Senator Warner spoke on the floor today to promote his bill creating a strong, independent council to regulate institutions from becoming "too big to fail," or so complex that its failure might undermine the financial system. 

In his statement, Senator Warner outlined the structure and purpose of his proposed "systemic risk council":

What I'm proposing today boils down to a simple, consistent, and commonsense idea: if we want to do something constructive about systemic risk, we should create a mechanism that can both ensure that our regulators do their jobs, avoid conflicts of interest, and fully leverage our existing regulatory resources to promote the proactive identification and control of systemic risks.

By having this council made by the day-to-day regulators, I believe we can create this mechanism. We need to make sure that we never again put the American taxpayer in the kind of financial duress that we had take place last year. I believe a systemic risk council approach, working as one piece of an overall moderation and re-regulation, will head us in that direction."

Since June, Senator Warner has been advocating for a council of regulators. He says it would eliminate the current regulatory "stovepipes," and a council would allow regulators to more easily spot companies that might become systemically risky sooner.