Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee. I commend the Senator from Tennessee who has worked tirelessly for months on this legislation but in particular has worked tirelessly on this particular amendment. I rise to try and make my point as strongly as I can. This body, I know, always wants to do the right thing. We want to address the concerns that made the market begin to collapse 2 years ago. We want to restore confidence in real estate finance. We want to bring back the vibrant housing industry. We do not want to reincarnate subprime loans. And we ought to do one simple thing today: We ought to learn from history. I want to give everybody a small history lesson. The underlying bill answers the question of better underwriting by putting risk retention as a requirement on a newly originated mortgage, a risk retention of 5 percent. The tier 1 minimum capital requirement of a nationally chartered bank is 8 percent. You are going to tell me the banks of America are going to reserve another 5 percent against the mortgages they originate? No, they are just not going to originate mortgages whatsoever. Secondly, risk retention is no insurance for a better mortgage having been made. The fact is, in the late 1980s, the American savings and loan industry, which was chartered for the purpose of financing American homes, went under, and they had a 100-percent risk retention. What causes bad lending is bad underwriting.…”