On the recordMay 5, 2010
I would like everyone to take a look at these headlines from September 2008: ``Nightmare on Wall Street, Where Do We Go From Here?'' All of us who went through this, whether we were in the Senate or we were looking at what was happening to our investments on Wall Street, we saw over 3 short days in September of 2008, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG collapsed and the stock market plunged. Seniors lost their retirement savings, and families lost their jobs and homes. Small businesses stopped hiring. It was a nightmare. That is what it was. If there is one thing we should all be able to agree on, it is this: The American taxpayer should never again have to bail out Wall Street firms that gambled away our savings and wreaked havoc on our economy. My amendment is very clear. It is not a sense of the Senate. It has the force of law. It is straightforward. It is an ironclad assurance that a failing, insolvent Wall Street firm must be liquidated, and the cost of that liquidation must come either from selling off the firm's assets or from industry assessments of the big Wall Street firms.
