Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) joins Starting Point to talk Congressional hearings on JP Morgan and how the Volcker Rule could have prevented the crisis.

Sen. Merkley says, “This is the type of investing, proprietary trading if you will, hedge fund style investing that specifically the Volcker Rule was designed to prevent. If you want to be in the hedge fund business, great, sever your ties with insured deposits and take the big risks and the only people who get burned are your investors or your own funds but don’t do it and try to be inside the banking system, where we subsidize operations and provide loans, liquidity to families and businesses.”

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien airs weekday mornings from 7-9am ET on CNN.

Anderson Spoke to Senator John McCain, who thinks U.S. should do more when it comes to Syria, he asked Anderson, “Where I the President of the United States?  When is the last time the President of the United States talked to the American people about how terrible the situation is?”
McCain also argues the U.S. and the international community should provide weapons to the Syrian opposition.

More than 20,000 Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey, finding a measure of safety in tent camps. The Syrians refuse to return to their homes unless Bashar al-Assad is no longer in power.Grief is everywhere. No one has escaped unscathed. Anderson tells some of their stories.

Tonight on Anderson Cooper 360°, a full month after the so-called cease-fire brokered by the United Nations took effect in Syria, the killing continues. We’re Keeping Them Honest as Anderson reports from the Syria-Turkey border.

Editor's note: Fouad Ajami traveled to Turkey with Anderson Cooper to meet Syrian families living in refugee camps after escaping attacks in Syria and fleeing across the border. He shares more of his expertise during a special edition of AC360° at the border of Syria and Turkey at 8 and 10pm ET tonight.

Abu Mohamed extended Anderson Cooper an invitation of hope: he wanted his guest, who had come into his tent on the outskirt of Antakya to chronicle the ordeal of Syria's refugees, to visit him in his beloved home, in Jisr al Shughur. "Please come and see us in fulfillment as you have seen us in our grief." The proud man in his mid 60's whom I had known from earlier visits was apologetic. There were the codes of hospitality from his beloved Syria. He wanted me to render his thoughts in English to the visiting American journalist; he was sure that the truth of his country was not understood in foreign lands.

The regime back home, he said, had depicted the town of Jisr al Shugur, an achingly close agricultural town a little more than a dozen miles away from this tent city of some 1,600 people, as a hotbed of religious fundamentalism and a home for terrorist groups. "Nothing could be further from the truth. We were a peaceful people who tended our work, who loved our country. There was hardly a hunting rifle in Jisr al Shugur. The weapons you can buy in stores, on street corners in American cities, were not available in our town." FULL POST

Sheila Bair, senior advisor for Pew Charitable Trusts and former FDIC chair, says financial institutions like JP Morgan are too large to manage and need to be smaller and simpler.

Bair states, "This is still a very serious issue. I think it does underscore that even with very good management these institutions are just too big to manage, and especially when dealing with very complex derivatives instruments trying to hedge risk in large securities trading books, even the best of managers can stumble. And so it does I think require, suggests smaller, simpler institutions, ones that have more focused management on particular business lines."

Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien airs weekday mornings from 7-9am ET on CNN.