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REGULATORY PERSPECTIVES ON THE 

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S FINANCIAL 

REGULATORY REFORM PROPOSALS, PART II 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 24, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services 

Serial No. 111–68 

( 

(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Chairman 

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

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 

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas 

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 

MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

TRAVIS CHILDERS, Mississippi 

WALT MINNICK, Idaho 

JOHN ADLER, New Jersey 

MARY JO KILROY, Ohio 

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio 

SUZANNE KOSMAS, Florida 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JIM HIMES, Connecticut 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama 

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

ADAM PUTNAM, Florida 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

LYNN JENKINS, Kansas 

CHRISTOPHER LEE, New York 

ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota 

LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey 

JEANNE M. ROSLANOWICK, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

July 24, 2009 ..................................................................................................... 1 

Appendix: 

July 24, 2009 ..................................................................................................... 51 

WITNESSES 

FRIDAY, JULY 24, 2009 

Bair, Hon. Sheila C., Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation 

(FDIC) ................................................................................................................... 36 

Bernanke, Hon. Ben S., Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System ................................................................................................................... 34 

Bowman, John E., Acting Director, Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) .............. 39 

Dugan, Hon. John C., Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency 

(OCC) ..................................................................................................................... 37 

Geithner, Hon. Timothy F., Secretary, U.S. Department of the Treasury ......... 7 

Smith, Joseph A., Jr., North Carolina Commissioner of Banks, on behalf 

of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) ....................................... 40 

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Bachmann, Hon. Michele ................................................................................. 52 

Watt, Hon. Melvin ............................................................................................ 54 

Bair, Hon. Sheila C. ......................................................................................... 56 

Bernanke, Hon. Ben S. ..................................................................................... 72 

Bowman, John E. .............................................................................................. 89 

Dugan, Hon. John C. ........................................................................................ 106 

Geithner, Hon. Timothy F. .............................................................................. 140 

Smith, Joseph A., Jr. ........................................................................................ 149 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Frank, Hon. Barney: 

Letter from the Federal Trade Commission ................................................... 175 

Written statement of Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch, Federal Trade 

Commission, dated July 21, 2009 ................................................................ 177 

Bair, Hon. Sheila C.: 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bachus ........ 189 

Bernanke, Hon. Ben S.: 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bachus ........ 205 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bean ............ 213 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Capito .......... 214 

Bowman, John E.: 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bean ............ 216 

Written response to a question submitted by Representative Sherman ...... 217 

Dugan, Hon. John C.: 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bachus ........ 218 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bean ............ 227 

Smith, Joseph A., Jr. : 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Bean ............ 232 

(1) 

REGULATORY PERSPECTIVES ON THE 

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S FINANCIAL 

REGULATORY REFORM PROPOSALS, PART II 

Friday, July 24, 2009 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in room 

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Barney Frank [chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Frank, Kanjorski, Waters, 

Maloney, Gutierrez, Watt, Sherman, Meeks, Moore of Kansas, 

Hinojosa, Miller of North Carolina, Scott, Green, Cleaver, Bean, 

Ellison, Klein, Wilson, Foster, Carson, Speier, Minnick, Adler, 

Driehaus, Kosmas, Himes; Bachus, Castle, Royce, Manzullo, 

Biggert, Miller of California, Capito, Hensarling, Garrett, Neugebauer, Price, McHenry, Campbell, Putnam, Bachmann, Marchant, 

Posey, Jenkins, Lee, Paulsen, and Lance. 

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come to order. The photographers will disperse. This is another in a series of hearings we are 

having on the question of restructuring our financial regulatory apparatus. We will be doing hearings today, and some next week. We 

will be returning in September with some action. 

I think it is very clear the first thing we will be doing will be 

marking up the consumer financial protection entity. And we will 

then be proceeding to marking up other aspects of this. Our expectation is that they will go to the Floor as one bill because that has 

been the Senate’s preference. 

But I am committed to a structure which will give us time to debate them sort of title by title on the Floor, which is clearly much 

more than a 1-day Floor event. And I will be working hard to make 

sure we have adequate time to debate on the Floor the various aspects. We have 8 minutes for— 

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman? 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. 

Mr. BACHUS. Are you saying that next week, we will be addressing—is it executive compensation? 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. 

Mr. BACHUS. Not the consumer. 

The CHAIRMAN. I said September. 

Mr. BACHUS. Okay. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The executive compensation on Tuesday, probably on the Floor on Friday. 

2 

And with that, we will have our opening statements. 

The gentleman from Pennsylvania is recognized for 2 minutes 

and 40 seconds. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. For more than 70 years, Mr. Chairman, the regulatory reforms of the 1930’s brought about, and then enacted because of the unbridled excess of dangerous speculation of an 

earlierera, safely steered our financial markets through the always 

rocky seas of capitalism. 

But all good things must come to an end. Created for the economy of the last century, those antiquated rules failed to respond to 

today’s realities in which financial engineering and innovation surpassed effective oversight. 

For our economy to flourish once again, we must fix this problem. The Administration’s diligent efforts to reform our outmoded 

and flawed regulatory system have resulted in a White Paper and 

subsequently specific legislative proposals. 

In particular, I am pleased that the Administration calls for establishing the Office of National Insurance, an idea I first originated and for which I have strongly advocated for some time. Also 

I commend efforts to regulate the advisors of hedge funds and 

other private pools of capital. Similarly derivatives and swaps markets will finally face a suitable level of scrutiny under the Administration’s plan. These reforms are long overdue. 

While the Administration’s proposals for credit rating agencies 

represent a good start, we must do more, much more, in this field. 

By sprinkling their magic dust on toxic assets, rating agencies 

turned horse manure into fool’s gold. We therefore should no longer 

pursue only modest modifications in regulating this problematic industry. 

Instead, we must consider radical reforms aimed at improving 

accountability, reliability, transparency, and independence. We 

could, for example, promote better ratings quality by establishing 

a fee on securities transactions to pay for ratings, forcing a government quality assessment of rating agency methodologies, changing 

liability standards for rating agencies and altering business structures. 

Additionally, I must reiterate my deep and profound concerns 

about the selections of the Federal Reserve as the primary entity 

in charge of systemic risk. I believe that we need someone with 

real political accountability in this role like the Treasury Secretary. 

On the whole, however, the Administration has produced a very 

thoughtful approach to financial services regulatory reform. I applaud the Administration for its hard work. 

Congress has now begun its hard work using the Administration’s promising foundation as our guide for enacting new laws that 

put in place a regulatory system that will last a very long time and 

help to ensure American prosperity for many years to come. 

I yield back my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas for 3 minutes. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

When you have the wrong diagnosis, you will in turn offer the 

wrong remedy, and that is exactly the case with the Administration’s proposal before us. 

3 

Our economic turmoil has not arisen from deregulation, but more 

so from dumb regulation. That, and regulators who did not lack 

adequate regulatory authority but may have lacked adequate judgment. 

Although I have a number of concerns about the plan, I am simply taken aback by the lack of reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie 

Mac, the epicenter of the financial crisis, not to mention the suggested creation of an agency to abridge consumer rights. 

Rather than taking on the current status quo for these GSEs, the 

Administration’s plan institutionalizes the problem. When President Obama referenced sweeping reform, I didn’t know he meant 

sweeping Fannie and Freddie under the rug. 

Worse yet, his plan actually gives the Federal Reserve power to 

create more systemic risk by establishing tier one financial holding 

companies which can simply create more Fannies and Freddies, 

and signals to the market that the biggest institutions among us 

will always have a taxpayer safety net. In other words, the proposal enshrines us as a perpetual bailout nation. 

One of the more troubling components of the proposed plan is the 

creation of a new consumer financial product approval agency ruled 

by five unelected bureaucrats. Based upon their subjective determination of ‘‘fairness,’’ they will be empowered to decide which 

credit cards we can receive, which home mortgages we are permitted to possess, and even whether we can access an ATM machine. The proposal represents one of the greatest assaults on consumer rights I have ever witnessed. 

The legislation will stifle innovation, perhaps the next online 

banking service or the next frequent flyer mile offering, and worse 

yet will contract credit to our small businesses at a time of historic 

unemployment. 

There is a better way. The Republican plan under Ranking Member Bachus’ leadership creates a new chapter of the Bankruptcy 

Code to enhance the resolution of large nonbank financial institutions. It puts an end to taxpayer-funded bailouts and too-big-to-fail. 

A market stability and capital adequacy board will be established 

and tasked with monitoring the interactions of all sectors of the financial system and identifying risk that can endanger the stability 

and soundness of the system. 

The Republican plan focuses the Federal Reserve on its core mission of conducting monetary policy. And although we preserve its 

13(3) exigent powers, we do not leave them unlimited. Once the 

housing market is stabilized, we would phase out taxpayer subsidies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and end the current model 

of privatized profits and socialized losses. 

Furthermore, our proposal creates an Office of Consumer Protection to empower consumers with effective disclosure and enhance 

the penalties for fraud. 

There are choices between more bailouts and no bailouts; market 

discipline or government control; consumer empowerment or the 

laws of consumer rights. Let’s hope this committee and this Congress chooses wisely. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. I will now recognize myself for 2 minutes and 40 

seconds. 

4 

I want to address a startling misconception that somehow we are 

ignoring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The charge that Fannie 

Mae and Freddie Mac were being ignored was accurate up until 

2007. That is, before 2007, while there were some efforts to legislate, one which came from this committee under the chairmanship 

of Mr. Oxley, but was opposed by President Bush, nothing happened. 

In 2007, we did pass in March of that year the bill to reform 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and include every power requested 

by the Bush Administration. It passed the House that summer. It 

did not, unfortunately, pass the Senate until the following year because the Senate was narrowly divided, but the fact is that the proposal of the Bush Administration, and particularly Secretary 

Paulson, for increased powers over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 

did become law; it is now under conservatorship. So the notion that 

there is an unbridled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out there is 

mythic. 

Now, it is true that, going forward, we will need to change the 

model, but it is not the case that they are now the way they were. 

They are under conservatorship. They are in fact serving as not 

what they used to be, but as almost a public utility in terms of trying to deal with the mortgage crisis. And their main role now is 

to try to help us deal with the foreclosure crisis and with refinancing. So they have, in fact, been—the first step was taken again 

at the request of the Bush Administration, and everything that was 

done regarding Fannie and Freddie in 2008 was done at their request. 

We do have on the agenda going forward a look at what their future role should be, but they were not what they were. 

We will be proceeding finally with other aspects of this. And I do 

want to say with regard to the Consumer Protection Agency—no, 

it is not called the consumer product approval agency. It will not 

be called that except by people trying to caricature it, and it will 

not have that function. The notion that we should leave exactly as 

we have consumer protection when it he has been so badly done, 

frankly that is a debate I am glad to have before the American people. 

The notion that the existing institutional structure protects consumers adequately, I think is a mistake. Yes, I was very pleased, 

for instance, when the National Federation of Independent Business supported our credit card bill, because as credit card users, 

small businesses wanted that kind of protection. That is what we 

will be doing going forward. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Neugebauer, for 1 minute. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Based on the principles of ending taxpayer bailouts, getting the 

government out of the business of picking winners and losers, and 

restoring market discipline, our Republican plan calls for a simplification for consumers not duplication. 

Adding new regulations and new bureaucracy does not create a 

regulatory reform. Designating some firms as too-big-to-fail and 

creating a permanent bailout authority doesn’t reform the system 

and does not protect the taxpayers. Adding more regulations when 

5 

original ones weren’t getting—regulators, when the original ones 

weren’t getting the job done doesn’t fix the problems. 

If there are regulatory holes, we should fill them. If we can 

streamline the number of agencies and reduce the overlap, we 

should do so. We need reform that tightens the regulatory structure and protects the taxpayers. Rather than more bailouts and 

more bureaucracy, we need to make more market discipline and 

more taxpayer protection available. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from North Carolina for 2 minutes and 40 seconds. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to welcome Secretary Geithner. 

And I want to particularly welcome my good friend Joe Smith, 

the commissioner of banks from my home State, the State of North 

Carolina, who will be testifying on the second panel. 

In the 22 years that I practiced law before I came to this institution, I came to realize that most often the definition of a good compromise is one that leaves everybody unsatisfied. And measured 

against that criteria, the Administration’s proposal for restructuring is a resounding success, because I haven’t heard anybody 

who is completely satisfied with what has been proposed. 

That probably suggests that we have hit the right balance if we 

do what the Administration has proposed with some minor modifications which we have to get involved in. 

The area in which I think we have received the most pushback 

has been the Consumer Products Agency. And I understand the 

natural resistance to change, but I would just say to my friends 

and the industry with whom I have worked over the 18 years that 

I have been in this body now that if we reach the end of this process, having given to the regulators and to the industry, both of 

whom succeeded in really allowing a meltdown to take place in this 

country, the same kind of structure and authorities without a focus 

on the consumer, the public will be outraged, and they should be 

outraged. 

So I want to welcome, encourage my friends and the industry to 

come to the table and sit down and talk about how we structure 

this new Consumer Protection Agency in a way that does robustly 

what we intend for it to do, protection of consumers, and does not 

have the disadvantages that have been spelled out and in my opinion grossly overstated. I think some of the concerns that have been 

raised are legitimate. We can address those, but we need to roll up 

our sleeves and work together to do so. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California, Mr. Royce, for 1 

minute. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. 

I think getting to the bottom of what caused the housing bubble 

should be our primary objective here. 

And in point of fact, it was the Fed that came to us, came to this 

committee, and came to the Senate committee, and said that because of the size of the portfolios of Fannie and Freddie and because of the leverage ratios of 100 to 1, 100 to 1 in leverage, because of the direction for them to have purchased a trillion in 

6 

subprime mortgages for their political, for their affordable housing 

goals and so forth, that they had to be regulated for systemic risk. 

In 2003, I put in a bill to do that working with the Fed. In 2005, 

we in fact had my amendment on the Floor to try to give the regulators the ability to regulate for systemic risk. Fannie and Freddie 

opposed it. Franklin Raines opposed it. It was opposed by most of 

the Members of this House. 

But in 2006, in the Senate, they actually got it out of committee. 

But again, the Democratic Members on the Senate side opposed 

that regulation to give the regulators the ability to handle Fannie 

and Freddie for systemic risk. That is the history of this. We need 

to address it. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from Illinois for 1 minute. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Chairman, the Administration’s plan endorses 

the too-big-to-fail mantra putting taxpayers on the hook for future 

bailouts caused by the behavior of a few dysfunctional Federal regulations and enforcement. 

It also allows the Federal Government to continue to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. That is not fair to taxpayers, 

and it is not fair to the little guys in my district. 

Speaking of picking winners and losers, TARP has left many 

community banks hanging out to dry. Those local banks are denied 

access to CPP and CAP assistance. By the time any aid is extended, it may be too late. 

