Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker gave testimony today before a Joint Economic Committee of Congress. He addressed the current financial and economic environment and the role of the Federal Reserve.

He discussed how the financial market environment has changed considerably since his tenure as Fed Chairman in the early and mid 1980's. He pointed out that financial institutions like investment banks and hedge funds, whose failure can have tremendous effects on the financial system, are lightly regulated. "Systemically important investment-banking institutions should be regulated and supervised" in a similar manner to commercial banks.

Chairman Volcker stressed the need to update the entire regulatory framework, saying "It's not simply a matter of inexperience or technical failures." He also discussed the need to update regulations on a global basis because of the increasing coordination between world central banks.

Anyone who has sat through a U.S. Congressional hearing -- present company included -- will tell you that the hearings are often 99% exasperation and 1% illumination.

Hours of each session can go by without hearing anything voters/readers really need to know about. Still, every once in a while, up pops something imaginative, sometimes even involving a topic that wasn't intended to be the focus of the hearing.

Such an event occurred Thursday during U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before the U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

Bernanke, responding to a question from U.S. Senator and Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-New York) on the federal government's $417,000 insurance cap on mortgages, suggested that Congress could consider allowing Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), under a temporary plan, to buy mortgages up to $1 million from banks and mortgage companies, pay the U.S. Government a fee for having the federal government guarantee them, then turn them into securities to be sold as investments.