Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, during the past few years, the financial service industry has endangered the American Dream of capitalism. Each day, we learn more about those who are responsible. It wasn't small business, the owners of these businesses or the entrepreneurs who harmed us but, rather, the Wall Street firms that manipulated the system and the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, that allowed greed to destroy the economy. SEC Inspector General David Kotz, in his recent report, said that the SEC bears total responsibility for nearly $70 billion of investor losses due to the Stanford and Madoff Ponzi schemes. Thousands of additional innocent victims were allowed to lose their life savings while they mistakenly believed that the SEC was actually regulating the securities market. What is worse is that, even today, Wall Street is attempting to manipulate the laws to avoid their responsibilities under the 1970 Securities Investor Protection Act, SIPA, and the corporation created to carry it out, the SIPC, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. SIPA provides $500,000 of insurance to investors against the fraud or the dishonesty of an SEC-regulated broker. Wall Street supported SIPA because it wanted to encourage investors to allow brokers to hold their securities in their street name. For example, if you bought securities through Merrill Lynch, instead of your name appearing on the stock certificate, it was held in Merrill Lynch's name.…”