Illinois banks have private equity at the door, but waiting for a 

Federal match that is not available. Some have estimated that, 

with a $250 million capital infusion in total, around 200 community banks could be saved. 

I want to hear from today’s witnesses, at a fraction of the cost 

of letting them fold, and for less than 3 percent of the $700 billion 

authorized, why can’t you help our community banks? 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California, Mr. Miller, for 1 

minute. 

Mr. MILLER OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

After listening to the regulators over the last 2 weeks in these 

hearings, I am very concerned about the lack of communication between financial regulators overseeing our economy and recovery. 

The Financial Accounting Standard Board may change the fairvalue accounting only after serious market turmoil and oversight 

from financial policymakers. 

When asked in a recent hearing, the SEC Chairman was unaware of how the banking regulators were applying the new accounting rules. While it is not the job of the SEC to oversee recovery efforts and regulate banks, financial policymakers should be 

collaborating on major issues that impact on our economy. The 

SEC, after all, conducted a 259-page study on fair value accounting 

standards and specs on financial institutions and banks. 

I am glad you are here, the Treasury, along with banking regulators are here to discuss regulatory reform. But I strongly believe 

that we need to have a hearing on both with regulators and accounting policymakers. In fact, major changes will be enacted in 

the credit market will be retroactive accounting changes known as 

SAS, FAS 166 and 67. I hope we can be proactive in examining the 

7 

changes instead of responding reactively like we did with fair 

value. 

I thank you and I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Garrett, 

for 1 minute. Let me just say, after this, I believe we will have time 

for the Secretary’s opening statement. Then we will break and 

come back. 

Mr. Garrett for 1 minute. 

Mr. GARRETT. Thank you. 

Mr. Secretary, you know, Chairman Frank has been critical of 

the banking industry for opposing the Administration’s plan for the 

CFPA. I don’t think anybody believes that we don’t need some reform, but the industry is not going to be the only one who expresses concerns. 

We are going to have a whole panel later on of all the regulators 

out there. And I think just about every one of them have expressed 

some doubts or some concerns with the CFPA proposal. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bernanke was here the other day, and he has expressed his concerns with the proposal as well. 

I know that some on the other side are going to say, they create 

a whole new Federal bureaucracy; that is a good political winner. 

I will disagree. And some may well say that it is a good thing to 

go forward. But I am glad that we are going to postpone this debate a little bit longer. As a matter of fact, the chairman has just 

said that this is an area that is worthy of an actual debate. 

I completely agree, because the more we debate, the more we 

hear about it, the more problems we see, the more we realize it is 

a bad idea; that it is going to limit consumer choice, limit credit 

availability. It is going to increase cost, and the most important 

thing, the most ironic thing, is it potentially decreases safety and 

soundness for our banking system. 

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

The CHAIRMAN. We will have the Secretary’s statement. We probably have about 15 minutes, so the Secretary can give his statement, and we will then break and come back. 

Mr. Secretary. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER, 

SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 

Secretary GEITHNER. Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, 

and members of the committee, thanks for giving me the chance to 

come before you today. 

Let me first begin by commending you for the important work 

you have already undertaken to help build consensus on financial 

reform. We have an opportunity to bring about fundamental 

change to our financial system, to provide greater protection for 

consumers and for businesses. We share a responsibility to get this 

right and to get this done. 

On June 17th, the President outlined a proposal for comprehensive change of the basic rules of the road for the financial system. 

These proposals were designed to lay the foundation for a safer, 

more stable financial system, one less vulnerable to booms and 

busts, less vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. The President decided we need to move quickly while the memory of the searing 

8 

damage caused by this crisis was still fresh and before the impetus 

to reform faded. 

These proposals have led to an important debate about how best 

to reform this system, how to achieve a better balance between innovation and stability. We welcome this debate, and we will work 

closely with the Congress to help shape a comprehensive and 

strong package of legislative changes. 

My written testimony reviews the full outlines of these proposals. 

I just want to focus my opening remarks on two central areas for 

reform. 

The first is our proposal for a Consumer Financial Protection 

Agency. We can all agree, I believe, that in the years leading up 

to the current crisis, our consumer protection regime fundamentally failed. It failed because our system allowed a range of institutions to escape effective supervision. It failed because our system 

was fragmented, fragmenting responsibility for consumer protection over numerous regulators, creating opportunities for evasion. 

And it failed because all of the Federal financial services regulators 

have higher priorities than consumer protection. 

The result left millions of Americans at risk, and I believe for the 

first time in the modern history of financial crises in our country, 

we face an acute crisis, a crisis which brought the financial system 

to the edge of collapse in significant part because of failures in consumer protection. The system allowed—this system allowed the extreme excesses of the subprime mortgage lending boom, loans without proof of income, employment or financial assets that it reset to 

unaffordable rates that consumers could not understand and that 

have contributed to millions of Americans losing their homes. 

Those practices built up over a long period of time. They peaked 

in 2006. But it took Federal banking agencies until June of 2007 

after the peak to reach consensus on supervisory guidance that 

would impose even general standards on the sale and underwriting 

of subprime mortgages. And it took another year for these agencies 

to settle on a simple model disclosure for subprime mortgages. 

These actions came too late to help consumers and homeowners. 

The basic standards of protection were too weak. They were not effectively enforced, and accountability was diffused. We believe that 

the only viable solution is to provide a single entity in the government with a clear mandate for consumer protection and financial 

products and services with clear authority to write rules and to enforce those rules. 

We proposed to give this new agency jurisdiction over the entire 

marketplace. This will provide a level playing field where the reach 

of Federal oversight is extended for the first time to all financial 

firms. This means the agency would send examiners into nonbanks 

as well as to banks reviewing loan files and interviewing sales people. 

Consumers will be less vulnerable to the type of race-to-the-bottom standard that was produced by allowing institutions without 

effective supervision to compete alongside banks. We believe that 

effective protection requires consolidated authority to both write 

and enforce rules. Rules written by those not responsible for enforcing them are likely to be poorly designed with insufficient feel for 

the needs of consumers and for the realities of the market. RuleVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:44 Feb 16, 2010 Jkt 053248 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53248.TXT TERRIE
9 

writing authority without enforcement authority would risk creating an agency that is too weak dominated by those with enforcement authority. And leaving enforcement authority divided as it is 

today among this complicated mix of supervisors and other authorities would risk continued opportunities for evasion and uneven protections. 

Our proposals are designed to preserve the incentives and opportunities for innovation. Many of the practices of consumer lending 

that led to this crisis gave innovation a bad name. What they claim 

was innovation was often just predation. But we want to make it 

possible for future innovations and financial products to come with 

less risk of damage. We need to create an agency that restores the 

confidence of consumers and the confidence of financial investors 

with authority to prevent abusive and unfair practices while at the 

same time promoting innovation and consumer access to financial 

products. 

The second critical imperative to reform is to create a more stable system. In the years leading up to this crisis, our regime, our 

regulatory framework, permitted an excess buildup of leverage both 

outside the banking system and within the banking system. The 

shock absorbers that are critical to preserving the stability to the 

system, these are shock absorbers in the form of capital requirements, margin, liquidity requirements, were inadequate to withstand the force of the global recession. They left the system too 

weak to withstand the failure of a major financial institution. 

Addressing this challenge will require very substantial changes. 

It will require putting in place stronger constraints on risk taking 

with stronger limits on leverage and more conservative standards 

for funding and liquidity management. These standards need to be 

enforced more broadly across the financial system overall, covering 

not just all banks but institutions that present potential risk to the 

stability of the financial system. 

This will require bringing the markets that are critical to the 

provision of credit and capital, the derivatives markets, the 

securitization markets and the credit rating agencies, within a 

broad framework or oversight. This will require reform to compensation practices to reduce incentives for excessive risk taking in 

the future. 

This will require much stronger cushions or shock absorbers in 

the critical centralized financial infrastructure, so that the system 

as a whole is less vulnerable to contagion and is better able to 

withstand the pressures that come with financial shocks and the 

risk of failure of large institutions. 

And this will require stronger authority to manage the failure of 

these institutions. Resolution authority is essential to any credible 

plan to make it possible to limit moral hazard risk in the future 

and to limit the need for future bailouts. 

Alongside these changes, we need to put in place some important 

changes to the broader oversight framework. Our patchwork, antiquated balkanized segmented structure of oversight responsibility 

created large gaps in coverage, allowed institutions to shop for the 

weakest regulator, and left authorities without the capacity to understand and stay abreast of the changing danger of risk in our financial system. To address this, we proposed establishing a council 

10 

responsible for looking at the financial system as a whole. No single entity can fully discharge this responsibility. 

Our proposed Financial Services Oversight Council would bring 

together the heads of all the major Federal financial regulatory 

agencies, including the Federal Reserve, the SEC, etc. This council 

would be accountable to the Congress for making sure that we have 

in place strong protections for the stability of the financial system; 

that policy is closely coordinated across responsible agencies; that 

we adapt the safeguards and protections as the system changes in 

the future and new sources of risk emerge; and that we are effectively cooperating with countries around the world in enforcing 

strong standards. 

This council would have the power to gather information from 

any firm or market to help identify emerging risks, and it would 

have the responsibility to recommend changes in laws and regulation to reduce future opportunities for arbitrage, to help ensure we 

put in place and maintain over time strong safeguards against the 

risk of future crises. 

The Federal Reserve will have an important role in this framework. It will be responsible for the consolidated supervision of all 

large interconnected firms whose failure could threaten the stability of this system, regardless of whether they own a depository 

institution. The Fed, in our judgment, is the only regulatory body 

with the experience, the institutional knowledge, and the capacity 

to do this. This is a role the Fed largely already plays today. 

And while our plan does clarify this basic responsibility and 

gives clear accountability to the Fed for this responsibility, it also 

takes away substantial authority. We propose to take away from 

the Fed today responsibility for writing rules for consumer protection, and for enforcing those rules, and we propose to require the 

Fed to receive written approval from the Secretary of the Treasury 

before exercising its emergency lending authority. 

Now, we look forward to refining these recommendations through 

the legislative process. To help advance this process, we have already provided detailed draft legislative language to the Hill on 

every piece of the President’s reform package. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, if you can wind it up, and then 

we can come back. Thank you. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Just 30 seconds. We welcome your committee and your counterparts in the Senate to pass reform this 

year. 

Despite this crisis, the United States remains in many ways the 

most productive, the most innovative, and the most resilient economy in the world. To preserve this, though, we need a more stable, 

more resilient system and this requires fundamental reform. 

Thank you. We look forward to working with you. 

[The prepared statement of Secretary Geithner can be found on 

page 140 of the appendix.] 

The CHAIRMAN. We will return to begin the questioning. 

[recess] 

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will reconvene. 

And, Mr. Secretary, I will get to a question, but I did want to 

use my 5 minutes, as it is up to us, to continue the history. 

11 

I think the distortion of history that we see, particularly with regard to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, needs to be addressed. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Royce, mentioned that in 

2005, when this committee voted on a bill, he offered an amendment that he said would have resolved the problem, and he obviously strongly believed that. He mentioned that it was opposed. He 

then went on to say that, in the Senate, there was a version that 

was better, but the Democrats opposed it. He did not characterize 

the party positions in the House, so I thought I would check and 

see if my memory in this one case held up. It did. The vote on the 

amendment offered by the gentleman from California: 153 Republicans voted no; 70 voted yes. The current ranking member of the 

committee, Mr. Bachus, voted no, along with me and Mr. Oxley, 

the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. 

Neugebauer, and the gentleman from California, Mr. Miller; we all 

voted no. 

So it is true that the amendment was offered, but it was defeated 

overwhelmingly and by more than two-thirds of the Republican 

Members. So if the history is relevant, it seems to me that is a relevant part of it. The gentleman from Texas did vote yes and spoke 

for it. And again, I would reiterate that, in 2005, the Republicancontrolled House, the Republican-controlled committee brought a 

bill out. It passed the House. Some Members thought it was too 

weak. The President thought it was too weak. The Republican Senate passed a different version. The Republican Senate didn’t take 

the bill up, and nothing happened. 

The Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Mr. Snow, said he 

thought the bill that was brought forward by Mr. Oxley was a good 

bill. He was overruled by the Administration. The gentleman from 

Ohio was troubled by what the Administration did. I joined him in 

writing a letter. I had actually voted against the vote on the Floor 

because of some unrelated issues, not Fannie and Freddie issues, 

but housing issues. But I did join him in writing to the Senate saying, ‘‘Let’s try and work this out.’’ The Senate never took up the 

bill. 

The Senate Chair, the Republican Chair, apparently felt that it 

wasn’t at this point worth trying, probably because he had some 

Republican opposition within. But then, in 2007, as it was clear 

that there was a crisis, as I did believe by 2005, the House did take 

it up when the committee organized after the election of 2006, and 

I was the chairman. The first major piece of legislation we dealt 

with was to reform Fannie and Freddie, and in this point worked 

completely with the Administration, including the powers of receivership, etc. The bill passed. It didn’t pass the Senate because of 

that same partisan division; 51–49 Senators are hard to make function. Whether it is 51 Ds or Rs, it doesn’t seem to make much difference. 

But I did want to say, that was the history. And as I said, the 

bill did pass in 2008. So we are not dealing with a Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac of the past. Clearly we have to do something before 

they can resume their role, but they are now playing a very different role than they had played before. 

And now, Mr. Secretary, I was struck to note that there has been 

a lot of debate about whether or not to have a Consumer Protection 

12 

Agency and who should be the systemic risk regulator. And it was 

interesting to me to note that your critics on this seem to be 

aligned with the socialist government in London, while the conservative government in London is on the other side. I did note that 

the conservative party line that just came out for a consumer regulator and for the Bank of England being the single systemic risk 

regulator, which does appear to be close to your position; whereas 

the socialist government, the labor government, still nominally socialist, has taken the opposite side. 

So apparently when things cross the Atlantic, they get reversed. 

I had not realized that was the ideological effect of a transoceanic 

voyage. I think the point is this, that what we are talking about 

here are important issues that people of good will can differ about, 

and that ideology really shouldn’t be driving this and, in many 

cases, doesn’t drive it. These are practical and pragmatic decisions 

to be made. 

The only thing I would add again is that while I strongly support 

the rationale of the Consumer Protection Agency, one of the members on the other side noted that all the regulators are against it. 

Now, those regulators should be happy they are getting support 

from some corners that they don’t ordinarily get, so maybe they 

should cherish it when they get it. 

I am always skeptical when people who are often in disagreement with somebody suddenly find great wisdom in that individual 

when they happen to agree. Stopped clocks come to mind. But the 

fact is that what we are talking about are agencies that are going 

to lose powers, and they object to losing their powers. And I think 

they have the right to make the argument that is sometimes made 

in an old joke; they can argue that taking the powers away from 

them may not make sense because the powers that will be taken 

away from them are in very good shape because they have rarely 

been used. Yes, it is true that they are pristine powers. They have 

sat largely undrawn upon for a while. But I think it is time to put 

them into the hands of someone who will use them. 

