Political Quotes

“Mr. President, yesterday, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, held the fourth in our series of hearings to explore some of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis. These hearings are the culmination of nearly a year and a half of investigation. The freezing of financial markets and the collapse of financial institutions that sparked our investigation are not just a matter of numbers on a balance sheet. These are numbers reflecting millions of Americans who lost their jobs, their homes, and their businesses in a recession that the housing crisis sparked, the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. Behind these numbers are American families who are still suffering the effects of a manmade economic catastrophe. Our goal has been to construct a record of the facts in order to try to deepen public understanding of what went wrong, to inform a legislative debate about the need for financial reform, and to provide a foundation for building better defenses to protect Main Street from Wall Street. Our first hearing, 3 or 4 weeks ago, dealt with the impact of high- risk mortgage lending. It focused on a case study, as our committee does, of Washington Mutual Bank, known as WaMu, a thrift whose leaders embarked on a reckless strategy to pursue higher profits by emphasizing high-risk loans.…”