Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, today I rise in support of H.R. 1675 and particularly want to speak about title II, which is called the Fair Access to Investment Research Act, which I sponsored along with my friend and colleague, Mr. Carney from Delaware. Since starting my most recent investment firm that I had back in the 1990s before I came to Congress a year ago, I have seen the investment category exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, grow from about 100 funds with $100 billion in assets to over 1,400 funds with almost $2 trillion in assets--a significant increase over that time. Despite their growing popularity and use by retail investors and small institutional investors, most broker-dealers in this country do not publish research on ETFs. Primarily, the lack of that publication is due to anomalies in the securities laws and regulations, and that is at the heart of what we are talking about here. It is an important investment category. It deserves research, and it deserves more information, not less. Title II's mission is simple. It directs the SEC to provide a safe harbor for research reports that cover ETFs so that those reports are not considered offers under section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933. Therefore, ETF research is just treated like all other stock corporate research.…”