The gentleman from Texas—I am sorry, the gentleman from Alabama. 

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you. 

I accept your apology, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Geithner, before we move on regulatory reform, I hope 

you will at least avail yourself to coming back one more time so we 

can talk about that issue because it is of extreme importance, including what the gentleman just said about the new agency which 

will design and determine appropriateness of all financial products. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Come back and talk about that or about 

GSEs? 

Mr. BACHUS. That, GSEs, the whole—I think it would be extremely helpful. 

My first question, the chairman reminded me about Fannie Mae, 

which also you know one of the big things on the table is, how 

much money is the government or the taxpayers ultimately going 

to lose from everything that happened over the last year? And you 

see some figures of $20 trillion, which, you know, that would just 

take—I mean, I don’t even use that figure. I just say, you know, 

we have seen $3 trillion is the amount outstanding. 

13 

But I have looked at those, and I think there are three big areas 

of loss. And I want to see if you sort of go and follow, how much 

does it look like we are ultimately going to lose? The biggest loss 

of all, the $85 billion that we extended to Freddie and Fannie, I 

see no prospect of getting that money back and would like your 

views on that. 

Now, the second biggest one looks to be the car companies. You 

know, we extended $80 billion, and it looks like we have gotten $2 

billion back. And we do have an equity share, you know, which is 

going to be very problematic. I see those as the biggest losses. 

Normally, people say AIG is the biggest loss. But I know the 

property you took on board has diminished in value by about $15 

billion, so I do see maybe right now a $15 billion or $20 billion loss. 

But by far, Fannie is the big one. The car companies and Chrysler 

Finance, and maybe the next one—I know that Bank of America 

and Citi, there is a lot of money there. And of course, Bear Stearns 

and CIT, we probably lost $5 billion there. 

But would you go over that? Are there others? In fact, I see some 

of the programs are making money. But I see those two big ones 

are Fannie being the biggest, about $85 billion, and maybe all 

those $70 billion. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Congressman, I think what you did is very 

helpful, because I think that some of these broad numbers don’t actually capture exposure, and they don’t represent any reasonable 

estimate of risk of loss to the taxpayer. And you are doing it the 

right way, which is to look at the areas of our system which were 

most damaged, most at risk, and try to build up from that. 

But I don’t believe we are in the position today really to give you, 

even this month or maybe even this year, a realistic estimate yet 

of those losses. That is the important thing for us to do. One of the 

strengths of our system is that when we make these commitments, 

under our budget rules, we are required to sort of set aside an estimate that is done independently of the Administration of the potential risk of loss to the taxpayer. 

Let me just take the positive side of this for just a minute. As 

you said, some of these programs are making money. I will just 

give you two examples. You know, we have had I think in the 

range of $80 billion in capital come back to the Treasury in just 

over the last 2 months. 

Mr. BACHUS. You have a Capital Purchase Plan making money— 

Secretary GEITHNER. Right. 

Mr. BACHUS. That is on the lending program. 

Secretary GEITHNER. And if you look at the value of the investment the government made in Goldman Sachs after the warrants, 

the government did realize a 23 percent annual return on investment. And that is a measure of the effectiveness of the policies that 

Congress helped put in place to try to bring more stability to our 

financial system. With the effect of those actions, the ultimate cost 

of this crisis could prove to be very modest relevant to the scale of 

the risk we confronted, but we won’t know that until— 

Mr. BACHUS. And let me ask another question, but I think you 

have Fannie and the car companies are our biggest loss, looking to 

me, maybe AIG. 

14 

You know, you are talking about the Capital Purchase Plan. The 

idea there was we put the money in the banks. They will lend it. 

You get a multiplier effect, and then it will pass through the economy, and I think a velocity is the economic term there. Of course 

they are holding on to it, but that is because of the capital requirements. They are restocking their capital. Some of them are lending 

it. But tell me why we didn’t really see that multiplier effect? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Well, I think you did. 

Mr. BACHUS. Did we? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Remember, a dollar of capital is equivalent to between $8 and $12 of lending capacity. So if you are short a 

dollar of capital, you are going to have to reduce lending by $8 to 

$12. So on the scale of our financial system, just think of this, so 

without that initial $250 billion of capital the previous Administration put into the financial system, you would have seen overall 

lending capacity decline by well over $1 trillion, $1 trillion to $2 

trillion. So you did see the benefits of that. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Again, welcome. We are sort of wearing that seat out, Mr. Secretary, with your presence, but we do appreciate it. 

In my opening remarks, I referred to the rating agencies. And we 

paid some particular attention to the White Paper and the suggestions of Treasury. I am not necessarily overwhelmed with the 

strong position— 

Secretary GEITHNER. I had that sense. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. —that you have taken. Run through some of the 

alternatives we have. Could you give me arguments pro or con, 

issuer pay, whether or not if we take issuer pay away that will 

have a positive effect for straightening out some of the problem, 

and if we do, where could we allocate that pay? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I think you are right that many people say 

that the fundamental problem is in the issuer pay model. But having looked at that question over a long period of time and having 

listened to the experts on it, I don’t see a practical viable alternative. There have been some models that don’t have that structure tested. They didn’t seem to work that well. But I agree with 

you; this is an important area of reform. And of course, we don’t 

have the monopoly of wisdom in these areas, and we are happy to 

look at any idea, including the ones you listed in your opening 

statements. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. How soon do you think we should try and get 

the package of the items we are talking about and the White Paper 

referred to, how soon should they be finished? Would you feel comfortable that we have responded to the— 

Secretary GEITHNER. Meaning when do we want to have these 

reforms in place? 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Yes. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Well, I think they need to be done as a 

package. You have made that point yourself many times. You 

know, you can’t fix this by just looking at capital over here and 

looking at some action over here. And in the systemic stuff, including on the rating agencies, you have to look at the comprehensive 

set of reforms together as a package. And as I said in my opening 

15 

remarks, I think it is very important we move this year, just because, as you have already heard, given the scale of interest affected by these reforms, given the amount of authority we are proposing to take away from people who have it today, there is a lot 

of resistance and opposition. And if we wait or we try to do it piecemeal, it is going to be much harder, I think, for this committee to 

find consensus on something sufficiently strong. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Now, we are working on something on insurance, and I know Treasury is setting something up. If we don’t get 

a national jurisdiction over the insurance industry of some element, 

how will this systemic risk regulator work? Won’t that leave it very 

deficient and over a very large portion of our financial industry? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I agree that, as you saw in the model line 

insurance companies and in AIG, one of the things at the center 

of this crisis was you had entities that were not only insurance 

companies with no Federal oversight of any meaningful level writing dramatically large commitments for credit protection with no 

meaningful levels of capital against that, and that is something we 

can’t afford to allow to happen in the future. 

So I think the framework that we proposed, which largely models 

on something you proposed, to begin the process of putting in place 

a Federal level oversight entity, it will be very important. But, of 

course, our job is not just to deal with the last war, but to make 

sure that we are putting in place something that is going to capture those weaknesses and vulnerabilities more quickly in the future. But I think you are hiding one particular example of the 

weakness of our current framework. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Well, I appreciate that and I look forward to 

working with you. 

And we should not be any more than one telephone call away, 

Mr. Secretary. 

I yield back my time Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Mr. Secretary. It is always good to see you. If I had 

more than 5 minutes, we would actually talk about a few of the 

things that we agree on. But given the limited time, I must 

admit— 

Secretary GEITHNER. I could use my time to describe those. 

Mr. HENSARLING. On your time, yes; on my time, no. 

Let’s continue on with our GSE history lesson if we can. Beginning in 1990, Fannie and Freddie’s investment portfolios grew tenfold. In 1995, HUD first authorized Fannie and Freddie to purchase the subprime securities, including loans to low-income borrowers. In 2004 alone, Fannie and Freddie purchased $175 billion 

in subprime mortgages, accounting for 44 percent of the market. 

From 2005 to 2007, Fannie and Freddie purchased approximately 

$1 trillion, a number that is all too common in this Congress, $1 

trillion in subprime and Alt-A loans, and the list goes on. That is 

the history. 

Where do we find ours today? We know that Fannie and 

Freddie’s share of the origination market has now increased from 

roughly half to 75 percent. At last look, the taxpayers have paid 

out, I believe, $85 billion that none of us expect to get back. They 

16 

are on the hook for an additional $315 billion, principally for helping securitize loans to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back 

in the first place. 

Now, Mr. Secretary, you have said in, I believe in rolling out the 

White Paper before the Senate Banking Committee on June 18th, 

‘‘we wanted to make sure we were focusing on central issues of this 

crisis.’’ I know you are concerned about Fannie and Freddie, but as 

a logical conclusion, since there is not a proposal beyond a study 

of the GSEs in the Administration’s proposal, that the Administration has concluded that Fannie and Freddie were not a central 

cause of the crisis. 

Secretary GEITHNER. No, I would say that Congress in its wisdom passed legislative authority that provided for, for the first 

time, a modern oversight capacity over these institutions. That was 

done in the summer of 2008. 

Mr. HENSARLING. So if I could, Mr. Secretary— 

Secretary GEITHNER. But I think they did play a fragile role. 

Mr. HENSARLING. I do have limited time. So it is a central cause, 

but do you believe to a great extent it has already been remedied? 

Secretary GEITHNER. No. Could I just finish this one thing? 

And I agree with you on this. As a government, we are going to 

have to figure out their future. What they are today is not going 

to be their future. It is not in their future. 

Mr. HENSARLING. But why not include it in the legislative proposal if it is a central cause and needs to be addressed? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Because we are rarely accused of insufficient ambition. We are taking on a lot of things. We are trying to 

solve a lot of problems in this area. And we think we want to do 

that one, don’t need to do that right now, cannot credibly begin to 

think about that reasonably right now because they are now the 

entire mortgage market in the country because of the deep failures 

we saw across the banking system. But that in time will come, and 

I think it will come relatively quickly. 

Mr. HENSARLING. I understand your answer, Mr. Secretary. I 

have limited time. 

Let’s think about another ambition then of the Administration. 

Again, I am not going to adhere to your terminology or the chairman’s terminology. What I see is a new government agency being 

proposed to approve consumer financial products, the CFPA. 

Apart from subprime mortgages, can you point to any other consumer financial product that you believe was a but-for cause of this 

credit crisis? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I want to just agree with one thing you said 

in your opening statement first, which is to say there is a lot of 

dumb regulation in our country. And part of our challenge is 

smarter regulation, not just more regulation. 

But I think if you look at credit products marketed to consumers, 

not just subprime, a broader array of mortgage products, and in 

the credit card area, beyond credit cards, too, there were a lot of 

examples of practices that we should not have tolerated in this 

country. 

Mr. HENSARLING. I agree with you, Mr. Secretary. 

But the question is, besides subprime mortgages, was it viewed 

as a central cause, since you know the Fed has already issued their 

17 

final home mortgage disclosure rules under Regulation Z. And so 

either, one, it is inadequate—I guess I am asking this question— 

why come up with an agency that has the power to ban or modify 

mortgages, ban or modify credit cards, ban or modify remittances? 

And I respectfully disagree with the chairman. I have read the language of his bill. I guess we can have two different lawyers look 

at it and decide what it means to have the ability to render unlawful unfair acts and practices that are subjectively decided on by 

this five-person unelected board. 

I mean, if credit cards and remittances were not a part of the 

central cause, why are they included in this legislation, and Fannie 

and Freddie aren’t? 

Secretary GEITHNER. This is not an agency we are proposing to 

give excessively broad scope. We are proposing to focus on the credit area in particular, where the principal failures were. It is a commission. It is a set of five commissioners appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, not unelected bureaucrats, and with 

authority that now exists in a bunch of other agencies. We want 

to put it in one place. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from New York is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Welcome Mr. Secretary. 

And thank you for your service. A ticking time bomb is the com- mercial mortgage loans. Roughly $1 trillion will become due in the 

next couple of years, and the credit markets are totally frozen. I 

am told they can’t get refinancing anywhere. So we will be looking 

at bankruptcies and defaults that will have a terrible effect on the 

regional banks that have invested heavily in commercial mortgage 

loans, and community banks, not to mention the loss of jobs and 

commercial activity. 

I would like to know if you are putting some of your creative attention to this problem. I know that Treasury came forward with 

the proposed guidance on residential-backed securities, mortgagebacked securities, that allowed them to restructure. As you know, 

under current law, the parties have to wait until a default is imminent before borrowers would put up new capital. 

And there has been some indication that Treasury is looking at 

issuing administrative guidance that would temporarily ease these 

rules so that borrowers can proactively discuss possible loan modifications with those who service their loans in order to deal with 

these issues while there is still time to deal with them. And my 

question is, are you looking at this? Are you intending to put forward guidance? When can we expect this guidance, and what other 

steps are you taking to prevent this ticking time bomb to our economy? 

Secretary GEITHNER. We have not made a judgment on whether 

guidance in that particular area is necessary or appropriate or possible, but that is something we would be happy to talk to you and 

your staff about in more detail. 

Stepping back a second, you are right to say this is still a significant challenge for the U.S. financial system. We do have in place 

today, though, relatively creative, carefully designed programs to 

help mitigate the effects. The first is the program that allows us 

to give capital to community banks, a program we expanded and 

18 

extended 2 or 3 months ago. And that is a very important thing 

to do. 

The second is a program we designed with the Fed to provide financing to the markets that are central and important to commercial real estate financing. Now those are important programs. We 

think they can be helpful in this. But I think you are right to say 

this is still going to be a challenge for our economy and our financial system to work through. 

Mrs. MALONEY. What is the problem with giving the same treatment to commercial-backed securities that you gave to residential 

mortgage-backed facilities? If this will help them refinance—and 

we are not talking about forcing them to modify or extend loans, 

but simply allowing them to begin the dialogue to see if they can 

work this out. 

Secretary GEITHNER. I understand why you are drawing attention to this issue, and I commend you for doing it. But this is an 

enormously complicated set of issues, and it is something we have 

to work through very carefully. As I said, we would be happy to 

talk to you and your staff about this in more detail. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Then, secondly, when we talk about the Consumer Protection Agency, which I totally and completely support, 

but I also support letting the agencies maintain these protections 

for consumers in these agencies. A great deal of how well an agency performs is who is in charge, who is appointed. And oftentimes, 

there is a political agenda. We have seen very ineffective chairmen 

or commissions or whatever and others that really protected consumers. So I believe consumer protection is so important that we 

should have a check and balance. 

And to give the example of the Federal Reserve that was so helpful to this Congress in the passage of the Credit Cardholders’ Bill 

of Rights, I truly believe momentum did not come to this effort 

until they came forward with a very well-thought-out rule that 

helped move the process forward. 

So it seems to me that it would be counteractive and put in jeopardy consumer protections to take away the right for other agencies 

that have the in-depth understanding that it would take years for 

a new agency to learn, to take that away from them and to also 

counter a situation where you may have an agency head who is not 

performing the way they should or carries a political agenda. We 

have certainly seen that at the FDA time and time again. 

