond. 

What is your evaluation of what the House produced in 2005 in 

this committee of that bill which actually did pass the House? 

Mr. WALLISON. Let me go back first, if I may, to the point you 

made, which is that HUD was responsible for the deterioration in 

mortgage underwriting standards beginning in 1992 when they 

took over authority for the affordable housing requirements. Those 

three quotes are only three of many, many statements by HUD as 

they gradually increased the affordable housing requirements over 

time. And they were very pleased with the fact— 

Mr. FRANK. I understand that, and that is in the record. But Mr. 

Wallison, we only have a limited amount of time. You are simply 

repeating what we all agree to. Please get to the point. 

Mr. WALLISON. I want to get into the point you were, I think, trying to make, which is that somehow the Republicans—I am trying 

to excuse the Republicans for something. In fact, I am not. I think 

HUD, through both the Clinton Administration and the Republican 

Bush Administration, was— 

Mr. FRANK. I understand that. I was acknowledging your doing 

that and I appreciated that, but I am now talking about the legislative history because that was the executive history. 

In 2005, I asked specifically for your evaluation of the bill that 

this committee passed under Mr. Oxley, and the House then 

passed, that was a response to this notion that we needed to do 

something. 

Mr. WALLISON. I am happy to do that. That bill was very weak, 

and the Bush Administration opposed it because it was so weak. 

And in one respect, it was weak because it did not deal with the 

holdings, the portfolios that mortgage companies—that is, Fannie 

Mae and Freddie Mac—were acquiring at that point. They had over 

$1 trillion in mortgages in their portfolio. That was the danger, and 

that bill didn’t deal with it. 

The Senate bill did deal with that, but that Senate bill never got 

anywhere because of the failure to get the 60 votes that you need— 

Mr. FRANK. Right. At that point, the Senate Democrats were supporting the House bill and the Senate Republicans were supporting 

the Administration bill, but it was Republican control of both 

Houses. 

Mr. WALLISON. This was not a partisan issue. 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Wallison, please, I am asking you specific questions and I appreciate your answers. 

Now, we then passed a bill in 2007 that was then modified and 

adopted in 2008. What is your evaluation of the bill? 

Mr. WALLISON. I thought that was an excellent bill. In fact, when 

I have been asked by the media about your activities in that connection, Mr. Frank, I supported them wholly. I said that you made 

a wonderful compromise with Secretary Paulson, and as a result of 

that we got a bill that we needed very badly. 

57 

Mr. FRANK. I thank you, Mr. Wallison, I appreciate that. I have 

been told there are 4 minutes left on the vote, and that isn’t a bad 

note to end on. 

Chairman BACHUS. I recognize Mr. Schweikert for as long as he 

can try. We have 4 minutes left on the vote. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Great. Give the freshman the opportunity. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Commissioners, first, thank you for what you have done. Congratulations. Rumor has it you may have almost a best seller, 

though now I am really questioning Americans’ reading habits. 

One of the things—and this may be a conversation we are going 

to have to have later, if we get beyond the typical repartee back 

and forth of who sinned, who didn’t, which Administration was 

this. I am new, but when I read through the dissents, when I read 

through everyone giving me the history of what went wrong, I keep 

coming back to, okay, systemically— 

Chairman BACHUS. The gentleman, you have 5 minutes, but 

there are 2 minutes left in the vote. You can take as long as you 

want. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Price of money, price of risk. Isn’t the ultimate 

failure we have seen up and down the system that, whether it be 

through regulations, whether it be through incentives, whether the 

way it has been done, we are failing to price risk; and because of 

that we are now trying to regulate mechanics to create risk pricing? And those who have incentives are always going to find a way 

around that. 

Mr. GEORGIOU. I think you are absolutely right. But one of the 

problems, of course, is that in our financial system, as a general 

rule, when you take excessive risk with inadequate capital and you 

fail, then you go bankrupt and your assets are distributed and you 

get to go on. The problem here is that we had systemically important institutions, so that when they took extraordinary risk, they 

put themselves in a situation where they had the upside to themselves and they had the possibility of turning to the taxpayers for 

protection on the downside. And that was— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I am about to do something 

horribly rude. I am going to get up because I need to go vote, but 

really I think there may be a much simpler way to get what we 

need to protect ourselves in the future than some of the things we 

are doing right now. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Schweikert, thank you. I apologize for 

the lack of time. 

The Chair notes that some members may have additional questions for this panel which they may wish to submit in writing. 

Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 30 days 

for members to submit written questions for these witnesses and 

to place their responses in the record. 

I want to thank each of you for your testimony. We had a tremendous number of questions that we were not able to ask, and 

I know you had the answers for each of them, but thank you for 

your testimony. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:15 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(59) 

A P P E N D I X 

February 16, 2011 

60 


64556.001
61 


64556.002
62 


64556.003
63 


64556.004
64 


64556.005
65 


64556.006
66 


64556.007
67 


64556.008
68 


64556.009
69 


64556.010
70 


64556.011
71 


64556.012
72 


64556.013
73 


64556.014
74 


64556.015
75 


64556.016
76 


64556.017
77 


64556.018
78 


64556.019
79 


64556.020
80 


64556.021
81 


64556.022
82 


64556.023
83 


64556.024
84 


64556.025
85 


64556.026
86 


64556.027
87 


64556.028
88 


64556.029
89 


64556.030
90 


64556.031
91 


64556.032
92 


64556.033
93 


64556.034
94 


64556.035
95 


64556.036
96 


64556.037
97 


64556.038
98 


64556.039
99 


64556.040
100 


64556.041
101 


64556.042
102 


64556.043
103 


64556.044
104 


64556.045
105 


64556.046
106 


64556.047
107 


64556.048
108 


64556.049
109 


64556.050
110 


64556.051
111 


64556.052
112 


64556.053
113 


64556.054
114 


64556.055
115 


64556.056
116 


64556.057
117 


64556.058
118 


64556.059
119 


64556.060
120 


64556.061
121 


64556.062
122 


64556.063
123 


64556.064
124 


64556.065
125 


64556.066
126 


64556.067
127 


64556.068
128 


64556.069
129 


64556.070
130 


64556.071
131 


64556.072
132 


64556.073
133 


64556.074
134 


64556.075
135 


64556.076
136 


64556.077
137 


64556.078
138 


64556.079
139 


64556.080
140 


64556.081
141 


64556.082
142 


64556.083
143 


64556.084