Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator, and I concur with his detailed explanations. His tireless efforts in putting these commonsense restrictions into law will help protect American families from reckless risk-taking that endangers our financial system and our economy. The conflicts of interest provision under section 621 arises directly from the hearings and findings of our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which dramatically showed how some firms were creating financial products, selling those products to their customers, and betting against those same products. This practice has been likened to selling someone a car with no brakes and then taking out a life insurance policy on the purchaser. In the asset-backed securities context, the sponsors and underwriters of the asset-backed securities are the parties who select and understand the underlying assets, and who are best positioned to design a security to succeed or fail. They, like the mechanic servicing a car, would know if the vehicle has been designed to fail. And so they must be prevented from securing handsome rewards for designing and selling malfunctioning vehicles that undermine the asset-backed securities markets. It is for that reason that we prohibit those entities from engaging in transactions that would involve or result in material conflicts of interest with the purchasers of their products.”