William Bryan: “today Senator Bond, Senator Moseley-Braun, and I are introducing legislation to require stocks to be traded in a much…”

“today Senator Bond, Senator Moseley-Braun, and I are introducing legislation to require stocks to be traded in a much more consumer-friendly fashion with the added benefit of saving investors billions of dollars. Mr. President, I send that legislation to the desk for its introduction. Let me just say parenthetically this is not the first time that I have had the privilege of working with the senior Senator from Missouri on legislation that affects vital consumer interests. He and I had the opportunity to work over several previous Congresses and secured in the last Congress significant changes to Federal law that protect consumers in terms of correcting information on their consumer histories, the largest single complaint before the Federal Trade Commission, and through his leadership and support and sustained efforts we were able to accomplish that. So I look forward to working with him on the piece of legislation that we introduce today, with the only caveat that I hope my distinguished colleague and I might be more helpful in getting this passed in a sooner period of time than we did on our previous enterprise which took three successive Congresses to work through. This legislation would bring to an end an antiquated pricing system currently used by Wall Street to buy and sell stocks that dates back to colonial times when the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the 18th century and the dollar was denominated in pieces of eight.”