Secretary GEITHNER. I understand that concern. We thought 

about that a lot carefully, but let me just make the other case. If 

you give this agency only rule-writing authority and no enforcement authority, it will be too weak, and the rules won’t be well designed, as I said in my opening statements. Because they are not 

responsible for enforcing, they won’t have the incentive to design 

the rules carefully to meet the needs of both consumers and the 

basic realities the way these businesses work. 

So that is one reason. The second reason is that right now what 

you have been proposing is you are leaving in place with a bunch 

of different people now enforcement authority that frankly was not 

well used or deployed. It is in a bunch of different places now, and 

I think it is very hard to look at that system and say that it did 

anything close to an adequate job of what it was designed to do. 

19 

So I think it is a hard case to make that enforcement as effective 

as it needs to be in the future if you leave it where it has been. 

Mrs. MALONEY. I would move the enforcement to the protection 

agency but allow the others to continue with their rulemaking and 

their input into protecting consumers. 

Secretary GEITHNER. So you would move enforcement and leave 

rule-writing authority where it is? 

Mrs. MALONEY. As a backup. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Again, as I said, we want to have a strong 

agency with the right balance between innovation and protection, 

and we would be happy to work with you and your colleagues on 

how best to achieve that. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. [presiding] The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Neugebauer for 5 minutes. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, 

thank you for coming today. Earlier in the week, Chairman 

Bernanke was here, and we entered into a dialogue, and he at the 

end stated that when it comes to separating the financial products 

regulator from the primary regulator he was opposed to that because he thought it bifurcated the regulatory process. I guess the 

first question is—and I am not trying to pit you two against each 

other—why is he wrong and why are you right? 

Secretary GEITHNER. As the Chairman said, I think it is perfectly 

reasonable and understandable that the institutions that have this 

authority and have teams of dedicated, motivated, experienced people with that responsibility today, they are not enthusiastic about 

giving up that authority. And I, with great respect to the Chairman 

and the other supervisors who are reluctant to do this, they are 

doing what they should. They would just defend the traditional 

prerogatives of their agencies. And I think, frankly, all arguments 

need to be viewed through that basic prism. And I understand that 

obligation they feel. 

On the substance, though, these are very different types of responsibilities. Prudential supervision is different from consumer 

protection. And I don’t think—again we have had a running national experiment as a country living with them being done together in their existing basic framework and that did not turn out 

so well for us. 

So I think the basic point is that I don’t think there is a plausible defense of maintaining that current system in place today, although I understand why people who still preside over those authorities are trying to make the case to preserve them. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I think the question, then, if you are going to 

have two different agencies, then what is the size of an agency that 

has to basically audit or oversee every financial institution in this 

country for their compliance? And what does that cost and who is 

going to pay for that? 

Secretary GEITHNER. That is an important question. But let us 

just step back right now. As you said at the beginning, there are 

existing teams of examiners spread across bank supervisory agencies and to some extent the FTC today, with responsibility for consumer protection. So we would like to take that expertise and put 

it in a single place, less diffused, take advantage of that accumulated experience and have that entity be responsible for this imporVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:44 Feb 16, 2010 Jkt 053248 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53248.TXT TERRIE
20 

tant function. Since I think overall supervision was inadequate, 

particularly over the nonbank sector. It is not—I am not sure I can 

tell today what you are going to need in term of the overall resource envelope. But we can take advantage of the fact that there 

are substantial existing resources today. They are just spread out 

in a place where they have not been optimally deployed. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Does it concern you, though, when I read your 

legislation, I see the charge of that and you spend a lot of time 

talking about this particular area in your recommendation. Other 

areas are pretty short, but this area—and I think what begins to 

look like to me is that these—products that could be approved that 

are going to be ‘‘the optimum product begins to look like government trying to limit the choices of the American people.’’ In other 

words, this is kind of the optimum credit card, this is the optimum 

mortgage, this is the optimum car loan, and to me, I don’t see that 

as a role of the Federal Government. 

So I think there is a difference between consumer protection, and 

I think all of us are for that. And then there is the other piece of 

it, which is product, the government determining what products 

the American people get to look at. I am going to be on the ‘‘no’’ 

category of the government telling us what kind of financial products we should have. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Generally, I agree with you on that. And if 

we were proposing that, I would agree with your criticism and I 

would share it. But we are not proposing that. So let me just be 

clear about this. 

We are suggesting that as part of a broad range of reforms to fix 

these vulnerable business systems, there should be a set of standardized, simple to understand, clear disclosure set of products that 

are available to consumers, that they can choose to avail themselves of or choose not to. We make it very clear and explicit that 

we want banks and others institutions to have the ability still to 

market other products to consumers. But even as your colleague 

said, there needs to be stronger protections in place against fraud 

and predation in those types of products. 

So we have a relatively pro-choice proposal here, and by suggesting that firms should be marketing standardized, more simple, 

with clear disclosure products, we are not materially limiting 

choice. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I think we all agree with the disclosure piece 

that there is a lot of difference between good disclosure and the 

government picking the products, and I think that to be very careful if this becomes an endorsement of the Federal Government of 

certain products. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from California. 

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

Mr. Geithner, we certainly appreciate your presence here today, 

and I would like to congratulate you on the strong leadership that 

you are already providing for the Consumer Financial Protection 

Agency. I think it is very important. I am absolutely dedicated to 

the proposition that we can do something for consumers. We held 

a very important press conference led by our chairman just yesterday, I am releasing an editorial today. When we are on recess, my 

first town hall meeting will be on this issue, and I will plug it into 

21 

stops that I will be making for speaking engagements in New Jersey, Tennessee, Georgia, and some other places. So I believe that 

this is very important and again I appreciate the work that you are 

doing. 

Many of our members are very appreciative of that and will be 

joining you in your efforts. So I won’t talk about that anymore in 

my limited period of time. I have to focus on what I can do for job 

creation. I don’t have to tell you that the unemployment rates in 

minority communities and poor communities are double digit, have 

been for a long time, and when we see 14 and 15 percent like in 

New York, you are really talking in some census strike areas 35, 

40 percent around this country. And so I am very interested in 

doing everything that I can do to help create jobs. 

To that end, you know, I have been a real advocate in pushing 

for a minority participation with the Treasury on a number of your 

programs that have been developed under the TARP, the PPIP, minority and women owned programs—well, the PPIP program in 

particular is your latest effort. Let me thank you for paying attention and including some minority firms in cooperation with some 

of the majority firms. I am very pleased that we have at least one 

firm that will be a main participant in the effort, and I am very 

pleased that we have identified and you have helped to select 

through your work minority firms that can participate with majority firms. 

But in examining what the minority firms are doing, I am finding that they are getting more fee-based work rather than—flat-fee 

work, rather than percentages. We want to beef up the participation with our minority firms to make sure that they are earning 

credible amounts of money because this money goes back into these 

minority communities. 

If you would take a look at Magic Johnson, for example, and 

what he has been able to do showing people that you can go into 

the minority community, you can do business, you can make a profit, and you can create jobs. So we need a lot more of that, and I 

would like to commend to you our database which we have been, 

I think, trying to share with you so that you will have access to 

those firms that are very, very capable of providing mainstream 

services and not having to rely on small amounts that are allocated 

by some of these firms that they have joined up with. 

Having said that, have you given more consideration to how you 

can involve women and minority-owned firms in this really, really 

once of a lifetime opportunity that has been afforded through all 

of the work that is going on with TARP? 

Secretary GEITHNER. We are giving more consideration to it. We 

haven’t made a judgement yet whether we are going to allocate, appoint additional managers under this program, but we will be reflecting on that as the program gets underway, and I understand 

how important this is to you. And thank you for highlighting the 

things we have already done. 

Ms. WATERS. As I understand it, you will be involved very soon 

in another aspect of this work. Are you putting something out within the next few weeks relative to the PPIP program still? 

Secretary GEITHNER. We are not fully operational yet. So I think 

the next stage in particular is as these firms we have appointed go 

22 

out and try to raise capital for the program—but anyway, I would 

be happy to come up and spend time with you and talk to you and 

your staff about the details and what is ahead. As I said, we are 

committed to trying to find ways to increase participation of small, 

women-, and minority-owned businesses in these programs. We 

have already done some important things in that areas, and we 

will look for ways to do more. 

Ms. WATERS. I think we are referring to valuation agents, my 

staff just said. That is something that I think is available now. And 

I don’t know what has been done in making sure that you do the 

kind of acceptable outreach to include these firms. They are very 

capable, they are very competent. This sector of the minority community is more prepared, more developed than a lot of our other 

sectors. That is why it is so important for them to participate so 

that they can help create these jobs in needed communities. 

I thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Barrett. Is Mr. Barrett here? 

Then next Mrs. Capito, the gentlewoman from West Virginia. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here and for your service to our Nation. 

I am from a small State and we have a lot of community bankers. A lot of the commerce and residential business is conducted by 

the community bankers in a very personal way. In a hearing last 

week, we had a community banker who talked about a woman who 

had run into a bit of bad luck because her husband was very ill 

and she was able to go to her community banker and reshape temporarily her mortgage so that it could meet her needs. Naturally, 

with the prospect of this Consumer Financial Products Commission 

and other regulations, the community bankers and those of us living in States who are served principally by community bankers are 

very concerned that the flexibility that this bank was able to show 

this individual would not be there for them, not only the flexibility, 

but the timeliness of this. 

What is your response to this kind of situation? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I think you are right. What you described 

is one of the great strengths of our system and it is very important 

that we preserve that. I don’t think there is any credible risk, but 

this is in the hands of this committee and Congress. But I don’t 

think there is any credible risk that in putting in place strong protections for consumers like we have proposed, we would be limiting 

credit to viable businesses and families or materially interfering 

with the capacity of banks to work out those kinds of things. But— 

and that is something we can achieve together. There is no risk as 

this takes shape that we reduce that kind of flexibility. 

Mrs. CAPITO. But if we are going to talk about—and I would like 

to get an explanation of this and I would appreciate your answer 

on this vanilla loan concept where everything has to have a plain 

vanilla sort of look to it. You know, mortgage products are one of 

the things that was talked about. It seems to me that we could be 

limiting some flexibility here for our community bankers, and then 

you get into things like car loans where they are 5 or 6 percent, 

or zero percent down or $1,500 incentives. 

23 

Is this Product Safety Commission going to be able to move fast 

enough to oversee this and is this the kind of thing we are going 

to be overseeing? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I am very glad you raised this again, because it is very important. Again, what we are proposing is that 

banks be required to offer the standardized, simple, easily understood, clear disclosure product. But they can also offer a range of 

other existing products that can be tailored to meet specific needs 

of families and businesses and— 

Mrs. CAPITO. But the regulation of those products, excuse me, 

does fall within that consumer product? 

Secretary GEITHNER. We are again—we are pretty clear in the 

language we put out in our draft proposal. And again we are happy 

to—obviously we are happy to look for ways to make that clear and 

better. But we are largely going to rely on disclosure and penalties 

against fraud to provide the protections against the risks that future innovation in these areas imperils the system. But I think 

that in this area we very much share your objective in trying to 

make sure we are preserving the capacity for competition of products and for innovation in products. That is very important to us. 

This is one of the great strengths of our system. We just let it get 

a little too far away from any basic sense of gravity and we need 

to bring that balance back a little bit. But I very much share the 

objective of preserving competition and product innovation but 

within a better framework of protection against fraud and predation. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Well, I think naturally—and you mentioned this in 

your opening statement or one of the responses to the question, 

that a lot of the problems was really not in the bank sector, it was 

in the nonbank sector. And the community bankers and other 

bankers of this ilk are getting the broad brush painted against 

them not only in negative publicity associated with what has happened, but also as we come in to regulate, as we are known to do 

in Congress and Administrations, overregulate and make it a onesize-fits-all sort of policy that it ends up gutting, I think, a lot of 

what goes on in the day-to-day life of a community banker and 

other small bankers? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I think you are absolutely right. And let me 

just say for the record we have a system which has 8,000 small 

community banks as a core part of our system. It is a great 

strength of our system. Many of those institutions were dramatically more prudent than their larger competitors, and that is a 

good thing about our system. And you are also right to point out 

that one of the challenges they faced was we had a system that allowed nonbanks to compete with them without the same basic 

standards, regulatory framework. That was not so good for them. 

It required many of them, if they wanted to compete, to lower their 

standards. 

That is something we have to prevent. That is why we need a 

level playing field. That is why we need a single point of accountability around these basic standards, more evenly enforced. I think 

the thrust of this will be very helpful for banks, reducing the risk 

in the future. They are going to be faced with that kind of competiVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:44 Feb 16, 2010 Jkt 053248 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53248.TXT TERRIE
24 

tive pressure solely produced by the ability to evade the kind of 

protections Congress legislates. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from North Carolina. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Geithner, in my 

opening statement I unequivocally made it clear to everybody that 

I am a strong supporter of the Consumer Protection Agency, one 

with equally robust mission and authority as the safety and soundness and prudential regulation authority that other agencies have, 

and no less subject to being second guessed or having their actions 

vetoed. 

So I am starting from that proposition. I am not debating that 

philosophical thing anymore. But I am not closing my mind to concerns that are raised, and I want to say that to my committee 

members and to the industry and to the other regulators—three 

things I want to ask you about, which I think have some merit that 

have been raised, and ask you and others if they care to, to work 

with me on. 

One of those you addressed in your opening statement, which 

was the examination authority. And the question I want to ask is, 

will you work with me and us and whomever else wants to work 

on it to make sure that the consumer protection examinations are 

coordinated with the prudential examinations so that we don’t end 

up with duplicative examiners in their different times and overburden the regulated institutions, the ones that are already regulated? 

If you can tell me that yes or no, that would be helpful. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Absolutely. And I think we can do better 

than that. We are proposing to put the prudential supervisor on 

the board of— 

Mr. WATT. That is the—actually the second part of it here. The 

resolution of potential conflicts when—although I have asked multiple people to tell me what those conflicts are and I have yet to 

find any real credible ones that don’t either fall clearly into consumer protection or clearly into safety and soundness, in which 

case a clear articulation of the authorities would suffice, but my 

question is, will you work with me to make sure that when there 

is some kind of conflict, there is an appeal or review mechanism? 

I thought it was going to be in the financial services oversight 

council, but I have reviewed what you all sent over in the last few 

days and I don’t see it particularly addressed there, and I want to 

make sure that we get that clearly articulated somewhere, that everybody gets coordinated or reviewed if there is a real conflict, not 

a contrived one. 

Will you work with me on that? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Absolutely. What we propose to do at two 

levels, someone at the level of the board of this new agency where 

we have representatives of the supervisors there on the board, that 

would help, but also at the level of the broader financial services 

oversight council. 

