Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first, let me commend the Presiding Officer. Senator Merkley has been an avid leader in doing something significantly important to end the role of proprietary trading, which is something that helped create a housing bubble, expanded that bubble, and the bubble burst and helped to sink this economy. This amendment we are offering is aimed at trying to rein in the excesses of those proprietary trades. It does it in a way which makes a lot of sense. A lot of work went into it. The Banking Committee, Senator Dodd, his staff, our staffs, and many other staffs and people outside of this body have worked very hard to make sure this will be a practical amendment. It is. I am proud to cosponsor it with the Presiding Officer, Senator Merkley, who has been such a great leader. As recent hearings that I chaired at the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations demonstrated, many things caused the financial crisis that started the recession that we are climbing out of. But up and down the financial system--upstream, from mortgage brokers hustling dubious mortgages, to Wall Street firms downstream that sliced and diced securities, betting on those risky mortgages--there were failures and mistakes piled on top of plain old-fashioned fraud. At its heart, the financial crisis is a story of extreme greed and excessive risk. In the pursuit of ever larger profits, financial institutions took on ever-increasing risk while ignoring the danger that risk represented.…”