Kanjorski Saw No Urgency In The Financial Sector

I am reposting this post from October, 2008. Paul Kanjorski and his fellow Democrats knew there was a huge problem in the financial services sector and downplayed its significance. Better yet, he admitted that when you do things in haste you can leave some awfully large holes in the mission. And that is exactly what happened and is happening with TARP, the Porkulus Spendulous package, and healthcare. Only a small part of the stimulus package is going to roadwork and bridges.

On September 25, 2003 the Committee on Financial Services held a hearing including the Financial Services Roundtable. As part of the financial modernization and deregulation the organization evolved from predecessors. "In early 2000, the first members from the securities, investment, and insurance sectors joined their banking brethren as founding members of The Financial Services Roundtable."

Mr. Steve Barlett, President and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable, and their newly formed Housing Policy Council offered testimony at the hearing. He was engaged by several Congressional panel members over the mortgage industry, its health, and the need for better regulation.

Listen to Paul Kanjorski in this video. We are smack dab in the middle of the biggest financial crisis to hit this planet in a 100 years and this was Kanjorski's assessement.

MR. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Listening to that discussion, I tend to agree that this is a very delicate area on how we handle mission and how we deal with what really independent strong role plus regulation will be and to tailor those two situations to these particular entities, not counting the fact that we have some earlier testimony about throwing in the Federal home loan bank system, which creates an entirely different problem we would have to address.

First of all, is anyone on the panel aware of a crisis situation where we have to do this in the next two or three weeks? Do you really believe that some of the issues that have been raised here in the discussion with this panel, that this can all be accomplished with deliberative speed in a short period of time, like two or three weeks?

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Kanjorski, our organization and our companies have been quite concerned about this from a safety and soundness as well as a mission for the last several years. We have communicated that concern. But recently, that concern seems to have been highlighted by a number of factors.

So, yes, sir, I believe there is an urgency that is to the tune of some $3.3 trillion that is either owned or guaranteed by these two agencies that all the testimony that you have heard today bring in some question as to whether they are being properly regulated. So we think they are not being properly regulated. And we believe that with $3.3 trillion, you do not want to wait too long. And now is the time to act.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I would not suggest that everyone has questioned whether or not we can construct a better regulatory authority than what we presently have. I do not know whether we want to put a qualitative standard on what has existed. But my question is, we have so many fundamental questions, particularly missions and what is a strong independent regulator.

It seems to be we are going to have to wrestle a lot of things. Somebody suggested we write the mission. I think it was Mr. Raines. I venture to say I could anticipate taking weeks and weeks and weeks hammering that around and just what that description in statute should be of what the mission is so that it can be more readily applied.

My problem is I think we have a lot of haste here. We are going to run down and, Steve, having served on this committee before, you know what happens in haste. We sometimes do not dot all of our i's and cross all of our t's. And we can leave some awfully large holes in this mission.]

Paul, you were given notice to protect the public. What happened?