Mr. WATT. The third question that I think is a legitimate question, although I think it is a red herring and I think we ought to 

completely eliminate it as an issue is, will you work with me to 

make sure that there is no presumption of liability for products 

that are issued that are not the so-called plain vanilla products? 

25 

The argument I have heard, which I keep hearing over and over 

again, is that we—if you have a plain vanilla product and we issue 

something else, somebody is going to sue us because we issued 

something—will you work with me to make sure that there is no 

presumption against non-vanilla—plain vanilla products that 

would create any kind of legal liability just because you created— 

offered some other product? That is, I think, the same question 

that Mrs. Capito raised in a different form. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Yes. 

Mr. WATT. Okay. All right. Now, that I have those three things— 

Secretary GEITHNER. I was going to qualify it a little bit, but I 

understand your objective. 

Mr. WATT. —those three things clarified, I am sure there are 

multiple others, but those at least seem to me to have some degree 

of validity and I think we can do all of those three things without 

in any way compromising the authority or subjugating this new 

agency to somebody else. 

I yield back and thank the chairman for the time. 

The CHAIRMAN. I will just say the gentleman speaks for me and 

I think the great majority on our side for that. The gentleman from 

California, Mr. Royce. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. I was just going to go back to an issue 

where the chairman said he was going to correct the record. I don’t 

think there was anything in the record there to correct. The chairman said that the majority of the members had voted against my 

legislation that the Fed, the Federal Reserve, wanted and indeed 

that is true. Most of the members, that is what I said, most of the 

members had voted against that in the House. The chairman said 

the bill did not go out of the Senate. That is true. In a straight 

party line vote in the Senate, it did go out of committee, but it 

couldn’t get off of the Floor on a 55/45 split in the Senate, although 

I do remember at the time the speeches given by Chuck Hagel, who 

was the author on the Senate side of the Fed’s bill, and the speech 

given by John McCain in support and the speech on the floor given 

by Chris Dodd in opposition to it. 

So I just want to again confirm that, yes, indeed, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury as a matter of fact, supported that legislation. And the reason it is important is because we are back to debating that again. If we go back to where OFHEO and HUD were 

in terms of their positions, we basically have a situation where the 

safety and soundness regulator is being trumped, is being prevented just as with the case of Fannie and Freddie. HUD had in 

its mission these affordable housing goals and as a result HUD 

came out with the idea of zero down payment loans. That would 

be anathema to safety and soundness, but no skin in the game, 

zero down payment loans. HUD came out with the idea of allowing 

them to arbitrage. Go ahead and leverage 100 to 1. Now, this was 

absolutely anathema to the regulators for safety and soundness, 

but nevertheless it was allowed to happen. And the amendment to 

try to do something about it and allow the regulator to step in and 

regulate for systemic risk was blocked. When it came to the idea 

of meeting those affordable housing goals by doing $1 trillion in 

subprime, that was encouraged. Not by the safety and soundness 

regulators. For them, they saw in 2004, 2005, 2006, as they came 

26 

up here and advised us against this, they saw where this was 

headed, and so did the Treasury. 

And so now we are in the process of trying to look at the problems that are in the past, but not repeating those problems in the 

future. And that is why I think it is important at the end of the 

day that the regulator for safety and soundness be able to trump 

these other missions. Fannie and Freddie became the most powerful influence or lobby up here. And as you know, I have supported 

a Federal insurance charter for sometime. 

I would like to talk about another issue here. I was concerned 

about the AIG problem and not being able to get our hands around 

the information, and I think you were, too. We have talked about 

that. As you have laid out your regulatory reform proposal, there 

are several problems with the current balkanized State-based regulatory system. It is inefficient. It is costly for consumers. It hampers U.S. competitiveness. It lacks a centralized regulator, which is 

a key concern for me, with an ability to look at the entire U.S. market. As we are looking to streamline and consolidate regulatory authority in the insurance portion of our financial system, it appears 

we may be taking a step back in the banking sector, especially with 

respect to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Within your 

CFPA proposal, you call for creating a floor for consumer protection 

which would allow State consumer laws to go over the top of the 

national standard. 

Bearing in mind what has happened in our insurance market, 

where we have 50 different sets of rules, 50 different regulatory approaches, are you concerned that the negative consequences that 

have arisen in the insurance market could be replicated in the 

banking sector with this approach, and would it not make sense to 

set a ceiling as well as a floor so there is some consistency nationwide? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I understand the concern you are raising, 

and it is difficult to get the balance perfect. We thought about it 

a lot. What we laid out was our best judgment. Again, how to make 

sure you have stronger, more uniform protections at the national 

level without depriving States of the ability to go beyond that. But 

I understand the concern again. We thought we got the balance 

right, but this is a very complicated issue. This committee spent a 

lot of time on these issues in the past in the preemption area. And 

again, we are happy to work with you and try to think through 

how best to get a better balance. 

Mr. ROYCE. I appreciate it. And one last point before my time expires. Would you concur on the thought about Fannie and Freddie, 

some of the points that I made in terms of the systemic risk that 

they pose to the system? 

Secretary GEITHNER. There is no doubt that we as a country let 

Fannie and Freddie get to a point where they posed enormous risk 

to the financial system. No doubt about it. It would have been good 

if we had figured out a way to avoid that earlier, and that mistake 

should underpin much of what we do in thinking about how to create a more stable system. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. We have a 

couple more. Mr. Secretary, we will start at 1:00 with the next 

27 

panel. What I plan to do with regard to the questioning is to pick 

up where we have left off with the second panel. So members who 

have already asked of the Secretary—we will go to members who 

haven’t asked. 

Plus—and I talked to the ranking member—we did have a time 

for the Secretary and we would have more time, but 56 procedural 

votes preempted him. They weren’t all procedural, but they were 

all silly. But what we will do is in September when we come back, 

one of the first things we will have is a full session of several hours 

with the Secretary. So we will get back to that. 

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. And I will now recognize for 5 minutes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Miller, if he would like to take 

the time. The gentleman from Texas? 

Let me just take the gentleman from Texas, if he would yield me 

his first 30 seconds. The gentleman from California is right. But 

again, let us be clear, we are not at the old OFHEO/HUD situation. 

In 2007, this committee passed a bill that included some of the 

things that had not been in the previous bill, approved by Secretary Paulson, President Bush, and Mr. Lockhart from OFHEO. 

So we are not now in a situation where the old rules apply. The 

new rules do apply. There will still have to be further changes, but 

we are not in the old situation as a result of legislation in 2008. 

The gentleman from Texas. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the clarification as well. 

Mr. Secretary, welcome again. It is always a treat to hear you. 

I was very impressed with your opening statement. I have been visited by many community bankers, as has been the case with many 

colleagues, and one of the concerns expressed is a desire not to pay 

for the sins of others. They sincerely say this in a literal sense, 

they don’t want their premiums to escalate because of those who 

engaged in 3/27s, 2/28s, prepayment penalties that coincided with 

teaser rates, and many other products that they were not 

purveying. Can you give us your word, please, that they will be 

comforted in knowing that they won’t pay for the sins of others? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I have said this in public before, and I will 

be happy to say it again. But I think they have a point. And I 

think, as Commissioner Bair has already laid out and we are very 

supportive of this, I think we need to move to a point where the 

basic cost of the failures in the system in the future are shared a 

bit more fairly. And I think that is an important thing. But, yes, 

I share that commitment. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, I would dearly like to work with you in making 

sure that they have the level of comfort that I think they richly deserve given that they were not a part of the concerns that we are 

trying to address today. 

Next point. You indicated that penalties against fraud would be 

one of the means by which going forward hopefully we would deter 

some of the products or the behavior that we saw. If you would, 

give a better bit of clarity to that phrase, penalties against fraud. 

Will there be civil as well as penal actions or are we talking civil 

only? 

28 

Secretary GEITHNER. I probably can’t do that justice today, but 

again, I am happy to spend some time working through those 

issues. Again, I think the basic principle—it is not enough to have 

standards, it is not enough to have rules, it is not enough to state 

protections. They have to be enforced. And fraud, violations of 

those protections, there has to be consequences. We need to make 

sure that the framework work in place today provides enough deterrents against those kind of practices reemerging. That is the objective we are working towards, lots of ways to do that. I am happy 

to spend time talking about how best to do that. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. And I would just like to share a thought 

with you as I complete my moment. I understand that we have two 

classes of consumers. We have those who actually consume or deal 

with the products that are being purveyed and then you have another class, the folks who work for minimum wage which just went 

up today to, I think, $7.25 an hour, but who suffer because others 

make unwise choices. They end up losing jobs, we have seen how 

connected the economy is, how interconnected the world is. And by 

virtue of this, I care about those consumers who make $7.25 an 

hour. I care about not only Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that we 

have discussed today, but also Aunt Fannie and Uncle Freddie, 

people who have real lives that are being impacted by those who 

made bad choices. 

So I am here to let you know that I want to work with you, but 

my Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac includes at least two classes of 

Fannies and Freddies. 

Thank you. And I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, 

I did an unusual thing, I yielded back time. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that, and I now recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Garrett. 

Mr. GARRETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Before I begin, will you work with Mr. Watt on all those 

issues? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I am just— 

Mr. GARRETT. I was being funny about it. It was an attempt at 

humor. Thank you. Following those lines— 

The CHAIRMAN. Never mind. Go ahead. 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, thanks. 

Randy asked a question with regard to who do we trust, who do 

we believe with regard to the Feds last week and your position 

here as far as— 

Secretary GEITHNER. You can believe him and believe me. We 

have a difference, it doesn’t mean— 

Mr. GARRETT. Right. One of your comments was sort of intriguing. You said you understood what they were saying, you understood what they were doing. And one of your comments was that 

what they were doing is the right thing, they are defending the 

prerogatives of the agency basically. And you are nodding your 

head and she can’t write that down, but that is a yes, right? Yes. 

Secretary GEITHNER. They are defending the people who have 

worked on these issues over time. 

Mr. GARRETT. Right. 

29 

Secretary GEITHNER. And speaking in favor of preserving the traditional prerogatives of their agency. That is an understandable 

thing to do. It happens all the time. 

Mr. GARRETT. I guess my concern there of course is it then really 

puts us in a hard situation when agencies come before us if that 

is the understanding of the agencies that are going to come from 

aspects from defending the prerogatives of their agencies, whether 

it is the Fed or one of the regulators or whether it is the Treasury, 

if they come to us doing it not for the good necessarily of the overall economy or the country or what have you, but defending their 

prerogatives, you can understand why that raised a red flag when 

I heard that. 

Secretary GEITHNER. No. I think that inherent in your job is to 

think about how to make those choices. 

Mr. GARRETT. And to consider the source? 

Secretary GEITHNER. There is no doubt about it. Absolutely. 

Mr. GARRETT. Going to Mr. Watt’s question, though. You said 

you would work with him with regard to one of the three issues. 

One of the issues was his example of someone coming in for a vanilla product and then getting a more complicated product. And his 

concern is that if the more complicated product isn’t right for me, 

do I have the right to sue the bank that gave me this more complicated product? And you just said that you hoped that you would 

work with him to make sure that you can’t sue the banks just because you are into this new product. Did I understood his question 

right? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I would probably say it differently that 

that. In trying to make sure again we have better protections 

against fraud and predation and in trying to make sure it is possible that people can be able to see, for example, a 30-year fixedrate mortgage alongside a suite of other mortgage products, you 

also want to make sure that they have the ability to choose a 5- 

year adjustable rate mortgage too without presumption, as he said 

it, that they would be vulnerable to challenge for offering products 

other than the vanilla product. That I agree with. 

Mr. GARRETT. What about the flip side of that, though? What if 

an individual comes into the bank and the bank does have these 

more esoteric products and they don’t offer it to the client or the 

individual and all they offer to the customer is the vanilla product. 

Does that client have a right to go back to the bank and say that 

this bank is profiling me and saying that I am not eligible for this 

type of more sophisticated product? 

Secretary GEITHNER. That doesn’t worry me that much. In our 

system—because we will have a lot of banks competing for this 

business—that consumer will be able to go to another institution 

and say, I like the range of choice that institution offers. 

Mr. GARRETT. That certainly should trouble you because we have 

heard a lot of discussion on this panel with regard to something 

called predatory lending, and so many times they said that there 

should be other products that individuals should be entitled to but 

they are just not offered those, and all they are offered are these 

much higher rate products or just really ones that put them in a 

bad situation. 

30 

Secretary GEITHNER. It is very unlikely, I think, that would come 

with an institution that chose on its own only to offer 30-year fixedrate mortgages. It is possible, but I think it is unlikely. 

Mr. GARRETT. In my time remaining, on the wind-down authority 

I have heard different stories, and let me go to the source. On the 

winding down authority—first of all, the chairman made a comment I agree with completely. He said that if we identify who the 

Tier 1 companies are—what did he say the other day? And then 

we shouldn’t have a pre-existing list because if you do, then he said 

you will only exacerbate the problem of too-big-to-fail. I agree with 

that. But under the proposal that has come out right now, it seems 

as though you are beginning to identify them by certain parameters and what have you. So, A, wouldn’t that cause some problem 

here because you are basically telling us who they are and, B, the 

second question—maybe you can get back to me on this—is I have 

heard different stories of where the assessments will be, will the 

assessments only be on the Tier 1 companies? And if the answer 

to that is yes—and you can give the answer off line too—will that 

be potentially harmful to those companies, the remaining companies, if the assessment is too large because you only have a small 

group? 

Respond to the question if you can. 

Secretary GEITHNER. Let me do the first part of your question, 

and the second part and the third part I will be happy to do separately. On the first part, here is our basic challenge. We believe— 

I think there is a very strong case for this—that the largest institutions that present these unique risks to the stability of our system, 

they need to have more conservative constraints on capital and leverage. They need to be holding more resources against the risk of 

loss so that we are less vulnerable in the future to the mistakes 

they made and the system as a whole is better able to withstand 

the effects of their failure. To do that, you have to be able to apply 

differentially higher charges. That requires identifying at least a 

mix of institutions that meet that risk. But we of course deeply understand the moral hazard risks that we live with today and that 

come various variants in this stuff. Again, we will work— 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. I am going to 

do two more. The gentleman from Georgia. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Geithner, welcome 

again. I want to ask you specifically in terms of would you not commit to at least having someone on your staff who is dedicated to 

increasing the participation of African-American-owned firms, management asset firm, other firms, so that they can get business in 

the financial sector as we move in this area? 

Secretary GEITHNER. I think I can do better than that in the 

sense that I would be happy to designate to you the principal Senate confirmed official in the Treasury with broad responsibility over 

the design and management of these programs, part of whose responsibility will be to continue to make sure we are looking for opportunities to increase participation of again small, women-owned, 

and minority-owned businesses in these programs. 

Again we have been pretty careful and pretty effective in expanding those opportunities, and we are happy to work with you on 

ways we can do better. 

