Political Quotes

“Mr. President, among the most difficult issues we dealt with in the debate over the Wall Street reform bill we approved last week is that of proprietary trading and conflicts of interest in the financial system. This trading, often involving risky investments with large amounts of borrowed money, was a significant contributor to the financial crisis of 2008--a crisis from which we have yet to fully recover. The bill the Senate has approved includes important language dealing with proprietary trading and with conflicts of interest. In the hope of strengthening that language, Senator Merkley and I introduced an amendment which would have made Congress's intent clear: to end risky proprietary trading at commercial banks, to demand that the largest nonbank financial institutions maintain sufficient capital for their trades to prevent taxpayer bailouts, and to end the outrageous and destructive conflicts of interest which marked so much of Wall Street's behavior leading up to the crisis. It is this last issue on which I have focused much of my attention. As we move toward negotiations between the House and Senate and final passage of a Wall Street reform bill, hopefully the final product will deal with these conflicts of interest.…”