Political Quotes

“I would like to thank my friend from Massachusetts for the time and Ranking Member Waters for being willing to hear different perspectives on this bill from our side. I want to start by saying that Dodd-Frank, which I think I can say I contributed more than my share to, was, on balance, a very good and very important thing. The dragging of derivatives into the light of day, trading on exchanges, clearing through clearinghouses, the creation of the CFPB, taking steps to eliminate too big to fail, there is lots of stuff in Dodd-Frank which is important and good. But not everything in Dodd-Frank is important and good. Like all other works of mortals, there are things in this that are probably unintended and perhaps overreaching. I happen to believe that the requirement that private equity funds register with the SEC is one of those areas. Why is that? First, private equity funds, as has been pointed out on the floor today, were a million miles from the bad mortgages from Fannie Mae, from Freddie Mac, from the subprime mortgages, from all of those things that caused the failures in 2008. They weren't anywhere close. Secondly, investor protection is important, but, by law, the only people who can invest in these funds are accredited investors or institutional investors who don't just sign up. They hire attorneys to negotiate partnership agreements. They negotiate with these private equity funds for disclosure, for the terms, and all of those sorts of things.…”