31 

Mr. SCOTT. Because there are many, many well-qualified minority-owned firms who, if we don’t make a special effort to make sure 

they have the opportunity to compete, and if it doesn’t come from 

the top, it just doesn’t get done. So I would appreciate it, and I 

know this committee would appreciate your work on that area. 

Now another area that I am vitally concerned about, and that is 

many, or shall we say some in the banking industry, it seems to 

me, are reverting back to some of the very practices that got us 

into this mess. I am sure you are familiar with the reports that 

have come out of now the huge, multimillion dollar, billion dollar 

compensation packages, bonuses that really got us into some of 

this. And they are going right back to it. What can you do about 

that? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Congressman, I just want to make it clear, 

we do not believe we can go back to the set of practices of compensation that prevailed over the last decade and helped contribute 

to this crisis, and that is why we proposed well designed but very 

important reforms in the compensation area, and that is why it is 

very important you are moving question quickly as a committee to 

consider those reforms just next week, I believe. 

But it is important that we do this in the context of broader regulatory reform because it is not going to be enough just to bring 

about better incentives for compensation. We are also going to have 

to put other constraints on risk taking through capital requirements; for example, more conservative safeguards, require firms to 

hold greater cushions against loss. But you need to look at comprehensive reform again to reduce the risks that we start to recreate some of the same problems that got us here. 

Mr. SCOTT. We continue to get complaints from some in the 

banking industry with certain practices. We have the Consumer 

Protection Agency which we are pushing, which unfortunately some 

are fighting very hard. And yet they are not doing the basic things 

that need to be done. They are not lending. What can you do to increase pressure on our banks to lend? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Let me just say two things in response to 

that. One is, there are basically two core substantive strategies 

that you can do that would be helpful in that area. One is again 

to make sure that banks who need capital have access to capital. 

That is critical. Without that, you will have further reduction in 

lending capacity. Banks will have to pull back further. 

The second is to make sure that our broader credit markets that 

compete alongside banks are working better. We have done a lot 

of things in both of those areas, but I think those are the most important effective things we can do. I do think it is important, given 

the cumulative effect of what a bunch of judgements by banks 

across the country did to our economy. I think it is very important 

that they work very hard to earn back the confidence of the American people that they are going to be a source of capital and credit 

for growing businesses and for families going forward. I think it is 

very important to them they work hard to earn back that basic 

trust and confidence. 

Mr. SCOTT. There is another growing practice that is happening 

in our financial sector and some banks, not all, but we have gotten 

reports where, in our rush to allow banks to do a multiplicity of 

32 

services and products in which they have encouraged individuals to 

open up their savings account at this bank, open up their checking 

account at this bank and if they need a loan or home equity loan 

or any loan that they would take at the bank. What happens is 

that oftentimes and particularly now when there is pressure on 

consumers out there to—and they are on the margins, where these 

banks would go in and if they are a week or 2 late on their payment for a loan, they would go in and take that individual’s savings without their knowledge and—or their checking and apply it 

to the loan. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from Delaware, for the last question. 

Mr. CASTLE. It has been stated perhaps by you, but I know by 

others, that various financial entities in this country seem to be 

relatively free or flexible in selecting their regulators, if you will. 

It is a little beyond the purview of this hearing. That just interested me. I mean, you are talking about everything from State regulators to the Fed, the OCC, the FDIC, the OTS or whatever. And 

I would think that the regulator would be dictated by how they are 

structured. So what are they doing that allows them to be able to 

so-called select their regulator and how great a problem is that in 

terms of some of the enforcement mechanisms we are concerned 

about? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Let me just give you some of the most compelling examples of that. Countrywide and WAMU were banks, 

found the strictures of being banks inconvenient, shifted their charter to a thrift charter, and were able to take advantage of what in 

retrospect can only be judged as lower standards of enforcement, 

and they grew dramatically or a more rapid pace after they made 

that basic switch. That is one example. But there were others in 

our system, too. 

Mr. CASTLE. Should we be looking at legislation to change that? 

Secretary GEITHNER. We should. We have proposed as the centerpiece of our legislation that we eliminate the thrift charter and 

combine Federal responsibility for these bank-like entities into one 

place, to eliminate— 

Mr. CASTLE. Do you think that will solve a lot of the—not all of 

the problems, but a lot of the problems? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Not all. But in the banking area, that difference between the thrift and the bank charter as it was enforced—now, there are hundreds of well-run thrifts across the 

country. But there were unfortunately a few very big examples that 

caused a lot of damage where effectively people would go from one 

system that was stronger to a weaker system, grow market share, 

took themselves to the edge of the abyss because of that, and that 

is something we have to prevent. 

Mr. CASTLE. Changing subjects, on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency—and this may be in some of your writings. You are 

submitting a lot of writings. Sometimes, I think in your spare time, 

you wrote the health care bill and the energy bill and a few other 

things. And I haven’t had a chance to read it all. Maybe this is 

spelled out in there. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would have to rule out attacks on the witness’ 

character. 

33 

Secretary GEITHNER. I am innocent of that particular charge. 

That is right. 

Mr. CASTLE. How do you view this would be structured? How big 

would it be? How expensive would it be? Would there be offsets and 

reductions in employment in the other various agencies that are 

now regulating if it were to occur? How do you foresee that? Maybe 

that is not thought out carefully yet. 

Secretary GEITHNER. There is a whole range of complicated design questions we have to work through. But again, the simple 

thing you said well, which is again there is a substantial body of 

existing examiners who now do consumer protection spread across 

our multitude of bank regulators, and what we ideally do is take 

advantage of that expertise in shaping the workforce of this new 

agency. That would be the ideal thing. It would not be sensible not 

to do that. And I think that as a result, the amount of employment 

in what will be bank supervisor with a narrow set of responsibilities for safety and soundness would be reduced. 

Mr. CASTLE. Is it your view that every new product that the bank 

would issue, a change in a credit card or whatever it may be, would 

have to go through an approval process with this Consumer Protection Agency? 

Secretary GEITHNER. Absolutely not. 

Mr. CASTLE. How would they determine whether they go through 

it or not? In your view, what is going to be the methodology for determining what needs to be submitted and what doesn’t? 

Secretary GEITHNER. We don’t envision that process. I don’t 

think that would be necessary or desirable. Again, the core of our 

proposal is to say we have put out broad standards and principles 

that should govern products and practices in this area. There is a 

lot of good stuff that has happened somewhat late, but good stuff 

that has happened in the last 2 years both in the credit card and 

mortgage area. You heard some in the paper today. We build on 

that basic model. But what we really want to do is just to make 

sure that consumers have the ability to take advantage of a more 

standardized plain vanilla, easier to understand product even as 

they contemplate a range of other different sets of choices. That is 

the basic thrust of our proposal. 

Mr. CASTLE. As you know, some of the existing regulators are not 

totally happy with this change, shall we say. In my judgment, they 

are starting to do a lot better than they did before. I will be the 

first to agree with you that there were serious problems, but the 

credit card business and the Fed is an example of starting to do 

a much better job. What is your response to them? There is a great 

deal of expertise at the Fed, for example, with some of this. 

Secretary GEITHNER. There is. 

Mr. CASTLE. I am worried about giving that up. 

Secretary GEITHNER. There is a lot of respect. We have to take 

advantage of that. But again, I think we had a long period of testing of the efficacy of that system, and it didn’t serve us well 

enough. 

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. As the song goes, see 

you in September. And this part of the hearing is ended and the 

34 

second panel—we will take about 5 minutes for the second panel 

to get in place. 

Let me apologize in advance for the fact that we are having some 

votes. We will begin the opening statements and some questions. 

At some point, there will be votes. As a practical matter, we probably cannot continue. But we have had a great deal to do here, and 

I apologize to everybody for the inconvenience. The only thing 

worse I think would have been not to have tried, and we will proceed. 

And we will start with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. 

Bernanke, whom I caught unawares and I apologize. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BEN S. BERNANKE, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE 

SYSTEM 

Mr. BERNANKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Frank, 

Ranking Member Bachus, and other members of the committee, I 

appreciate the opportunity to discuss ways that the U.S. financial 

regulatory system can be enhanced to better protect against systemic risks. 

The financial crisis of the past 2 years has had diverse causes, 

including both private sector and regulatory failures to identify and 

manage risks, but also gaps and weaknesses in the regulatory 

structure itself. 

This experience clearly demonstrates that the United States 

needs a comprehensive and multifaceted strategy, both to help prevent financial crises and to mitigate the effects of crises that may 

occur. That strategy must include sustained efforts by all our financial regulatory agencies to make more effective use of existing 

authorities. 

It also invites action by the Congress to fill existing gaps in regulation, remove impediments to consolidated oversight of complex institutions, and provide the instruments necessary to cope with serious financial problems that do arise. 

In keeping with the committee’s interest today in the systemic 

risk agenda, I would like to identify the key elements that I believe 

should be part of that agenda. 

First, all systemically important financial institutions should be 

subject to effective consolidated supervision and to tougher standards for capital liquidity and risk management consistent with the 

risks that the failures such a firm may pose to the broader financial system. 

Second, supervision and regulation of systemically critical firms 

and of financial institutions more generally should incorporate a 

more macro prudential perspective, that is, one that takes into account the safety and soundness of the financial system as a whole. 

Such an approach, which considers interlinkages and interdependencies among firms and markets that could threaten the financial 

system in a crisis, complements the traditional micro prudential 

orientation of supervision and regulation which is focused primarily 

on the safety and soundness of individual institutions. 

Third, better and more formal mechanisms should be established 

to help identify, monitor, and address potential or emerging systemic risks across the financial system as a whole, including gaps 

35 

in regulatory or supervisory coverage that could present systemic 

risks. The Federal Reserve Board sees substantial merit in the establishment of a council to conduct macro prudential analysis and 

coordinate oversight of the financial system. The expertise and information of the members of such a council, each with different primary responsibilities, could be of great value in developing a systemwide perspective. 

Fourth, to help address the too-big-to-fail problem and mitigate 

moral hazard, a new resolution process for systemically important 

nonbank financial firms is needed. Such a process would allow the 

government to wind down a troubled systemically important firm 

in an orderly manner that avoids major disruptions to the broader 

financial system and the economy. Importantly, this process should 

allow the government to impose haircuts on creditors and shareholders of the firm when consistent with the overarching goal of 

protecting the financial system and the broader economy. 

And fifth, ensuring that the financial infrastructure supporting 

key markets can withstand and not contribute to periods of financial stress also is critical to addressing both the too-big-to-fail problem and systemic risks. For this reason, reform should ensure that 

all systemically important payment clearing and settlement arrangements are subject to consistent and robust oversight and prudential standards. 

Comprehensive reform of financial regulations should address 

other important issues as well, including the needs for enhanced 

protections for consumers and investors in their financial dealings 

and for improved international coordination in the development of 

regulations and in the supervision of internationally active firms. 

Let me end by noting that there are many possible ways to organize or to reorganize the financial regulatory structure. None would 

be perfect and each will have advantages and disadvantages. However, one criterion I would suggest as you consider various institutional alternatives is the basic principle of accountability. Collective 

bodies of regulators can serve many useful purposes, such as identifying emerging risks, coordinating responses to new problems, 

recommending actions to plug regulatory gaps, and scrutinizing 

proposals for significant regulatory initiatives from all participating 

agencies. But when it comes to specific regulatory actions or supervisory judgments, collective decisionmaking can mean that nobody 

owns the decision and that the lines of responsibility and accountability are blurred. Achieving an effective mix of collective process 

and agency responsibility, with an eye toward relevant institutional incentives, is critical to a successful reform. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify in these important 

matters. The Federal Reserve looks forward to working with the 

Congress and the Administration to achieve meaningful regulatory 

reform that will strengthen our financial system and reduce both 

the probability and the severity of future crisis. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Bernanke can be found on 

page 72 of the appendix.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Bair. 

36 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SHEILA C. BAIR, CHAIRMAN, 

FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION (FDIC) 

Ms. BAIR. Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and members of the committee, thank you for holding this hearing and for 

the opportunity to give our views on reforming financial regulation. 

The issues before the committee are as challenging as any that 

we face since the days of the Great Depression. We are emerging 

from a credit crisis that has greatly harmed the American economy. 

Homes have been lost, jobs have been lost, retirement and investment accounts have plummeted in value. 

The proposals by the Administration to fix the problems that 

caused this crisis are both thoughtful and comprehensive. Regulatory gaps within the financial system were a major cause of the 

crisis. Differences in regulating capital, leverage, and complex financial instruments as well as in protecting consumers allowed 

rampant regulatory arbitrage. Reforms are urgently needed to close 

these gaps. 

At the same time, we must recognize that many of the problems 

involve financial firms that were already subject to extensive regulation. Therefore, we need robust and credible mechanisms to ensure that all market players actively monitor and control risk taking. We must find ways to impose greater market discipline on systemically important institutions. In a properly functioning market 

and economy, there will always be winners and losers. And when 

firms, through their own mismanagement and excessive risk taking, are no longer viable, they should fail. 

Efforts to prevent them from failing ultimately distort market 

mechanisms, including the incentive to compete and to allocate resources to the most efficient players. Unfortunately, the actions 

taken during the past year have reinforced the idea that some financial organizations are simply too-big-to-fail. To end too-big-tofail, we need a practical, effective, and highly credible mechanism 

for the orderly resolution of large and complex institutions that is 

similar to the process for FDIC insured banks. 

When the FDIC closes a bank, shareholders and creditors take 

the first loss. We are talking about a process where the failed bank 

is closed, where the shareholders and creditors typically suffer severe loss, where management is replaced, and where the assets of 

the failed institution are sold off. The process is harsh, as it should 

be. It is not a bailout. It quickly reallocates assets back into the 

private sector and into the hands of better management. It also 

sends a strong message to the market that investors and creditors 

face losses when an institution fails, as they should. 

We also believe potentially systemic institutions should be subject to assessments that provide disincentives for complexity and 

high risk behavior and reduce taxpayer exposure. I am very 

pleased that President Obama, earlier this week, said he supports 

the idea of assessments. Funds raised through an assessment 

should be kept in reserve to provide working capital for the resolution of large financial organizations to further insulate taxpayers 

from losses. 

In addition to a credible resolution process, we need a better 

structure for supervising systemically important institutions, and 

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37 

cial system. The new structure, featuring a strong oversight council, should address such issues as excessive leverage, inadequate 

capital, and overreliance on short-term funding. A regulatory council would give the necessary perspective and expertise to look at 

our financial system holistically. 

Finally, the FDIC strongly supports creating a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. This would help eliminate regulatory 

gaps between bank and nonbank providers of financial products 

and services by setting strong, consistent, across-the-board standards. Since most of the consumer products and practices that gave 

rise to the current crisis originated outside of traditional banking, 

focusing on nonbank examination and enforcement is essential for 

dealing with the most abusive lending practices that consumers 

face. 

