Political Quotes

“Thank you. I thank the gentleman from the great State of California. You know, today we had a hearing in the Financial Services Committee in which we looked at sort of an autopsy of Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers is particularly problematic for California, but also for many other States and local jurisdictions because so many of these local jurisdictions had money invested in what were investment-grade instruments at Lehman, and when Lehman went belly up, they lost everything. So in San Mateo County, for instance, $150 million just gone, even though it was prudently invested in investment-grade instruments at Lehman's. And many people lost their jobs, many classrooms weren't built, many developments that were supposed to take place didn't happen. It was interesting today because Mr. Fuld, who was the former CEO, said that Lehman Brothers was risk averse; ironic when a company had $20, $30 billion that basically just evaporated overnight. I think it's really important as we discuss this issue, though, to take us back to how did we get to where we are today? How did we get to a place where everything came crashing down? I would like to just point to the cracks in Wall Street, which I think explains really well what actually happened. If you recall--this is way before our time, certainly--but in the thirties, the Glass-Steagall Act was passed by this very Congress after a horrendous meltdown on Wall Street when we were in the throes of the Great Depression.…”