That's a very, very important point about how things will move forward. It's also extraordinarily difficult for me to understand the Republican Party in this matter. On the Senate side, at the moment it looks as though they want to…

Well, now that's an interesting question. Clearly, we have institutions that are too big to fail. That's where the TARP legislation that was the last act--one of the last acts of the Bush administration--came into being. The Treasury…

It's really very, very important that we do focus on the community banks. This is Main Street. This is where the small businessman--the men and women that own the local grocery store, the shop, the person who is the carpenter, the painter…

That's in the bill that you and the other members of the Financial Services Committee put together. It was voted on here on this floor in December, as I recall. I had the pleasure of being elected in November, and I was here for that vote…

You have raised a very, very important point, and it's the history of how all of this came to pass, about a mortgage industry that had run amok, that had engaged in predatory pricing and predatory mortgages and selling products, mortgages…

Mr. Speaker, thank you so very much. What we intended to talk about was the Wall Street meltdown and the necessity of the reform of Wall Street. However, having listened to our colleagues on the Republican side carry on for the last hour…

Mr. Ellison, thank you so very, very much for pointing out what was the history of the great 2008 collapse. You saw those enormous job losses that were occurring during the Bush period and then the slow but steady improvement in the number…

Thank you very much. That history is not a good chapter in America, and these men that were involved in all of this, to whom did they owe their allegiance? I've said many times, it's about the fundamental American values. I know that in my…

Let's be very clear that those closed-door meetings were the leadership of the Republican Party sitting down with Wall Street and talking about how to preserve the present system that led to this great collapse. You said something that…

It's one of those basic American values that Wall Street seems to have forgotten and the Republican Party seems to want to be absent from Wall Street, and that is honesty, transparency. That is, explain what this product is all about, and…

There is something I learned long ago at the University of California when I was taking an economics class, and that was the American private system of the economy was dependent upon competition, and that laws were put in place more than a…

You mentioned the issue of Wall Street pay. The numbers are really astounding. In 2007, before the collapse, Wall Street paid out $137 billion to its employees. In 2008, in the midst of the great collapse, they actually reduced it. They…