The Administration’s proposal would be even more effective if it 

included tougher oversight for all financial services providers and 

assured strict consumer compliance oversight for banks. As both 

the bank regulator and deposit insurer, I am very concerned about 

taking examination and enforcement responsibility away from bank 

regulators. It would disrupt consumer protection oversight of banks 

and would fail to adequately address the current lack of nonbank 

supervision. 

Consumer protection and risk supervision are actually two sides 

of the same coin. Splitting the two would impair access to critical 

information and staff expertise and likely create unintended consequences. 

Combining the unequivocal prospect of an orderly closing, a 

stronger supervisory structure, and tougher consumer protections 

will go a very long way to fixing the problems of the last several 

years and to assuring that any future problems can be handled 

without cost to the taxpayer. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Bair can be found on page 

56 of the appendix.] 

Mr. KANJORSKI. [presiding] Thank you very much, Ms. Bair. 

Our next presenter will be the Honorable John C. Dugan, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN C. DUGAN, COMPTROLLER, OFFICE OF THE COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY (OCC) 

Mr. DUGAN. Thank you, Mr. Kanjorski, Ranking Member Bachus, 

and members of the committee. I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the Administration’s comprehensive proposal for reforming the 

regulation of financial services. 

The OCC supports many elements of the proposal, including the 

establishment of a Council of Financial Regulators to identify and 

monitor systemic risk. We believe that having a centralized and 

formalized mechanism for gathering and sharing systemically significant information and making recommendations to individual 

regulators makes good sense. We also support enhanced authority 

to resolve systemically significant financial firms. 

The FDIC currently has broad authority to resolve systemically 

significant banks in an orderly manner, but no comparable resoluVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:44 Feb 16, 2010 Jkt 053248 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53248.TXT TERRIE
38 

tion authority exists for systemically significant holding companies 

of either banks or non-banks. The proposal would appropriately extend resolution authority like the FDIC’s to such companies. 

We also believe it would be appropriate to designate the Federal 

Reserve Board as the consolidated supervisor of all systemically 

significant financial firms. The Board already plays this role with 

respect to the largest bank holding companies. In the financial crisis of the last 2 years, the absence of a comparable authority with 

respect to large securities and insurance firms proved to be an 

enormous problem. The proposal would fill this gap by extending 

the Federal Reserve’s holding company regulation to such firms. 

However, one aspect of this part of the proposal goes much too 

far, which is to grant broad new authority to the Federal Reserve 

to override the banking supervisor on standards, examination, and 

enforcement applicable to the bank. Such override power would undermine the authority and the accountability of the banking supervisor. 

We also support the imposition of more stringent capital and liquidity standards on systemically significant firms. This would 

help address the heightened risk to the system and mitigate the 

competitive advantage they could realize from being designated as 

systemically significant. 

And we support the proposal to effectively merge the OTS into 

the OCC with a phaseout of the Federal thrift charter. However, 

it is critical that the resulting agency be independent from the 

Treasury Department and the Administration to the same extent 

that the OCC and the OTS are currently independent. 

Finally, we support enhanced consumer protection standards for 

financial services providers and believe that an independent agency 

like the proposed CFPA could achieve that goal. However, we do 

have significant concerns with some elements of the proposed 

CFPA stemming from its consolidation of all financial consumer 

protection, rule writing, examination, and enforcement in one agency, which would completely and inappropriately divorce all these 

functions from the comparable safety and soundness functions at 

the Federal banking agencies. 

I believe it makes sense to consolidate all consumer protection 

rule writing in a single agency with the rules applying to all financial providers of a product, both bank and non-bank, but we believe 

the rules must be uniform and that banking supervisors must have 

meaningful input into formulating these rules. Unfortunately, the 

proposed CFPA falls short on both counts. 

First, the rules would not be uniform, because the proposal 

would expressly authorize States to adopt different rules for all financial firms, including national banks, by repealing the Federal 

preemption that has always allowed national banks to operate 

under uniform Federal standards. This repeal of the uniform Federal standards option is a radical change that will make it far more 

difficult and costly for national banks to provide financial services 

to consumers in different States having different rules, and these 

costs will ultimately be borne by the consumer. The change will 

also undermine the national banking charter and the dual banking 

system that has served us very well for nearly 150 years in which 

national banks operate under uniform Federal Rules and States 

39 

are free to experiment with different rules for the banks they charter. 

Second, the rules do not afford meaningful input from banking 

supervisors, even on real safety and soundness issues, because in 

the event of any disputes, the proposed CFPA would always win. 

That should be changed by allowing more banking supervisors on 

the board of the CFPA and by providing a formal mechanism for 

banking supervisor input into CFPA rulemaking. 

Finally, the CFPA should not take examination and enforcement 

responsibilities away from the banking agencies. The current banking regime works well, where the integration of consumer compliance and safety and soundness supervision provides real benefits 

for both functions. Real life examples attached to my testimony 

demonstrate how this works. 

To the extent the banking agencies have been criticized for consumer protection supervision, the fundamental problem has been 

with the lack of timely and strong rules, which the CFPA would 

address, and not the enforcement of those rules. Moreover, moving 

these bank supervisory functions to the CFPA would only distract 

it from its most important and daunting implementation challenge, 

establishing an effective examination and enforcement regime for 

the shadow banking system of the tens of thousands of non-bank 

providers that are currently unregulated or lightly regulated, like 

the non-bank mortgage brokers and originators that were at the 

heart of the subprime mortgage problem. CFPA’s resources should 

be focused on this fundamental regulatory gap, rather than on already-regulated depository institutions. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Comptroller Dugan can be found on 

page 106 of the appendix.] 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you very much. 

Our next presenter will be Mr. John E. Bowman, Acting Director, 

Office of Thrift Supervision. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN E. BOWMAN, ACTING DIRECTOR, 

OFFICE OF THRIFT SUPERVISION (OTS) 

Mr. BOWMAN. Good afternoon, Mr. Kanjorski, Ranking Member 

Bachus, and members of the committee. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the Administration’s proposal for financial regulatory reform and H.R. 3126, the 

Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009. It is my pleasure to address the committee for the first time in my role as Acting 

Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision. 

The OTS supports the fundamental objectives at the heart of the 

Administration’s proposal, agrees that the time to act is now, and 

agrees that the status quo must change. As you consider legislation 

to meet those objectives, I encourage you to ensure that each proposed change addresses a real problem that contributed to the financial crisis or otherwise weakens this Nation’s financial system. 

In my view, the solutions to these real problems fall into three 

categories: 

Number one, protect consumers. One Federal agency whose central mission is the regulation of financial products should establish 

the rules and standards for all consumer financial products. This 

40 

structure would replace the current myriad of agencies with fragmented authority and a lack of singular accountability. For entities 

engaged in consumer lending that are not insured depository institutions, the Consumer Protection Agency should not only have 

rulemaking authority, but also examination and enforcement authority. 

Number two, establish uniform regulation by closing gaps. These 

gaps became enormous points of vulnerability in the system and 

were exploited with serious consequences. All entities that offer financial products and services to consumers must be subject to the 

same consumer protection rules and regulations and vigorous examination and enforcement so that under-regulated entities cannot 

gain a competitive advantage over their more regulated counterparts. 

Number three, create the ability to supervise and resolve systemically important firms. No provider of financial production should 

be too-big-to-fail, achieving through size and complexity an implicit 

Federal Government backing to prevent its collapse and thereby 

gaining an unfair advantage over its more vulnerable competitors. 

The U.S. economy operates on the principles of healthy competition. Enterprises that are strong, industrious, well-managed, and 

efficient succeed and prosper. Those that fall short of the mark 

struggle or fail and other stronger enterprises take their places. 

Enterprises that become treated as too-big-to-fail subvert the system. When the government is forced to prop up failing systemically 

important companies, it is in essence supporting poor performance 

and creating a moral hazard. 

If the legislative effort accomplishes these three objectives, it will 

have accomplished a great deal, and in my view, the reform effort 

will be a ringing success. 

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. We look forward 

to continuing to work with the members of this committee and others to create a system of financial services regulation that promotes 

greater economic stability for the Nation, and I would be happy to 

answer your questions. 

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

89 of the appendix.] 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you very much. 

Now, we will hear our final presenter, Mr. Joseph A. Smith, Jr., 

North Carolina Commissioner of Banks, on behalf of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. 

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH A. SMITH, JR., NORTH CAROLINA 

COMMISSIONER OF BANKS, ON BEHALF OF THE CONFERENCE OF STATE BANK SUPERVISORS (CSBS) 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, sir. 

Representative Kanjorski, Representative Bachus, members of 

the committee, good afternoon. My name is Joseph A. Smith, Jr., 

and I am North Carolina Commissioner of Banks and Chairman of 

the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. 

Thank you for inviting CSBS to testify today on the Administration’s plan for financial regulatory reform. CSBS applauds this 

committee and the Administration for the time and energy put into 

a challenging undertaking. We look forward to working with ConVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:44 Feb 16, 2010 Jkt 053248 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53248.TXT TERRIE
41 

gress and the Administration toward a reform plan that makes 

meaningful and sustainable improvements in the way our financial 

system serves the public and strengthens local communities and 

the Nation’s economy. 

My statement today reflects the perspectives of commissioners 

and deputy commissioners from around the country, and I would 

like to thank them for their efforts in helping to put this together. 

Our major concern is that the legacy of this crisis could be a 

highly concentrated and consolidated industry that is too close to 

the government and too distant from consumers and the needs of 

its communities. That need not be the result. To avoid that outcome, Congress needs to realign the regulatory incentives around 

consumer protection and end too-big-to-fail. 

We believe that many provisions of the Administration’s plan 

would advance these goals. These include the continuation of the 

current supervisory structure for State-chartered banks, a comprehensive approach to consumer protection, and the recognition of 

the importance of State law and State law enforcement in accomplishing consumer protection. 

However, we also have some concerns. In our view, the Administration’s plan inadequately addresses the systemic risk posed by 

large, complex financial institutions. My testimony today will 

present our perspective on these issues. 

We support the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection 

Agency in concept and we support its goals. Restoring public confidence in our financial system is a necessary objective. Consumer 

protection standards for all financial service or product providers, 

such as those to be promulgated by the agency, are an important 

step in that direction. 

Any proposal to create a Federal Consumer Financial Protection 

Agency must preserve for the States the ability to set higher, 

stronger consumer protection standards. We are pleased to see that 

the Administration’s proposal, as well as H.R. 3126, does just that, 

explicitly providing that Federal consumer protection standards 

constitute a floor for State action. 

We believe that the new agency’s activities would be most effective if focused on standard setting and rulemaking. As part of this, 

we support the agency having broad data and information gathering authority. We believe the agency’s visitorial authority should 

be a backup function aimed at filling in regulatory gaps. We also 

believe the agency’s enforcement authority should be a backstop to 

the primary enforcement authority of State and Federal prudential 

regulators and law enforcement. As part of this, timely coordination and information sharing among Federal and State authorities 

will be absolutely critical. 

We do not believe that systemically significant institutions 

should be too-big-to-fail. There should be a clearly defined resolution regime for these institutions that actually allows them to fail. 

Every type of institution must have a clear path to resolution. 

We believe the FDIC is the best choice as receiver or conservator 

for any type of financial institution. It is an independent agency 

with demonstrated resolution competence. 

For systemically significant institutions, the regulatory regime 

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42 

rective action standards, and it must protect taxpayers from potentially unlimited liability. 

We applaud the Administration for its prompt and comprehensive response to the obvious need for improvement in our system 

of financial regulation. We now look forward to the members of this 

committee bringing your specialized knowledge and legislative experience to this proposal in order to ensure that it accomplishes its 

stated objective, a safer, sounder financial system that provides fair 

and stable access to credit for all sectors of the economy. 

We look forward to working with you on this legislation to reduce 

systemic risk, assure fairness for consumers, preserve the unique 

diversity of our financial system, and enhance Federal-State coordination to create a seamless network of supervision for all industry 

participants. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to share our views today. 

I look forward to any questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found on page 149 

of the appendix.] 

Mr. KANJORSKI. Now we will hear from Mr. Sherman of California for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First as to the CFPA, the consumer agency, I hope that would 

not interfere with the traditional relationship between attorneys 

and CPAs and the clients that they advise. This relationship has 

traditionally been regulated by the States. When attorneys and 

CPAs act within the scope of their profession, it would seem unnecessary to have yet another consumer agency, since they are already 

bound by professional ethics, fiduciary duties, State licensure, and 

centuries of ethical traditions. But my comments don’t apply when 

those professionals decide to become investment brokers or step 

outside of their traditional roles. 

Also as to the consumer agency, and the chairman and I have 

had a colloquy on this, we should be creating a regulatory agency 

that enforces the law, not a law-writing agency, and I hope we are 

able to craft the language to make that clear. Otherwise, we would 

be taking this committee out of the consumer protection business 

and punting that to the unelected. 

Mr. Kanjorski focused on credit rating agencies. I focus a little 

different than the chairman in that it is, to me, not who pays the 

credit rating agency, but who selects the credit rating agency. 

Imagine a baseball league where the umpire is selected by the 

home team. Even if the league paid the umpire’s fee, if the umpire 

is selected by the home team, you are going to influence the outcome. I will be introducing legislation to have credit rating agencies 

selected at random from a qualified panel. 

As to derivatives, we are told that even over-the-counter derivatives play this important role in our economy, but most derivatives 

are just naked casino bets without anybody hedging any risk they 

have in their actual business. So one wonders why we need overthe-counter derivatives allowed, except in those circumstances 

when one of the parties is hedging a legitimate business risk. 

When there is no societal purpose served by an over-the-counter 

derivative, why expose our economy to the systemic risk? 

43 

Chairman Bernanke, I hope you will respond for the record as to 

whether there would be any harm if the President appointed all 

your regional boards of governors. After all, I don’t know why 

banks are appointing those who serve on the Fed and indirectly the 

FOMC, when the pharmaceutical companies don’t get to actually 

name the people who serve on the FDA, the bar association doesn’t 

pick the lawyers. We have a system of democracy where you elect 

a President and he appoints governmental officers. 

Mr. Bowman, you seem to suggest, and I hope you will respond 

for the record, that perhaps we should break up those institutions 

that are too systemically important to fail or too-big-to-fail rather 

than sit around and see if they go under and then break them up. 

I don’t know if that was your suggestion. If so, it is remarkable to 

have somebody in the Executive Branch be so bold. 

Chairman Bernanke, I want to focus on bailout authority. You 

have powers under 13(3) that are unlimited in terms of dollar 

amounts. I remember once I asked whether you would accept a $14 

trillion limit. It was a facetious question to which I got an interesting answer. But you have limited 13(3) to close to zero risk 

transactions, and I applaud you for that modest interpretation of 

your authority. 

In one area of his presentation on an issue where you agree with 

the Secretary of the Treasury, he talks about resolution authority, 

and he says any cost to the taxpayer from the use of this resolution 

authority will be recovered through ex post facto assessments on 

large financial firms. 

So his vision of resolution authority is that there will be cost to 

the taxpayer. And the question is, if we continue to have 13(3) as 

authority for the Fed, would it be unduly burdensome on those of 

you in the bailout business or the systemic business, or whatever, 

to put a half trillion dollar limit on any additional permanent 

TARP authority that we create in this statute? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Thank you. On the presidents question, the regional presidents, we do not support Presidential appointment of 

the Reserve Bank presidents. We are in a situation now where we 

need to increase our consistency of enforcement and oversight, 

where we need to coordinate across the system, and I think creating 12 new Presidential appointees, 19 Presidential appointees 

around the FMOC table, is going to create a more diffuse and decentralized system. So, I wouldn’t be in favor of that. 

On 13(3), my answer to your facetious question was also facetious. We recognize the need to be very careful in the use of this 

authority. And, in particular, if this Congress puts together a resolution authority that can address the problem of failing firms, then 

I would certainly be open, in fact quite eager, to subordinate the 

13(3) authority to the request or the requirement of the resolver. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Having your authority limited by another part of 

the executive branch—if you could just address the question. Do 

you want unlimited new TARP authority? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We are currently, as you know, winding down 

our 13(3) program. So, I don’t anticipate we will be approaching the 

previous peaks. I can’t anticipate what kinds of situations might 

arise in the future. 

44 

Mr. SHERMAN. So you might need unlimited authority to deal 

with them. Thank you. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

We will hear now from the gentlelady, Mrs. Bachmann. 

Mrs. BACHMANN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I found Mr. Sherman’s question very interesting on unlimited authority for the Fed 

as they go forward, and I appreciate also the Chairman’s response, 

being able to anticipate what the need would be for authority going 

forward. 

I would just ask the Chairman briefly, do you believe it would 

be beneficial for the GAO to do an audit of the Federal Reserve? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Well, I have addressed this question some this 

week. The GAO already has authority over most of our activities, 

all supervisory and operational activities, the single firm loans, like 

AIG and Bear Stearns. It also has authority over our TALF program. So we would be happy to work with Congress to address any 

remaining aspects of our operations that involve the use of taxpayer funds or financial management. We are more than happy to 

work with the GAO to allow their audits and oversight. 

The concern that I have with the bill that has been proposed is 

that it does not exempt monetary policy and related operations, 

and my concern is that GAO audits are not really audits. They are 

really policy reviews. And I am concerned that the ability of Congress to essentially ask the GAO to audit any monetary policy decision would be a major reduction in the independence of the Federal 

Reserve to make monetary policy, which would have, I think, very 

negative consequences for the economy. 

Mrs. BACHMANN. So I think to summarize, the answer would be 

no? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Very broad authority is fine, but I would like to 

retain the exemption for monetary policy and related operations. 

Mrs. BACHMANN. I appreciate the nuance. I do. Thank you so 

much for that. 

My concern really goes back also to the concerns in the opening 

statement that was given by Mr. Hensarling early and also by others. I share those concerns. I am very concerned that the President’s proposal that came before this committee is silent on any 

true, meaningful GSE reform, because nowhere in the President’s 

White Paper that I could surmise does he propose any substantive 

ideas to fix the fatal flaws that I think many of us would agree are 

inherent in the GSEs, the too-big-to-fail philosophy that drove Bailout Nation. These are flaws that significantly contributed in many 

of our estimations to the financial crisis the country experienced. 

So my question would be for members of the panel, how can the 

only plan be, and I am quoting from the White Paper, how can the 

only plan be to engage in a wide-ranging initiative to develop recommendations on the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and 

the Federal Home Loan Bank system which will be punted until 

the President’s release of his 2011 budget? It just seems to me that 

real reform could have been, had Congress included placing 

Freddie and Fannie in receivership rather than in conservatorship, 

and how can we ever expect to fix the problems with our financial 

system without making changes at the root cause? If we have effectively nationalized these GSEs, what is our way out? I mean litVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:44 Feb 16, 2010 Jkt 053248 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53248.TXT TERRIE
45 

erally, will Starbucks be too-big-to-fail? Will these be considered financial Tier 1 organizations? 

I think, at this point, we need to ask those questions. 

We saw that the government backed away from CIT, which I 

think many of us were happy to see. But I would ask again, do you 

believe that we should be acting sooner to reform the GSEs? 

And that is for anyone on the panel. 

Ms. BAIR. I think the hesitancy to address the GSE issue is that 

it transcends financial policy and perhaps extends to housing policy, and this is really not an area where any of us have direct responsibilities at this point. But certainly, as the GSEs are functioning now and have functioned before, I believe they are quite 

profoundly systemic. They were sources of systemic risk that had 

built up over the years, as we know now. 

So I think if they do continue to exist, clearly this is something 

that an oversight council should have some input and responsibility 

for. But as you say, the long-term future of those entities seems 

somewhat unclear right now, and it is really not within our purview as banking regulators to influence that policy decision. 

Mrs. BACHMANN. I appreciate that. It is also rhetorical in the 

sense of just laying that on the table again that there are concerns 

from this side of the bench to say that this is an area that we do 

have concern. 

Also regarding the resolution authority, my colleague Mr. Sherman had just referenced, and I think rightly so, Secretary 

Geithner’s testimony indicates that because the government can 

collect the ex post facto assessments to cover the costs of a resolution, that moral hazard will be reduced. So it seems like everyone 

from the taxpayers to the innocent banks will have the potential 

to lose big, except the creditors and the counterparties of the failed 

firms. So how will that improve the status quo, in your estimation? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Well, Chairman Bair has also spoken on this 

topic, but I think we would all agree that an effective resolution 

regime would take value from shareholders and impose costs and 

losses on creditors. So, I think that would be an important part of 

it. 

An alternative, a close alternative, would be to require firms to 

have securities like contingent capital or convertible debt that, in 

the event of one of these resolution events, would be converted into 

a less valuable, more junior liability, and therefore indirectly impose costs on the lenders to the company. But I think we all agree 

that imposing costs on the shareholders and the creditors is an important part of this idea. 

Mrs. BACHMANN. Just to change subjects, do you think there is 

going to be an influx of lawsuits that would be challenging products? This is now on the—apparently my time is up. 

Thank you, Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you again to the panel, too. I 

appreciate it. 

Mr. KANJORSKI. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Meeks. 

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

It is good to see all of you again. My first question would be to 

Chairman Bernanke. It seems that every time you look at reports, 

we seem to be getting some early signs that if not recovering, at 

least the recession is bottoming out. But most of the data that we 

46 

looked at is based on domestic economic trends and housing, employment, etc. But we have also seen that our economy has become 

increasingly dependent on a broader global economy, and in particular developing countries, which have accounted for some 75 percent of global economic growth this decade and over 60 percent of 

growth in U.S. exports. 

So my question is, how do you see trends and risk in the recovery 

in developing countries impacting our own recovery here at home, 

going back and forth? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Well, emerging market economies took a very big 

hit because there was a lot of capital flowing out of those countries, 

and many of them are very dependent on exports and trade fell a 

lot. So, those economies did have very serious declines late last 

year and early this year. But the news I think is generally good. 

Most emerging market economies in Asia, Latin America, and 

other parts of the world have generally bounced back to some extent, and I think that is very positive. It won’t have a major impact 

on the United States because we don’t export a great deal to those 

countries, but it will contribute to a broader and more stable global 

economy and financial system. So, I think it is very positive, both 

for us and for them. 

Mr. MEEKS. I will ask Chairman Bair, and anyone can answer 

this question, I am always concerned about what took place with 

Lehman Brothers, especially currently with the bankruptcy that 

still has a lot of U.S. investors’ money tied up in London. 

I was wondering how would we prevent something—you know, if 

we had with the new regulatory reform program coming in, how 

would we handle the same situation that we had with Lehman 

Brothers? How would it be different? How could we make sure we 

don’t fall into the same situation that we are currently in in regards to an international holding company like Lehman? 

Ms. BAIR. With a resolution authority that is patterned off of 

what the FDIC has now, you could have, in a situation like that, 

put the systemic functions into a bridge facility and required that 

derivative counterparties continue to perform on those contracts. 

In a bankruptcy situation, counterparties have an immediate 

right to close out netting, and that is in point of fact what happened. They exercised those rights, pulled collateral out of the institution, netted out their positions, and went out to re-hedge. That 

caused a lot of disruption in the system. 

With the resolution authority along the lines of what we have 

now, you could have wiped out shareholders and unsecured creditors under our claims priority. But, you could have required secured creditors, such as counterparties, to continue performing on 

their contracts and had an orderly wind-down of the institution. 

But with the rights of immediate closeout netting that are triggered with bankruptcy, you had a very disruptive situation. 

Any resolution is going to be a difficult thing, but I do think that 

with the kinds of tools that we have, you can also do advanced 

planning with our resolution process, particularly for a bank. We 

work with the primary regulator. When we see trouble coming, we 

start planning in advance. So, you can control the timing as well. 

In bankruptcy, there is no control over the timing. 

47 

There are a lot of advantages that we have that I think provide 

in appropriate circumstances a more orderly process, while at the 

same time imposing significant losses on shareholders and creditors. 

Mr. MEEKS. Let me ask my last question to Comptroller Dugan. 

This is based upon news reports yesterday that FASB is considering a new accounting standard that would require that all banks’ 

assets be mark-to-market, including those currently held at book 

value. 

Now, given that many people argue that the primary hurdle to 

getting the banks to move toxic assets off their balance sheets and 

getting them to participate in the government programs to facilitate this has been the unwillingness of the banks to mark down the 

value of their held-to-maturity loans. 

So do you see this as a positive accounting standard, or do you 

think it would promote greater urgency for banks to actively move 

toxic assetts off of their balance sheets? 

Mr. DUGAN. Congressman, I believe that FASB announced they 

will be putting such a proposal out later in the year. I haven’t read 

the exposure draft, but as explained to me, it would move more of 

the loans on balance sheet to a mark-to-market or fair value status, 

although it would have different treatment for how the ups and 

downs in that would be run through the income statement or the 

balance sheet. 

I must say, I do have a very significant concern about moving 

more assets and liabilities into the mark-to-market arena. I 

thought, given all of the issues that we have had this year about 

the volatility that introduces into income statements and balance 

sheets, that we wouldn’t have continued marching down that path. 

So this concerns me. It also concerns me what it will do to the process of having more ability to have loan loss reserves in good times 

to prepare for losses in bad times. 

So we will want to study this. 

The CHAIRMAN. The time has expired. 

The gentleman from California. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. This will be the last questioner. I apologize to all 

concerned, but we have about an hour of votes, and we will end the 

hearing at this point. It isn’t fair to the witnesses to have them sit 

around while we vote for an hour and have the only two people in 

Washington who aren’t making planes come back and look at them. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. I guess I am the clean-up batter. 

The first question to Chairman Bernanke, we are talking about 

firms that are systemically significant, too-big-to-fail, too-interconnected-to-fail. Not an exact number, but in order of magnitude 

today, how many firms is that? Five, 50, 500? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Order of magnitude, I would guess— 

The CHAIRMAN. Could members as they are leaving please do it 

in a quiet way so we don’t disrupt the hearing any more than it 

has been disrupted. 

Thank you. Please continue. 

Mr. BERNANKE. A very rough guess would be about 25. But I 

would like to point out that virtually all of those firms are organized as bank holding companies or financial holding companies, 

48 

which means the Federal Reserve already has umbrella supervision. So, I would not envision the Fed’s oversight extending to 

any significant number of additional firms. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. Okay. So it is basically, like you say, additional 

oversight for about 25 firms over which you already have some 

oversight? 

Mr. BERNANKE. In fact we already have umbrella supervision authority, yes. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. Okay. And those firms, if a firm was determined 

to be systemically significant and they didn’t like or want the additional supervision they were going to get, they could always spin 

off divisions or do whatever they needed to do to not become systemically significant, correct? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Absolutely. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. The second question for the whole panel is, unless I heard incorrectly, with the exception perhaps of Mr. Bowman, I think all of you believe that some of the powers or authority 

or whatever in the CFPA should be somewhere else than the CFPA 

as the Treasury has proposed it. 

I think that question was very inartfully worded, but hopefully 

you understand that the powers and everything that Treasury gave 

to the CFPA, with the possible exception, Mr. Bowman—or maybe 

you agree, but all of you believe that some of those powers and authorities should be somewhere else, is that correct? 

Everybody is nodding. 

The CHAIRMAN. The reporter cannot pick up nods. 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes. 

Ms. BAIR. Yes. 

Mr. DUGAN. Yes. 

Mr. BOWMAN. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. All of you believe that. 

Okay, then, one final question for me, and then I can yield the 

balance of my time to Mr. Posey. 

The Treasury proposal does not have Federal preemption, which 

in theory perhaps means 51 regulators instead of one. Do any of 

you not support Federal preemption? 

Ms. BAIR. There are a lot of State-chartered banks that operate 

in multiple jurisdictions, and they comply with State consumer protection laws, and it is really not that much of a problem. So we do 

disagree on this issue. We think that it is appropriate, even for federally-chartered institutions, to comply with State consumer protection laws. 

Also, with a good strong standards setter and some strong, valid, 

common-sense standards, the need for the States to go above the 

Federal standard will probably be greatly reduced, if not eliminated. But, there are lots of State-chartered banks that operate in 

multiple jurisdictions that comply with these State consumer protection laws now. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. I am from California now. No matter what regulations are set up, my State will make them more onerous. 

Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. I agree with every single thing that Chairman Bair 

has said. There are a number of situations where the Federal 

49 

standards were proper where States did not adopt additional standards. In fact some States actually cut back to the Federal standard. 

The States have acted when there has been no Federal standard 

or inadequate enforcement. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. So a 3–2 vote on that. 

I will be happy to yield the balance of my time to Mr. Posey. 

The CHAIRMAN. We will give Mr. Posey 21⁄2 minutes. We will give 

him an extra minute. 

Mr. POSEY. I don’t have any questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will be then be adjourned. 

Mr. Bowman, you wanted to add something? 

Mr. BOWMAN. Mr. Chairman, if I could, Mr. Sherman asked me 

a question which I didn’t have sufficient opportunity to respond to. 

With your permission, I would like to supplement the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. The record will be open for all witnesses, members, and others to submit statements. 

Let me just say there are a number of witnesses here who have 

appeared before the committee on several occasions. I welcome you 

here in your guise as born-again consumer protectors. 

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I think it is so important that this 

panel come back, maybe not Mr. Bernanke. Chairman Bernanke 

has been here so many times. I am kind of reminded of the story 

of the mother who told her son— 

The CHAIRMAN. Let’s do it quickly here. 

Mr. BACHUS. I would like them to come back in September. 

The CHAIRMAN. We are I think sufficiently entangled, all of us, 

so that, yes, we will see them again as well as we deal with this 

in September. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:45 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(51) 

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